We don't need no education!

Enrollment growth in Oregon’s community colleges and universities is not necessarily a healthy sign as the Statesman Journal’s report on July 31^st implies.

Economic recessions are always correlated with increases in the number of students in higher education.  During recessionary times, there is not much of a job creation and, therefore, unemployed and underemployed labor tends to fall back on college education as a way to keep themselves busy and to improve their chances of meaningful employment as the economy recovers.

Economists tell us that the Great Recession ended in June 2009 with growth in the economy over consecutive quarters after an eighteen month downturn.  However, a significant number of Americans are yet to see that growth translated into jobs, which is the only way their own “personal recessions” will come to an end.

Thus, the lingering 9 percent-plus unemployment means that some of them take up college courses.  Graduating high school seniors, on the other hand, realize the stiff competition even for the minimum wage jobs and, they too, are more likely to try to beat the odds by signing up for college.

Therefore, the record enrollment level is far from any celebratory milestone per se.

Instead, we ought to be acutely worried that joblessness might be driving quite a few Oregonians to college.

This unemployment scenario turns even gloomier when I hear from students who completed their undergraduate degrees within the last few years but are yet to find any productive employment.  This morning’s email included one from a former student who wants my advice on certificate programs that she could do in order to get an entry-level job.

Further, studies show that students who graduate during recessions almost always are never able to catch up with the earnings lost because of unemployment and underemployment.

Merely increasing the numbers of people going to college is not going to solve the short-term economic crisis, nor necessarily provide society with a robust economic future.

To make things worse, public colleges and universities are also keen on maximizing enrollment, and even aggressively sell themselves not only within Oregon, but also in the other 49 states and the rest of the world.  As the Pulitzer-winning David Leonhardt observed, a big problem with higher education is “the focus on enrollment rather than completion, the fact that colleges are not held to account for their failures.”

Imagine if we ran hospitals based on the number of patients admitted, and not on the more important metrics of survival and health of those admitted.  We would be aghast, and rightfully so, at the failures in the medical system, more so when it is so darned expensive.  Higher education is, unfortunately, not that different from an expensive health care industry where the patients are not being well served. 

It is past the critical hour that we asked ourselves whether society ought to blindly promote 16 years of education without understanding the marginal costs and benefits of a population supersaturated with undergraduates and doctorates.