Can colleges that are failing produce successful students?

A presenter at one of the sessions that I attended at the conference spoke about the difficulty in capturing how students might be picking up valuable soft skills via their part-time work, and how much we need to understand that.

I agree with her--I have interacted with a number of students whose communication and leadership skills are exemplary, but these were not via classroom instruction.  It was then an added bonus to have such students in the classroom because of those skills they brought to the discussion-based learning that I prefer.

A hand shot up from the back of the room.  "Don't you have student clubs and organizations at your university?"

It didn't require that metaphorical doctorate in rocket science to understand what was going on--the presenter was from the UK and the audience member was from the US.  Very different contexts.

"We do" the presenter replied.  "But they are mostly student-run anyway and we won't be able to capture that ..."

The response from the audience member was all too revealing a statement on the higher education issues in the US.  She said "at [I am withholding the university name she said] where I work we have plenty of people who work on those student life issues."

Yes, the very "student life" bureaucracy that has driven up the cost of higher education is the one she referred to as a plus point for the US.  I chose not to engage her on a discussion about it--no fun constantly being the nagging one with a minority viewpoint!

It is atrocious how much we drive up the cost of education by hiring people in order to provide services all under the pretext of serving the customer--the student, that is.

If asked to explain the wildfire growth of their administrations, college officials would say, “It’s what the customer wants.” That huge “student life bureaucracy,” Johnson observes, was supposed to “enhance the typical student’s campus experience, since these students are incapable of navigating the modern college experience themselves.”   

If that sounds odd given the context—the context being college education, not new cars, clothing, or foodstuffs—you’re right: it is odd. “[T]he vision behind the student life bureaucracy sees the student as a consumer rather than a learner, someone who needs to be accommodated lest he take his finances elsewhere by transferring.” That’s the theory behind it. 

Yet, the faculty member in the audience was promoting the "virtues" of a student life apparatus at her university, when I think that we ought to go the European way--if students want to play soccer, or go hiking, or whatever, they should do that on their dime, er, Euro.

Yes, dear reader, even my university employs full-time staff to coordinate downtime activities for students.  And we think we don't have enough of them!  We are worried that without these, students will drop out of the university or, worse, they will transfer to other universities.

This NY Times piece on "colleges struggling to stay afloat" refers to a report from Bain that I have cited in this blog before:

One-third of all colleges and universities in the United States face financial statements significantly weaker than before the recession and, according to an analysis released last July, are on an unsustainable fiscal path. Another quarter find themselves at serious risk of joining them.
“Expenses are growing at such a pace that colleges don’t have the cash or the revenue to cover them for much longer,” says Jeff Denneen, head of the higher education practice at Bain & Company, the global consulting firm that, along with the private-equity firm Sterling Partners, performed the analysis. “A growing number of colleges are in real financial trouble.”

At public institutions like the one where I work, we don't want to rise up to this financial challenge by looking hard at how we do what we do.  Instead, we press for more money from the government and even use students as lobbyists for this noble cause--in the name of helping students.  That won't work because there isn't enough money in the coffers.  So, we will raise tuition and fees instead.  After all, we need rock climbing walls!

Perhaps the continued financial struggles indicate that there are just too many colleges for the marketplace — or at least too many that, with their climbing walls, lazy rivers and five-star dormitories, look too much alike in the battle for prestige, and have lost sense of their mission. A thinning of the ranks might be long overdue.
Just because we believe that colleges are a public trust and shouldn’t fail doesn’t mean they won’t.

We are already failing--in how much we are not educating students when that ought to be our core and only business.  The financial failure is only a result of veering way off.