This strange business called higher education

If only people listened to me!

As always, it was about half past eight when I reached the campus on a cold Monday morning.  Unlike many others (are you listening, my friend?!) it does not bother me one bit to get up bright and early even on Mondays and head to work, and whistle while walking to campus.  (I have been unable to clear this tune from my head!)

And, as always, it was a silent building that I entered.  No students in the hallways. No student even inside some of the classrooms.  A few minutes after the hour, I wondered whether the conditions might be any different. Nope.  Vacant classrooms like this one.

For years, it has been this way--very little human presence and activity until we begin to approach the ten-o-clock hour.  Any weekday morning it is pretty much the same story.  Well, weekdays except Friday.  Classrooms get filled fast from ten until four.  And then the buildings empty out.  This is the Monday through Thursday schedule.

Fridays, there are very few classes anymore. And, of course, no classes on Saturdays and Sundays.

When such excess classroom capacity exists, one would think that the last thing anybody would complain about is lack of classroom space.  Yet, ahem, that is a mantra often chanted at such places of "critical thinking."  Maybe mantra is the way to describe it because it is do devoid of reason!

The perception of no classroom space exists because neither the faculty nor the students like early morning classes.  I, too, hate early morning classes for the only reason that when my pedagogical style is to engage in questioning students, well, even for the inquisitor that I am, it is way too early.

In any other business, the service provider would come up with so many incentives and disincentives to address this capacity/demand issue in order to maximize the use of resources.  In any other business, of course. Not in higher education where we simply increase tuition and fees and construct more buildings that will remain empty for most time of the year.

In fact, the business model is so warped that the university even charges an additional fee for online classes.  Yes, an additional fee when there is no need for an expensive piece of real estate that the classroom is, no need for the expensive technology that makes them "smart classrooms," no need for the heating and lighting, no need for chairs and tables and desks.  Instead of, therefore, charging students less for online classes, the university charges them more.  Go figure!

Years ago, I suggested that we simply move by an hour the two-hour blocks that start from eight.  I.e., given that most classes meet two hours at a time, the time-blocks begin at 8, 10, 12, and 2. Why not move them to 9, 11, 1, and 3?  A simple move that will go a long way to addressing maximizing resources.  Can't happen was the response.

Another suggestion was this: price them differently.  Discount the classes at eight, and charge more for classes that start at ten, noon, and two.  Perhaps even throw in a "morning stipend" for faculty who teach classes at eight. Or a "weekend stipend" for faculty who would teach in the weekends.

Nope. Inflexible we shall be because, hey, this is, after all, a non-competitive industry with consumers facing nothing but a Hobson's Choice.

The reality, if only we would pause to understand, is that the economy does not need higher education:

These contentions tying the state of the economy to the number of people completing college programs are not warranted. ...
No reliable data are available showing the number of certificates or degrees needed for work-force development, unemployment reduction, or economic improvement. The oft-cited shortfall of millions of degrees is based on deceptive reasoning: Credentials are not even relevant for most jobs. 

I have made those arguments plenty of times here in this blog, and in newspaper op-eds.  But, hey, if eminent scholars like Art Cohen can't get that idea across to people, what chance do I have!  Cohen, et al, also point out:

The Economic Policy Institute's review of job data shows that 52 percent of employed college graduates under the age of 24 are working in jobs that don't require college degrees. Put another way, of the 21 million workers earning less than $10.01 per hour, 3.57 million hold college degrees and an additional 5.46 million have some college. That these sales representatives, clerks, cashiers, and restaurant servers hold associate or bachelor's degrees does not mean they needed to present them when they applied.

And yet, we continue to do business as if we are a highly value-adding activity, for which we can charge whatever we feel like charging and misuse resources any which way we want to misuse them.  It is amazing how much higher education can get away with--in broad daylight!

Business as it is, higher education then wants to get customer feedback.  Not by asking the word outside the academic walls--after all, that will cause heartburn when they tell us things we do not want to hear.  We ask students on what they think about classes.  Ask yourself this question: if I were a student, which classes and faculty would I highly rate?

Evaluations do make things worse, though, by encouraging professors to be less rigorous in grading and less demanding in their requirements. That's because for any given course, easing up on demands and raising grades will get you better reviews at the end.
How much better? It's hard to say. But it isn't as if most teachers are consciously calculating the grade-to-evaluation exchange rate anyway. Lenient grading is always the path of least resistance with or without student reviews: Fewer students show up in your office if you tell them everything is OK, and essays can be graded in half the time if you pretend they're twice as good.
There's also a natural tendency to avoid delivering bad news if you don't have to. So the prospect of end-of-term student reviews, which are increasingly tied to job security and salary increases, is another current of upward pressure on professors to relax standards.
There is no downward pressure. College administrators have little interest in solving or even acknowledging the problem. They're focused on student retention and graduation rates, both of which they assume might suffer if the college required more of its students. 

You see, we want to retain students and graduate them because they are the cash dispensers.  So, isn't it in our best self-interests to tell students they are all awesome, and that work is always at "A" grade status, and that their feedback is important?

Meanwhile, studies show that the average undergraduate is down to 12 hours of coursework per week outside the classroom, even as grades continue to rise. One of these studies, "Academically Adrift" (2011) by sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, suggests a couple of steps that could help remedy the problem: "high expectations for students and increased academic requirements in syllabi . . . coupled with rigorous grading standards that encourage students to spend more time studying."

If only people listened to me!