Fatal attraction

No, not those brightly painted toes that distract me when the summer heat reveals those female feet ... but blogging about student debt and higher education

[What] do you tell perspective parents and students about the options they should be looking for, whether they should consider, you know, not going?

What would any responsible person tell them?

[We] really emphasize that metrics such as completion rates at schools, average amounts of student debt and employability at a particular institution once someone graduates should be the priority in choosing a school, and not, again, which university has the more popular football team or the more lush student center.

We should use such metrics because ...?

[If] we can reorient to those metrics, many people might be able to avoid going into an amount of debt that is crushing.

That is from the PBS News Hour interview with Andrew Rossi, the director of the documentary, "Ivory Tower," which is about "the growing worries and criticism over college costs and student debt."

(BTW, looks like the transcriber got mixed up with the prospective versus perspective.  Or, wait, did the News Hour's interviewer get it mixed up?  If the latter, well ...)

To me, and to readers of this blog this is nothing but the proverbial preaching to the choir.  It really does not take a rocket scientist, or even a first grade student, to figure out that reason why college has become expensive is rather simple--higher education has strayed far, far away from the mission of education.  It is now an enormous mostly "non-profit" arm of the entertainment industry, while occasionally holding classes for students.

David Leonhardt explains, very well as he always does, that it is not the debt that students at the prestigious schools have that is of real worry.  Those students will always succeed.  But, the scary story, which is also what I have often argued--like here--is with the college dropouts, a group that is also highly correlated with low and low-middle income households.

Many colleges graduate fewer than half of the students they enroll — and resist policy makers’ attempts to hold them accountable for their results.

Meanwhile, yesterday, this blipped in my Feedly:

Students may be graduating $30,000 in debt, but at least they live in relative opulence for four, five, or six years.

Why that sarcasm, you ask?  Here is an example for you:

At Wichita State, a new $65 million residence hall and dining facility at the center of campus has a waiting list while openings are plentiful at the university's older, lower-priced halls. It'll cost between $10,000 and $12,000 a year (including meals) to live in the new facility, compared to $6,800 a year for older residence halls.

Yes, students and parents care more about country-club living, fancy gyms with climbing walls, and, of course, football and basketball teams, and conveniently forget that the metric ought to be about "completion rates at schools, average amounts of student debt and employability at a particular institution once someone graduates."  And then the same students and their parents complain about the debt?

Why not talk about something pleasant when I am trying my best to maintain my sanity in this hot oven!

source

College is not a trade school. Higher education as an investment "risk"

Whether it is in India or in the US, higher education sells, seemingly at rates faster than how tulips sold in the manic Dutch and European markets nearly 500 years ago.

Students (and their parents) operate with a skewed understanding of what higher education is about.  In economic terms alone,

colleges are not employment agencies.  Plus, the labor market rapidly changes; few schools are prepared to perfectly match students with open positions.  If they did, colleges would admit students (to the school or to majors) based on the supply and demand of available jobs.  Instead, students undertake a great deal of risk that their investment will pay off with increased income, but there is no guarantee.  Unfortunately, even as the student loan bubble continues to inflate, too few students (and their parents) appear to grasp the magnitude of risk that they are undertaking when they enroll in college.

So, what ought to be done?

While we can keep arguing whether college is worth it, the people who really need to answer that question are the ones who are ponying up the dough at the cash register.  We owe it to them to provide the best information so that they can make an informed decision.  They need a clearer definition of the assumed risk of enrolling in college.  They have to wrestle with the notion that a future graduate may have to pay $300 a month for 30 years after graduation, regardless of where that student goes after graduation.

Of course, a good college education does provide intrinsic rewards beyond a future paycheck such as an enlightened mind and a love of learning, but at the moment those benefits do not characterize the intentions of most students.  Hence, we need mechanisms to reduce (what Austrian economists call) the malinvestments in higher education.  The sooner this happens, the less pain will be involved and the quicker we can shift our intellectual energy from running in place to moving forward.  

The gutting of the traditional liberal arts is a tragedy:

As the former president of St. John's College in Santa Fe, John Agresto, argues in his essay, "The Liberal Arts Bubble," were it not for the continued infusion of government subsidies and the influx of foreign students, the bubble might already have burst. Agresto points out that the liberal arts, once the backbone of the higher education system, has fallen into a precipitous decline.
"What was once normative -- that Jake or Suzie would go off to college and study some history, some literature, learn a second language, and perhaps major in philosophy or classics -- has not been the case for years," Agresto writes. By 2008, the number of bachelor's degrees had risen to 1.5 million Americans, but few of these degrees were in the traditional liberal arts. Barely 2 percent of BAs were awarded in history and only 3.5 percent in English literature. Agresto points out that more than a third of undergraduate degress are now earned in business, health professions and education. Colleges have become trade schools by another name -- but far more expensive ones than their for-profit counterparts.

Yep, we have become expensive trade schools :(

If higher education is like religion, then atheists say ...

Have we developed some kind of a blind faith in higher education?

Education is as close to a secular religion as we have in the United States. In a time when Americans have lost faith in their government and economic institutions, millions of us still believe in its saving grace. ...

The American education gospel is built around four core beliefs. First, it teaches that access to higher levels of education should be available to everyone, regardless of their background or previous academic performance. Every educational sinner should have a path to redemption. (Most of these paths now run through community colleges.) Second, the gospel teaches that opportunity for a better life is the goal of everyone and that education is the primary — and perhaps the only — road to opportunity. Third, it teaches that the country can solve its social problems — drugs, crime, poverty, and the rest — by providing more education to the poor. Education instills the knowledge, discipline, and the habits of life that lead to personal renewal and social mobility. And, finally, it teaches that higher levels of education for all will reduce social inequalities, as they will put everyone on a more equal footing.

How is this "religious" belief working?  The author of this book review article scans a territory that is not new in this blog. 

we will need to turn our backs on assumptions of our most fervent boosters of universal higher education: that access alone is the primary purpose, and that when students and teachers are co-present, education occurs.

It is a scam. It is a conspiracy. It is "higher education" :)

While I don't completely agree with the video here (ht), it does raise a whole bunch of critical questions about higher education. And, yes, well presented too

How financial aid makes a ponzi of higher education?

Like many commentators, I have been worried for a while about the escalating student debt crisis, and the role that financial aid plays in the college enrollment ponzi scheme that benefits the higher education industry. 

A wonderful example: Here is an ad that popped up when I was reading and blogging:

Need I say more?

Higher education: heal thyself ... or else?

A year ago, I blogged about the critique of higher education by Professors Hacker and Dreifus.  In the post, I noted how the university where I work made it to their list of the good ones, and also the irony of faculty and administrators alike explicitly disassociating from Hacker and Dreifus.  Oh, good times those were!

Now, it is time for the release of the paperback edition.  Timed with that, Hacker and Dreifus have authored this commentary in the Chronicle, where they write:

Whether one feels that a little or a lot needs fixing, what is missing are signs that colleges and universities see themselves as part of the problem. That is what's most disheartening of all, because if today's higher-education leaders won't take steps on their own, they shouldn't be surprised when outside forces step in—and that won't augur well for academic freedom. The responsibility is theirs to take.

As one who has also been saying this for years, I doubt whether colleges and universities will ever take that first step of admitting that they themselves are the biggest part of the problem.  Naturally, the pressure will come from the outside--and it will come really, really, soon, in the form of various restrictions on funding.  After all, money talks and everything else walks!

I don't ever expect colleges and universities to clean up the mess by themselves.   Unfortunately, it will then be maniacs like the Tea Party folks who will then force us to throw the proverbial baby and the bathwater.

Anyway, what do I get in return for my approach to this academic profession that I absolutely cherish?

In the latest annual evaluation report of my service, the Division Chair notes in effect that I am not a collegial team player.  I then had to file a rejoinder to protest his remark!

Am reminded of the advice that a friend/ senior colleague gave me back in California: faculty do not like anybody who threatens the status quo that works well for them, and all the more so if the dissenter from the ranks is a non-White.  He knew it firsthand and, he too, was from India :)

Oh, BTW, the bizarre reaction from my colleagues was echoed elsewhere too; Hacker and Dreifus write:

At one point, we praised Earlham College for putting students first and playing down research; the college's reaction was immediate and incensed. 

Muahahaha :)

Now the credit agencies are on to the other debt: student loans

Unless students limit their debt burdens, choose fields of study that are in demand, and successfully complete their degrees on time, they will find themselves in worse financial positions and unable to earn the projected income that justified taking out their loans in the first place.

 That is the analysis from the credit rating agency, Moody's, and Reason adds:

In August 2010 financial aid guru Mark Kantrowitz announced that student loan debt had, for the first time, surpassed credit card debt. A month later, the Department of Education announced that default rates for student loans had jumped from 4.6 percent in 2005 to 7 percent in 2008, the most recent year for which data is available. While the two announcements went largely unnoticed, some took the data points as evidence that America's next big bubble—higher education—was becoming dangerously inflated.

My reaction? a big yawn! 
I have been writing about the higher education bubble for more than a couple of years now!  (Search for "higher education ponzi")

More from Reason:

the college industry had more in common with Detroit than the housing crisis.
“These subsidies are kind of like propping up the auto industry with cash for clunkers, or the housing industry with cash for first-time buyers,” he told me last year. “We have this financial aid system that is keeping the system alive.”

Seriously, tell me something new!  

When will the policymakers and the public wake up to the fact that we are overselling higher education, which benefits neither the students nor the idea of "education," and the only beneficiaries are those in the higher education business? 

I am doing my part--like this recent opinion piece in the Oregonian, and this one that I hope that the Statesman Journal will publish.  How about you, dear reader? (editor: what makes you think there are readers?)

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.

When colleges boast of enrollment growth, be scared. Be really, really, scared!

Suppose hospitals boasted about the massive increases in the number of patients who had to be taken care over weeks within their facilities.  The public and the government would be alarmed that either there is something seriously wrong with the hospitals.  More so when heath care costs are soaring.

The increases in in-patient numbers would also make us worry about possible public health epidemics--the possibility that there was something significant that was making people really, really sick.

Fortunately, hospitals don't work that way.  Their goal is not to go into an overdrive and increase the hospitalization rates.  If at all, the complaint often is that hospitals are always too keen on sending patients packing quite early in the rehab stage.

Now, compare that behavior with the trend in another service industry where too costs have risen dramatically: higher education.

As the following chart from Carpe Diem shows, costs of college have outpaced even the much talked about health care costs.

Is all that college tuition worth the investments though?  Not at all. I have blogged enough about this (including this op-ed in the Oregonian.)

Isn't it an unfortunate irony then that the only goal of public colleges and universities seems to be to maximize enrollment!  To use that hospital analogy, more patients, with patients taking longer and longer to get better even while paying high costs, and when they leave the hospital many of them are worse off than when they entered it :(

Yet, again, I find that public universities, like here in Oregon, are only too thrilled about the unheard of and historic growth in the numbers of students.  Only one university seems less concerned about enrollment itself:

It also might be tougher to get in to Portland State University in the future but for different reasons. School officials there have shifted the emphasis from enrollment to retention and graduation, said PSU spokesman David Santen.

Which is how it ought to be--focus on quality patient care, so to say.

Back in 2009, David Leonhardt, who later won a Pulitzer for his succinct analytical writings in the NY Times, observed that a big problem with higher education was:

the focus on enrollment rather than completion, the fact that colleges are not held to account for their failures.

As far as colleges are concerned, it seems to be a variation of the old sarcastic comment, "the operation was successful, but the patient died."

The leaders of educational institutions don't seem to care; in fact, their worry is that there is not enough money coming from the federal government in order to subsidize students:

Current proposals in Congress to cut funding for Pell grants — the federal government’s primary program to help economically disadvantaged students go to college — are shortsighted and could have a devastating effect on students’ access to higher education and work force training, especially in today’s weak economy.

As noble as it might sound, cheap money handed out by the feds ends up benefiting the colleges and not the intended beneficiares--students.  Here is an explanation of how that happens:

[The] U.S. federal government is directly behind the bubble we observe to exist in the cost of U.S. higher education, with federal spending during years of recession effectively insulating U.S. colleges and universities from the nation's economic circumstances by subsidizing their operations.
These subsidies, delivered at times of recession, free U.S. higher education institutions to set the price of their tuition independently of their students' ability to pay based upon their or their family's current household income.
The only limiting factor for U.S. higher education institutions then would be the actual growth of U.S. federal spending. This would be why the average cost of college tuition in the United States would appear to have come to track the total level of federal government spending so closely.
As a result, the cost of college tuition has skyrocketed with respect to the typical family's household income. Consequently, when a student attends college today, they must increasingly rely upon subsidies from the federal government that fill the gap between what their institutions charge and what they must pay for out of their own pockets.

So, yes, the college tuition and fees keep increasing, and quite rapidly--an example, also about Oregon, in this news report:

Oregon's seven universities have proposed an average 7.5 percent tuition increase for full-time, resident undergraduate students next year, pushing the average annual cost of tuition and fees to $7,634. ...
The proposed increases, which the State Board of Higher Education is expected to approve Friday, range from 5.1 percent at Western Oregon University to 9 percent at PSU, the University of Oregon and the Oregon Institute of Technology. Proposed increases are 8.1 percent at Oregon State University and 6.8 percent at Southern Oregon and Eastern Oregon universities.

Where does all the additional money go?  I suppose we need all that extra money for rock-climbing walls, re-branding, ... who cares if students are screwed in the process, right?

Doonesbury explains what college is for. Hint: not for learning!

My students know all too well that I emphasize understanding and analysis in my classes, and none of the assignments or exams is a test of their ability to memorize facts.  And, thus, they know how much I hate the bubbling-in-answers scantron approach to education, particularly at the undergraduate level.  I even allow them to use laptops and smartphones in the class--I try my best to push them beyond a simple and simplistic access to information, and get them to think about the information.

Towards the end of the last term, one student, "K," raised her her hand as we regrouped after a ten-minute break.

"Do all professors teach the way you do, or did we luck out taking your class?"

I gave her a dull boring answer because I had to ensure that I did not use the class time to critique colleagues, not only at my college but in higher education, who, even in this new world of Google and iPhone apps, think that undergraduate education is all about access to facts and testing students about those facts.

What I would have liked to tell "K" and the rest of the class, with a big grin on my face: "thanks for the compliments."

In this cartoon here, Trudeau conveys the same idea, and also the explanation that Bill Gates gave some time ago on why we have colleges anymore:

'Place-based colleges' are good for parties, but are becoming less crucial for learning thanks to the Internet

Don't go to college if you don't need to

So, the board of the Oregon University System approved the tuition increase across all the campuses.

The following is a letter in the Oregonian.  The writer, "Wes Shoger lives in Beaverton. He is an unemployed graduate with a bachelor of landscape architecture."

Oregon universities recently proposed an average 7.5 percent increase in tuition for undergraduates, and no community in Oregon is without debate on what to do with their schools and lack of funding. Even with rising costs and school closures, most parents and educators are still touting the value of higher education as the only option to success.

In debating education reform, little has been discussed on the value that vocations play in our schools and economy. Higher education and attaining a degree have been pushed on our youth as an economic panacea, while "lesser" forms of education that highlight practical skills are swept into the corner. Schools have turned into a one-size-fits-all factory with few options for those who cannot afford the outrageous price of college, those struggling with high school, or even individuals who dare question the efficacy of a degree in today's world.

In elementary school, I was told by my teachers that attaining a college degree would allow me to earn a million dollars more than my high school-only counterparts. That sounded like a lot of money back then. In middle school, disdain for practical skills couldn't be more apparent, where the transformation of a wood shop in the sixth grade became a computer lab by eighth grade. In high school, little was discussed about trades for students who don't care about college or simply have a difficult time plugging into school, where learning welding part time might allow that student to flourish.

Like so many graduates, I am closer to 30 than 20, I have a five-year degree from a university, attained in 2009. I have been sparsely employed with no real career to speak of, and I live with my parents. What hurts most is that I have no hands-on skills to fall back on.

Heed my advice: Don't go to college if you don't need to, and learn a trade instead. Don't cast aside education, but make yourself useful in the labor market by learning a skill. As for the educators and politicians who have hindered skilled labor with the idea that higher education is the only answer to prosperity: Please wake up from your delusional thoughts, as recent graduates seeing little in return from their degrees are growing in numbers.

This is not a warning message or a feel-good essay. This is a call to order that we need to fundamentally change the way we think about education and work in America. Oregon should take note and lead the way in pushing for trade schools as a solid option, or we can keep having this perpetual discussion as to why schools are barely graduating half of their students on time, or wonder in amazement that college is not returning what it originally promised.

Tuition increase in Oregon ... and the money kept rolling in ...

With the slowdown in the economy, and the free falling home prices, the talk of a double-dip recession is getting louder and louder.  Against such a background comes this news report:

Oregon's seven universities have proposed an average 7.5 percent tuition increase for full-time, resident undergraduate students next year, pushing the average annual cost of tuition and fees to $7,634. ...
The proposed increases, which the State Board of Higher Education is expected to approve Friday, range from 5.1 percent at Western Oregon University to 9 percent at PSU, the University of Oregon and the Oregon Institute of Technology. Proposed increases are 8.1 percent at Oregon State University and 6.8 percent at Southern Oregon and Eastern Oregon universities.

I suppose we need all that extra money for rock-climbing walls, re-branding, ... who cares if the promise of college education as the ticket to economic prosperity is a mere selling strategy, right?

In my op-ed piece, I wrote that:

At the end of the day, the only beneficiaries are colleges and universities that are, naturally, recording enrollment increases -- even in my classes in the summer. This enrollment growth then triggers the need for additional facilities, which necessitates a demand for more money from students and taxpayers.

Such a higher educational system cannot go on forever. As economist Herbert Stein famously remarked, "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." I suspect that it will come to a crashing halt when students, and their families and taxpayers, begin to see the numbers flashing by really fast on their meters.

But, if the rates are going up 7.5%, .... oh wait, didn't I voice the same worries quite a few months ago?

College was supposed to be hard. "was" is the operative word :(

If ever it is the case that a crisis is too good an opportunity to waste, well, now is the time to seriously rethink higher education here in the US.  And, what we do here will spread to the rest of the world too.  Not a single day passes without reading yet another piece that makes me wonder for how much longer this craziness in higher education can go on ...

Consider the following chart from Economix:

The chart easily tells the story, which is:

a higher share of college graduates under age 25 were employed in 2000 than in 2010 — 81 percent versus 74.4 percent. And a higher share of this demographic was employed in jobs that required college degrees a decade ago than last year — 59.7 percent versus 45.8 percent.

A phenomenally wasteful underemployment.  A kind of underemployment that is bound to have terrible implications for the rest of the graduates' lives.

But then one might contend that this is lowering education to nothing but utilitarian calculations.  But, hello, most students are in college only for those reasons.  If they could get going on a $30,000 job without the requirement of a college degree, I bet that the enrollment at my college will be down to a fifth or less.

As Loius Menand points out in his wonderful book-review essay in the New Yorker, it was not always like this:

A lot of confusion is caused by the fact that since 1945 American higher education has been committed to both theories. The system is designed to be both meritocratic (Theory 1) and democratic (Theory 2). Professional schools and employers depend on colleges to sort out each cohort as it passes into the workforce, and elected officials talk about the importance of college for everyone. We want higher education to be available to all Americans, but we also want people to deserve the grades they receive. ...
It’s possible, though, that the higher education system only looks as if it’s working. The process may be sorting, students may be getting access, and employers may be rewarding, but are people actually learning anything?

Yes, are most students learning anything, more so given the expensive nature of the investment?

when motivation is missing, when people come into the system without believing that what goes on in it really matters, it’s hard to transform minds.
If there is a decline in motivation, it may mean that an exceptional phase in the history of American higher education is coming to an end. That phase began after the Second World War and lasted for fifty years. Large new populations kept entering the system. First, there were the veterans who attended on the G.I. Bill—2.2 million of them between 1944 and 1956. Then came the great expansion of the nineteen-sixties, when the baby boomers entered and enrollments doubled. Then came co-education, when virtually every all-male college, apart from the military academies, began accepting women. Finally, in the nineteen-eighties and nineties, there was a period of remarkable racial and ethnic diversification.
These students did not regard college as a finishing school or a ticket punch. There was much more at stake for them than there had been for the Groton grads of an earlier day. (How many hours do you think they put in doing homework?) College was a gate through which, once, only the favored could pass. Suddenly, the door was open: to vets; to children of Depression-era parents who could not afford college; to women, who had been excluded from many of the top schools; to nonwhites, who had been segregated or under-represented; to the children of people who came to the United States precisely so that their children could go to college. For these groups, college was central to the experience of making it—not only financially but socially and personally. They were finally getting a bite at the apple. College was supposed to be hard. Its difficulty was a token of its transformational powers.

College is no longer supposed to be hard.  It is now an easy ponzi scheme.

Kafka's "The Departure" is a metaphor for higher education :(

This is the first spring term in a while that I have not shared with my classes Kafka's wonderful short story, "The Departure."  I wonder if it is because I am slowly giving up fighting the screwed-up higher education system.  I hope not.

I was reminded of that short story when a student, "S," came to my office to chat about a few ideas related to her academic work.  In the course of the conversation, "S" tells me that she is completely disillusioned with the whole higher education.  All through high school, she was advised to prepare for college, where, she was told, she would be able to discover herself and her passions by taking a whole bunch of courses.  But, after taking all those courses, "S" now thinks that she could have been doing all that reading by herself, even as she was flipping burgers for a living.

"S" added: "I don't think this self-discovery is worth the $70,000 investment.  If they want us to discover ourselves, then the general education should be free.  Now, I don't care.  All I want is to get the diploma and then move on to find out what I want to do."

I felt horrible listening to "S" because I know her from her freshman year, and she was one highly inquisitive, energetic, sincerely-doing-the-homework, student always with a wonderful smile.  And, through the coursework, it appears that we have simply sucked the life out of her, instead of helping her find her own distinct path towards her future.

Now, all she wants to do is jump through whatever hoops she has to in order to get that diploma and get the hell out of college.

I am willing to put every penny I have (I have only pennies!) to support my view that "S" was articulating what a significant majority of students feel.  Is this what we want to achieve through higher education?  After all the time and money invested in it?

If that is so, then I feel like I am nothing more than the corrupt police constable in India, who might let a car go through only after collecting the bribe.  I am now one of the many constables who force young adults to pay up so that they can move through the lines?  Really?  How awful!

Anyway, we end up in a situation where most students are like "S," who just want to get the hell out of college.  "So, what is your career plan?" I asked "S."  I was not at all surprised when she replied "I don't know. I guess I will figure it out soon."

Which is why I am reminded of Kafka's story, "The Departure."  As you read it, you will see why.  And, you will also see why, in the past years, I have shared this with students in the spring term, as graduation talk fills the air.

The Departure

by Franz Kafka

I ordered my horse to be brought from the stables. The servant did not understand my orders. So I went to the stables myself, saddled my horse, and mounted. In the distance I heard the sound of a trumpet, and I asked the servant what it meant. He knew nothing and had heard nothing. At the gate he stopped me and asked: "Where is the master going?" "I don't know," I said, "just out of here, just out of here. Out of here, nothing else, it's the only way I can reach my goal." "So you know your goal?" he asked. "Yes," I replied, "I've just told you. Out of here--that's my goal."

Hey "S," good luck; I wish you well.  Sorry the system and I let you down.

A selection of responses to my opinion piece ... one more

I wondered whether there might be more comments to my op-ed in the Oregonian.  I am so glad I checked for the comments because the following one, by a reader "looktherapture" makes all the crap that I get from my colleagues all worth it.
Thank you, "looktherapture," whoever you are.

An excerpt from the reader's comments:

I've taken a couple of Dr. Khe's classes. They have definitely been the most engaging and thought-provoking classes I have had at Western. His willingness to "slander" his own profession is commendable; the job of a professor should be focused on spreading knowledge, not providing job certification. When a large majority of the students obviously could not care less about actually learning and just go through the motions, then college has become a "credentialing" program. And if that's the case, maybe people will think twice about going $20,000 in debt for a piece of paper.

The college dream: Is it higher education or a job-training program?

(My op-ed published in the Oregonian)

If only we were all aware of the cost of higher education and engaged in those discussions as much as we are painfully in sync with gas prices.

Every once in a while I point out to students that in the academic quarter system, it costs about $110 every week, per term, for each of the four-credit classes that I teach. A majority of that $110 is paid for by students through tuition and fees. Taxpayers chip in a significant amount as well.

Such an expensive investment is guided by a belief that college education is about future employment and economic productivity, but that's not entirely true. In fact, this linkage of higher education to economic performance is relatively new in human history.

Education, for the longest time, was not about credentialing for the trades. As one looks back to the days of gurukula in India or Plato's academy, it becomes clear that education was simply about knowing. Preparations for the trades and professions happened elsewhere.

Thus, higher education wasn't an industry, either. Galileo pursued research on the cosmos because of his undying, and heretical, curiosity, not because he thought of it as a convenient opportunity to charge students fees that they could not afford.

But especially since the post-World War II years, there has been a transformation that's resulted in a twisted understanding that higher education is some sort of a credentialing service for young adults interested in joining the 21st-century equivalents of trade guilds.

The irony is that it doesn't require an undergraduate degree to complete the tasks in service-sector jobs. Yet we've managed to convince ourselves that a college diploma is a must-have for mere survival, let alone prosperity. Most students I talk to feel that they have no choice but to get a college diploma if they want to get any sort of job anymore. And that presents a horrible choice.

After spending $110 week after week for classes like mine, students graduate, typically, with about $20,000 in debt, only to realize the realities of employment. Despite all my full disclosures in the classroom, they are shocked to find that there really isn't a job waiting for them and that their diploma isn't necessarily the guaranteed route across the (un)employment gates. In fact, trade guilds often add and require their own training and certification.

At the end of the day, the only beneficiaries are colleges and universities that are, naturally, recording enrollment increases -- even in my classes in the summer. This enrollment growth then triggers the need for additional facilities, which necessitates a demand for more money from students and taxpayers.

Such a higher educational system cannot go on forever. As economist Herbert Stein famously remarked, "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." I suspect that it will come to a crashing halt when students, and their families and taxpayers, begin to see the numbers flashing by really fast on their meters.

Maybe students and taxpayers will then demand a refund of the money they spent on my classes, eh?

Postscript:
In addition to the comments at the newspaper's site, two emails, thus far, to me. (I have withheld names and email addresses)

A reader:

Thank you for the EXCELLENT OP-ED piece in the Oregonian: I wished I would have read it 40 YEARS ago; True then also: 3 Degrees Later and OUTCOME SAME: Jobs R in CHINA !

A faculty colleague:

That was an excellent piece in the paper this morning.  I, too, feel that the objective of a university education must be to encourage intellectual growth rather than simply being a minimal qualifier for employment.  We have community colleges for that purpose.  My observation has been that many, if not most, WOU students are intellectually adrift.  We, as an institution, can help young people discover significance.  I believe that should be our mission.

Another reader:

"The world needs ditch diggers too".  Judge Schmels, CaddyShack

A GREAT piece on education.  Unfortunately, the (educational) system is not made up of individuals such as yourself, but of "intellectuals" who have been installed by society as those that must know, and therefore we must follow.  We will be following right into the abyss.

Instead of the constant mantra of "go to college", I hope that we will finally get our educators - particularly in elementary and high school - to say "get a skill" and then teach them how to get that skill.  We have wasted at least two generations on this notion that a four year degree is absolutely necessary.  Gather the industrialists, the business leaders, the employers that want to groom their future workers.  Let the school system(s) produce a crop ready to learn the skills, and then guide those with the aptitudes to the right industry. We could make a tremendous difference in our society, in our educational system, and in our pocket books.  Free the schools from being the catchall of what a child "needs", and just TEACH.  

Thank you for the thoughtful and enlightening opinion piece. 

A letter to the editor:

I was very disappointed in Sriram Khé's analysis of higher education ("The college dream: Is it higher education or a job-training program?" In My Opinion, May 15). Indeed, his opinion seems to confirm the worst and ignore the best of what is actually happening in higher education today. As professors (and as a society), we cannot allow ourselves to be lulled by a siren song of doom and a lack of imagination.

Why can't we provide classical training AND prepare students for the job market? In my field, criminal justice, I am able to teach historical, philosophical and analytical thinking in addition to giving students face time with real-world employers.

To suggest that increasing employment options for our students is somehow a bad thing is shortsighted. Recently, I was able to provide my students with an opportunity to obtain $100,000-a-year jobs with an out-of-state criminal justice agency. Guess what? The hiring folks are actively and eagerly recruiting from the higher-ed pool. Our students are desirable candidates precisely because they have been educated and not simply trained.

Robert Swan
Swan is a visiting assistant professor of criminal justice at Western Oregon University. 

Photo of the day: college degrees and ponzi schemes

An email from a student, "R," had the subject line "university ponzi scheme."  In the email, "R" writes "Did you read this one? Are you Dr X in this article?" ....

Hey, I have been loud and open on this--like here--and don't have to hide behind any "Dr. X" :)

Thanks to R for the link to this latest piece on the worthlessness of the college degree ... and it is in this piece that you will find the image below ...

Excerpt:

if college is neither a luxury good nor an investment, what is it? For Thiel, the commodity college most closely resembles is the humble insurance policy. Americans have become terrified, he says, of what will happen to their children if they don’t send them to college. The recession, widening income inequality, growing job insecurity, the uncertain future of the welfare state, the increasing costs of health care—all have deepened the anxieties that made college such an attractive option for a rising middle class in the first place. “I think that’s the way probably a lot of parents think about it. It’s a way for their kids to be safe, to be protected from the chaos. You’re paying for college because it’s an insurance policy against falling out of the middle class.” The larger question this raises, he says, is, “Why are we spending ten times as much for insurance as we were 30 years ago? And does that tell us something has gone really badly wrong with our country?”

Of course, I have blogged before about Peter Thiel's views on education.  I suppose while we might arrive at the same conclusions about the deplorable state of higher education, our reasons and objectives are not the same.

Branding. University. Business. Ponzi.

In the thirty years since we completed high school, a classmate/friend, "V," has become a big guy (in more ways than one, right "V"? :)) in advertising, with his own firm, and a branding consultant.  For the fun of it, "V" even decided to "brand" our class of '81.  Yes, for free :)

Branding is a standard operating procedure in the world of commerce where it is important to establish a certain identity in the marketplace.  All the more when the competition is now global. The idea then spilled over to politics, which too seems like is all about money.  (editor: you think?!)  Candidates go to a great deal of length to develop a brand of who they are and what they stand for.  Well, what they stand for other than to screw the rest of us.

The logic is simple: where there is money, there is a need for branding.

Along that logic, as we realize that higher education has transformed (or transmogrification, which was a Calvin fave) to nothing but yet another commercial activity to make money--for whom, I know not--well, of course universities need to hire branding consultants and brand themselves.  "It is elementary, my dear Watson."

The university, where I apparently am doing my bit to help earn the university money, has issued a press release to this effect--no, not about making money, which will be a welcome full disclosure, but about branding:

On May 3 at 1 p.m. at the Werner University Center Plaza, Western Oregon University (WOU) will release the new athletic and academic logo marks for the university, designed by Rickabaugh Graphics.

Yes, of course.  If we didn't do all these, students and taxpayers might not be able to figure out where their monies are being wasted!

Developing an identity and brand is crucial because it tells the world how you see yourself now and in the future. 

Really? Don't we already have that?  Uh, hello, as a public higher education institution governed by a board appointed by the governor, we have a clear mission, don''t we? (This blank webpage is a statement by itself on the mission of the university!)  We are not like a BP, which has an identity, PR, and branding problem. Heck, Exxon shows that even if there are problems, the money just keeps rolling  in ...



Need any reminder on what Evita did to the country and its people?

(Wasteful) Spending to get a college degree!

If only we were all aware of the cost of higher education and engaged in those discussions, as much as we are painfully in sync with gas prices!

Every once in a while, I point out to students that in the academic quarter system, it costs about $110 every week, per term, for each of the four-credit classes that I teach.  A majority is paid for by students through tuition and fees.  Taxpayers chip in which a significant amount as well. 

Such an expensive investment is guided by a belief that college education is about employment and economic productivity.  But, this is not entirely true.  In fact, this linkage of higher education to economic performance is relatively new in human history. 

Education, for the longest time, was not about credentialing for the trades.  As one looks back to the days of “gurukula” in India, or Plato’s “academy” it becomes clear that education was simply about knowing.  Preparations for the trades and professions happened elsewhere.

Thus, higher education wasn’t an “industry” either.  Galileo pursued research on the cosmos because of his undying, and heretical, curiosity, and not because he treated that as a convenient opportunity to charge students fees that they could not afford. 

But, especially since the post-World War years, there has been a transformation that has resulted in a twisted understanding that higher education is some sort of a credentialing service for young adults interested in joining the 21^st century equivalents of trade guilds. 

The irony is that it does not require an undergraduate degree to complete the tasks in every service sector job either.  Yet, we have managed to convince ourselves that a college diploma is a must-have for mere survival, let alone prosperity.  Most students I talk to feel that they have no choice but to get a college diploma, if they want to get any job anymore.  And this is a horrible Hobson's choice they face.

After spending $110 week after week for classes like mine, students graduate, typically, with about $20,000 in debt only to realize the realities of employment.  Despite all my full disclosures in the classroom, they are shocked to find out that there isn’t really any job waiting for them, and that the diploma is not necessarily the guaranteed route across the (un)employment gates.  Further, trade guilds, often, add, and require, their own training and certification. 

At the end of the day, the only beneficiaries are colleges and universities that are, naturally, recording enrollment increases.  Even in my classes in the summer!  This enrollment growth then triggers the need for additional facilities, which necessitates a demand for more money from students and taxpayers.

Such a higher educational system cannot go on forever.  As Herbert Stein famously remarked, "if something cannot go on forever, it will stop."  I suspect that it will come to a crashing halt when students, and their families, and taxpayers begin to see the numbers flashing by really fast on their meters.  Maybe students and taxpayers will then demand a refund of the money they spent on my classes, eh!

More on the Ponzi, er, higher education system

It seems like every single day there is yet another analysis of the utterly wasteful strategy of mandating college degrees for all.  If it looks, quacks, and walks the same way, isn't it about time we recognized it as a ponzi scheme?

Today's edition is from Matt Yglesias--far from a Tea Party nutcase he is.  Yglesias provides this chart (it is off the same set of data that I had blogged about last September):

See how much steeper the tuition increases are compared to even that other great ponzi scheme called housing?  Now, of course, the public tuition going up is a reflection of reduction in state allocations.  But, we can use the private tuition as the baseline index, which itself is enough.

So, as state allocations decrease, what do we do?  Increase federal grants, of course!  But then the more the feds subsidize, the more that "benefit" is immediately captured by the public institutions which jack up tuition and fees, instead of the benefit going to the poor student.  More on this here.

Against such a backdrop, faculty are already thinking about salary increases.  Welcome to the bizarro world.  Over at the Chronicle of Hr. Ed. is a lively debate on whether discussions about faculty salaries do more harm than good.  As far as I can tell, there is not any serious comment about the squeeze that we are applying on students :(

Increasingly I wonder whether students themselves realize they are being screwed.  My hunch is that they don't, or even if they do they feel like they have no choice in this matter.  oh well ...

update: this from the faculty union on campus:

Just a quick reminder that Monday (4/25) is Higher Ed. Rally Day at the state capitol steps.  Please join students and faculty for a rally which will convey our needs and goals to the Governor and the Legislature.  It startsat 12:30 on the steps and will last approximately an hour.  See you there.

So, where will the additional money come from?  Hmmmm ....