The old man and the C

For years--all the way from my California days--I have been arguing in favor of vocational education in high school and against pushing young people into college.  I have written many op-eds about these issues.

I have also written quite a few op-eds, and blogged over and over, that "higher education" is not vocational education.  While college does involve preparing for the world of employment, it is a lot more than mere job-training.

I have failed, and failed miserably at that, to get anywhere with such ideas.

But, I continue along this path anyway because, well, stupid is as stupid does! ;)

Now that we are well into the term, students have started feeling the pain of college and classes like mine.  "It's all downhill from here till the end of the term," remarked a student in class yesterday, when I asked them about the lack of energy in the room.

It is not me.  Even the best of the teachers face the same issue.  In this interview, the libertarian-economist, Bryan Caplan, quotes  "Steven Pinker, the psychologist at Harvard, who regularly wins awards for his teaching" and says:

Yet he looks at his classroom a couple of weeks into the semester and sees that half the students aren’t there. How can it be that these are the best students in the world, with the best teacher, at arguably the best school in the world, and half the students don’t think it’s worth their while? And they’re getting a grade, so they actually have an extra reason to be there, and yet they’re not. The only thing you can say is that even the best teacher in the world is boring to these kids, compared to what else they could be doing. It’s sad and hard to face, but that’s the truth.

Even at Harvard, many of the brightest students find one of the brightest thinkers/teachers to be boring!  What are my prospects then, right?

Caplan has a new book out, in which he tears into higher education.  He says in the interview:

People who don’t like school rarely write essays about how terrible it was. Instead they just suffer in silence or complain to their friends, and then they go and get a practical job and we never hear their voices again. The whole conversation about education is really driven by people who did enjoy school and who work with students. Part of what I wanted to do is give a voice to the voiceless and say, "They may not talk about it, but they are suffering." It’s not a real mystery if you actually go to a classroom and look at the faces. Students are generally not happy. They’re bored.

Yep, which is also why I have blogged in plenty about how the current system of higher education is nothing but a ponzi scheme run by educators.

I firmly believe that we are rapidly approaching the point of a paradigm shift in the way we do college.  There are forces converging from many directions.  When that shift happens, I will lose my job.  And students will not be subject to my boring classes either. 

Caveat emptor! All PhDs are not created equal

Back when I was in India and thinking about graduate school in the US, and given that those were the prehistoric days before the internet, I thought that most good universities were comparable and that it might not make that huge a difference on where I did my schooling.

It didn't take me long to know that I was wrong. Dead wrong.

Thus, I briefly flirted with applying to a couple of elite universities.  But, it was too much work all over again.  I ditched the plan, even as I watched two other students from India move on to Berkeley for their PhDs.  (One returned to India, primarily because he couldn't find an academic position here.  The other, I tracked down after all these years, thanks to thinking about this post.)

A PhD from USC sounds great to somebody in India. It might impress somebody in Peoria.  But, insiders know all too well that it ain't a PhD from Harvard.  All PhDs are not created equal.

Source

Now, when I attend conferences and watch the eager-beaver younger people whose identities are so wrapped up with their doctoral dissertations, I am tempted to ask them if they had thought whether or not their PhDs would really get them the academic positions that they are dreaming about?  When they have so much access to information that I never had when I was 22, did they not pay attention to how difficult it is to find a permanent job in academia?  Heck, when as undergrads they had the experience of teaching assistants with strange accents and adjunct faculty who were tired and poor, did they not worry about the post-doctorate phase of life in which they could be unemployed or underemployed?

I suppose to be youthful means to be optimistic and over-confident.  But, then they should not complain later, right?  To complain after seven years of graduate schooling will mean that they lack the very critical thinking that academe is about.

Dan Drezner, whose blog I followed a lot more before he moved on to WaPo, warns about the "cult of the PhD."  Though in the context of his fields of political science and international relations, his observations are equally valid to most, if not all, other disciplines as well:

if your goal is to become a professor and you are not accepted with a scholarship into a top-20 political science program, I would not in good conscience recommend that you get a PhD.

Indeed.

Most of the professoriate in international relations comes from the elite schools. Whether this is because these schools function as a prestige cartel or not is immaterial: the reason will not change the current realities. The academic job market is brutal; getting an academic job without a degree from a top-20 institution is even more brutal.

USC ain't in the top-20.  Well, its academic creds have vastly improved over the past decades.  But, if I were an undergrad in this country and thinking of a PhD program in order to have a career as an academic, USC would be more like my "safe school."

Drezner concludes with this:

If you really want to be a professor, then you need to get a PhD. If you want to advance your career as a wonk, then, all else equal, a PhD would probably help. But all else is not equal. If this is the kind of world you want to enter, then fine, you’ve been warned. But do not claim, seven years from now (if you’re lucky), that someone sold you a fake bill of goods.

Yep.  I have been saying the same thing for years.  And have also been blogging forever, it seems like, on why going to grad school is the worst move for most people.

The WSJ adds:

universities contribute to a glut of Ph.D.s by admitting students who take out loans (some 40% of the $1 trillion in student debt is for graduate school) even when they know few will ever work as full professors. By admitting them into graduate programs, the schools in effect are producing for themselves a low-paid work force.
“To put it crudely, they are hiring their own serfs,” says Richard Vedder, an Ohio University economist who runs the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. He says it’s “as much a moral issue as an economic one.” A university truly devoted to the well-being of its students would be more honest to grad students about the dismal job prospects for Ph.D.s—and more candid to undergrads about their actual instructors.

Caveat emptor!  Yes, that phrase too I learnt only in graduate school ;)

Academic freedom is dead. Long live academic freedom!

The more "funny" things happen at my college and elsewhere in academia, the more I worry that "academic freedom" has been hijacked to mean things very different from what it really means.

We will begin with the first principles--on how Academic Freedom was/is defined by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) :

1. Teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of the results, subject to the adequate performance of their other academic duties; but research for pecuniary return should be based upon an understanding with the authorities of the institution.
2. Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject. Limitations of academic freedom because of religious or other aims of the institution should be clearly stated in writing at the time of the appointment.
3. College and university teachers are citizens, members of a learned profession, and officers of an educational institution. When they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community imposes special obligations. As scholars and educational officers, they should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.

How simple and yet lofty in its ideals, right?

That was the statement in 1940.  As valid then as it is now.

Here is where it gets even more profound:

Institutions of higher education are conducted for the common good and not to further the interest of either the individual teacher or the institution as a whole. The common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition.

That is from the opening paragraph before those three points about Academic Freedom were listed out, and before the statements on academic tenure.

How many faculty and administrators truly understand that academic freedom and tenure are not about the individual nor the institution but for the common good?

It is perhaps always depressing to look at how far we stray from what we thought we were setting out to do.  When a student complains that most of the time in one of their classes the faculty was ranting about something political that had nothing to do with the course, that is not a freedom that the faculty thinks (s)he has.  When a faculty engages in lewd conduct in a public park, (s)he forgets that "the public may judge their profession and their institution" and the "academic freedom" comes with obligations toward that public good.  When faculty have on their office doors and walls cartoons and statements that put students who have differing views on the defensive, they fail to "show respect for the opinions of others."  Academic freedom is not to simply offer courses on whatever, when its contribution to the public good is questionable.

Yet again, I feel like I was born thirty years too late. I am not cut out for this contemporary world where faculty and universities do not care about the public good and, instead, seem to only "further the interest of either the individual teacher or the institution."

Here's to hoping that tomorrow is another day!

Yep, from there

Are the feds helping students with easy loans? Hint: NO!

I always worry about my paycheck.

No, not the way the "comrades" do.  But, I worry that my paycheck is dependent more and more on the tuition and fees that students pay.  "Blood money" as I have referred to it in the past.  Over the years, I have started worrying that I am less an educator and more a mercenary.

As I have often blogged here, and written in op-eds, we are unnecessarily pushing students to college.  Right from the middle school years, we make sure to convey to students that not going to college is a sign of a loser, and that picking up a trade is evidence of being a loser.  Simply awful.  Just awfully distorted and condescending this is.  And so destructive to the human that a young person is.

The federal government does not help when on top of all the screw-ups it has managed to create in K-12 and higher education.

The federal government will lend money to anybody who goes to school, no matter how poor their chances of completing their degree and finding a job that will position them to repay their debt.

That is no exaggeration.  It is true.

The more the government says it will loan, well, is it any mystery that the costs continue to go up?  And, therefore, should it surprise us that the student debt is shattering records month after month?

Even worse--yes, there is even more of a horror story here--is the default rates in student loans.  Consider this chart:

You see how bad a story this is?  A horror story!

Of borrowers who began repaying their debts in 2009, 26 percent have already defaulted—meaning they fell at least 270 days late on their debt—according to new data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Of those who went into repayment in 2005, when the economy was somewhat decent, 25 percent have defaulted.

You see why I am worried and guilty about my paycheck?

Are academic deans furious and waxing wroth over the latest athletic scandal?

The athletics-driven higher education is finally in some serious shit.
Way past time.
But at least now.

What happened, you ask?

For 18 years, thousands of students at the prestigious University of North Carolina took fake "paper classes," and advisers funneled athletes into the program to keep them eligible, according to a scathing independent report released Wednesday. ...
In all, the report estimates, at least 3,100 students took the paper classes, but the figure "very likely falls far short of the true number."

If ever one needed a metaphorical smoking gun in order to take the issue seriously, well, now there is no denying it.

"As an athlete, we weren't really there for an education," Rashad McCants, the second-leading scorer on the championship University of North Carolina basketball team 10 years ago, told CNN's Carol Costello. "You get a scholarship to the university to play basketball," he said. In other words, the point wasn't for him to actually learn. That's just sad.
"The university makes money off us athletes," McCants told Costello, "and they give us this fake education as a distraction." When McCants first made these remarks, university representatives tried to shoot the messenger, attacking him and his credibility.

Remember the lawsuits against the NCAA that colleges and the sports body were simply making money off the students who were hired under the guise of "student-athletes" but were, ahem, not students and only athletes?  The whole thing is a "subversion of the academy":

 The NCAA is a cartel of the major athletic universities in the United States that sets wages, playing conditions, and other aspects of intercollegiate athletics. Most prominently of these is a restriction on payments to football and basketball players. These two sports create billions of dollars in local and national revenues via gate receipts, TV contracts, and ancillary merchandise, not to mention millions of dollars annually at member schools in donations by alumni and other supporters of athletic programs.

It is a tangled web that was woven at UNC.  A web that involved even a, wait for it, ethics professor!  Yep, an ethics professor, who "directed the university’s Parr Center for Ethics," was totally in the middle of this scandal!

The president of Macalaster College is furious:

this is not fundamentally an issue about sports but about the basic academic integrity of an institution. Any accrediting agency that would overlook a violation of this magnitude would both delegitimize itself and appear hopelessly hypocritical if it attempted, now or in the future, to threaten or sanction institutions—generally those with much less wealth and influence—for violations much smaller in scale.
Most of us work very hard to conform to the standards imposed by our regional accrediting agencies and the federal government. If falsified grades and transcripts for more than 3,000 students over more than a decade are viewed as anything other than an egregious violation of those standards, my response to the whole accreditation process is simple: Why bother?

Exactly!  Why bother with real work?  I agree with him that the university should lose its accreditation until it is able to convince us that the grades mean something.

The crime involves fundamental academic integrity. The response, regardless of the visibility or reputation or wealth of the institution, should be to suspend accredited status until there is evidence that an appropriate level of integrity is both culturally and structurally in place.
Anything less would be dismissive of the many institutions whose transcripts actually have meaning.

Of course, that will not happen.  Because, dammit, that won't happen!  After all, this ain't anything new :(

Is it possible to pull academia's head out of the clouds?

In a hallway, in the building where my office is, are two shiny display shelves with books authored by faculty.  This takes intellectual onanism and narcissism to new heights (lows?).  After all, it is not even at a place that has high visitor traffic to impress them with "research"--heck, it doesn't even have high student traffic--which means that the displays are essentially for us faculty to feel important in this cosmos.

A monument to faculty, by faculty. and for faculty!

I suppose those display shelves by themselves are an awesome statement on what higher education has come to mean for faculty--it is all about themselves.  Who cares about students and their learning, and society and the public good!

Why such books in the first place?  Because, that is how faculty prove their mental capabilities to their peers.

The first four chapters prove the scholar’s done the work, and the next two chapters – the ones “people might actually read” – present the argument. Elsewhere and in between are the reworking of the author’s dissertation and implicit tenure pitch.
That’s how Timothy Burke, professor and chair of history at Swarthmore College, described the scholarly monograph here Thursday during a forum on its future sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries. Half-jokingly, Burke said of how authors view their books: “I prize this because only five people in the world understand it … We all know it.”

Haha. Funny. What a joke, right?  Those books on display in the hallway are like most books by academics--even if the publishers gave people money to read them, there won't be any takers.

When insiders joke about something important, I wonder why they cannot instead, you know, do something about it.

Anyway, back to the books. If these are not books that you find at the local bookstore, and if even the peers won't really read them, who buys these books?  Two major customers: students, who will buy the required texts (and not even open those books!) and university libraries that stock them on stacks that practically nobody ever goes to anymore.

So what to do about it? Burke and other speakers pointed to the digital monograph as a remedy to higher education’s stubborn grip on an increasingly obsolete form.

OMG, alert the press; the glacier is moving!  Higher education has figured out there is something called "digital."  And, even more, about an important advantage:

“In digital work, expert-based work becomes less important, and problems become more important,” Tanaka said. “That changes the authority structure on which our careers and expertise are based.”
Somewhat counterintuitively, however, he added, the historian in this context becomes more important, not less. With the wealth of data now available to the general public, historians don’t just transmit information; they must think critically about how it is best shared with which audiences, and how it intersects with research and teaching.

Seriously?  It took them these many years to understand that "problems become more important" and that the "expert-based work becomes less important" and that faculty need to "think critically about how it is best shared with which audiences, and how it intersects with research and teaching"???

Even more of a show-stopper is this:

The humanities also need to be a bigger part of online scholarly conversations, he said. Still, Shore said he wondered if the proposal -- especially in light of the day's conversations -- "goes far enough." He told the librarians in the room that they were the "intellectuals of this new ecosystem," and encouraged them to share feedback and -- along with faculty members -- "take risks" in exploring the future of the monograph.

OMG, "a bigger part of online scholarly conversations" could mean, ahem, engaging with the masses that exist outside the ivory towers, and many of them could be as smart as, or even smarter than, the faculty. Isn't it much better to remain cloistered instead and build self-satisfying monuments?

Meanwhile, the friend alerts me to this development:

Enter the Carnegie Corporation of New York, one of the few top foundations that's headed up by a bona fide public intellectual, Vartan Gregorian. This week, Carnegie dropped $5 million on five universities to help bridge the worlds of academia and policy in the area of global affairs.
What's cool here is that Carnegie is targeting two of the top problems keeping scholars sidelined.
First, the foundation wants to see universities change their rules on tenure and promotion to take into account policy-relevant work. As well, its grant funds will support younger scholars who want to freeze that ticking tenure clock while they go out into the policy world and make themselves useful.
Second, Carnegie money will support efforts to pull scholars into debates where their expertise is relevant, through both new research and by engaging with policymakers and the media.

How awesome that a foundation is putting up money as incentives for academics to crawl outside the gilded towers!  Will it work?

the insularity of academia is a hard problem to solve one institution at a time—especially when there's no evidence that the system as a whole is interested in change. For decades, now, universities have been pummeled for becoming less relevant, yet things have only gotten worse. And that's not surprising: Universities aren't really accountable to anyone who favors more real-world engagement, so where's the institutional incentive to change anything?
Add "policy relevant" to the criteria used by U.S. News in its college ranking and we'll see some action. But probably not before.
So while Carnegie's effort is laudable, one wonders if this is money well spent.

Fine, you want the bottom-line?  Here it is:

even if Carnegie is doing God's Work here, it's not clear that any foundation has enough money to pull academia's head out of the clouds.

Yep. I can expect to see and hear within the university how awesome the research work done by faculty is, while the rest of the world outside continues to worry that students are simply academically adrift.

Hey, you think the Carnegie Foundation will give me at least a couple of dollars for the public engagement that I have committed myself to?  Yeah, right!

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!

Academic research. Irrelevant. But, end not near!

When I was in graduate school, there were, at least, three tenured faculty who didn't have doctorates.  Yep, professors without PhDs.  As one professor put it, it was a different world when he first applied to become a university lecturer.

Nearly three decades later, I, too, am ready to echo those words that the world was very different then from what it is now, and it seems like it is changing even more rapidly.  But, not only has a PhD become firmly institutionalized as a requirement to become an academic, it has become a ponzi scheme as much as many other aspects of higher education are.

[There] seem to be genuine problems with the system that produces research doctorates (the practical “professional doctorates” in fields such as law, business and medicine have a more obvious value). There is an oversupply of PhDs. Although a doctorate is designed as training for a job in academia, the number of PhD positions is unrelated to the number of job openings. Meanwhile, business leaders complain about shortages of high-level skills, suggesting PhDs are not teaching the right things. The fiercest critics compare research doctorates to Ponzi or pyramid schemes.

Though I am not convinced as Ronald Bailey is about Singularity University as model for the future, I do agree with this:

The production of new knowledge is accelerating exponentially, Nail notes, which means that graduate students dawdling along for years on a Ph.D. will become “fatally irrelevant.” 

In this ponzi scheme, we also require from academics more pointless research than ever before.  This, too, like many aspects of higher education, cannot go on forever.  In a fortnight, I will be at the annual meeting of the professional body in my field, and will attend many sessions.  Many sessions of talks and discussions that will simply be inane and it will be a struggle to even stay awake.

But, research and inquiry does not have to be that way, especially in the humanities and in the social sciences.  With the rapid scientific and technological progress, there is more need now than in the past to understand what it is to be human and how humanity fits into the larger scheme of things.  The larger population outside the academic walls is also keen on insights into such questions.  Yet, research, and PhD theses seem to be about making sure there will be no new insight whatsoever!

A couple of years ago, Joseph Nye, who is a Harvard professor, and former dean of the Kennedy School there, expressed similar sentiments when writing about the academic field of international relations::

Scholars are paying less attention to questions about how their work relates to the policy world, and in many departments a focus on policy can hurt one's career. Advancement comes faster for those who develop mathematical models, new methodologies or theories expressed in jargon that is unintelligible to policymakers.

It is not only policymakers who are eager for scholarly interpretations, the public also is. Instead, we academics continue on with an approach that a graduate school friend of mine always ridiculed as "intellectual masturbation."

Nye adds:

The solutions must come via a reappraisal within the academy itself. Departments should give greater weight to real-world relevance and impact in hiring and promoting young scholars. Journals could place greater weight on relevance in evaluating submissions. Studies of specific regions deserve more attention. Universities could facilitate interest in the world by giving junior faculty members greater incentives to participate in it. That should include greater toleration of unpopular policy positions. One could multiply such useful suggestions, but young people should not hold their breath waiting for them to be implemented. If anything, the trends in academic life seem to be headed in the opposite direction.

Unfortunately, even in the nearly three decades that I have been associated with academia, I have not seen anything that even remotely suggests that changes might be coming.  Instead, academia digs even deeper trenches and, as much as those young soldiers in World War I found themselves trapped in the foxholes for weeks not knowing what was going on, young students are used as the metaphorical cannon fodder.  How unfortunate!

Yes, I have strong opinions on academic research. It is a minority opinion, no doubt, and that does not serve me well. Despite the negative feedback from my peers, I am convinced that I am on the correct path, however Quixotic the tilting at the academic windmills might be.

A much younger me, at one of the academic conferences that I attended as a grad student

If a BA is for bartending, a BS is for ...

Last week, I had a very difficult conversation with a student who wanted my thoughts on a certain academic major versus majoring in geography.  It was not difficult because the student wanted to ditch geography in favor of something else.  In fact, it was a move the student was thinking of making in the opposite direction, hoping for better employment prospects.

So, why was it difficult when all I had to do was to further encourage the student?  Because, I had to give my honest spiel that within the traditional liberal arts, any one major might not make students more or less employable compared to another--unless it is a professional, or a pre-professional, major.

I spent a few minutes describing the idea, that wonderful ideal, of liberal education.  We talked for almost an hour.  While I felt awful that nobody had ever told the student this reality of higher education, the student was thankful, and said, "nobody has ever taken the time to explain all these to me.  Not eve the counselors."

That was last week.

Earlier today, I read this news report on the tremendous underemployment of college graduates:

Students who graduated into the Great Recession have struggled to find work that fits their learning. But according to research released on Monday, millions of college graduates over all—not just recent ones—suffer a mismatch between education and employment, holding jobs that don't require a costly college degree.
The study, from the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, says that nearly half of all American college graduates in 2010—some three years after the recession began—were underemployed, holding relatively low-paying and low-skilled jobs.

This is not news by any means.  After all, even I have been commenting about this forever, it seems like.  (like here, and here)  It has been one long trend, since the burst of the dotcom bubble, with a brief rise that came crashing even more.  Anyway, the latest report adds

Mr. Robe, a research fellow at the center, said that the "bartender with a bachelor's degree" is a classic example of the lack of jobs that require a college education. Many college graduates who take jobs as bartenders or taxicab drivers have better options, he said. But vacancies in those occupations tend to be filled by other college graduates, a trend that slowly crowds out high-school graduates and dropouts.

How terrible!

Meanwhile, there is a different kind of a report from the WSJ--about graduates with specialized skills:

Mirroring trends in the broader economy showing that engineering and computer skills are highly sought, eight of the ten highest-earning majors come from these departments. Companies need workers with specialized technical skills to keep up with rapid technological change and the explosion of data, but too few American college students are choosing the relevant majors to meet that demand.
“Over the years the number of graduates in those areas has decreased, so that creates greater demand,” said NACE’s Andrea Koncz, who oversees the survey.

The way I understand all these, it is quite simple a narrative: the economic structure has rapidly changed over the last decade.  In the new economy, high school graduation alone does not guarantee that "American dream" that was once possible.  That has led to an incorrect perception that getting a liberal arts degree would guarantee one a prosperous middle class life.  But, again, this is a completely different global economic structure where such a qualification doesn't make one readily employable.  Further, the liberal arts were never intended as an employment-ready credentialing system.

Ultimately, it is the college student who is paying a huge price.

Outstanding student loan debt now stands at $956 billion, an increase of $42 billion since last quarter.  However, of the $42 billion, $23 billion is new debt while the remaining $19 billion is attributed to previously defaulted student loans that have been updated on credit reports this quarter.¹ As a result, the percent of student loan balances 90+ days delinquent increased to 11 percent this quarter

How terrible!

The degree you get in graduate school: MD (More Debt)

In my classes, I often tell students, who are awake, that they should not assume there is a direct relationship between their undergraduate majors and their careers after graduation.  In fact, I go one step more and caution them from assuming that there is even any kind of a relationship anymore between college degrees and employment.

If after all that they come to talk to me about going to graduate school, especially for a master's degree, I make sure they understand the huge risk they take, and I am usually ready to even use that "P" word--ponzi! A Google search for this wonderful description of graduate school will bring up a post from my blog in the top results.  I have no idea how the Google algorithm works, but sometimes visitors to my blog land up here because they seem to be worried about graduate school.

They ought to be worried about graduate school.

All of us ought to be panicking about graduate school.

Because, we have simultaneously inflated the credentialing requirements and watered down the quality of undergraduate programs that now graduate schooling is the new two-year BA degree!  In the process of suffering through more years of education, students do not end up amassing knowledge but more debt.

As I noted in a post a long time ago, it now is a requirement to have a graduate degree to teach fifth-graders!  At this rate, we will have post-docs teaching in high school!

The highly indebted students, er, generation!

It is nauseatingly gross when a highly seasoned higher education administrator says the following:

“I readily admit it,” said E. Gordon Gee, the president of Ohio State University, who has also served as president of Vanderbilt and Brown, among others. “I didn’t think a lot about costs. I do not think we have given significant thought to the impact of college costs on families.”

Yep, for years he and practically all the administrators and faculty at colleges and universities never gave any significant thought to how much the cost increases might affect students and their families.  They decided that the goose was laying golden eggs in the form of higher salaries, and went after all the possible geese and eggs.  How awful!

As I look back at my own writings, in September 1999, I authored an op-ed in The Bakersfield Californian,  in which I worried that we were fixated on dropout rates in high schools, all because of the preoccupation with college and, in the process, were not paying attention to career and technical education--vocational training.  Since then, I have been all the more been only drowned out by the louder and louder voices in favor of college for all, even as the mismatch between the revenues and expenditures of governments worsened, resulting in fewer dollar allocations for higher education that, in turn, resulted in higher fees for students.  And now it is a trillion dollar problem we are forced to recognize.  Meanwhile, Mr. Gee has been collecting salaries and benefits in the millions every year, and coaches even out-earn him. 

"The Indentured Servant Generation" as Matt Yglesias noted a while ago!

Crap; not a good way to start a Monday morning :(

More on the deplorable state of contemporary higher education!

At the BBQ to which my neighbors/friends had invited me over, I slipped into a rather serious and depressed/depressing mode while talking about education.  It has become one giant ponzi scheme at so many levels, I told them.

Almost a day and a wonderful grilled steak and conversations later, here I am reading more during my solitary lunch break, and .... yep, more depressing stuff.  If only students would understand how much the system is sucking them dry!

Exhibit A: This WSJ report that "Only 49% of graduates from the classes of 2009 to 2011 had found a full-time job within a year of finishing school, compared with 73% for students who graduated in the three years prior."  Despite a plethora of such reports, students don't seem to care, and I have often wondered why.  Could there be a great deal of truth in the report's simplistic/sarcastic comment?:

Many students nonetheless express optimism, though perhaps that's simply the Lake Wobegon effect: They might believe they're all above-average after years of positive reinforcement from their parents. In the same vein, they may see themselves as exceptions to the rules of the job market.

And then there is the whole aspect of athletics versus academics. 

We might even cut down the number of classes we offer, and reduce the numbers of full-time instructors, but never shall we even marginally reduce our commitment to athletics.  It is similar to the maniacal Republicans adamantly holding the line on military budget.  Exhibit B: This Bloomberg report on the supremacy of athletics at public institutions:

Rutgers funneled $28.5 million from the university budget and student fees into sports, the most among 54 U.S. public universities in the biggest football conferences, based on data compiled by Bloomberg for the fiscal year ended last June. It was at least the second straight year at the top of the list for the state university of New Jersey, despite cost-cutting after lawmakers and faculty protested that academics were losing out.
(To see Bloomberg’s data on sports spending at Rutgers and 53 other schools, click here.)
“Rutgers puts too much money into athletics at the cost of basically every other department,” said Stephen Sweeney, the Democratic president of the New Jersey Senate, in an e-mail. He applauded efforts by Athletic Director Tim Pernetti to increase revenue. At the same time, he said, “the faculty, student body and the families of students who are supporting them through school simply pay too much.” 

So, ok, those are at the undergrad levels. The typical cure offered by the higher education industry is, well, more schooling. So, we then have excited people going in for PhDs in fields like history, which is Exhibit C:


If it were not for the fact that it is a brilliantly sunny and warm spring day, this would be one hell of a depressing Monday!

Ponzi lives on, through his name. Madoff won't :)

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

Marketing graduate school

As if I needed additional materials as evidence of how we aggressively market graduate education, despite the whole thing being a "graduate scheme," well, here is an example--excerpted from a campus email:

Graduate School Week is returning this October! It is a great opportunity to help introduce students to graduate school information. ...

Class Presentations: An opportunity for faculty to bring a grad school presentation right into your courses! We will work with you to set up a class presentation for your classes. This presentation can be very flexible - ... The idea is to help integrate this information into a class period where students can get the most essential parts of graduate school information for their needs, and for you to be able to help get this information to them by inviting us into the classroom....

WOU Graduate Programs Fair: ...booths from all of WOU's graduate programs will be set up with representatives on hand to give out information, answer questions, and help orient students to the types of graduate programs WOU offers. A great way for undergraduates to learn more about degrees right here at WOU. (And a wonderful way for students to get extra credit for attending!)

BTW, did you catch that "extra credit" deal for attending the fair? :(

Harry Frankfurt noted that marketing, by its very nature, requires a whole lot of bullshitting!

One simple way to save money in K-12 and community colleges

Two words to keep in mind: graduate degrees.

Look at yourself at the mirror and ask this question: "Does one really need a master's degree to teach at the elementary school level?

And then, follow it up with this: "Do instructors at community colleges need doctorates to teach the classes?"

There is a good possibility that your instinct says that a master's degree is not needed for elementary school teachers, and that community college faculty don't need to have the "PhD" tag either.

It is also highly probable that you think it might be a good idea if teachers have those respective advanced degrees.

Now, ask yourself, this: will student learning be increased just because it is an elementary school teacher with a master's degree, or a community college instructor with a PhD?

Perhaps you are beginning to hedge your bets.  It is more likely that you are thinking, "really? A master's degree at a second grade class?"  Or, "hmmm, a PhD to teach basic writing composition?"

If you are hedging, you are not alone.

There is nothing in the literature that shows that student learning is enhanced merely because the teachers have those higher credentials.  In fact, the higher credentials by themselves do not make good teachers.  The advanced degrees are neither necessary, nor sufficient, conditions for improved student learning.  These are simply distractions!

Perhaps at this stage, you are thinking, "well, even if they are not great teachers, isn't it better to have more educated teachers than otherwise?"

Yes, that is absolutely logical indeed.

The problem comes up because teachers, their unions, and the schools have set up a system in which teachers get a salary bump if they have advanced degrees.

Thus, two teachers could be equally lousy or equally awesome, and one could earn more higher than the other only because of the advanced degree.  Even worse: a lousy teacher with advanced degrees could earn more than a good teacher who doesn't have them!

Warming up?  Wait, there is more.

Given that we are talking about taxpayer-funded public schools and community colleges, think about the unnecessary expenditures only because of this rigged system.  Any guesses on how much these cost?  Here is from my own post from nearly two years ago:

A 2007 study estimated that 2.1 percent of all current expenditures can be attributed to teacher compensation related to master’s degrees. Seen another way, the master’s bump costs the average school district $174 per pupil.
... A Nebraska lawmaker, for example, should probably be aware that, on a yearly basis, roughly $81 million dollars—$279 per pupil—are tied up in master’s degrees and thus unavailable for other purposes. During this time of fiscal stringency, it should raise eyebrows when a state automatically allocates over 3 percent of the average per pupil expenditure in a manner that is not even suspected of promoting higher levels of student achievement.

These days, when we are ready to organize bake-sales to fund science labs, we are talking about significant expenses all because of the salary bump for master's degrees.  Take Oregon, for instance: the extra cost as a result of this master's bump is $109,520,560. And this was from a 2007 study, using prior years data.  Update that for the years that have gone by.

Now, think about higher education as an industry.  If you are a higher education professional, you realize that there is an economic incentive for second grade teachers also to get master's degrees.  You then expand into offering those programs:

90 percent of teachers’ master’s degrees are in education programs—a notoriously unfocused and process-dominated course of study. Because of the financial rewards associated with getting this degree, the education master’s experienced the highest growth rate of all master’s degrees between 1997 and 2007.

If you are a concerned taxpayer, by now you are probably getting ticked off.  But, at the same time, you are wondering, "could this be some propaganda?  From disgruntled middle-aged faculty, or worse, from Faux Noose?"

Calm down. Here is what President Obama's education secretary, Arne Duncan, said:

state and local governments should rethink their policies of giving pay raises to teachers who have master’s degrees because evidence suggests that the degree alone does not improve student achievement.

 You are really upset by now.  I hate to add fuel to the fire; but, I have to.

Taxpayers subsidize the public universities that offer those graduate degree programs.  That is right: we pay for the generation of most of those advanced degrees.  These graduates then earn more because of the very degrees, when those degrees are not even required!

Pulling your hair out?  Wait.

The dollar figures I provided were only for the K-12 system, and not for the community colleges.  Think about the several years to get a PhD--the private and public investment it takes--and these PhD grads getting salary bumps at the community colleges, which then turn around and ask for more taxpayer money.

Have a nice day!

Rising college enrollment isn't as good as it seems

As with many of my opinion columns that have been published, this latest one too draws on quite a few of my blog posts.  Blogging has in many ways helped me with the learning about issues and, of course, writing about them as well.

The title of the post here is the title of the op-ed in the Statesman Journal (August 12, 2011)

Enrollment growth in Oregon's community colleges and universities is not necessarily a healthy sign as the Statesman Journal's report on July 31 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, the unemployed and underemployed labor tend 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 18-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, even at the risk of being overqualified at the end.

This unemployment scenario turns even gloomier when I hear from students who completed their undergraduate degrees within the past few years but are yet to find any productive employment. Recently received emails 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, thus, no panacea for the short-term economic crisis, nor to 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 was "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 promote 16 years of education without understanding the marginal costs and benefits of a population supersaturated with undergraduates and doctorates

I wonder what the comments will be this time around--from my esteemed faculty colleagues that is :)

BTW, want an example of how colleges aggressively sell themselves their degree programs?  The following is an ad that appeared when I was reading a piece at Economix.  Higher education has become an industry that pushes college degrees like how spammers sell Viagra :)

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?

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?)

So, ... you really want to go on to graduate school?

When I was relatively new to the neighborhood where I live, a neighbor remarked that becoming a college professor did not come with the economic returns that one might normally expect, particularly when you factor in the subsistence lifestyle in the long years between the undergraduate degree and the full-time academic position.

"One needs to be independently wealthy or should have a spouse who earns, and earns a lot" he added.  We both agreed on this--I from my own experience, and he was basing it on his son's.

Over the years, I am all the more convinced that I don't belong anywhere else but in academe but, at the same time, make sure that I warn any interested student about the realities of graduate school and academia itself. 

William Pannapacker, who writes about many of these aspects of higher education at the Chronicle, has a piece at Slate, where he writes about the need to "remind undergraduates that most of them are out of their freaking minds if they are considering graduate school"

I can only recommend graduate school in the humanities—and, increasingly, the social sciences and sciences—if you are independently wealthy, well-connected in the field you plan to enter (e.g., your mom is the president of an Ivy League university), or earning a credential to advance in a position you already hold, such as a high-school teacher, and even then, a master's degree is enough. 

 Of course, truth-telling of any sort doesn't earn friends.

But, that never stops me, right?

What might "The Simpsons" have to say about graduate school?




Not convinced yet about graduate school?  Ok, how about this one: