Higher Education Gone Wild. Not, it ain't the costs!

David Leonhardt of the NY Times summarizes the issues:

• The complexity of the financial-aid process is one, because it scares away many poor students; in the ideal system, up-front tuition costs would remain low, and students would pay back colleges with a percentage of their income.
• The patchy — and often shoddy — quality of education at many high schools and colleges is a major problem.
• It’s also a problem that we don’t know which colleges are doing a good job and which are not.
• Finally, it’s a problem that Washington and the states spend billions of dollars subsidizing higher education but do not demand accountability. See this Daniel de Vise article in The Washington Post for more.

It is not clear though whether all these have equal weight, according to Leonhartd, or whether the listing reflects his understanding of the relative importance.  The way I understand the problems of higher education, I would list the same in the following order--with the most important first:

1. Washington and the states spend billions of dollars subsidizing higher education but do not demand accountability.
2. We don’t know which colleges are doing a good job and which are not.
3. The patchy — and often shoddy — quality of education at many high schools and colleges
4. The complexity of the financial-aid process is one, because it scares away many poor students

Even in this re-ordered listing, it is clear thatpoints 1, 2, and 3 are referring to same issue of accountability.  For all purposes then we can summarize the problem into a simple phrase: Higher Education Gone Wild!

Costs are, to a large extent, the symptoms of the disease, and with our preoccupation with costs we seem to be confusing symptoms and causes.  Even there, at the end of everything, do we have any confidence that the costs, which are spiralling out of control, are worth it?



But, if course, most faculty and administrators will come together very quickly on the one issue of accountability--they will fight it because they like the current system where they can keep asking for as much money as possible without being held responsible for constructive outcomes.

Quote of the day (Fukuyama)

You simply can't get good governance without democratic accountability. It is a risky illusion to believe otherwise

Read the interview with Fukuyama. (ht)

More on fixing schools and colleges

So, it is open season on fixing the mess in higher education, and K-12. This was the latest NY Times op-ed in this topic.

I disagree with the op-ed author (Harold Levy) for a whole bunch of reasons:

• I cannot believe that Levy would want to raise the age limit for compulsory education to 19. For better or worse, we already have 18 as the age when a kid becomes a legal adult. (of course, for alcohol they don't become adults until 21! that is another issue by itself.) The last thing I want to do is tell 18-year olds that they are not adults yet, and that we are going to tell them what they ought to do. To quite an extent, extending the compulsory education is almost the same as compulsory military service that a few countries have for their citizens. Compelling adults to do anything is not my idea of a free society.
• I have already made my point in an op-ed that longer school year is not a panacea. There are a number of other issues with K-12 that need fixing. For instance, studies have shown that children need sleep, more so teenagers. Yet, by starting the school day at 8:00, and in some places as early as 7:00, we rudely interrupt their sleep and pack them off to school. I am yet to meet a teacher who does not complain how most students practically sleep through the first and second periods. We continue with this schedule because it fits the parents' work schedule. When I was a kid, our school started at 9:00 am!
• Everybody talks about the long summer break, including Obama. I hate long summer breaks, which is one major reason why I teach summer school. It makes me less productive if I have that kind of a break. Which is also why I don't see myself taking a long sabbatical also. However, I do not want to force students into more schooling. I would rather lengthen the winter break by one more week, and have a longer spring time break, and thus shorten the summer break without adding more school days. Again, I think we won't do such things because it will interfere with the parents' work commitments.
  I tell you, we are screwing the kids because of what will be a good schedule for parents, and then we blame the kids for not doing well. Nice game we have going :-)
• Levy's argument on truancy is the weakest of all his weak arguments. This way exceeds my threshold for how much society should take over parenting. I will leave it at that.
• One of the groundwork laying items that Levy lists is "losing the advertising wars to for-profit colleges". And, what he in turn proposes is nothing but how public colleges and universities ought to behave like those for-profit colleges. Which means, Levy and I have a serious disagreement on the very purpose of higher education itself.
  When I criticize higher education, my concern is that we are promising students high economic rewards, but then screwing them up. I want full disclosure to students that there is no guarantee of productive employment upon graduation. I also want to emphasize to students that higher education is not about employment skills, but about something less tangible and more profound. Instead, we are currently playing a shell game of conveniently offering either of these explanations as bait and switch. When students worry about jobs, we tell them that higher ed is about more than jobs. But then we pummel them with how higher educated people on an average earn more. Of course, the world has conveniently raised the minimum education for even mindless routine jobs ....
• Levy's comments on making accreditation is a waste. Because, hey, the entire accreditation process was a joke at our own university. It is a fantastic process if done correctly and I completely believe in self-study-based-accreditation. However, in its current structure most colleges and universities simply play the accreditation game, which is a shame. And, it cheats the public with whom we colleges and universities have a social contract.
  

If only I ruled the world :-)