The Coming College Crash
James Poulos ·
Jul 1, 2011 at 9:34am
From my latest at The Daily Caller:
Now is a time to give voice to the hard, embarrassing truths. One of the hardest and most embarrassing to confess is that the democratization of higher education has been a failure.
We flatter ourselves that America is the land of individuality, and that college is the place we go to “find” our unique “selves.” In fact, at prohibitive cost, college is churning out a single kind of person — self-entitled, immature and compliant. The nation’s prestigious cookie-cutters, and the human cookies they mass produce, are luxuries we can no longer afford.
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May '11
Re: The Coming College Crash
"Modern university education has achieved the dubious result of turning out a self-described sensitive, caring mind that has never been more ignorant of the past and the present. The modern therapeutic university has managed all at once, with its various “centers,” reduced teaching loads, empty faculty research, and legions of new administrators, to put tuition costs beyond the reach of most Americans, to spark an entire new competing industry of no-frills, private, for-profit certificate-granting trade schools, and to end the old idea that a student’s B.A. degree was synonymous with competency or a faculty member’s Ph.D. with wisdom."
From VDH's article at NRO. The higher education bubble will eventually burst but what will replace it?
Sep '10
Re: The Coming College Crash
Seems like you're preparing the rationale for sending your kids to Podunk U, or they've already been and you're chagrined that their values aren't in lock step with yours.
May '10
Re: The Coming College Crash
James --
Your criticisms apply very neatly to a liberal arts education at an elite (or semi-elite) school which you likely understand very well, but you ignore two important points:
1) the process of being accepted to such schools is not easy and therefore the parsing process that takes place IS relevant to an employer and in that sense signifies some aspect of cause & effect albeit not the one that is commonly understood.
2) You make the false assumption that higher education is all about 18-22 year-olds and it is not. Those that have been accepted to elite schools can spend 4 years growing up before looking for a job. Those that do not fall into that category often work hard to acquire skills and understanding that are new and helpful in obtaining a better job.
So yes, you make an excellent point. But you make it I think a little too broadly and a little too cavalierly. Which is OK for Daily Caller, but doesn't pass muster at Ricochet.
Dec '10
Re: The Coming College Crash
This is the same rant that folks make about fancy cars after they test drive a fancy European import but learn from the dealer finance guy that the monthly payment exceeds their budget. Call the bare-bones car what you want, but let's be honest, who really goes to a dealer to buy a car without a radio, without an air conditioner, and with a manual transmission? No one does that.
Modern higher education is expensive because we have learned that high level education requires more than a bare bones text book in a stripped down classroom. Yes people once made do with plain texts in plain classrooms. And Abe Lincoln made do with a bit of chalk, a piece of chalk board and a fireplace for light.
But 1860s teaching methods are no longer adequate to teach about modern technology.
I have taught the old way (text book in stripped down classroom) and the new way (multi-media in a high tech classroom) and you can do much more with all of the expensive wiz bang gadgets. The value in today's university is amazing.
May '11
Re: The Coming College Crash
Gag me with a spoon.
Jul '10
Re: The Coming College Crash
Trace Urdan: James --
1) the process of being accepted to such schools is not easy and therefore the parsing process that takes place IS relevant to an employer and in that sense signifies some aspect of cause & effect albeit not the one that is commonly understood.
Trace, as an HR guy I can tell you you've hit the nail right on the head. I don't expect college grads to have learned anything of value while in college - but the fact that they had what it took to get into a top school says volumes about their earlier education, their self-discipline and their drive.
Aug '10
Re: The Coming College Crash
Oh, I don't know. I recently picked up a copy of the McGuffey Readers set, with the original text from the 1830's, and it is a better reading curriculum than anything I've seen in the last 20 years' worth of interactive multi-media reading software that our elementary schools have been using.
If all you're worried about is learning new technology, there are computer labs for that. If you're worried about actual learning, the content that gets pushed through the fancy platforms, then the one room stripped-down schoolhouse model has a lot to recommend it.
Mar '11
Re: The Coming College Crash
Modern higher education is something of a scam. It's unnesscary for a huge number of people that went to college... they end up working in the same kinds of jobs they would have had without it... and in the insane process of trying to get everyone into college, we've watered down both the standards of college instruction and the value of the degree. College is glorified high school now. A degree used to be a sign of education and leadership. Now it's simply a stamp that claims "this guy is employabe in an office environment".
As far as elite schools, the value of their degree isn't the teaching... undergrad classes at Harvard are as thin and banal as classes at "podunk u.", as another poster put it. The value of an elite degree is other social contacts you make with movers and shakers.
We'd be much better offer going back to fewer colleges with more rigorous courses of study, and expanding our technical and vocational training schools to modern standards. And we need to make High School mean something again. It has to get tougher as well. Fewer AP courses, more shop classes please.
May '11
Re: The Coming College Crash
Education is a very good thing. Borrowing money for higher education at today's cost is a very bad investment. The market for that investment has been artificially inflated and the bubble will eventually burst.
Aug '10
Re: The Coming College Crash
Abe Lincoln is a bad example, by the way. The chalkboard in front of a fireplace shows a self-motivated, self-teaching spirit that is largely absent from modern classrooms; you wouldn't need to worry about spending money on fancy gadgets for such a student.
Drop Abe into an impoverished modern school without a motherboard in sight, and he would find a way to learn modern technology on his own.
In fact, people (like myself) who interview prospective IT job applicants look for this self-motivation specifically. We don't want someone who did 4 years in college or got X certification; we want someone who is so passionate about technology, they work on it in their spare time. We want to hear about your pet side project, about how you learned an esoteric programming language on your own and tried to submit a project using it to your Comp Sci teacher, or how you consider your personal portfolio of apps to be more important than your A+ in Database Design 101.
Please, please, PLEASE give me fewer B.A. holders, and more wild-eyed rogue programmers who taught themselves Python in a public library on their own dime.
Apr '11
Re: The Coming College Crash
Stuff I've heard recently from reliable commentators but can't source:
$80K-$200K is an expensive maturing process, and the modern campus seems designed more to be infantilizing.
I'm sure you had more fun. Did the students get their money's worth, especially the ones who didn't need the whizbang, i.e., who really belonged in college?
Mar '11
Re: The Coming College Crash
Kenneth
Trace Urdan: James --
1) the process of being accepted to such schools is not easy and therefore the parsing process that takes place IS relevant to an employer and in that sense signifies some aspect of cause & effect albeit not the one that is commonly understood.
Trace, as an HR guy I can tell you you've hit the nail right on the head. I don't expect college grads to have learned anything of value while in college - but the fact that they had what it took to get into a top school says volumes about their earlier education, their self-discipline and their drive. · Jul 1 at 10:53am
So their college education was valueless but their earlier education was great? I'm more of the opinion of Andrew Ferguson that what has been learned before and during the admissions process is how to manipulate people, use connections and play the diversity game. They then learn nothing more of value while in college, but emerge with a degree in manipulation and an admission ticket to the ruling class.
Jun '11
Re: The Coming College Crash
I grew up in Huntington, WV, and I remember my parents constant pushing of all of us kids to go to college because that was the only way we were going to be able to get good jobs. And thus we all did. My two stepsisters have masters degrees, my brother a law degree, and me a BS in physics and math. What I really think is happening is that an undergraduate degree is becoming more and more like a high school diploma. Employers are looking to it to show them that the people they're hiring have a certain education level. It seems a college degree much more commonplace, which makes them normal. And ordinary. As for the hedonistic attitude--college is simply an extension of high school, only with a bit less supervision.
Dec '10
Re: The Coming College Crash
grendel:
I'm sure you had more fun. Did the students get their money's worth, especially the ones who didn't need the whizbang, i.e., who really belonged in college? · Jul 1 at 11:35am
"Didn't need the whizbang" is akin to saying that I did not need to read Emily Dickenson in English class. Just yesterday, in fact, did a presentation where I put images of the Queen Mary, a "work vessel" and a barge on a screen one after another. That 90 seconds of visual images saved twenty minutes of verbal digression that was better spent on the substance of the subject at hand. Likewise graphs and tables make it easier to illustrate key points.
I suppose we could do all of that with mimeograph or those big old fashioned artist drawn posters. But why should we?
After all, we do not actually need this blog. We could make do with the old samizdat.
Aug '10
Re: The Coming College Crash
Well, having learned in both environments, I'm not quite as sanguine about what technology adds to understanding. Employed deftly, it sure has its uses, and some subjects don't exist without it.
But a lot of my fellow math and physics students actually preferred teachers who opted for the more stripped-down style. Being genuinely interested in the subject, multimedia fireworks often struck them as distractions -- and expensive distractions, at that. (The intro quantum lecturer who gave all his lectures power-point style was snickered at behind his back, poor dear, though he was an excellent teacher when he just used the blackboard.) We especially learned to appreciate a teacher who'd use a more old-fashioned (and cheaper) style of textbook.
Certainly, technological whizbang can be overdone. Showing a computer model of the bicycle-wheel-turntable experiment is simply inferior to placing your students on a turntable and handing them a spinning bicycle wheel: real physical sensation counts!
May '11
Re: The Coming College Crash
Whizbangs are great but borrowing money to play with them at school is stupid.
Aug '10
Re: The Coming College Crash
If you look at educational fields where what matters is actual knowledge and not intangibles like 'breadth' or 'citizenship' or connections made or signalling of character or whatever fuzzy characteristics many ivy league schools use to describe their graduates, you find that the value of the 'premium' schools drops substantially.
In engineering, no one cares what school you went to. They care about what you can DO. I work for a very large tech company, and we have guys with 2-year college diplomas promoted over people with ivy-league engineering degrees or even masters degrees. The impressive school resume may get you an interview, but once you're in the job the only thing anyone cares about is your ability and your work ethic. If you produce better work than the guy next to you, you get the promotion and he doesn't. End of story.
The engineering field is a meritocracy, and no one cares who your family is, where you come from, or what school you went to. Our only 'elites' are people who have created great things.
Aug '10
Re: The Coming College Crash
Some useful whizbangs I encountered in college:
May '11
Re: The Coming College Crash
Dan Hanson:.
The engineering field is a meritocracy, and no one cares who your family is, where you come from, or what school you went to. Our only 'elites' are people who have created great things. · Jul 1 at 1:25pm
Ditto for medical school. Borrowing money to go to a private med school if you can get into a state school is insanity. In fact, all of the allied fields of medicane are a meritocracy. Life should be a meritocracy.
Jul '10
Re: The Coming College Crash
Southern Pessimist
Dan Hanson:.
The engineering field is a meritocracy, and no one cares who your family is, where you come from, or what school you went to. Our only 'elites' are people who have created great things. · Jul 1 at 1:25pm
Ditto for medical school. Borrowing money to go to a private med school if you can get into a state school is insanity. In fact, all of the allied fields of medicane are a meritocracy. Life should be a meritocracy. · Jul 1 at 1:31pm
Sorry to disagree with you, but there's a definite hierarchy within the medical field, based upon where you got your training.
If you went to one of the top schools where the latest research and latest technology are on offer, the doors of elite practices and hospitals are wide open. If you went to a lesser school, with lesser resources, good luck.
Even patients recognize the difference. Who wants brain surgery from a grad of a middling state school when a surgeon from Harvard or Penn is available?