Amid all the uplifting clichés at their commencement ceremonies, graduating college students won’t hear a line applicable to some of them — you got ripped off.
Student debt just surpassed the country’s credit-card debt for the first time. It is projected to top $1 trillion this year, according to the New York Times, when it was less than $200 billion in 2000. For the class of 2011, the mean student-debt burden is nearly $23,000, up 8 percent from a year ago.
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There’s no doubt that graduating from college brings a significant economic advantage, but that doesn’t excuse the waste and self-satisfied lassitude of American higher education. Colleges appropriate tuition dollars from America’s students with an ever-accelerating voracity, yet don’t deliver any additional educational benefits — indeed, they do the opposite. Higher education is one of the sectors of American life that most desperately needs a thorough re-conception.
What are students going into hock for? In their book Academically Adrift, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa sift through data that only Bluto could relish.
They cite the work of labor economists Philip Babcock and Mindy Marks showing that in the early 1960s, college students spent 40 hours per week on academic work; now they spend only 27 hours per week. In 1961, 67 percent of students said they studied more than 20 hours per week; now only one in five study that much.
Miraculously, grades haven’t dropped, despite less study. Such are the wonders of grade inflation and students’ selecting the classes where they can most easily slide by. The two labor economists believe that students have mastered “the art of college management,” whereby they succeed at “controlling college by shaping schedules, taming professors and limiting workload.”
There are fewer professors to tame than in the past. Full-time instructional faculty dropped from 78 percent in 1970 to 52 percent in 2005. “On average,” Arum and Roksa write, “faculty spend approximately 11 hours per week on advisement and instructional preparation and delivery.” The rest is devoted to research and sundry other professional and administrative tasks.
The hiring binge on campus has been devoted to what sociologist Gary Rhoades calls “managerial professionals” specializing in sundry student services. What kind of learning environment is it, after all, without a director of sustainability initiatives?
If increasingly students don’t study, teachers don’t teach, and college employees aren’t primarily concerned with either, it raises the question of what the hell happens on campus. Well, many students have a grand time during a years-long vacation from real life. They enjoy state-of-the-art facilities, socialize, and figure how to come away with the credential of a degree in exchange for minimal effort. (That is, if they graduate at all — four-year institutions only graduate about a third of their students in four years, and two-thirds of them in six.)
This is not a formula for drinking deeply from the fountain of learning. Arum and Roksa find only minimal gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing for many students. Forty-five percent of students barely ticked upward after two years, and 36 percent hadn’t budged after four years.
Reformers are brimming with ideas to renovate an expensive and inefficient system. Economist Richard Vedder suggests dismantling the current architecture of financial aid — which helps drive up costs in a never-ending cycle — and giving help only to truly needy students who are performing well academically. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) asks why we can’t move toward three- rather than four-year degrees. Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute wants other ways to credential young people besides a BA. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas is embarking on a controversial push to get the state’s universities to devote themselves more to teaching than to obscure research.
In their book, Richard Arum and Josipa Roska make the elementary suggestion that colleges foster “a culture of learning.” That would seem to go without saying, except in the groves of academe.
I just wonder how MUCH of an economic advantage graduating is, especially when it comes with huge debt burdens to work off? I also wonder what percentage of that debt is from students who fail to graduate? After all, if the AD-vantage is graduation and, presumably, if you BOTH get the debt AND don't graduate, you are doubly-dam*ed.
Of course, the huge rise in student loans has spurred, rather than reacted to, the rise in tuition costs--the cheaper the money to buy something, the higher the price charged. But at least credit cards have to put that fine print "truth in lending" info into your statements even if you don't read or care about it at the time you buy that must-have bling.
Maybe we should have a disclaimer in "plain non-legalistic language" that explains to the student and their parents before they sign on the dotted line that the overall cost of the loan and interest and fees should be deducted from any salary expectations they have from earning the degree? But then, of course, the universities would be forced to disclose the odds against actually graduating at all, provide cost/benefit analyses of their tuition totals, and all of the other simple, commonplace, and everyday loan rules we apply to all other kinds of loans and consumer products/services.
Ain't gonna happen, is it? Not while we have another "education president" in the White House who wants all those young skulls full of mush indoctrinated in policies that will prohibit their future wealth and the wealth of their nation, even while they go deeper and deeper into eventually-to-be-defaulted-on debt, just as the underwater real estate debts have become.
Assuming the guy working on the docks isn't Eric Hoffer, what's the point of teaching him calculus? Or Medieval history?
Sure, if he likes learning about that stuff, be my guest . . . on his own dime. But let's get real here. A lot of learning is like lottery tickets after tonight's drawing.
Good luck with the push in Texas to get rid of research and focus only on teaching. We already have institutions like that, they are called community colleges. And that is precisely how the professors in the Texas universities will view it, as a misguided race to the bottom. If the government intervention goes through, it will only succeed in chasing the best out of the universities, and removing a major source of funding for many departments- research grants.
I'll let you in on a little secret. In most universities, many if not most professors view their teaching/advising responsibilities as an annoying but necessary task that they are required to do part of the time while they get the rest to spend on what they truly are interested in, their research. Of course most won't publicly say that, and the official mantra is that teaching is a challenging and enjoyable aspect of their job.
The professors apparently aren't alone in that view- most universities place far more emphasis when the professors are up for review for tenure and promotions, on the research achievements- publications, national and international recognition of the professor as an expert in the field, and the extent to which they have brought in lucrative grant money, than they do on whether the professor has been an outstanding or mediocre teacher.
Like most government interventions, this one will create a worse situation than the one it is intended to fix.
"I'll let you in on a little secret. In most universities, many if not most professors view their teaching/advising responsibilities as an annoying but necessary task that they are required to do part of the time while they get the rest to spend on what they truly are interested in, their research."
Then perhaps it's time remove these people from university and into research bureaus with the appropriate funding and pay.
The non teaching of professors at colleges and universities is the grand scam of our time. The wall street banksters are pikers in comparison.
parents and students, do not invite Sally-Mae into your home, she is a leech and a slob, never cleaning or mowing, just eating your $$. pay cash or go to work.
I don’t agree with you often but today you are spot on.
You’ll probably disagree with this one though... but I predict the President’s next economic initiative.
In order to expand educational rights for all Americans and decrease college student’s and graduate’s debt burden while increasing their economic opportunities, he is going to pass the College Tuition Forgiveness Act.
Let me be clear, this historic act will allow the government to buyout all college loan debts.
But if you read the small details it will not be available to those richest top 10% Americans who surely can afford to educate their children anyway.
There was an MBA, a man studying to get his Masters of Taxation, and a student majoring in computer information systems. The MBA asked the man studying to get his Masters of Taxation, "Isn't it surprising that I have an MBA and you have a degree and we're both doing the same job as a current college student who is barely starting out?" The man studying to get his Masters of Taxation simply volleyed, "Ah, that is the question of the day, isn't it? Now you're beginning to put the entire picture together about the value of a college education. It is only a matter of time before many other college students begin to put the same picture together." The student majoring in computer information systems laughed and said, "That's kind of funny, maybe I shouldn't finish my education." I simply said, "You are more right than you know, but the joke's on me."
I guess I find myself in somewhat of a minority - I have higher than average student debt after graduating last year, but I also have no real concerns about paying off that debt after getting into med school. Many of my fellow graduates, however, are currently working in jobs they probably could have gotten coming out of high school because they couldn't find anything better in this economy.
I went to college for two years. I wasn't getting much out of it, so I left and joined the Army. My first clue should have been that we started English 101 with a sentence unit. Call me crazy, but a high school graduate should know how to write a sentence well before he walks across any stage, regardless of the state in which he studies.
I work in a university as an adjunct and have had the displeasure to have a beer after work with some of my tenured colleages who freely admit to gaming the system to work the least amount of hours possible. I know of tenured faculty who teach 5 hours per week and have no research or administrative obligations and who complain to high heaven when asked to attend a function or do something extra for the department. The tenured faculty have a club, of sorts, and the rest of the world is excluded.
I make my living in the private sector and teach at the U for the satisfaction of helping young minds to understand the private sector world - and I do it without reservation or equivocation. I actually started teaching because I thought it would be interesting, but I know my calling is to promote private sector thinking and self-reliance. When the opportunity arises, I am able to point out to my students the folly of tenure and other pictures of laziness in the U system, and what is wrought (rot) by them.
P.S. Today Obama says he's going to "forgive" $1 Billion in debt from...Egypt! And "loan" them yet ANOTHER $1 Billion in debt. I wonder how many in-debt non-grad post-college Americans like that idea...as the Everybody-But-Americans Administration strikes again? Maybe we should coin a new phrase: "Immoral Hazard"??
I've been waiting for the downsizing of the higher ed industry for years. It is coming.
I can't wait until students/grads realize that the scammers are the teachers and not the employers.
Only spend the money on that diploma if you need the credentials or you can pay cash. Or get your feet into your chosen industry and get that degree after work.
Loans will burden you during the years of mobility and they will hamper your ability to take advantage of opportunities after college.
Also, once you take that non-college level job, you will be labeled for life, your earnings will always be lower than grads who gained college level jobs.
So, bottom line: know what kind of life you want. Know how much you can afford. Know the educational system and be as defensive as possible with your schooling and career.
I think higher education is the next bubble to burst. now even an in-state university costs $60K for four years. Private out of state schools are $55K per year. And now there is a good chance a graduate can't even find a decent job! Then there is questionable quality of the education as Rich Lowry eloquently describes. At some point in the not too distant future, parents are going to rebel. They will stop wasting their the money. Colleges & Universities enrollments will dry up. They will start dropping like flies. The professors will lose their gravy 6 hour workweek jobs. Unless of course Obama postpones the inevitable by bailing out the colleges and forgiving all student loan debt; what's another trillion or two?
Recently CNBC had a program on college tuition. One point mentioned was, if your child is taking on student loan debt, take out a life insurance policy on your child. While not something you normally think about... If the child dies, the debt is not forgiven, and the parents still have to pay it off.
It depends on your school and your major. My son just graduated with a math/econ degree from a private college and had several job offers starting in the 55-60k range, and he's around 25k in loans. I'd say that was a pretty good investment.
Our institutions of higher "learning" are all very aware of how easy it is for students to get student loans.
One of the consequences of that is our colleges and universities have zero incentive to keep costs in check and to seriously review proposals to expand curriculum in the context of added cost.
Several years ago, I made the acquaintance of a man who had been fired from his job as a professor at a public university. The reason was not that he failed to fulfill the duties the university assigned him. To the contrary, he got sacked because the university discovered that he was simultaneously serving as a full-time professor at another public university. There are many dedicated professors who work long hours for the benefit of their students, but something is wrong with the system when one person can hold two full-time jobs.
I think every college and university should have to publish data on the economic situation of its graduates, the percentage of students who do not graduate, and the percentage of students who attend various professional schools and graduate schools. The economic data should be broken down by major, level of degree, etc. Also, they should disclose the results for 1 year after graduation, 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, and 20 years out. This data should be audited by public accounting firms and published on the universities' websites.
How much of this debt is tied to the increase of the interest rate on college loans since Obamacare took over the college-loan business? I'll never forget BO said something to the effect, that loans for college tuition had served the banks well lo these many years but now, with obamacare, college loans would help the people getting the loans. All this knowing that the interest rate on these loans would rise from about 2 percent to 6 percent. How much debt is tied to the rise in interest? One day, someone who's not an employee of CNBC or the NYT will describe BO's presidency as the audacity of disingenuousness.
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