Too Much for Too Little

August 26, 2011, 5:42 pm

Richard Vedder’s Innovations post, “Universities and Income Equality: New Evidence and Conjectures,” deserves serious attention. I was going to post a comment, but it struck me as perhaps more useful to offer some additional context.

Vedder offers a tentative finding that since 1970, we have had diminishing returns in the attempt to reduce income inequality by expanding the percentage of the population that holds college degrees. His finding contradicts a number of other studies and those differences will have to be sorted out. But, unlike those other studies, his finding makes perfect intuitive sense.

It also fits with several other forms of evidence. We learned back in January from Academically Adrift, Arum and Roksa’s study of the results of the Collegiate Learning Assessment, that overall about 36 percent of college seniors have made no significant cognitive advance since their freshman year. We also have Richard Vedder’s analysis of Department of Labor statistics from last October showing that the preponderance of growth in bachelor’s degrees in the last two decades has served mainly to increase the number of college-educated workers in fields in which those degrees are unnecessary. His roll call: “Over 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees (over 8,000 of them have doctoral or professional degrees), along with over 80,000 bartenders, and over 18,000 parking lot attendants. All told, some 17,000,000 Americans with college degrees are doing jobs that the BLS [Bureau of Labor Statistics] says require less than the skill levels associated with a bachelor’s degree.”

I don’t want to neglect the reply that is sometimes offered to numbers like these: that these are graduates temporarily placed in low-paying jobs but who will sooner or later get on their feet. Kevin Carey has been conspicuous among those offering this sweeter assessment of where we stand. Surely he is right about some of those underemployed graduates, but 17,000,000 is awful lot of people standing in line for their first break.

The simple fact is that we have inflated the supply of college-credentialed workers far beyond what the market can absorb in the form of high-skill, high-remuneration jobs. And this increase in supply has been accomplished in large measure by reducing (1) college-admission requirements, (2) the quality of instruction, (3) graduation requirements, (4) the rigor of evaluation, and (5) consequences of academic dishonesty. That increase has also been eased into place by the invention of new programs of study that have little intellectual substance and by the growing emphasis throughout higher education on “campus community,” identity group affiliation, ideological conformity, and activities conceived to be therapeutically beneficial. Diminished academic content on one hand, and diversion of attention to non-academic pursuits on the other, have stripped the college degree of much of its value as a guarantor of broad competency.

Of course, as the college degree has become less and less a reliable indicator of knowledge and skill, higher education has become ever more emphatic that its graduates are learning “critical thinking.” The importance of Arum and Roksa’s study is that it has punctured this conceit. They showed that perhaps a third of college graduates acquired “critical thinking” to any meaningful extent.

Employers by and large have assessed the situation correctly, and this would seem to be a key mechanism to explain the diminishing returns that Vedder now finds. The growth in the number of college degrees reduces income inequality only if those additional degrees translate into more prosperous careers than the graduates would have had absent their college credentials. This takes us into another contentious realm: Just how large is the lifetime-earnings premium for attaining a college degree?

The calculations are contentious because we have to account for the income a student forfeits while attending college instead of working and the extended costs of repaying student loans. Different analyses have produced a wide spread of results, but all of them have in common that the “premium” is far less than the $1 million figure that the College Board bandied about a few years ago.

The returns to the individual for “investing” in a college education are thus also diminishing, and the public is more and more aware of this. The New York Times yesterday offered a front-page story, “Online Enterprises Gain Foothold as Path to a College Degree,” on the growing segment of the degree-seeking public that is opting for lower-priced online degree programs. Perhaps the most telling observation: “Nationwide, almost three quarters of college students attend public institutions, and commercial career colleges like the University of Phoenix and Kaplan now make up almost as much of the remaining quarter as traditional nonprofit private universities like Stanford or Duke.” The article and the accompanying sidebars are chock-a-block with quotations from students who say they have weighed their options carefully and come out on the side of online programs as their best route to obtaining the credentials they want.

If this shift continues, and especially if it accelerates, we will need a lot of new calculations. The world of online degree programs differs so much from traditional residential colleges that it very likely has its own distinctive “premium” for lifetime earnings and it may also, in time, produce a different result for reducing income inequality.

In any case, the public has already noticed the diminishing market value of traditional college degrees and is responding accordingly. Americans know they are paying too much for too little, and they are beginning in substantial numbers to explore alternatives. Online programs look like they will be the main beneficiary of this disaffection, but the story is still unfolding. Vedder has also noted that the “elite top schools” benefit from the diminished value of ordinary college degrees. The “Uber College Graduate,” as he puts it—the graduate of Harvard or Stanford—still has an edge in finding one of those increasingly scarce high-paying jobs for which college skills really are a prerequisite.

A wise college president right about now would be looking for ways to tighten admissions standards, introduce a rigorous core curriculum, wipe out grade inflation, strip away the ideological folderol, and in every other way make his institution identified with graduates who reliably possess a first-rate education. Colleges that offer that—really offer it rather than just proclaim they do—will thrive in the years ahead. The others will watch as the numbers of high school graduates interested in attending fall away.

As I write, the Northeast is hunkering down for the arrival of Hurricane Irene. People are tightening things up, battening down the hatches, and stocking up on the essentials. Maybe Irene will prove only to be an inconvenience, but it is a good idea to get ready anyway.

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chuckkle

This analysis seems to overlook some pertinent factors:

1. the drastic changes in the US economy over the past 50 years, especially moving manufacturing and even many services (such as editorial work) which don’t require a physical presence offshore. It isn’t just family wage manual labor jobs that have been lost, but also the professional jobs that are connected to those jobs: accounting, engineering, supervision and administration, etc.

2. the class position of most elite private college students (as determined by parental income, family wealth, etc.) who are virtually guaranteed a good job on graduation through family connections no matter how they perform at academic endeavors. Middle class and working class students seldom have the same advantages. US society is not, as data easily shows, a genuine meritocracy.

3. the change from an older model of apprenticeship and other forms of on the job training and in-service training which was paid for by capitalist employers to shifting the expense and burden for education and experiential training to individuals ( e.g. paying college tuition and expenses, even for “internships” which provide free labor to employers) and the government (subsidizing public higher education).

4. the effective changes in the corporate and individual US tax structure over the past 50 years which has shifted wealth to the highest segment of the population and worsened the relative economic situation of the lower strata.

Wood’s analysis looks at symptoms which allow his typical hand wringing and worry warting, but he studiously avoids considering basic structures.

Chuck Kleinhans
AlanCollinge

Chuck,

This entire discussion fails to recognize the following.:

1. Price, and the uniquely vicious, predatory , and ultimately inflationary lending system that has evolved due to the Congressional removal of nearly all standard consumer protections, and creation of unheard of collection powers…powers that are wielded like a weapon by the lending collection industry against the borrowers, and completely ignored or even disputed by all but a tiny fraction of the academic community.

2. Higher Education, as envisioned by the original Higher Education Act, was meant to improve the citizenry for the public good. The financing system was never meant to come to dominate the discussion as we are seeing today with these silly, logically suspect earning correlations, and other “ROI” analyses that seem to be the only currency that counts anymore.

When Academia acknowledges these head on, with the urgency that is demanded, and acts according to the principles, and with the ethics that the country is still waiting to see, then there will be something worthwhile here.

Until then, the gross neglect of this problem, as evidenced by this conversation, will only grate the nerves, and erode the patience, and good will of the citizens who have been extremely kind, tempered, and well mannered to this point.
bscmath78

Professors Vedder’s analysis neglects important Supply & Demand factors. Viet Nam drove intense demand for college, grad school, National Guard, Reserve and defense industry draft deferments. Combined with all the draftees, this slashed the general labor supply, while LBJ’s fiscal policy overheated the economy hiking demand. These factors also delayed into the 70′s, the entry of a million plus initial Baby Boomers into the general labor pool. 1946 + 24 = 1970!! This further compounded the 70′s oversupply caused by the continuing arrival of more Boomers, and the slashed demand caused by stagflation, recessions, OPEC, war’s end, etc. The Ph.D. cab driver was already a cliche by the 70′s.

Louis Menand’s 2010 book, “The Marketplace of Ideas”, credits college draft deferments with driving male college enrollments (and I suspect retention and graduation rates) to a peak not seen since. Male enrollment is now sharply lower. The early Boomers blighted the economic prospects of later Boomers and subsequent generations. The never digested “Pig-in-the-Python Generation” has never ceased to be a source of problems and represents a looming crisis in retirement and sickness. There is a literature on the multi-faceted impact of Boomers and demographics.

On top of this, there is the vast, world-wide, oversupply of college grads readily available for corporations, who can now cherry-pick from the top 1-10% world-wide, who are also lower cost. Combined with advancing technology and more Winner-Take-All markets (see Robert Frank’s writings on the topic) it would appear that one should expect declining prospects for the lower 90%.
bscmath78

Referring to “Academically Adrift” does not advance the case since it does not compare the cognitive advances (assuming you believe that CLA scores are a useful measure) of the current crop, to the earlier crops of say 1950, 1960 or 1970.

Most college graduates of previous generations have long known about the limited cognitive value of college academics for 90% of graduates.  Henry Adams long ago noted the inadequacy of a Harvard education. Willam James long ago decried the noxious Ph.D. While frats and eating clubs, at the right institutions (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc.), have long been known to be the true path to distinction among the ruling class.

The data accompanying “Academically Adrift” casts doubt on its analysis. Shockingly, it shows that High Selectivity institutions are only predicted to do better than the Low Selectivity institutions by roughly 5.7%! This is a ridiculously pathetic difference which seems less than the likely measurement error with the CLA.  Yet, surprisingly this generates no outrage. There are similar surprisingly pathetic differences between the different groups of majors. Further discussion of some issues with the “Academically Adrift” material starts here:

http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/richard-vedder-on-the-ills-of-higher-education/28716#comment-156293507
bscmath78

Citing current Department of Labor stats does not advance the case. You need to show that 2006 was significantly worse than 1974, on a percentage of graduates basis. For 40 years, under-employment has plagued grads. The Ph.D. cab driver was already a cliche in the 70′s. For 40 years, many students have worked at minimum wage jobs. If employers pay minimum wage for someone who has successfully completed 3rd year then it is clear that there isn’t much value associated with college education. This has been the case for many students for at least 40 years.

Think of all the college graduates who ended up in low paying jobs as secretaries or copy editors. Think of the 1959 film, “The Best of Everything”, where the passing of the typing test elicits the question, “Vassar?” with the response, “No, Radcliff”.

Think of Einstein, who needed a friend to get him a job as a Swiss patent clerk, and who still couldn’t get a post after publishing his famous 1905 papers. Value analysis needs to factor out the benefit of having the right family, or friends of the family, or other connections. Value analysis also needs to consider the non-academic benefits associated with “Who you know” as a result of attending Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, etc. Though it seems unlikely that the median graduate of the Harvard schools of Public Health, Education or Divinity, who stays in the field, makes significantly more than others (adjusting for their starting positioning).

Value analysis also needs to factor out the degree to which Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford select students based on criteria that also relate to later success. It also needs to factor out the halo effect and the delegation of selection effect (you let Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford select so you don’t have to, because what actually is learned, if anything, is of no real value on the job).

The personal assistant hero of “The Devil Wears Prada” is a Brown grad in the novel and a Northwestern grad in the film.

Plus, don’t parking lot attendants get better pay than some English adjuncts?
manoflamancha

Dumbing down, grade inflation, rampant cheating…does this sound like a receipe for sucess? There is so much waste in so-called higher education, it is amazing it has survived without a government takeover. But Americans know value, and the corrupt system will right itself in due course. Searching for truth in adverstising, as Wood&Vedder have done, will help start the revision.
11301218

Do not forget about the economics driving most institutions. Just like their students,
colleges and universities have heavy burdens of debt that must be paid off by putting
students in the classrooms and dorms. This is the result of years of expansion that
began when the baby boomers started going to school. Unilateral raising admission
standards, reversing grade inflation, and dropping frivolous programs with little or no
academic content will adversely hit the bottom line as students will go to the school
that keeps the threshold low (and, perhaps, offers enough vocationally oriented
programs like nursing). Even if the students fail to persist to a degree, the
constant churning of enrollment keeps the money flow through the
university finance office. The equation is: Keister + chair = $$$.
11301218

Even the early boomers were not immune to oversupply. The Ph.D. recipient in 1970
was lucky to get a job pumping gas (back when you did not do it yourself). At that
time the space program (Apollo flights to the moon) was being terminated. Billboards
had “Would the last person leaving Seattle please close the lights?” The writer
did hit the nail on the head in identifying the draft as the major impetus in male
enrollment in universities, especially in science, math, and engineering. Degrees in
these disciplines had better chances of leading to draft deferments.
bscmath78

This concern about waste is most clearly associated with the 19th and 20th Century Communist attacks on capitalism and freedom. The Communists claimed that central planning would be so much more “efficient”. One type of shoe, in numbers determined by the 5 Year Plan. Didn’t they also decry “the corrupt system” along with all those 60′s college Boomers? Didn’t they expect that capitalism would collapse “in due course”.

All those 60′s Boomers waving Mao’s “Little Red Book” or some other Communist propaganda (in reality or metaphorically), provide the context. Mass-murderers seemed soooo popular with the college crowd. I guess murder by the million is soooo “efficient”. But they probably would have hated manoflamancha’s rocket tests (Xenon or not), if they learned of them.

All through the Cold War, Americans were repeatedly berated about how bad their education was and how great the Russian schools were. So I guess I should not be surprised to see, “. . . it is amazing it has survived without a government takeover.” Yes, just the ticket ;-) for the Communists. In a free capitalist society, it is the Market that should decide. Efficiency is largely irrelevant outside of a price-driven, oversupplied, commodity business. Where is the efficiency of Prada? And high-heels? Very inefficient for the factory or farm. In capitalism, maximizing profit is the highest good, only Marxists believe that products should be priced on cost instead of Supply and Demand (and maybe “useful fools”, “fellow travelers”, idealists, romantics, polemic bloggers, etc.)

As repeatedly documented in the CHE and especially the comments, the Market has spoken loud and clear. “Dumbing down, grade inflation, rampant cheating…” are exactly what students want, they are even paying a pretty price to get them, though for “dumbing down” you would have to dive deep to reach the levels of the late 60′s sex, drugs, rock’n'roll, booze, draft avoiding/dodging/deferring Boomers (or is that the real objective of “critical thinking” and “cognitive advance”. Are these really tricky “code words”, sugar-coated poison or “poisoned chalices”? ;-) ).

Actually, the “government” has spoken at the school district, state and federal level with its pressures to increase participation, enrollment, retention and graduation which really means, “Dumbing down, grade inflation, rampant cheating…”

“Americans know value” and they know the real value, for 90% of students, of college has been the connections, the clubs, the parties, the fun, the sports and the right credentials. “It’s not what you know, but who you know” captures the essential truth of going to college for 90% of students.

Bi-partisan government mandated NCLB and its related “accountability” variations raised costs while accelerating “Dumbing down, grade inflation, rampant cheating…” All that wonderful accountability and testing has produced high school graduates that on average need much more remedial work. Defining “merit” via SAT/ACT or other standardized tests has advanced “gaming the system”, “teach to the test”, narrowing thought and creativity suppression.

Of course, way back, there was Savonarola (probably motivated by what Jesus and the Prophets had to say), so some of their ideas did not originate with the Communists, but eventually the Florentines got tired of his lectures and burned him at the stake. Luxury, parties, variety, freedom, choice and options have long held their appeal, no matter what the scolds had to say. But I guess one would have had to have remembered something from college to know that (or still had the curiosity to learn about it afterwords), but how likely is that outside of say 10% of graduates.
betterschool

- As I have said before, aggregate analyses such as Vedder’s and others (Carey offers opinion but no real analysis), obscure meaningful real effects, positive and negative, at the level of specific degrees and professions. If acted upon, such aggregate analyses would simultaneously lead to good and bad outcomes. This entire line of reasoning holds about as much significance for the condition of higher education as does an aggregate analysis of the cause of automobile accidents that combines data from the rugged Idaho mountain highways and the New Jersey turnpike.

- “Improving” the situation, however defined, by increasing selectivity in inputs is not a solution. It is a retreat from a solution. Believing that superior inputs cause superior outputs is commonly known as the “Harvard fallacy” (because they commit the error so frequently). A constructive solution improves the ratio (breadth and depth) of outcomes to inputs. Again, we can reduce automobile accidents by restricting licenses to elite drivers. Is this a solution? Is is a net good? You may think it is at least one of the two because it represents a generalization your principle.
bscmath78

betterschools, actually, since the vast majority of Americans think they are above average drivers, there should be no problem in convincing them to vote to eliminate those who are not above average (“it’ll get rid of those bad ‘other’ guys”). A 50+% driver reduction will enormously improve the quality of life of the remainder, with way faster commutes, way fewer injuries and death, and less smog. So in that case yes, it is an excellent “solution” and yes, it is a “net good”. Even better, you probably could win with eliminating the bottom 60%. ;-)

So you may not want to promote this analogy since it does seem very compelling and voter friendly.

As a side point, for those who don’t remember the concept, by definition, at most 50% of the population can be above average based on any one specific measurement. There could be a lot at the average mark, so care should be taken to draft the bill to label as many as possible as average. Maybe “above average” could be defined as greater than the mathematical average plus one standard deviation. This would maximize the benefits :-).
manoflamancha

You force me to reply, you crazy canuck mathematician. Much of what you say is true, and much is original. But the true parts are not original and the original parts are not true.

PS: Only the Brits, Canucks and Aussies say BSC, true Americans say just BS, which you have lots of.:-))
bscmath78

manoflamancha, I don’t think I have ever claimed originality for anything in a post. I think I have only claimed to have read or remembered stuff. In this thread, I think I have written nothing original (much is conventional wisdom), so I am content with your clever line. Though I don’t claim truth, either. As I have written in at least one thread, “Caveat Lector” applies to my sources and what I write.
bscmath78

The sorry state of 60′s elite university education was illustrated by Columbia’s Jacques Barzun in his 1968 book, “The American university: how it runs, where it is going”.

He wrote regarding faculty Ph.D. advisers, “. . . for whom the supervising and examining of dissertations is all the more distasteful that [sic] most are exercises in fact-gathering rather than contributions to knowledge.”

You can read the context of my quotation at:

http://books.google.ca/books?id=e89rlySIsU0C&pg=PA93&lpg=PA93&dq=%22for+whom+the+supervising+and+examining+of+dissertations+is+all+the+more+distasteful%22&source=bl&ots=WIwzGz4JIz&sig=CxMrEBjTyIdPehJ-nAgvg2fC-0w&hl=en&ei=JfVDTvqFH6-DsAL7q4XkCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22for%20whom%20the%20supervising%20and%20examining%20of%20dissertations%20is%20all%20the%20more%20distasteful%22&f=false

A few other great lines:

“. . . the whole rigmarole is as wasteful and ineffectual as when James first deplored it”
referring to William James’ 1903 critique in the “The Ph.D. Octopus”

“. . . there is really very little the young serfs can do.”

“. . . to a level of quasi neglect close to the undergraduate’s”

This was the state of affairs before Boomers hit grad school or entered the faculty or the Administration. This was also when there was a shortage of new academics (apparently all male). It does again illustrate the importance of Supply & Demand.

To see more on how the present is simply a continuation of a dismal past, as documented by academic writers, you can read one of my posts at:

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Self-Exam-That-Higher/128543/#comment-282472182

The impact of Supply & Demand and how it is affected by massive direct and indirect government subsidies is discussed by various posters starting here (you need to search around for the subsequent comments since the URL does not work the way I intended):

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Self-Exam-That-Higher/128543/#comment-281325543

Actually, the whole thread has some interesting comments from a variety of people.
sand6432

Wood’s advice to the “wise college president” ignores the fact that many of them think having a top football or basketball team is a much easier way of attracting more students than upgrading the quality of education. Are they wrong?

What online learning cannot offer, but residential college life can, is the value of social networks, as made clear long ago by my college classmate Mark Granovetter in his pioneering study ‘GETTING A JOB (Harvard, 1974). Don’t underestimate the lifelong importance of netwprking.

And then there’s my brother, who went to Yale, studied at Harvard Business School, held several CFO and CEO jobs, but then moved to Colorado in the early 1980s and spent the remainder of his working life delivering mail for the U.S. Postal Service where his colleagues included Ph.D. mathematicians from MIT and such. He enjoyed being outdoors and living in an area where he could ski a lot. Was his education wasted? I suspect he wouldn’t have gotten some of his early jobs without his college credentials, even if he didn’t need them to work in the post office. How does one evaluate that kind of life in terms of Wood’s criteria?

—Sandy Thatcher
betterschool

Hardly a point here (manoflamancha and bscmath78) that I could not jump in to defend.

However, in the past 75 years, what there is to mean by “higher education” has expanded from a small niche market or three — serving the smart and the rich — to a large number of mass and niche markets — serving 80% of the ability curve. Given this, and given that the direction of this expansion is not likely to reverse its course, it would seem that a responsible dialog would not spend much time wishing for the good old days. Radiological technicians and nuclear engineers are both college educated citizens. For the most part, similarities end there. We can reduce or increase the supply of both by adjusting admissions standards. What does that mean? A starting point for me is a meaningful assessment of ability to benefit. Such an assessment would not be a multiple-choice quiz. It would be a comprehensive examination of one’s situation. It would also include some recognition of what I believe is everyone’s right to fail. Another key point, perhaps second tier, is the recognition that it takes little skill to teach the very smart. Raise admissions standards and, suddenly, everyone is a “better” teacher. It is embarrassing that to many otherwise apparently smart people fail to grasp this. Now that we are teaching to a much wider range of abilities, I think we need to raise standards for teaching. We need to ensure that everyone in a college teaching role possesses at least a working knowledge of modern learning and evaluation sciences.
bscmath78

betterschools, since “Radiological technicians and nuclear engineers” both have the ability to cause misery, suffering and death, through neglect or ignorance alone, it seems dangerous to “increase the supply of both by adjusting admissions standards.” as does considering “ability to benefit.” Do we need more Three Mile Islands, Chernobyls or K19′s (see the movie “K-19: The Widowmaker”)?

“. . . are both college educated citizens.” but do they actually need to be? Maybe first spending five years working on the reactor of an on-duty nuclear sub would be better?

I think my points have consistently argued against the existence of “the good old days”.
betterschool

Nowhere did I suggest increasing the supply of either professions. Since we are at the level of implications (yours from my words), one correct implication is that the notion of increasing or decreasing admissions standards, as traditionally conceived and executed, is a crude, inappropriate, and often counterproductive tool. (A tool, by the way quite often in service of fragile faculty egos. “I’m smarter . . . better . . . cooler . . . etc. because I teach smarter students.” Would it not be a good thing if we professorial types could coddle our insecurities with the idea of being better teachers?)

I believe I laid out a case for putting more intellectual energy into the construct ‘ability to benefit’ along with a few related ides that also need to become constructs and merged with the broader idea. At least that was my intention. If you come back with the idea that I am merely talking about admissions standards, I have failed to make my point to you.
manoflamancha

The great Mass Entrance came with the GI Bill following WWII. Universities were overwhelmed; Quanset huts were common all over for living facilities. Just about all the GIs were admitted back then, but only a few could hack it, especially in Engineering, which received the preponderance of that lot. Flunk rates of 50% were common.

I think this policy is worth revisiting: admit all, forget about the silly inconsistent ACT/SAT predictors of success. But, set a tight standard. If students put in the time (three hours/lecture hour) and have the smarts, they will move on to graduate. If not, farewell and good luck at the Post Office. Everyone deserves a chance, but every one does not deserve to graduate!

Yes, raise teaching standards (e.g. require all Assistant Profs to pick a mentor, and attend all his lectures), but also remove distractions that corrupt learning and study: fraternities, football and million dollar coaches, etc. Think of the money to be saved. Finally, elect all Presidents/Chancellors from within the academy by a vote of the tenured faculty at a salary by fiat that can not exceed the highest paid Professor.

I used to challenge my Cambridge colleagues overseas by telling them, “Cambridge is easy: your students were smart and learned when they came in and are also smart and polished gems when they graduated. But the real challenge is in America: wherein we take in rough stones and with lots of work and grinding, turn them into modest but sparkling gems.”

What is missing nowadays is not good teaching, but good attitudes about work!
bscmath78

betterschools, I did not wish to imply that you wanted to increase the supply, but I now see that could be the implication given my use of the tail end quote, sorry. I wished, in the context that you provided, to cast doubt on the wisdom of the concept of manipulating admission standards (which I thought you were against), as well as, what I thought was the idea that you favored, “ability to benefit”. To make it clear, I am against both ideas, in this context, regardless of your attitudes towards them.

In this context, high failure rates could be excellent, if it means that only those who will be good, conscientious, dedicated, honest practitioners emerge. It seems to me that creating a hard, “no loans” program, without monetary incentives, with an ideology of service, sacrifice and honor, is more likely to attract those with the right potential. It is better to have one of these nuclear engineers instead of 10 poor ones. The odds are against the heavily indebted having the right motivations. My superficial understanding of Jimmy Carter’s actions, as a Naval officer, in 1952, in dealing with a foreign, civilian, land reactor partial meltdown, suggests a potential model of the type of person one might want as a nuclear engineer.

The churning out of bad poets, writers, actors, sales rep, sales managers, etc., is, by comparison, hardly a problem.

In the context of “Radiological technicians and nuclear engineers” and similar positions that can inflict injury, sickness and/or death through neglect or ignorance, the primary and overriding concern of the public is the exemplary performance of duty on an ongoing basis. Aiding the personal interests of the individuals is only of consideration in the context of having a sufficient supply of good performers. It should also be remembered that there is an important distinction between behavior scored on an exam and actual behavior in the field as the years progress.

Given current economic trends, a world-wide competitive market, advancing technology, a vast excess of college educated people, etc., it is unclear how an “ability to benefit” strategy will help the lower 90% of potential college attendees, given the high net costs they will have to pay. I am assuming the top 10% have substantially lower net costs given the competition for them.

manoflamancha wrote in another CHE thread that since WW II that there has only been a shortage of the top 20% of the engineering class, with corporations hiring based on an arbitrary GPA cutoff. He tells an engineer’s joke about a dumb engineer who does much better than the rest of his class, to make a point that class rank does not necessarily affect monetary success. He also wrote, “I never had the top student in the class prove to be useful in the lab”. I don’t know the general validity of his observations, but they do complement other observations about the enormous difficulty in predicting success.

Read what manoflamancha wrote at:

http://chronicle.com/article/A-Size-That-Fits-All-for-the/128421/#comment-274450794
bscmath78

manolamancha, when you were at Cambridge, did they mention the grad student Oppenheimer? Apparently terrible in the lab, plus there was the time that he tried to murder a professor (with a poisoned apple?).

When was Oppenheimer a rough stone? When were Feynman, Guth or the kids at the Bronx High School of Science? Feynman seemed to think Caltech freshman were pretty good.

In the land of opportunity, people like Lincoln and Edison were able to rise to greatness without going to college, and in the 20th Century there are the famous college dropouts like Jobs and Gates. But I have difficulty thinking of some post-1970 American rough stones made into “sparkling gems”, or did your qualification of “modest” mean they became productive, but not famous? I am asking out of ignorance, and under the influence of the idea that college grinds down curiosity, originality and creativity.

Isn’t it cheaper, today, for corporations to simply buy the Cambridge gems and other gems arrayed around the world?
betterschool

You raise many questions, directly or indirectly, to which I have no answer and have only suggested a tentative direction. I would point out, however, that the relations between the terms “failure,” “success,” “high admissions standards,” “low admissions standards,” “bad sales managers,” and “good sales managers” are more complex than you seem to imply.

I have time today for only a two chunks of ice from a large iceberg that has facets running in all directions. #1. Years ago, I was asked to determine why a medical school was, in spite of repeated increases in admissions standards, turning out more “bad” physicians each year (their metrics were good, you’ll have to trust me on this). After a bit of not-so-simple research, the answer turned out to be simple. It wasn’t that their standards weren’t high enough; they had the wrong standards. Standards needed to be reduced *and* re-focused. When they did that, they got more “good” physicians. #2. The largest, fastest growing, and (in the aggregate, for level of degree) the highest paying sector of professions requiring degrees pertain to health care. At the same time, most of these degrees suffer enormous credential inflation that shows no sign of slowing down. (Audiology used to be certificate level, then AS, then BS, then MS, now doctorate; same for pharmacy.) Also at the same, time, these degrees require mastery of a great deal of high-stakes knowledge (cf. knowledge of poetry that may offend ears but kills only sensibilities). Using nursing as an example, state colleges have considerably higher admissions standards for nursing student than career or community colleges. Yet 17 years of employer interviews in this area demonstrate conclusively that employers either have no preference for graduating institutions or *slightly* prefer the career and community colleges. (No, there is no pay differential.) What does this tell you? As it turns out, we have the answer. Experienced nurses and their employers tell us that the big universities placed far too much emphasis on research and far too little emphasis on the drudgery of competent patient care (in fact, they often say that some of their “scholarly” professors had no clue about how to deliver good care in the real world); career schools and community colleges, emphasize proficiency in the skills actually needed to become a “good” nurse. Again, the , so-called, “lower” admissions standards produced the “good” employees.

Before we go too far with this, I can tell you that the relations (empirical/conceptual, contingent/analytic, etc.) run in all directions. There are no simple answers. Thus, back to my very first point, the only meaningful analysis takes place at the level of specific programs and jobs. The rest is pretty much parlor talk.
peterwwood

Dear sand6432, I am sure there are many college presidents who are counting on sports programs to attract more students. Are they wrong? That remains to be seen but I suspect so. Intercollegiate football loses large amounts of money for all but a handful of NCAA Division I programs. Intercollegiate athletics appear to be doing very little to make colleges more attractive to male students, who are staying away in significant numbers. Basketball is financially a better bet, but students who select colleges on the basis of their having conspicuous sports programs are a limited pool and they are already mostly spoken for. When tuition-driven colleges find themselves faced with declining enrollments because of the combination of price-resistance and skepticism about the value of the degrees they grant, those presidents who respond by doubling down on sports will be making a very risky choice.

I too used to think that online colleges would never be able to match residential colleges in helping students form social networks, but I don’t anymore. Today’s students network online with ease. The networks may be different but they are substantial. The key is to remember that an online college provides another way people can meet, and it doesn’t imprison those who meet this way from becoming friends off-line. I don’t think I’m the one underestimating the importance of social networking.

Your brother provides an example of a certain kind of life choice that I expect most readers of this forum are familiar with. I have friends and a family member too who, after opted at a certain point to take up a low-stress9and low-wage) occupation. How do I “evaluate” this? As a personal choice, of course. It has little bearing on the motives of most people who seek college credentials or on income inequality in the nation as a whole. We know from the annual survey, “The American Freshman: National Norms,” published by the U. of California at Los Angeles Higher Education Research Institute, that about 75 percent of students (76.8 in 2008) go to college with the objective to be “very well off financially.” Some may later change their minds about their priorities, but it is the priorities of 17 and 18 years olds that matter when we are considering the likely future of four-year residential colleges.

Peter Wood
bscmath78

11301218, thank you for your additional points illustrating slashed 70′s demand. Yes, you are quite right, the initial Boomers who got a Ph.D. got hammered by the start of the bad times in 1970, even if they probably graduated in 1972 or later (18+4+4=26 and 1946+26=1972).

To elaborate on some of your examples, the Seattle situation has often been linked to Congress killing the Boeing SST in 1971 and other federal cuts that hit Boeing hard. The problem for STEM Ph.D.s was that the federal government suddenly turned off the funding tap that had previously been wide open. All this illustrates the power of Supply and Demand (including the impact of government fiscal, monetary, economic, military, education, research, etc., policies), which Professor Vedder appears to have neglected.
betterschool

manoflamancha, To a certain extent, I think bscmath78 is reasoning from exceptions; you are looking at main effects. However, I cannot agree that good teaching skills are not missing, especially when one considers the wider range of abilities that present themselves as learners.
peterwwood

Dear Betterschool,

The rhetoric of “inputs” and “outputs” reduces higher education inappropriately to a mechanism. Likewise your comparison to “aggregate analysis” of automobile accidents. Vedder’s statistics are useful to the extent that they help clarify a human reality. We know very well that colleges and universities are admitting large number of students who have low levels of academic ability and very little intellectual ambition. We know also that large numbers of students who graduate end up underemployed, some permanently so. That suggests to me–and to quite a few others–that we aren’t serving those under-qualified students very well. They don’t learn much in college; they find little college-related work opportunity after college; and they are typically burdened with college-loan debt. These students would be better off getting post-seondary education different in kind from what most colleges now offer. Is this a “Harvard fallacy?” No, it is common sense.

Peter Wood
bscmath78

betterschools, I am replying here because I can’t Reply to your ice chunks post. I have no disagreement with your chunks on good physicians, credential inflation and nurses. I think you bring up excellent points that are seemingly ignored in policy discussions. I see them as perfectly compatible with my earlier point that in a life and death context, “the primary and overriding concern of the public is the exemplary performance of duty on an ongoing basis.”

I see them as illustrating the folly of the wrong standards, the folly of credentialism and the folly of ignoring the real educational task. When I write “folly”, I mean for the public who wants to be cared for properly by a doctor, nurse or other form of health practitioner. For these types of roles, one might think the focus should be on something like on hands-on, on-the-job, mentored, apprenticeship demonstrating and requiring the exemplary performance of real-life tasks, like drawing blood with the least pain, where they wash their hands each and every time, and do it properly.

In 1847, Ignaz Semmelweis determined that proper hand washing with antiseptic would prevent Childbed Fever and save many lives, yet his work was rejected. To this day, inadequate medical procedures kill thousands a year. There have been articles about an ICU checklist that has slashed ICU death rates at some institutions, by increasing conformance with proper practice, in part by empowering nurses to correct doctor behavior.

There are many important roles where the excellent knowledge of formal theory does not result in the excellent execution of important tasks. The right to practice, in the life and death context, should be limited to those who demonstrate the consistent excellent execution of important tasks, and continue to demonstrate it, year after year.
manhire

A Lament for Low Academic Standards
http://www.nationalreview.com/phi-beta-cons/270955/lament-low-academic-standards-george-leef#
bscmath78

I am replying here because I can’t Reply directly to betterschools.

Yes, I am reasoning from exceptions. I do so because the exceptions are the ones I have read about. I do so because I think the key mission of R1 universities is the support and creation of the exceptions, the finding of the next Newton, Curie, Einstein, Dirac or Feynman. I would gladly trade one Curie for a whole Chemistry department, actually for 10 whole Chemistry departments (maybe more).

(manoflamancha, I would gladly trade all of Cambridge from 1209 – Newton’s arrival in 1661, for another Newton, though hopefully one who was more inclined to create and publish scientific work).

I commented previously on this aspect, starting here:

http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/campus-cfos-are-right/29787#comment-246226619

There seems to have been a decline in the production of exceptions, which is worrisome, given that historically much progress has been dependent on them. One wonders if current college admissions procedures are geared to filtering out the potential exceptions.

Just a reminder to betterschools and manoflamancha, my big issue in this thread is with Professor Vedder’s apparent neglect of Supply and Demand along with his apparent ignoring of its impact in the 60′s, the 70′s and the decades since, and his apparent ignoring dismal portents for the lower 90%, which I see as key problems for an Economics Professor. My issue here is not the problems with colleges that you have both pointed out, which I see as the continuation of decades old problems, driven by Supply & Demand considerations. Without recognizing the power of Supply & Demand realistic remedies are unlikely. Canute knew his limitations when he ordered the tide to stop, in order to rebut his sycophant courtiers. Supply and Demand is the tide.
manoflamancha

I’m replying to your earlier post regarding Oppenheimer, who was terrible in the lab at Cambridge and elsewhere, but eventually came to respect the lab folk with zeal. Had Heisenberg in Germany been a good lab man, the war would have had an entirely different outcome. Thank god he was a theoretical type, although my Danish friends even doubt that.
bscmath78

Only 1% of current taxpayers really count as “very well off financially”, this suggests that less than 1% of student will become “very well off financially” by their own efforts (excluding inheritance, gifts, marriage and lotteries). Even for the current top 1% (excluding inheritance, gifts, marriage and lotteries), it typically took hard work, good luck, and a few decades to get to “very well off financially”. So it looks like most students are guaranteed to be unhappy.

The above would still apply even if you extended the definition of “very well off financially” to the top 5% of taxpayers.
bscmath78

Given the enormous cost of the Manhattan Project, the eager participation of many top European scientists, and the enormous industrial resources required, it would appear that the Allies should have won regardless. In addition, the Allies assiduously and repeatedly struck to deny Norwegian heavy water to the Nazis, while striking at Axis industry in general. Theory is one thing, lab results another, industrial scale up is yet another, not being hit by a 1000 bomber raid when the Allies can rapidly decode German communications, is still yet another thing.

On the other hand, the Allies somehow missed the Auschwitz concentration camps, but not the I.G. Farben plant that was part of the overall complex. Also, that pesky Russian, Sakharov, would later come up with an H-bomb small enough that it could be delivered by air, so one can never count on being smarter than the enemy, and the Nazis did have a lot of nasty advanced weapons. So there is always uncertainty, so to speak.

“We cannot guarantee victory, but only deserve it” – Winston Churchill

As a side note, the German Otto Hahn couldn’t figure out the meaning of his experiment. It was Austrian Lise Meitner (a refugee from Hitler then in Sweden) and her nephew Otto Frisch who understood it was nuclear fission and its implications, but not, apparently, enough of the implications to keep it secret from Hahn. It was the theoretician Einstein who wrote the famous letter to FDR that helped initiate the Manhattan Project. It was Hahn who got the 1944 Nobel Prize for fission, with nothing for Meitner and Frisch. In physics, theory and experiment inspire and support each other, both are necessary, but typically not in the same people.

All of the above is unoriginal and basically conventional wisdom, which manoflamancha is already most likely better acquainted with than I am, but that might provide helpful context for the non-STEM reader.
betterschool

Peter,

I suppose that any analogy I was capable of ginning up at the moment would have been treated as reductionist. Analogies to complex social functions invite that claim and I should have known better. (However, you did see the reference to breadth and depth?) ”

Vedder’s statistics are useful to the extent that they help clarify a human reality.” Again, I see this as trivially true but materially false. The reality they convey is one of a central tendency that admits so many outliers that acting on the main effects would be unintelligent and damaging. (By the way, I think much of the evidence presented by Vedder and others is based on weak analysis even though I agree with the general problem statement as applied to some areas of higher education.)

Look at it this way. You are making a claim which, at its heart, is statistical in nature. If you disagree with me, consult a statistician down the hall as to the logic of basing analysis — policy or otherwise – on measurements of central tendency when (a) error terms are high, (b) between group differences are high, and (c) some side effects are larger than main effects. Central tendency is the wrong family of statistics appealing to the wrong form of analysis.

Speaking without reference to statistics, how we can use undifferentiated, Vedder-level analysis to craft social policy that will be effective for the many programs that are counter-factual to Vedder’s generalizations as well as those that are supported by them? To do so implies going beyond the facts you presented in support of your generalizations.

The Harvard fallacy referred to an entirely different point.
betterschool

The practical side of the problem you describe (while not directly related to Mr. Wood’s article) is only going to worsen as babyboomers age. However, the health care community is not sittig on its hands. They are ramping up the supply of Nurse practitioners (who can operate independent practices in most states and work as, as it were, limited practice physicians. The same is true for Physician Assistants, although the legislative changes are lagging there. So far, this is working out well. Independent assessments suggest that many people prefer seeking primary care from an NP or PA and find the outcomes identical. While the rural areas will be underserved (as they are now), there is a chance that the new types of primary health care providers will be there more or less as needed. The problems will fall to other types of care, including nursing and dental. The shortage of dentists is already a problem and many more dentists will be retiring soon. Very few new dental schools have opened. Some states are creating an expanded class of hygienists that can fill carries, etc. but the pace is too slow.

Indirectly, this does address Mr. Wood’s article in that we are discussing contrary cases to his and Mr. Vedder’s unhelpful generalizations. Yes, we are admitting a wider range of abilities (my point) and the results are predicable but the entire problem, including defaults(1), is overblown and can largely be remedied by insisting that professors know how to teach.

And, yet again, raising admissions standards is neither a logical nor an empirical response to the challenge of ensuring an effective education for today’s students. At best, it is elitism. “Quick . . . close the door so they won’t come here with their unwashed hands.”

————
(1) Mr. Wood seems unaware that “default” is a contrived federal technical term the R(2) of which is about 0.15 to individuals who actually fail to pay back their student loans. Example: in many circumstances a student is in “default” if he consolidates his loan and takes advantage of the feds offer for an “interest only” year one, or if he otherwise does not pay down the principle in that year, even though he may pay thousands of dollars in interest. By the way, the feds are making billions on student loans, including the costs of true defaults in the calculation. This is all sidebar but it goes to the lack of deep expertise on the part of those writing these blogs.
bscmath78

betterschools, thank you for the additional information. Children can be taught to wash their hands, yet some doctors seem to still have a problem with it. Studies in hospitals have shown that doctors are the worst at properly their washing hands.

There is a need for a context-driven redefinition of what “elitism” and “high standards” mean. In this case, the consistent proper washing of hands and the practical implementation of “First, do no harm!” should be part of the minimum standard. Can any professor effectively teach such things? Yet Pavlov seemed to have effective techniques. ;-) I’m sure if dogs can learn so can others. ;-) Plus, teaching the wrong things well, is counter-productive.

Some health-related tasks require physical actions like drawing blood, giving injections, stitching wounds, or cleaning teeth below the gum-line, where the good do it with less pain and collateral damage. There is a wide variation in pain inflicted by practitioners. Is there a way to predict pain performance, other than noting some people are consistently better than others? Is there any correlation with GPA, understanding Krebs Cycle, understanding quadratic equations, or any other academic knowledge?

It is surprising that patients “find the outcomes identical” since practitioner variations should have dominated, unless the patient experienced say 5 different practitioners in quick enough succession, performing the same tasks, so that they could compare the outcomes like pain, bleeding, swelling, and bruising. Do you have a URL for the independent assessments that you mentioned?
peterwwood

Dear Betterschool,

You are crossing some kind of line here. I never used the word “default” and never even alluded to the concept and yet you accuse me of being “unaware” of what it means. For someone who persistently parades what he regards as his superior knowledge of statistics, you are breathtakingly sloppy and are here reduced to make inferences out of thin air.

Peter Wood
betterschool

You are correct and I both apologize and thank you for pointing this out. The inclusion of “defaults” came from another blogger on a related post. You only mentioned the typical burden of debt, which is correct both in fact and that it is a problem for many students.
bscmath78

betterschools, I forgot to mention that Ignaz Semmelweis’ investigations were triggered by the knowledge that giving birth in the street (!) had the best survival rate, the overcrowded clinic staffed by midwives, the second best survival rate, and the clinic staffed by medical students, the worst survival rate. In other words, the exact opposite of what you might expect if you believed in higher standards, criteria, education, status, prestige and reputation.

In 1846, the med students killed more than 4 times as many mothers, via Childbed Fever, as the midwives. The public knew it, which is why the midwife clinic was overcrowded and some preferred to give birth in the street. It is an excellent example of how faulty standards and criteria, that appear to be high and rigorous, can be a death sentence.

Semmelweis’ idea of hand-washing with antiseptic was rejected. He was eventually imprisoned in an insane asylum, soon dying of the general form of the disease that he had tried to fight (maybe due to the guards beating him).
bscmath78

Even back in 1968, it is unclear what the old-style curriculum core actually accomplished. Columbia’s Jacques Barzun in his 1968 book, “The American university: how it runs, where it is going” doesn’t fill one with confidence (note that he makes no exceptions, not even for Columbia). He wrote regarding faculty Ph.D. advisers, “. . . for whom the supervising and examining of dissertations is all the more distasteful that [sic] most are exercises in fact-gathering rather than contributions to knowledge.”

You can read the context of my quotation at:

http://books.google.ca/books?id=e89rlySIsU0C&pg=PA93&lpg=PA93&dq=%22for+whom+the+supervising+and+examining+of+dissertations+is+all+the+more+distasteful%22&source=bl&ots=WIwzGz4JIz&sig=CxMrEBjTyIdPehJ-nAgvg2fC-0w&hl=en&ei=JfVDTvqFH6-DsAL7q4XkCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22for%20whom%20the%20supervising%20and%20examining%20of%20dissertations%20is%20all%20the%20more%20distasteful%22&f=false

A few other great lines:

“. . . the whole rigmarole is as wasteful and ineffectual as when James first deplored it”
referring to William James’ 1903 critique in the “The Ph.D. Octopus”

“. . . there is really very little the young serfs can do.”

“. . . to a level of quasi neglect close to the undergraduate’s”

The last one is suggestive of undergraduate education.

Barzun even explicitly says that he has no changes to make reflecting the Columbia events of 1968 (probably referring to the student occupation and protests of 1968).
bscmath78

“Higher Education?: How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids” has little to say about the Columbia Core (even though one of the authors teaches there) other than page 97 which includes, “. . . far few senior professors deign to take part . . .” instead it is “adjuncts and graduate assistants.” Effectiveness before or after the change doesn’t appear to be of interest other than seeming to assume the change is a bad thing.

I don’t remember David Denby noticing a decline in 30 years though he notes it is different, but that maybe simply because this time he is paying attention in class.

Even the authors’ article http://chronicle.com/article/The-Self-Exam-That-Higher/128543/
doesn’t have anything to say about Columbia.
http://twitter.com/Meldenius J Matthew Melton

Questions from interviewees that I rate highly: 1) something that shows they’ve done their homework–about recent events on campus, about campus life, about the university mission, about faculty who have been in the news (as others have said below); and 2) questions about the community at large — schools, arts, institutions, etc. The important thing, however, is to have such questions ready to go. Froth questions on the one end and presumptuous questions on the other (“Do you fully understand how much better off you will be with me on your team? What are you going to do to make me want to be here?”) don’t wash.