The Value Gap

January 11, 2012, 6:32 pm

Since the late 1970s, when some type of a college education essentially became a requirement for a solid, sustainable, middle-class job, the cost of that education has skyrocketed.

The annual price tag for a college credential has risen about three times as fast as inflation, and there is no sign that it’s slowing down. In the last decade alone, tuition rates at public colleges and universities, which enroll about 80 percent of American students, rose by an average of 5.6 percentage points above inflation every year.

Despite those vast price increases, students continued to line up for admission to one of the nation’s colleges. To pay the bills, students and their families borrowed—a lot.

Some $110-billion in student loans was borrowed last year. That’s more than half the amount that was borrowed between the passage of the first Higher Education Act, in 1965, and the end of President Bill Clinton’s second term.

By now, in most industries, customers would have said, enough is enough. But along with health care, higher ed has enjoyed something no other sector in the U.S. economy can claim: Raise prices and people will go to almost any end, including huge amounts of debt, to pay the bill (well, maybe housing enjoyed that too, but we saw how that ended).

Colleges have been helped greatly by a blip in the birth rate 20 or so years ago, which meant there were three million more 18-to-24-year-olds in the population. That spike has now ended, and colleges are already dealing with the consequences, particularly in the Northeast. What’s more, many experts are predicting a nationwide drop in the number of affluent, well-prepared high-school graduates whose parents attended college, the types of students who propelled growth at so many institutions in recent years.

But beyond demographics, what has really helped sustain the anything-goes pricing model in higher ed is the so-called wage premium. The reason so many students want to go to college, and the reason so many families are willing to pay anything for it, is the lifetime payoff of a degree: A typical bachelor’s-degree recipient earns about 66 percent more than a high-school graduate during a 40-year career.

Although wages for college grads actually fell over the last decade, the wage premium is not going to disappear. Employers may disagree about what they want in their workers, but they do agree on one thing. “They want education,” says Anthony P. Carnevale of Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce.

So going to college is worth it, but going to any college at any price may no longer be worth it. About half of Americans think that the higher-education system is doing a poor or fair job in providing value for the money spent, according to a survey last spring by the Pew Research Center.

College presidents seem tone-deaf to those concerns. In a companion survey conducted with The Chronicle, three-fourths of college leaders said the system was providing a good or excellent value.

For some presidents, it’s easy to ignore public and political consternation over college prices. Their elite institutions can continue to charge almost anything because they enjoy so many qualified applicants that they can easily fill their freshman classes 10 times over.

For the vast majority of colleges, however, the time has come to prove their worth if they have any plans to continue the price increases of the past several years. In the face of several stinging reports about the limited learning that goes on during the undergraduate years, prospective parents and students want to know if their experience will be rigorous enough to justify the cost and reap the rewards in the job market.

Sure, the climbing walls, the new dorms, the fancy food in the dining hall, and the sports teams will continue to be a sales tool employed by many colleges to reel in students. But academic rigor will play a greater role in the value proposition, as a simple credential will no longer cut it in some employment circles. And on that front, many colleges just don’t measure up.

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http://profiles.google.com/higheredcio Jerry Bishop

Jeff and Warren I truly enjoy your episodes and you guys have a great style that fits well when eating lunch. Sondra as with other guest are certainly brave to put themselves out there like this for the good of our community. I did have some lingering thoughts which I wrote on my blog which I hope help advance the dialogue. In part they center on three themes from the broadcast:
1. Benchmarking is irrelevant
2. Best practices is only what you can get done
3. Playing not to lose
Hopefully I have made some sense in the discussion on assessing IT performance
Regards.
bryanalexander

Great discussion from Sondra, who represented the small campus/liberal arts world. I like the way you rapidly surveyed the terrain, from the importance of peer cohort benchmarks to the student experience connection to organizational reconfiguration.
a_voice

The interview was about much more than Zuckerberg, but speaking of, I don’t think any organizational planning process would yield the next Zuckerberg. Chances are that he or she will rise despite these processes.
blesstayo

If you don’t promote your good work while you are alive, you might be lucky if ALL your accomplishments are outlined in the obituary sections of news media! Celebrate your good life, treat yourself out to nice diners for all accomplishments.
11223435

Quick, Lesboprof–correct that “baited breath” phrase before some academic vaudevillian asks if you’ve been eating crickets or worms!!!

lesboprof

Ugh. Done. Thanks!

kosboot

I think your post is not only relevant – but should be a mandatory course in every undergraduate program. It can be a struggle for students to survive the educational system. Having a course that makes them conscious of the image they construct and project to others (and how to read such images and the messages they convey) can contribute to crafting not only an academic/professional image, but could also help create self-esteem and self-confidence. They are qualities you need not just after you leave school but even navigating the educational system.

Since you’re an administrator, Lesboprof, you’re positioned to make it a reality in your institution. Go for it!
http://www.facebook.com/people/Jim-Bishop/672604057 Jim Bishop

20 years ago an old friend of mine published an explanation of this, and predicted exactly what we are now experiencing. (http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Spirit-Page-Smith/dp/0140121838/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1326365398&sr=1-1)
graddirector

The huge expansion of tuition costs for many students has been largely driven by the decisions of state legislatures to stop supporting their public colleges. Many of these have gone from 80% public support to 10% or less over the past 20 years. Guess where this money now needs to come from, tuition increases.

Yes, there are clearly some private colleges with huge price tags that provide very weak educations (we get grad school applicants from those who mightily struggle in grad school despite 3.9+ GPAs). That said, a large proportion of students are educated in large public university systems who are having to greatly raise tuition due to state budget cuts.

Commentators like this like to imply that this need to raise tuition is largely driven by “overpaying” “lazy” faculty members. If faculty are overpaid, why do my MS graduates taking jobs in the private sector routinely make as much or more than our assistant professors? Why do I need to routinely get up at 4am to get all of my work done which is necessary since my work day at the office has no open time to deal with it?

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jim-Bishop/672604057 Jim Bishop

>1. If faculty are overpaid, why do my MS graduates taking jobs in the private sector routinely make as much or more than our assistant professors? 2. Why do I need to routinely get up at 4am to get all of my work done which is necessary since my work day at the office has no open time to deal with it?<

1. Perhaps because they more often produce an actual work product, have no tenure, and work longer hours? Is student opinion of your teaching relevant to your evaluation? In most cases, university teachers are promoted based upon 'research' published in 'scholarly' journals read by almost no one, and few in 'power' care about their teaching skill.

2. As for your rising at 0400, perhaps your calendar is filled with activities irrelevant to teaching? Also, what time do you finish your day? Every dairy farmer and airline pilot in the world experiences your schedule; sometimes continuously.

archman

You’re funny. I am reminded of college freshmen who say off-the-wall things in class. The room goes dead silent, and everyone cocks their head at an angle in the vain hope that the next ridiculous statement to come out may actually be rational or informed.

Fortunately Mr. Bishop, this website is an excellent place to educate yourself about how higher education (actually) works. You will find a wealth of literary resources that can inform on most every issue and topic pertinent to college life, for students, faculty, and staff. The forums in particular are populated by hundreds of academics that do superb jobs answering common questions and dispelling common myths.

threejs

“Fortunately Mr. Bishop, this website is an excellent place to educate yourself about how higher education (actually) works. You will find a wealth of literary resources that can inform on most every issue and topic pertinent to college life, for students, faculty, and staff. The forums in particular are populated by hundreds of academics that do superb jobs answering common questions and dispelling common myths.”

And your point is????
http://www.facebook.com/people/Jim-Bishop/672604057 Jim Bishop

>The forums in particular are populated by hundreds of academics that do superb jobs…dispelling common myths.<

Or perpetuating them, you condescending piece of work, presuming, as your remarks do, that you and your like-minded fellows understand the problem better than I could possibly, a joke in itself.
seattlenerd

I work in higher education, as a tenured professor, as an administrator. There’s a lot of truth in J.B.’s points 1. and 2. above.

There are, of course, extremely effective faculty at universities, but the reward structure for faculty is largely orthogonal to effective educational leadership. In my experience, Universities get effective educators and administrators by accident, not by design.

goldenrae9

I couldn’t respond to your lower comment wherein you stated ”
Or perpetuating them, you condescending piece of work, presuming, as your remarks do, that you and your like-minded fellows understand the problem better than I could possibly, a joke in itself.”

I would remember that we can read your facebook page and it seems pretty clear that you’re more a conservative troll than someone who has extensive background knowledge in higher education.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jim-Bishop/672604057 Jim Bishop

You believe what people write on their Facebook page?!?

Do you believe in Leprechauns, baby Jesus, Santa, the tooth ferry, the inherent honor and virtue of tenured faculty and their leadership?
ellenhunt

Yes. And living testament to Kruger’s observation that “the unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their ability as above average”

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10626367
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

graddirector

Well, I am a science prof studying a human disease and trying to develop treatments for my scholarship. I assure you my work is read by plenty of folks and may even affect your life some day.

As for my day, most of it is directly relevant to teaching and helping students. However, at the college level, there is alot more involved than just giving lectures. My day usually ends around 6pm when I pick up my kids, so I guess I am like a dairy farmer now…..

Your assertion that MS students work harder than a tenure track assistant professor is simply absurd and shows a clear ignorance of a professor’s day. Many of our students chose the MS instead of the Ph.D. since they find our work schedule unappealing and are specifically choosing a profession where 40 hour work weeks are the norm in direct contrast of that of their mentors who often work twice that at peak periods.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jim-Bishop/672604057 Jim Bishop

>Your assertion that MS students work harder than a tenure track assistant professor is simply absurd and shows a clear ignorance of a professor’s day. <

I'm MUCH more familiar with 'a professor's day' than you want to believe, or I will take time to explain. Sincere congratulations on spending most of your day in ways '…directly relevant to teaching…' but I would ask you to consider the profession as a whole, and reflect on the percentage of your colleagues and mine who can honestly make the same claim. Parents send their children to school to obtain an education from legions of people who have a very different goal for their efforts, and that is the long and short of it. As you are with the sciences, reflect for a moment on how much public money is lathered on your discipline's projects, and how contemptuous multitudes of scientists are regarding the public and the non scientist science students that blunder under their sway.
ellenhunt

Consider, Jim, how contemptuous you are regarding those making the often incredible sacrifices necessary to be an educator or researcher.

I can only presume that you may have had a bad experience, or are just taking out your frustrations with life online.

I agree that because of budget cutbacks the student to professor ratio has become far too high. And yes, some professors get through who are, as the English say, “donuts”. But the majority have worked incredibly hard to get where they are.

Yes, some are arrogant jerks, that’s true. But mostly what some see as arrogance is a degree of irritation with a people who are uninterested in learning, but want to tell the professor “where its at”.

ellenhunt

Dear god Jim. You have no clue what you are talking about. Professors work long hours. And to get to be a professor is incredibly competitive. Typically they work for 15 to 20 years at starvation wages before making much of anything. A very few make really good salaries. But I know brilliant, highly qualified professors in sciences, with tenure, who make in the $80K range. And many of them are the best, most active teachers.

jdbishop5

I understand how hard the best teachers work very well. What astonishes me is how often teachers know very little about the difficulties of other professions. It would seem that nearly every subgroup within society has the idea that its difficulties are the most challenging, and that others are a cake walk. Certainly there is an ‘ivory tower’ quality to many of our ‘best and brightest’s’ thought processes, including yours. It is not at all unusual for people to ‘…work for 15 to 20 years at starvation wages before making much of anything. ’ That is the very normal circumstance for almost everyone.

DaveyNC

Have you noticed that nearly every part of our economy that gets a significant amount of revenue from the government is experiencing exploding costs? Healthcare, check. K-12 education, check. Higher education, check. Housing, check—er, well it was, before it imploded. Corn and other subsidized crops, check.

It’s the subsidies that do it. Any time the government tosses some more money into a sector, prices rise by an aggregate amount roughly equal to the amount of the subsidy. I’m guessing that state legislatures cut back in part because they know that the feds will make up the difference.

If we want these costs to come down, we need to get the federal government out of the subsidy bidness.

ellenhunt

DaveyNC. I presume you listen to Ron Paul talk about Austrian economics?

1 – If you look at nations where there is a National Health Service, health care costs are NOT exploding. The USA, where “competition” and “private payment” rules is driving rises in health care costs worldwide. Just look at the salaries of physicians worldwide.

http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/physician-fees-and-salaries-in-the-us-and-other-countries/ – The pattern shown for orthopedic surgeons also applies to other specialists.

So the actual evidence shows that the problem in health care is that the USA does NOT have enough government involvement! Take a look at Medicare reimbursements to physicians. Many doctors won’t take medicare patients because the payments are so low. There is simply no price support system present there.

2 – It is just not so that K-12 costs are exploding. Where did you get that non-fact? Government support for K-12 education has dropped, and that’s because of property taxes being cut – which is a subsidy for home prices. So the federal government has had to pick up the slack, and that has made local schools beholden to Washington. See how that works?

3 – Higher education tuition cost is rising, yes. But only because in the past government paid 80% or more of the cost of a college education! Take what little support is left away and tuition costs will rise further.

4 – Crop subsidies are not subsidies. They are price supports. Those are there as a strategic matter in order to prevent extremely destructive booms and busts in farming. Those price supports kick in so that farmers can stay in business. Farms would not be able to survive without them. Subsidies only kick in in good times for farmers. As long as the price is high the price support doesn’t cost anything. There are basic things like food that are matters of national defense.

5 – At the end of your post you discuss the states versus the federal government. And you imply that if you get the federal government to stop allocating money that the states will step up. Except that at the state level the anti-tax demagogues are screaming the loudest. So that won’t happen.

Micha_Elyi

Neither Ron Paul nor Austrian Economics invented the basic economic principles of supply and demand.

The NIH depends on artificially capping supply. Unsupplied demand is ignored by its bureaucrats and left to suffer. Cost is low and so is service – like a Wal-Mart or, in the UK, a Woolworth’s.

Economics education undoubtedly sucks in your country.

bearjimmy

I hold three degrees: one take at a state funded university, and the otehr two taken at the same Ivy League University. The state university is one of the so-called public ivies. The experience I had there, though, was truly a mixed bag, from superior to pathetic. The experience I had at the Ivy campus, though was superior across the board, and I took courses from a wide range of departments, from political science, sociology, American Studies, education, engineering, art and architecture history, history of medicine and public heatlh, to American and English literature. Compared to the cost of my bachelors taken at the state school, the cost of the secondt two degrees was outrageous. I would, however, do it again without hesitation. Had the preperation I received in state supported public elementary and secondary schools been better, I could have avoided spending four years at the public ivy in the same state. My better-half who is an MD took a Bachelors and MD on the same public ivy campus. Whereas the experience while taking the MD degree was superior, the experience during the process of earning the Bachelors degree was the same as mine , a mixed bag. Sadly, the same lacking preparation in a totally different part of the state’s public school system was also the source of ending up in that state’s “flagship” public ivy insitution. In the end, it isn’t the school, it is the faculty. The cost of a superior faculty can not be too high. Beyond that, there is the question of which is the most important: knowledge to get a job, or being truly libearlly educated.

laughnow

Being ‘liberally educated’ is only for the rich now. College to get a job may be useful if its in an employable discipline. In IT, if I had it to do over again, id have skipped college, paid 20K to get a Cisco CCIE(assuming I had the brain to do it, which is way harder than the worst, and multiple immediate offers of employment. Then after getting a job that paid better than slave wages, get myself ‘liberally’ educated, provided I had enough dramamine to stomach it.
Young engineers I know coming out of college have 80-100k of college debt, limited prospects, but have no employable work skills. No education is worth that unless its employable.

hdl1784

That is interesting to hear. The conventional wisdom is that people with engineering degrees come out ready to work, and can get jobs easily.

Unemployed_Northeastern

That’s the conventional wisdom for law schools, too. Doesn’t mean it is true.

- unemployed attorney
hdl1784

There is no “reply” button under Unemployed Northeastern, but I am responding to his/her comment on my previous comment. That is emphatically NOT the conventional wisdom about law schools, and it has not been for a number of years now. For at least the past 5 years anyone paying attention would have heard that law school is a risky proposition for lots of people. No one has ever said that law school teaches people to be practice ready when they come out. I mean no one in the decades since Langdell. On sites all over the Internet, law students and graduates are castigated because they majored in subjects that did not train them to do anything but get another degree. Engineering is almost always offered up as the thing they should have been doing instead of majoring in English or History. It is interesting to hear that graduating with an engineering degree is no guarantee of a job or that the person will be able to hit the ground running, and know everything they need to know, on day one. Actually, it’ s not a surprise, few educational programs actually do that. People just have this wish/fantasy that they will.
Unemployed_Northeastern

In regards to law schools, yes, it is common knowledge among readers of the Chronicle of Higher Education that law school is a sham. In the general public, it absolutely is not. Not even close. Every law school in the land continues to turn away hundreds and thousands of applicants, falsified employment data is still condoned by the ABA and relied upon by well-meaning kids who have been told their entire lives that educators are benevolent demigods, and as one striving mightily to get out of the profession, I can assure you that every nonlegal hiring manager believes that all attorneys make bank, and that anyone looking outside the law must have some manner of mental defect. Do not overestimate the general public’s knowledge of law school.

Personally, I am rather surprised that you know of the uselessness of a law degree for most, but have never heard that the old chestnut “We need more STEM people now!” is mostly a cover for corporations to continue to lobby for increasing numbers of H1B work visas, whom they can pay far less and for whom employee protections are more or less nonexistent (since their ability to stay in the US is generally predicated upon continued employment with the company that brought them in, H1B holders sure as heck aren’t going to complain when our [very] few employee rights & protections are run over by capricious bosses).
hdl1784

@unemployed — it it is not just readers of the Chronicle who know the current problems with law schools. The numbers of people taking the LSATs are down. Applications are down. Of course, many people are still going because they do not know what else to do and because they genuinely want to go.

And it is not just corporations who are pushing STEM.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_AQVEVDBVQIFXGWTEGKME5ZMFMU neptune

Agreed. Three degrees here: BA at a rigid private institution, MA, MA, and ABD at public institutions (still trying to finish the PhD). My undergraduate institution was very tough whereas my graduate training has been somewhat mediocre: in fact it seems that at my doctoral institution, likeability goes much farther than actual competence. There is absolutely no comraderie among graduate students and intellectual disagreement is often impulsively characterized as “idiocy”. But that may be more of a revelation about graduate school politics/culture/egos than the difference between attending an exclusive private institution and a public institution. All that I know when I was B student as an undergrad in a private university, I felt more intellectually challenged than as a grad student in a public university. And while I have studied under distinguished chairs at my doctoral institution (two were on my original committee), those I studied under as an undergrad were more approachable and genuinely concerned about my intellectual development as opposed to demanding unquestioning deference to their opinions. As a college teacher these days, I implore my students to question me as much as they can: I’m no good to them if I demand that they take my scholarly opinions as the final word.

annekaliellen

Ah, graddirector, I feel your pain, as do many other Chronicle readers who get up at 4 am to squeeze in their morning read before embarking on a 14-hour workday. If only it were as simple as exposing the lie that academics don’t work hard. Of course most academics work hard, as do most other highly-educated people in professional positions. But we’re sometimes not working effectively, and the end result is that we toil furiously to limited purpose. Our lived experience of working very hard should not blind us to the reality that some of our efforts are futile.

For many, our classes consist increasingly of students with limited academic preparation and no deep vocation for learning. We spend endless hours trying to help students think–or even construct a reasonable sentence. But do we have any actual training in how to do this? Are we developmental education experts? Do we know much about how people learn? Or did we learn easily, naturally, and with joy, and therefore rarely experience what our own students are going through? Many of my colleagues spend hours meticulously grading student work and correcting errors, but see little in the way of improvement. We’re trying very hard, but we don’t necessarily know how to teach our current students. We’re sometimes wasting our time, and theirs.

Meanwhile, the limited learning going on in college classrooms prompts accrediting agencies to crack the assessment whip. More and more kinds of evidence, more and more standards of excellence to meet, more and more documentation that we have measurable learning goals, that we assess them using multiple tools, that we use the results of assessment to change curricula and pedagogy. These elaborate and time-consuming assessment edifices, of course, are constructed by…disciplinary academics who are not really assessment experts! The blind leading the exhausted and demoralized.

I’m reasonably confident that we’ll adjust, that we’ll learn how to teach our students, that we’ll figure out less time-consuming and elaborate ways to demonstrate that students are learning. But in the meantime…back to the 14 hour days!

grward

“Many of my colleagues spend hours meticulously grading student work and
correcting errors, but see little in the way of improvement. We’re
trying very hard, but we don’t necessarily know how to teach our current
students. We’re sometimes wasting our time, and theirs.”

I’ve been teaching undergrads for almost 17 years, and I sometimes amuse myself by tracing my evolution as an instructor. At first, every failure was a challenge to me and I rose to the challenge by using some (or a lot of) face-to-face time to explain, to review, to try to stimulate and motivate (I absolutely love to learn new things and thought that, if I could show students just how exciting the world of science could be, then they would be, well, just like me!). After many hours of hard work (on my part), I would give the student another chance to pass the course (sometimes I bent the rules a bit because I just couldn’t stand failing a student: it would mean my failure also!), and well, as you can guess, the student would show no improvement the next time. After awhile, I realized that I wasn’t a tutor and would encourage failing students to make use of all of the professional resources available on our campus (study skills, note-taking, time management, stress reduction, etc.). I was only somewhat relieved to see that it wasn’t just a failure on my part: that these students also rarely seemed to improve after the professionals stepped in. Eventually, I made two decisions: 1) that my primary responsibility is to my discipline, and I must ensure that my students respect the discipline and learn to appreciate that they must work hard to become proficient in it; and 2) that it will up to the student to figure out how to become proficient in the discipline, that it’s a road they must travel alone but, if they stick it out, there will be rewards at the end. Sure it’s fluff, but it’s kept me sane all these years.

Now, as one of the most senior instructors in my department, I’ve become the crusty old curmudgeon whose courses are “tough”, whose marking is “tough”, and who expects too much from students (according to what the students say on my course evaluations). But my overall ratings are quite high and the elective courses I teach always have a waiting list, even when similar courses aren’t full. There are too many students in universities today who don’t belong there: decide which ones you can help, and put your valuable time and energy into them, and realize that sending the message to students that they are failing with their current approach to being a student can also be doing them a favor.

sibyl

“So going to college is worth it, but going to any college at any price may no longer be worth it.”

And I would add, studying any subject. We still produce vast numbers of psychology majors and business majors, when what the workforce pays for is engineers and computer scientists. The psych and business majors shouldn’t be surprised or enraged when they can’t find work — but they often are, and many of them shift the blame from themselves or the economy to colleges. Don’t misunderstand: if people want to major in psych and business majors, that’s fine, but they also need to take math and computer and finance courses so that they have the skills and adaptability to be valuable in the workforce. Too many students back into their majors after realizing that they lack the ability or interest in taking courses that are “too hard” (especialy math and science).

“College presidents seem tone-deaf to those concerns.”

Well, really, who can blame them? In the first place, at least three fourths of them can say, “Yeah, but angry parents are concerned about the $50,000 colleges. We only charge $20,000, so we are fine.” In the second place, they already feel squeezed on the expenditure side, with ambitions of their own held in check by large increases in health care costs and the hovering specters of deferred maintenance and unfunded retirement costs. And most of all, there’s really nowhere for them to go to take action. They can’t get the states to reverse the decline in appropriations, and it’s very risky to antagonize the campus community by initiating cuts. (Especially when it’s hard to anticipate any rewards for cutting costs.)

What is NOT going to work is urging colleges to change in advance of disaster. Burton Clark’s [i]The Distinctive College[i] still applies: significant institutional change will happen only when the only alternative is closure. The great mass of colleges are still years away from that.

unusedusername

Exactly.

“a simple credential will no longer cut it in some employment circles. And on that front, many colleges just don’t measure up.”

The real problem is that some majors don’t measure up. To say that college doesn’t work because some graduates are unemployed is painting with too broad a brush.

22136689

The average college graduate has a student loan debt of approximately $22,000. The average car loan is $24,000. Unlike a college degree an automobile’s value drops the minute the car is driven out of the showroom. Still waiting for media to report on the outrageous price of today’s vehicles.

Unemployed_Northeastern

Cars are subject to lemon laws and consumer protections. College degrees and student loans are not. If your new car doesn’t work, you have recourse. If your new degree can’t get you employment, well [insert BS "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" nonsense here].

Edit: like a new car, the value of a new degree drops precipitously a few months after graduation, when many employers start looking ahead to the next class of graduates instead of looking back at the “day old bread.” The relevance of a new college grad sans employment can almost be measured in weeks.

ellenhunt

Yes, that is true. There should be a clause in the federal student loan program that says that if the college has too high a loan default rate that it will no longer be eligible for student loans. And that college should also be required to pay back the federal government for those defaults. That will at least shut down lousy colleges that exploit the system.

Unemployed_Northeastern

And as soon as broke college grads can spend more on lobbying than the banks who fought for these onerous conditions, I am sure Congress will do the right thing…

threejs

Ever since the post WWII Veteran’s Act, higher education has become increasingly identified with careers, vocations, etc. Colleges cannot continue to have it both ways: While not exactly or even mainly an either/or situation, it is folly for colleges to continue tracking the demands of the student market (which has been more and more sold on college on the basis of a better career, etc. and not the instrinsic worth of “an education” while bemoaning the lack of respect and interest in non-career-related programs (viz. the humanities).

While colleges continue to push the marketability of their degrees, through status or through perceived competence, they cannot consistently ignore the demands of the market for accountability in the form of a good job at graduation. Fact is that many trades pay way better than many degrees.
vceross

One thing is clear: our educational system is in crisis, by which I mean less the notion of disaster and more that of a turning point, an opportunity, a time for decision-making. The publication of such student-written texts as “Student Handjob” (a scathing critique of higher education by a group of students, presumably) and even such seemingly benign and perhaps unintentionally cynical texts as that produced by two Ivy League students with disabilities about how to navigate college point to the fact that it isn’t just employers, or educators, or parents who are dissatisfied with our educational system but also our students, and the criticisms of the students suggest that they are fed up with a deal in which they learn little and get good grades and faculty teach little and spend time on their research–an arrangement that works well from a certain job-oriented perspective, while of course emptying the meaning and value of education as it was once understood.

One thing is clear: A culture needs to agree upon its educational goals, process, and institutions or they are doomed. It’s time for us as a nation, a culture, to stop blaming and defending and instead to work together to acknowledge we have a problem, yes, and to get on with the business of defining it so that we may then quarrel about how to solve it.

A few years ago, in a cab in London during a traffic jam, I asked the driver why no one was red-faced and honking. He said, “That would be foolish. We’re all in this together.”

klaunglu

Thank you vceross for providing an optimistic point of view and showing the opportunity that we have before us. I think that this discussion in itself is a great step towards progress.

I’d like to share my point of view first before I elaborate. I am a STEM graduate student in an R1 university. I have the opportunity to earn a good living in the private sector, but I have decided to take a large sum of loans in order to pursue elite education so that I may one day get the chance to join the ranks of professors of higher education. I frequent this website extensively and understand the challenges involved in pursuing a tenure track or an academic career. I believe, however, that the quality of research and teaching that is performed within this country is invaluable.

Jim Bishop, I understand your point of view. Many professors have wasted my time in courses that cost me $44 dollars per day. I have toiled with many friends through courses from professors that we believe taught us nothing and only hold tenure because they are lucky enough to be in a lucrative research field. However, I have many peers that have been inspired by professors, deans, and administrators that toil for the good of higher education and by proxi, the good of society.

I would like to ask you again what is the point of “higher education”? I personally do not believe it is to provide the means for students to make a living. I personally do not believe it is to increase the GDP for the nation. It might do so by coincidence, but I believe the goal of higher education is to improve the society in which we live in. I believe that the professors in sociology do this by pointing out to us the prejudices in our society and help shed light on how to see the value in other human beings unfamiliar to us. I believe that the professors in philosophy improve society by showing us how to critically think about important issues like abortion and immigration.

I understand the concern, however, of the importance of making a living. I will have to pay back over $50,000 in loans on an academic salary if I achieve my goals. Believe me, I am exploring all the options available to me. I would like to ask everyone though, what is the real value of higher education?

Here is an idea towards a solution I’d like to share. The discussion has largely been from people asking for more revenue potential from a college degree or from people defending the value of higher education and advanced research. Why not consider them separately?

threejs just mentioned this above. ”many trades pay way better than many degrees.” It reminds of the community colleges that provide training in order to work the pipettes and equipment for biotech firms. Why do we need to publicly fund people to make a good living? If citizens can fund trade education that will result in adequate jobs that provide for a family, is that not enough? On the flip side, why should the public fund higher education in economics or business in order for some people to make a large personal salary? Is that a good investment in public money? I do not pretend to say that it is a simple question, but I’d like to bring it up anyways.

To end my post, I’d like to sincerely thank the administrators, professors, and public for thoughtfully discussing these topics. I understand the limited time that everyone has under these tough conditions. You are all truly going above and beyond your duties and it gives me hope that this crisis will turn into a great opportunity like vceross says.

Thank you. I sincerely wish you all the best of luck in your endeavors. Remember that your efforts give us students hope and motivation to do great things.

atana09

Unfortunately for our students and our nation one of the reasons higher education has become a promise pit is because of those who lobbied to ensure profits could be extracted out from what had been a equitable and effective system. And that detrimental condition has its origin at the point when student funding transitioned to privatized profit provided by public resources. After the privitization of student lending there was a incredible impetus to ensure that non loan aid to students be reduced making academe reliant on lending for much of its revenue. And equal emphasis to reduce proper overall funding to academe also resulted due to related political influence trading.
Despite the scandals such as the 9.5, which resulted in massive losses in both public monies and public trust the inherent corruption of this system continues. Obama and Duncan did something in ending (sort of) the sub loan programs but that 900+ billion of student debt (massively overleveraged) means that those who hold it can also hold our educational and economic policy by the throat. And so what little reforms are done are either not enough or undermined.
As Mr. Seligo noted the colleges have played the glitz game with the debt money in part due to the difficulty of having to sell what had been a public service to a public which is increasingly aware of and cynical about the imbalance of cost to benefit in academe. The sickening aspect is that these type of decisions are a expanded influence the more glitz the more debt and the less validity for the value of college studies.
And it is unwise to look to the community colleges to break this cycle as proportionally yes the debt is less but the proportional cost to the populations they serve is actually more when their available resources and potential future income are considered.
mycantarella

I agree here. A college education when it delivers on teaching communications skills, critical thinking, research, problem solving, and maybe some softer skills like managing time, and engaging in work with all kinds of people, is what is needed to move into and ahead in the workforce. Those factors can be delivered in varied schools and the brand names do not have a monopoly. There are outstanding state and local colleges and some small and unsung schools that can have high impact. Finding the right school for a student vs shoe-horning all students into the same model or the same time frame ought to be a consideration more than it is. Helping students understand the role that the above mentioned skills play in the world of work can make it more relevant. If the marketplace begins to object to ever increasing prices we will see competiton (already happening) with honors programs in places like CUNY which offer high value for less. There has to be a correlation between the product of the educational experience and the outcomes in earnings. One of the places where the discrepancy is most egregious is the for profits which gouge low income students and offer an education that rather than expanding career options by offering breadth, caps them by offering highly specific degrees in fields that are ever changing. This is one of the arenas where rationality in the marketplace does not always prevail.

Marcia Y. Cantarella, PhD, Author, I CAN Finish College: The Overcome Any Obstacle and Get Your Degree Guide.
dberkey

Jeff Selingo raises important points about the value/cost relationship. High-priced privates cannot significantly reduce cost without radically changing the nature of the experience. It’s the value side of the ratio where the difference lies.

At Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) students work hard, collaboratively, and on project teams with an emphasis on collaboration, not competition, and a focus on important ideas and problems. They graduate with strong core knowledge in science, engineering and technology; with excellent communication skills of all types; with a global perspective from working abroad in project teams solving hard problems of high social value; and well educated due to a broad engagement in the humanities and arts, including the performing arts. It is a culture of high achievement. Our graduates are in high demand by leading industries; many go on to fine graduate programs; and most contribute important leadership to their companies, communities, and non-profit organizations which they serve. Our tuition increases run well below the national averages; we provide fully competitive packages of student financial assistance; and we invest substantially in the maintenance and improvement of our physical plant. Graduates’ debt loads compare reasonably with the strong starting salaries available from a range of employers. Student satisfaction, which is closely monitored, is very high.

Contrast all this with a story told recently on the front page of the New York Times of a young women pursuing a masters degree in strategic communication, having graduated from a small private college and having found work only on a part-time basis at a Starbucks, but who has already amassed some $200,000 in student loan debt. One of these models is not sustainable.

Four years is a long time. There is no reason we cannot be producing well-educated graduates who are also well-prepared for jobs and careers. The higher education model is not broken, although the public sector is currently drastically underfunded, but rather needs to be better understood for what it is and is not. Those looking for low-cost education and training, and wanting to avoid significant debt, can find credible options for certain types of experience, especially in the public and for-profit private, and distance-eduation sectors. My own spouse began her undergraduate education as a commuting student at a two-year branch campus of a public university; transferred onto campus to complete her B.S. degree; completed an M.A. degree at a private university; and won a fellowship for her doctorate at a leading ivy-league institution where she has enjoyed a highly productive research career now for decades. That, and what I have reported about WPI, are examples of how the model can work. But they are examples of hard work and high motivation by students; productive, dedicated faculty; purposeful selections of faculty and programs; and clear-eyed examinations of value for cost at whatever type of institution one is considering for an education or for employment.

Quality education is a high-value product. We have slipped into the notion that it ought to be widely available at a deep discount, that student loan debt cannot be justified by its return in earnings and in quality of life, and that colleges and universities are relatively inefficient organizations blind to the concerns of consumers and public officials. A better-informed, more thoughtful discussion is required, and thought leaders like Jeff Selingo are making important contributions.

Dennis Berkey
President and CEO, WPI

Unemployed_Northeastern

I must say, this is one of the most thoughtful comments regarding the cost structure of higher education I have seen from a college president. Thank you. If I might, I have a few unrelated questions.

- There is a pretty strong conception among many venture capital outfits around Boston that only Harvard and MIT grads have ideas worth funding, no doubt because so many VC partners attended MIT or an Ivy. One hand scratches the other… Consequently, if someone from BU or Wentworth or Tufts or wherever has a genuinely good or great idea for a product/site/widget, s/he will encounter a lot of closed doors in Back Bay, Cambridge, and Waltham. Have you found this myopia to impact WPI grads?

- Similarly, Mark Zuckerberg recently came back to Boston/Cambridge to recruit. He made it no secret that he was only recruiting from, you guessed it, Harvard and MIT. Evidently, no one from the other 80-some odd Boston-area colleges and 30-odd Pioneer Valley colleges knows how to write code. What was your take on that, if any?

- Moving away from the sickening notions of prestige = talent that pervade our corner of the country, how does an institution or student balance their education between specialized coursework and training that has immediate benefit for an employer, and skills that might be more versatile in the long run? In other words, how does one ensure they can find another job if their chosen speciality goes the way of the passenger pigeon? One reflects on the many laid-off aerospace engineers – genuine rocket scientists! – after the end of the Apollo program, or of the thousands of unemployed Silicon Valley workers after the dot.com implosion and the “discovery” that most of their work can be done in developing nations for a fraction of the cost (or done stateside by folk on work visas). In other words, in our global economy where so much of the work force and their accumulated knowledge and experience is considered utterly fungible and easily interchangeable, how can one safeguard against such occurrences, beyond moving to the low-cost countries themselves?

3rdtyrant

When I was in graduate school, I received a letter from our university president telling us that my university was proud to remain affordable to students (we had just seen our graduate tuition jump from 11,000 to 14,000–which I know is less than many of you out there paid). I sent a reply calling his claims of affordability (our graduate teaching stipend was 11,000) were risible. The reply was to point out the comparatively low tuition and to ask what I meant by “risable,” and to correct me by saying that tuition was “raisable.” That’s all I needed, to know that university presidents need to be kept out of the loop.
Waldemar1

The problem now extends beyond undergraduate education to graduate education. For people holding graduate degrees, the wage gap has changed because the market has been flooded with post-baccalaureate degrees. (Think of the gross overproduction of PhDs.)

There is a reason that blogs like “100 reasons NOT to go to grad school” are appearing: http://100rsns.blogspot.com/
antonw

Education writers should lead with the Bureau of Labor Statistics report that states that only
22% of the jobs created require a college degree and that math/science/computer jobs are being hit hard in our “Flat” world. See page two of this two page report.
http://www.textbooksfree.org/Change%20Education.htm
http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Moelling/100000672345596 David Moelling

The Commenters who noted the Ivy/Public delta as one of consistency miss the point. It’s still the student who wants and knows what they want to achieve. The school can help them choose the right courses etc. This is easier in private schools and particularly in the science/engineering areas (I refuse to use STEM) not because of the subject matter but because a defined set of courses and prerequisites exists. All students should start out as a declared major (changable) with a strong core of common courses for their first year. The structure is enormously helpful. This is what private schools often do better. HOWEVER, the cost increase is truly in the administrative and physical plant not the instructor level. At private schools this is prestige and in the public schools its payoff to the local construction lobby.
rei727887

Whether a college education is “worth it” also depends on one’s major. A degree in Applied Mathematics, for example, will be worth much more than a degree in Ethnic Studies.

It’s also interesting to compare the benefit:cost ratio of a two-year certificate of competency in a high-paying vocation, awarded by a community college, to the benefit:cost ratio of the four-year degree in Ethnic Studies. Community colleges’ tuition is less, as is the length of the program (two-year versus four-year). If the community college student lives at home, his cost for food and rent is less; and even if he’s a full-time student, his opportunity cost of foregone income is less. Finally, it’s unclear whose compensation would be higher.

For this person, the “college premium” may be small or negative. Yet, despite having little competence or interest in academics, he may feel obligated to earn a worthless four-year degree– incurring lots of debt to do so – because he has bought into the LIE that he cannot be successful without a bachelor’s degree.

hdl1784

Relatively few people major in “ethnic studies”. That’s a coded whipping boy. Business majors far outnumber ethnic studies majors. The business major is a more relevant comparison.

22265447

superficial, warmed-over drivel. everything has gone up in price and the consumer price index does not adequately reflect higher education. higher ed has a more relevant index which commentators with their axes to grind either overlook or ignore. as was noted in another post, the price of a car has gone up dramatically since the 70s and there’s no lasting value. it’s not an investment, but a cost of living. most items we buy meet those characteristics. higher education does not. when will higher ed commentators start noting that the skyrocketing costs of consumer products that is needed to pay ceo salaries and shareholders has taken ever so much more money from our pockets and created such a huge wealth gap that people are noticing and expressing that awareness through the occupy movement and support for it. are they deaf to such obvious signs of public discontent? they must be, because they want colleges and universities to imitate business. then, when we do–by charging what the market will bear (or just what we need to make up for declining state financial support) or paying our ceos–they cry foul. which is it smart guy commentators–should higher ed act like a business or not?

jaysanderson

Howard Johnson is right.
rei727887

I have examined the Higher Education Price Index and it’s a self-serving piece of circular nonsense that is completely irrelevant to consumers’ ability to pay for college.

Like the CPI, HEPI is based on a “basket” of goods and services that Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs) buy, the greatest portion of which is labor. Now, here’s the catch: if the (weighted average) costs of the goods and services in the IHE market basket increases, THE HEPI INCREASES by the same percentage.

Think about this for a moment. It’s as if you go shopping for a car and find that the model that cost $20,000 last year now costs $21,000 — an increase of 5%. When you point this out to the salesperson, he says, “No, in ‘real’ terms, it’s the same price as last year because the Car Price Index increased by 5%.”

So, no matter how much the cost of the goods and services bought by IHEs increases, the HEPI neutralizes it, allowing the institutions to claim “with a straight face” that the cost of higher education really hasn’t increased that much. On the other hand, if the IHE’s funding doesn’t keep pace with the HEPI, it can claim that it’s losing purchasing power. And how does the IHE close this gap between revenues and “need”? If you said, “raise tuition,” go to the head of the class.

The Consumer Price Index is the appropriate deflator for calculating what students and parents pay, after adjusting for the effects of inflation. When adjusted by the SAME index (to allow an apples-to-apples comparison), the cost of tuition has FAR OUTPACED consumer purchasing power.

The HEPI has absolutely no place in determining the “true” cost of colleges and universities to parents and students.

22028784

At least the Chronicle’s editorial director is willing to let us know that he is not neutral on the question of higher education’s value. This helps explain much about the editorial choices.
bethryan019

Everyone is extremely sensitive to the cost/value conumdrum. I think the situation is the siren for creating new education models – how can we look at the goals of education differently? Like the publishing industries, higher ed is going to have to accept that in the current environment, they have remember that their businesss is education, not forcing dated and inefficient education models originally created in the Middle Ages. The world has changed.

And yet, I just had a couple of young (20 something) alumni tell me that now that they are working, their education was worth every penny they had to borrow – we’re talking about a +/- $600/month student loan payment. I was amazed.

But, they had the personal drive to get those jobs by taking internships for no pay; there can be no substitute for personal initiative. Higher-ed can inspire and train, but students need to be responsible to plan their finances and be willing to make sacrifices as well.

When enrollments fall, higher-ed always looks at price/discounts – the author did not mention the increase in the high school drop out rate in the Northeast which also narrows the pool of applicants for higher ed as well.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Jim-Bishop/672604057 Jim Bishop

@ klaunglu

To my great disappointment, I think my late great friend Page Smith, who wrote the book to which I referred in my original post, was correct. We have, as a profession and as a culture, lost what was once our basic assumption about the purpose of education. I remain convinced that education at its best is a process wherein caring, skilled, informed people guide others in the process of becoming human; that is to gain control over the towering capacity that separates us from every other living creature of which we now know. We have the most developed ability to reason. Once a person has learned to execute the capabilities of their humanity, they may well get a good job, but that is not the point. In fact, some of our most capable brothers and sisters chose not to have a job at all but create a world for themselves completely outside the contemporary limitations of the culture into which they are born. Now, and for some time, the ‘educational process’ in most of its iterations is essentially a occupational training exercise ministered by people who attempt to pour the bodies and intellects of their students into molds prepared by the industrial machine that provides their summer homes and ‘research’ grants.
daraflores

Study without thought is vain: thought without study is dangerous. Stop wasting your time with just job hunt, if you are looking for a job for more than a year just realize that you need to change job you can get degree in few months from High Speed Universities search it online and you will be amazed
teapartydoc

See how “necessary” your pretty little credentials are to the public when your subsidies dry up, sucker.
lizziec

Adding to this questionable value is the dumping of masses of for-profit graduates into the market place with nice pieces of paper but little to show for their time in “college”. Now, employers not only have to contend with the reality that public universities have long ago lowered standards to keep the tuition monies flowing in, but now there are a host of other institutions, apparently with degree-granting ability, whose graduates add to the confusion.

It’s getting harder and harder to determine who’s worth the interview, and for a while, I heard talk in the ivory tower of the PhD fading into the ranks of the Master’s Degree and a NEW degree being developed (post-PhD) that would REALLY separate the wheat from the chaff. (yeah, right…)

Colleges are continuing tp price themselves out of the market for all but a few wealthy families, and those willing to enter into debt slavery to attend while the quality across the board continues to diminish in the name of greater numbers.

My prediction? But for a few of the solid, private/non-profits (Ivies come to mind), employers will dispense with looking for the degree specifically and begin to develop methods for evaluating who is trainable and then partner with (or develop) just-in-time training programs that will prepare their workforce for their specific needs. This sounds good for employers and seems nice if you are one of the people deemed “trainable”,… until you try to leave that enmployer and find that you are starting over again at the bottom of the heap.

In a way, things will have come full-circle, but it will be painful for all until we settle into the new reality.
lizziec

disqus… love when they double post!!!
rei727887

In my indignation over the inappropriateness of using the HEPI to justify increases in IHE spending — and, more specifically, tuition increases – I’m afraid I got a little carried away, but my main point is the same.

The HEPI does, in fact, measure the cost of a typical market basket of goods and services bought by IHEs at specified points in time. A significant part of this market basket consists of employee compensation, which is influenced by those use the index.

Now, to the source of my indignation. My state is home to a major public university system which shall remain nameless. Several years ago, this system produced a very nice glossy brochure to justify its request for additional funds. One chart had a title to the effect of, “Adjusted for Inflation, Cost of [IHE] Has Not Increased.” Sure enough, there was a line chart illustrating this point. How could this be? Even though state support per FTES had decreased over the period covered by the chart, tuition had skyrocketed and, after adjusting for inflation as measured by the CPI, total funding per FTES had increased in many of the years on the chart.

I was told that spending had been adjusted by an index measuring the cost of goods and services that the system bought — the HEPI. Although this description was technically accurate, I’m sure it was news to the students and parents who had seen tuition more than double over the previous decade.
jennoh2

It seems that more and more students are looking at the value of education. I know that the community colleges are swamped with students in our area. Many students opt to go to community college and then transfer to OSU to save money. They know the end result will be a degree from a reputable university. I see more students becoming more pratical and giving up bells and whistles, including traditional campus life, to save money. Additionally, it seems the emphasis now is for students to become more globally educated, both in and outside of the classroom, so that they can be more marketable to employers who are now looking for candidates that have experience interacting in the global market place.
http://freysinger.net Daniel Freysinger

You are very out of touch. I am a parent preparing to spend 30% of my gross income to send my daughter to a state institution. Academics spend too much time in a fantasy land where they lose touch with reality. Yes, funding has been cut. At the same time I can open a college catalog and see pottery classes or talk of a new stadium. I walked past a multimillion dollare gym that has absolutely nothing to do with educating my daughter. We are paying for a popularity contest geared toward attracting high paying out of state students.

http://fleecedparent.com
http://freysinger.net Daniel Freysinger

It is going to cost my over $80,000 for my daughters degree. That loan statistic is a joke. Acadmics live in a fantasy land where cost doesn’t matter. It is all about reputation. Far too many think there is no price to pay for the education they deliver.
johnbarnes

Meh. It’s a little bit you and a little bit them, as the Monkees would say. I’ve been in similar situations and known highly successful people from run of the mill origins. Some rich people are raised to be gracious (and some of them don’t get it very well and come across as condescending); some are raised not to be; many follow the temperaments, regardless of their raising. Some of the rest of us, around the raised-rich, have chips on our shoulders, some try too hard, some have mostly gotten over it or were just too socially obtuse to notice there was a problem in the first place. Class is like any other awkward, noticeable difference — race, gender, preference — sometimes everyone handles it well, sometimes no one does, an assumption of good will usually helps but can be blinding. It sounds to me like you’re trying and at least many of them are, so you don’t need tips so much as the simple encouragement: you’re doing what you can. (One way class is a little different is that it’s still downplayed; I can’t imagine in this day and age anyone would ask for “any other suggestions” for getting along with people of different races, preferences, genders, etc., because mostly we’d recognize that the one size fits all in relationships across the divide is already pretty well established; it’s the individual details that are tough to negotiate).
bfrank1

Well, as the nice old ladies where I grew up (rich or poor) used to say to me – “Well, Bless your heart, honey, you just keep trying!”
iep_university

This piece is just weird to me.
ufenglish

What you have not identified as a source of social awkwardness, and what I find often a fundamental issue, is politics. Class does not always dictate politics, of course–in fact, simple wealth these days seems to do so much more than inherited class. But there is often a correlation between having the money to be courted as a donor and espousing political positions that can be difficult not to react to in conversation. Of course,region also has something to do with that, and I am in the South.
11301218

Amen, sister. I am first generation immigrant and first generation university graduate of a genuinely proletarian family. I am also a professor and ex-administrator. I never felt at ease speaking with members of the 1%. Since I am a former administrator, I am thankful not ever having to do that again. One thing I noticed is that money has little to do with being interesting or smart. There was more than once I wanted to shout, “If you are so rich, how come you’re not smart?” You give some (a lot) of these folks a pile of money and all of a sudden they think that they are brilliant and wonderful and among God’s anointed whose opinions cannot be challenged.
lesboprof

Yes, I agree. I think this is definitely one way to go.
henry_adams

This method is especially good for those who don’t promote themselves and otherwise would go unnoticed by the people in power.

Henry Adams
henry_adams

You aren’t being shameless. You are being realistic.

Henry Adams
tolivier

Because of course rich people never use bad words. I have been in a similar position to the author of the article, and it didn’t get much easier over the years. I think the only thing to do, other than wear out your smile, is to keep asserting the strengths of your institution and how much it means that Mr. and Mrs Never-Say-Fuck take an interest.
12029355

In polite and educated company, I just don’t think the use of that word is necessary or appropriate — including this forum.

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