The Crisis of College Affordability

[Mn_Mark]

Re: The Crisis of College Affordability

It seems that there has been too much liberal arts bashing in this thread. The true core of liberal arts has in fact been lost and watered down with sociology, psychology, etc. This is not to say that such fields do not have value, but they are not the liberal arts, they are social sciences. A return to the true meaning of a liberal arts education, one that trains the mind and deepens one's familiarity with 'the great conversation' would actually be of tremendous value..

I started college as a chemistry major and switched to a double major in English literature and philosophy. I was young and idealistic and wanted passion in my life and loved the intellectual interplay of those fields.

Then I graduated from college and found that an English/philosophy degree is in practical terms worth almost nothing. I finally found a job selling photo portraits in a department store for a pitiful, barely five-figures salary. It was big move up in salary when I got a job as a Clerk, Grade 2 with the state, in the motor vehicle division.

I have come to believe that things like English literature and philosophy are properly to be considered as hobbies. These are fine things, part of rounding out one's life. But they are useless in real life terms for finding employment that pays a good wage. Yes, by all means, read literature and philosophy and history and study art and all the rest - but do it in the evening instead of watching television.

People who say "the liberal arts teach you to think, and this is very valuable"...well I'm here to say that is idealistic and not true. I got a liberal arts education and it really did nothing for me in terms of my economic life, which is pretty much the purpose of going to college.

Fine, if you're a rich kid and you're going to work in Dad's business, then I can see going off for four years of history, literature, and philosophy to polish you into a learned gentleman. But for the average middle class kid who needs to get a job after college, the whole liberal arts thing is a seductive, idealistic trap.

I went on to get masters degrees in journalism and business administration before finally finding my career niche in something that I trained myself in and had nothing to do with my bountiful education: software development. With better vocational guidance in high school, I think I might have figured out back then that I had an interest in and aptitude for engineering-type work. But that was never discussed in my high school. One simply went off to college...and chose whatever major caught one's fancy. What a waste of time and money.

[hayekvindicated]

Re: The Crisis of College Affordability

I started college as a chemistry major and switched to a double major in English literature and philosophy. I was young and idealistic and wanted passion in my life and loved the intellectual interplay of those fields.

Then I graduated from college and found that an English/philosophy degree is in practical terms worth almost nothing. I finally found a job selling photo portraits in a department store for a pitiful, barely five-figures salary. It was big move up in salary when I got a job as a Clerk, Grade 2 with the state, in the motor vehicle division.

I have come to believe that things like English literature and philosophy are properly to be considered as hobbies. These are fine things, part of rounding out one's life. But they are useless in real life terms for finding employment that pays a good wage. Yes, by all means, read literature and philosophy and history and study art and all the rest - but do it in the evening instead of watching television.

People who say "the liberal arts teach you to think, and this is very valuable"...well I'm here to say that is idealistic and not true. I got a liberal arts education and it really did nothing for me in terms of my economic life, which is pretty much the purpose of going to college.

Fine, if you're a rich kid and you're going to work in Dad's business, then I can see going off for four years of history, literature, and philosophy to polish you into a learned gentleman. But for the average middle class kid who needs to get a job after college, the whole liberal arts thing is a seductive, idealistic trap.

I went on to get masters degrees in journalism and business administration before finally finding my career niche in something that I trained myself in and had nothing to do with my bountiful education: software development. With better vocational guidance in high school, I think I might have figured out back then that I had an interest in and aptitude for engineering-type work. But that was never discussed in my high school. One simply went off to college...and chose whatever major caught one's fancy. What a waste of time and money.

I nearly went to an Ivy League school back in 2001 for a master's degree in law. I had admission to the programme but then decided not to go. Had I gone ahead, I would have spent a fortune on a degree of extremely questionable value. A few years later I was considering a MBA. The high costs and lost income put me off. It was the best decision I ever made.

Years of booming asset prices and easy credit have made a whole generation of people remarkably foolish about debt. In my view, it is a truly horrendous thing to have US$300,000 of debt when you start working (which is what happens if you get a professional degree from an Ivy League school). It is insane how many people think its the only ticket to a good life.

College education is also just a brainwashing exercise. The "Liberal Arts" faculties are filled with New Left nuts who exercise extreme intolerance in practising PC - the University is actually destructive for the mind because free thought actually gets crushed. What you learn is all the PC bullshit the Left wants you to get indoctrinated with.

The destruction of needless faculties filled with pet New Left theorists would be one of the best things to come out of this Depression (assuming it does happen).

College education is mostly a complete waste of time and money.

Cornelius Vanderbilt:

If I had learned education, I would not have had time to learn anything else.

[Basil]

Re: The Crisis of College Affordability

College education is also just a brainwashing exercise. The "Liberal Arts" faculties are filled with New Left nuts who exercise extreme intolerance in practising PC - the University is actually destructive for the mind because free thought actually gets crushed. What you learn is all the PC bullshit the Left wants you to get indoctrinated with.

The destruction of needless faculties filled with pet New Left theorists would be one of the best things to come out of this Depression (assuming it does happen).

College education is mostly a complete waste of time and money.

Cornelius Vanderbilt:

Liberal Arts faculties have their liberal nut jobs who are pushing an agenda. But they also have some rather conservative individuals who are pushing their agendas. And you might be surprised to know that there are many professors who simply want to help people learn how think and help them develop a greater appreciation for philosophy, literature, art, etc. Evaluating the competing perspectives of the radical liberal professors and extremely conservative professors comes to be part of the intellectual exercise for students.

While some professors may exercise intolerance, most do not. I think that you are under the impression this is more prevalent than it is because the story of a mild mannered professor teaching students Ottoman History, Shakespeare, or German Literature, etc. and improving their analytical skills and writing abilities in the process would not be worth writing about. But that is what is happening in most liberal arts classrooms around the country.

I would, however, agree with you that a restructuring of university faculties is an inevitable result of this process. It is already happening at several schools. At some schools it will serve to trim the fat, at others it will serve to reinforce current ideological trends within the university.

A good education is never a waste of time. An indoctrination certainly is. The debt aspect is just horrendous. The amount of debt people must now take on for a college degree is untenable. I attended the university where my mother worked as an administrator because it was free. I loved it, But may have felt much differently if I had accumulated heavy debts.

[Basil]

Re: The Crisis of College Affordability

I started college as a chemistry major and switched to a double major in English literature and philosophy. I was young and idealistic and wanted passion in my life and loved the intellectual interplay of those fields.

Then I graduated from college and found that an English/philosophy degree is in practical terms worth almost nothing. I finally found a job selling photo portraits in a department store for a pitiful, barely five-figures salary. It was big move up in salary when I got a job as a Clerk, Grade 2 with the state, in the motor vehicle division.

I have come to believe that things like English literature and philosophy are properly to be considered as hobbies. These are fine things, part of rounding out one's life. But they are useless in real life terms for finding employment that pays a good wage. Yes, by all means, read literature and philosophy and history and study art and all the rest - but do it in the evening instead of watching television.

People who say "the liberal arts teach you to think, and this is very valuable"...well I'm here to say that is idealistic and not true. I got a liberal arts education and it really did nothing for me in terms of my economic life, which is pretty much the purpose of going to college.

Fine, if you're a rich kid and you're going to work in Dad's business, then I can see going off for four years of history, literature, and philosophy to polish you into a learned gentleman. But for the average middle class kid who needs to get a job after college, the whole liberal arts thing is a seductive, idealistic trap.

I went on to get masters degrees in journalism and business administration before finally finding my career niche in something that I trained myself in and had nothing to do with my bountiful education: software development. With better vocational guidance in high school, I think I might have figured out back then that I had an interest in and aptitude for engineering-type work. But that was never discussed in my high school. One simply went off to college...and chose whatever major caught one's fancy. What a waste of time and money.

Sounds to me like you had a bad experience, beginning with the lack of guidance in high school. But you are making a broad generalization based upon your own particular experience. For every individual who was not able to get a job with their 'liberal arts' degree, there is another individual who is not able to get a degree with his or her engineering degree (or, like my cousin, business degree ). I know of many people who went through an entire pre-med program only to discover that they hate medicine and are now completely unprepared to pursue the types of professions that they might value.

There are many in the business world who have actually come to prefer an applicant with a good liberal arts degree over a business degree because an individual with the liberal arts background is considered to be more well rounded and more creative.

Personally, I am the average middle class kid who needed a job after college, but I got into graduate school and delayed the job until after that. I did not want to go to college at all until I worked for a year and a half after high school and realized I did not want the life of my co-workers. Then I applied to college simply as an experiment, but only because I had an opportunity to go for free. I would never argue that everyone needs to get a liberal arts education, especially as I did not even think I needed one. But I do think that casting aspersions upon the value of a liberal arts education because one had a bad experience is somewhat misguided.

Nonetheless, you are right, the cost of higher ed. today is simply not worth it for most college graduates.

[Basil]

Re: The Crisis of College Affordability

I was going to post that. Good for you. Here are my comments:

Our education is all about programming people and socializing them.

John Gatto is one innovative thinker in the field:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/

Another famous educator was Maria Montessori:
http://www.montessori.edu/maria.html

But I think all this education business may be left in the dustbin. MIT now offers it courses on line for FREE! So, education now becomes available to all, FREE! The computer revolution post IBM Monopoly involved many dropouts from conventional education. These folks taught and learned on the fly what they needed. There were no "educators" around to drone on in lectures, take attendance (hey, are you here mentally?) and give exams.

This on line capability may actually turn out to be very dangerous but that is another story.

So, if the Global Best and the Brightest take advantage of this, degreed education may become a thing of the past. Business entities who hire personnel based on pieces of academic paper are going to take a whipping. Meanwhile America cranks out the Worst and the Dumbest through its by rote, by rules system. What will be important, unlike in America, is What do you actually know? and How can you use it? So, as America again wallows in an antiquated, privileged, non accountable Industry (universities included), the World will leave it behind.

Personally, I think in this day and age of the Internet I would never send a child to a by rote, by ring the bell, by top down programming institution. Of course, as an truly educated child grows up, it will be constantly asking, "Why is everything so effed up?" That's a heavy burden for a parent to bear.

I am a fan of Gattos'. But truly the most perceptive, if perhaps too idealistic, individual in this area is Ivan Illich in 'Deschooling Society'. The problem is the world will always need teachers and this need will always tend towards some for of institution. So we are going to have educational institutions, like it or not. Gatto at least demonstrates how we can work more effectively within them to transform them.

If you examine the MIT website, not all of the materials are there. Even if they were. The difference between real teaching and mentoring and learning through a computer is like the difference between eating vitamins and real food. In theory the vitamins would work, but in reality you need food.

[Sharky]

Re: The Crisis of College Affordability

You might enjoy this wonderful talk by Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

[BadJuju]

Re: The Crisis of College Affordability

The state of primary and secondary education in this country is abysmal. As a recent graduate of high school and a current attendant of college, I can quite honestly say that it has been an utter waste of time. High school is a glorified daycare and college is what high school should be. I feel that I would be much better served if I simply educated myself.

[leegs]

Re: The Crisis of College Affordability

This thread has led to some interesting discussion with my wife, regarding our daughter. I do not subscribe to the belief that college is necessary or appropriate in all cases.

I summarized my point of view by thinking in terms of a 2x2 matrix with one dimension representing 'Talent/Smarts', and the other 'Direction/Passion' i.e. interest or focus in a specific field having potential to make a reasonable income.

Smarts/Talent ---- Direction --> College Approriate?
High -------- Focused/Specific ----------->Yes
High -------------Unfocused ----------->Yes/Probably
Average -------- Unfocused ----------------->No
Average ------ Focused/Specific ---------->Yes

In other words, IMO it is not a good investment of time and money for a person of average talent and intelligence to go to college to get a liberal arts or business degree so that they can get a 'good job'.

[strittmatter]

Re: The Crisis of College Affordability

Here lies another lovely aspect to this discussion.

We "lucked out" and got all three of our chitlins enrolled in the Texas Guaranteed Tuition Plan just before they froze it in 2003.

I've been worried about it though:

Report: Guaranteed tuition program could be billions short


02/16/2007
Associated Press

The state's prepaid tuition program is underfunded and could be up to $3.3 billion short of meeting guaranteed tuition payments over the next two decades, according to the state comptroller.
The Texas Tomorrow Fund, which has been closed to new participants since 2003, lets parents invest in their young children's future college tuition while locking in current prices.
The 158,000 Texas families that have invested in the program are guaranteed set tuition rates, meaning the state and universities would have to make up any shortfalls.
Comptroller Susan Combs said in a letter earlier this month to Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and state House Speaker Tom Craddick that a group of outside financial experts found that the shortfall will be worse than previously predicted.
Combs said the group estimated the plan will be between $1.74 billion and $3.31 billion short by 2029.
"While no one can accurately predict the future performance of the plan with absolute certainty, I believe these estimates are sobering," Combs wrote.
Combs' letter was obtained by the Houston Chronicle and The Dallas Morning News.
The Tomorrow Fund was started in 1996 to help middle-class families afford college tuition.
The state board overseeing the fund halted new enrollments starting in 2003 in response to the state's decision to deregulate tuition. Deregulation has resulted in higher tuition and fees, as well as more discrepancy between the costs of different universities.
Combs, who chairs the Texas Prepaid Higher Education Tuition Board overseeing the fund, told the state leaders that she's been worried about the guaranteed tuition plan.
"Upon taking office, in January, I immediately asked a group of experts outside state government to review the plan and provide me with an analysis," she wrote.
John Sharp, who helped start the fund when he was comptroller, said he'd never heard multi-billion-dollar shortfall estimates before. He said the fund needs new enrollees to be viable.
"Any fund like that depends on new folks coming into the system, just like Social Security," he said. "Right after I left office, they killed the Tomorrow Fund. When you do that, it's a travesty for middle-class families." Last month, the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission said the fund could be reopened next year if the Legislature adopts changes to the program, including allowing the state's more expensive institutions to add a tuition surcharge above what the fund pays for new students in the program.

Recently Texas has implemented a scaled down version: https://www.texastuitionpromisefund.com/

http://www.dailytexanonline.com/viewpoint-botched-promises-1.744475

VIEWPOINT: "Botched Promises"

The crevasse that separates the University from the state has grown wider with the announcement of the Texas Tuition Promise Fund, which allows citizens to prepay their college tuition at fixed rates.
Texas experimented with a prepaid tuition program in 1996 with the infamous Texas Tomorrow Fund. Currently, almost 120,000 students are drawing their tuition money from the fund. In 2003, the state stopped accepting participants because it became obvious that the fund’s returns were not keeping step with increases in tuition. According to a study by John D. Finnerty, a professor of finance at Fordham University, of the 22 states that experimented with these types of programs, almost half either suspended enrollments at some point or ended their program altogether.
According to a recent article in the Austin American-Statesman, UT already budgets $8 million a year to cover the shortfall in state funding for more than 1,000 students who have contracts with the controversial Texas Tomorrow Fund, although the main responsibility for deficit went to the state. (The Dallas Morning News reports that deficits brought on by the fund could amount to $3.1 billion by 2029.)

[Wild Style]

Re: The Crisis of College Affordability

I have not read through this entire thread. But I work at a private university and I can tell you these universities are in TONS of trouble.

1. The private universities with poor education standards and high tuition are seeing enrollment drop. I mean why would I go to some expensive sub par education center when i can pay the same amount or a bit more and be exposed to better professors, research etc. In other cases people are enrolling but when it comes time to attend class the students don't show up or drop out. Or others who were thought to attend full time end up going half time. These all ends up screwing your budget up and means cuts in spending and eventually lay offs if it continues this way.

lets look at Ph D programs. At these private sub par universities they have to pay for Ph D but at well established universities you dont. They even given their Ph D students stipends and T.A. positions. Add to this that these pay to play degrees are no where as good

2. The big private universities with large endowments have enrollment up BUT their endowments are down so they are cutting back and laying off

3. State schools are in trouble because there is dwindling taxes which means decreases in funding which means less money for them to operate.

Students are also starting to get smarter and going to community colleges which in many cases are decent in their education standards and are half the prices of the private institutions.

[Basil]

Re: The Crisis of College Affordability

The state of primary and secondary education in this country is abysmal. As a recent graduate of high school and a current attendant of college, I can quite honestly say that it has been an utter waste of time. High school is a glorified daycare and college is what high school should be. I feel that I would be much better served if I simply educated myself.

Indeed, the problem is that schooling has replaced education. An education is priceless; schooling is not worth a dime. You should read John Taylor Gatto. It is a real eye-opener. His book "The Underground History of American Education" can be read in its entirety on line. If you just go to chapter 18 you will get the heart of the argument. Here is an excerpt:

When children are stripped of a primary experience base as confinement schooling must do to justify its existence, the natural sequence of learning is destroyed, a sequence which puts experience first. Only much later, after a long bath in experience, does the thin gruel of abstraction mean very much. We haven’t "forgotten" this; there is just no profit in remembering it for the businesses and people who make their bread and butter from monopoly schooling.


The relentless rationalization of the school world has left the modern student a prisoner of low-grade vocational activities. He lives in a disenchanted world without meaning. Our cultural dilemma here in the United States has little to do with children who don’t read, but lies instead in finding a way to restore meaning and purpose to modern life. Any system of values that accepts the transformation of the world into machinery and the construction of pens for the young called schools, necessarily rejects this search for meaning.
Schools at present are the occupation of children; children have become employees, pensioners of the government at an early age. But government jobs are frequently not really jobs at all—that certainly is the case in the matter of being a schoolchild. There is nothing or very little to do in school, but one thing is demanded—that children must attend, condemned to hours of desperation, pretending to do a job that doesn’t exist. At the end of the day, tired, fed up, full of aggression, their families feel the accumulated tedium of their pinched lives. Government jobs for children have broken the spirit of our people. They don’t know their own history, nor would they care to.


In a short time such a system becomes addictive. Even when efforts are made to find real work for children to do, they often drift back to meaningless busywork. Anyone who has ever tried to lead students into generating lines of meaning in their own lives will have felt the resistance, the hostility even, with which broken children fight to be left alone. They prefer the illness they have become accustomed to. As the school day and year enlarge, students may be seen as people forbidden to leave their offices, as people hemmed in by an invisible fence, complaining but timid. Schools thus consume most of the people they incarcerate.


School curricula are like unwholesome economies. They don’t deal in basic industries of mind, but instead try to be "popular," dealing in the light stuff in an effort to hold down rebellion. That’s why we can’t read Paine’s Common Sense anymore, often can’t read at all. Only one person in every sixteen, I’m told, reads more than one book a year after graduation from high school. Kids and teachers live day by day. That’s all you can do when you have a runaway inflation of expectations fueled by false promissory notes on the future issued by teachers and television and other mythmakers in our culture. In the inflationary economy of mass schooling—with its "A’s" and gold stars and handshakes and trophies tied to nothing real—you cease to plan. You’re just happy to make it to the weekend.

[metalman]

Re: The Crisis of College Affordability

Indeed, the problem is that schooling has replaced education. An education is priceless; schooling is not worth a dime. You should read John Taylor Gatto. It is a real eye-opener. His book "The Underground History of American Education" can be read in its entirety on line. If you just go to chapter 18 you will get the heart of the argument. Here is an excerpt:

When children are stripped of a primary experience base as confinement schooling must do to justify its existence, the natural sequence of learning is destroyed, a sequence which puts experience first. Only much later, after a long bath in experience, does the thin gruel of abstraction mean very much. We haven’t "forgotten" this; there is just no profit in remembering it for the businesses and people who make their bread and butter from monopoly schooling.


The relentless rationalization of the school world has left the modern student a prisoner of low-grade vocational activities. He lives in a disenchanted world without meaning. Our cultural dilemma here in the United States has little to do with children who don’t read, but lies instead in finding a way to restore meaning and purpose to modern life. Any system of values that accepts the transformation of the world into machinery and the construction of pens for the young called schools, necessarily rejects this search for meaning.
Schools at present are the occupation of children; children have become employees, pensioners of the government at an early age. But government jobs are frequently not really jobs at all—that certainly is the case in the matter of being a schoolchild. There is nothing or very little to do in school, but one thing is demanded—that children must attend, condemned to hours of desperation, pretending to do a job that doesn’t exist. At the end of the day, tired, fed up, full of aggression, their families feel the accumulated tedium of their pinched lives. Government jobs for children have broken the spirit of our people. They don’t know their own history, nor would they care to.


In a short time such a system becomes addictive. Even when efforts are made to find real work for children to do, they often drift back to meaningless busywork. Anyone who has ever tried to lead students into generating lines of meaning in their own lives will have felt the resistance, the hostility even, with which broken children fight to be left alone. They prefer the illness they have become accustomed to. As the school day and year enlarge, students may be seen as people forbidden to leave their offices, as people hemmed in by an invisible fence, complaining but timid. Schools thus consume most of the people they incarcerate.


School curricula are like unwholesome economies. They don’t deal in basic industries of mind, but instead try to be "popular," dealing in the light stuff in an effort to hold down rebellion. That’s why we can’t read Paine’s Common Sense anymore, often can’t read at all. Only one person in every sixteen, I’m told, reads more than one book a year after graduation from high school. Kids and teachers live day by day. That’s all you can do when you have a runaway inflation of expectations fueled by false promissory notes on the future issued by teachers and television and other mythmakers in our culture. In the inflationary economy of mass schooling—with its "A’s" and gold stars and handshakes and trophies tied to nothing real—you cease to plan. You’re just happy to make it to the weekend.

yet another thing to either get depressed about... or do something about.

i'm starting to think that the real answer is a mass movement to not participate.

[BadJuju]

Re: The Crisis of College Affordability

yet another thing to either get depressed about... or do something about.

i'm starting to think that the real answer is a mass movement to not participate.

I am doing my part right now. I am teaching myself about electronics, mathematics, and carpentry! :cool:

[vanvaley1]

Re: The Crisis of College Affordability

Maybe some incentives would produce 'productive' people? What if the state paid for the education of physicians, nurses, mathematians, scientists, water resource specialists, etc. etc. etc. and left the rest to fund for themselves?

[Sharky]

Re: The Crisis of College Affordability

An education is priceless; schooling is not worth a dime.

Agree.

The difference between an education and schooling reminds me of the difference between doing real work for a living and working for the government. One is meaningful, adds value to your life and the lives of others and builds self-esteem. The other is the exact opposite.

Perhaps the fact that the US has so many government employees should be no surprise, given the nature of public schooling.