Article: Melt-Down in Higher Education

Parents Forum
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<p>An interesting article. The author, Seth Godin, is an author of business marketing books:</p>

<p>The coming melt-down in higher education (as seen by a marketer)
For 400 years, higher education in the US has been on a roll. From Harvard asking Galileo to be a guest professor in the 1600s to millions tuning in to watch a team of unpaid athletes play another team of unpaid athletes in some college sporting event, the amount of time and money and prestige in the college world has been climbing.</p>

<p>I'm afraid that's about to crash and burn. Here's how I'm looking at it.</p>

<ol>
<li>Most colleges are organized to give an average education to average students.</li>
</ol>

<p>Pick up any college brochure or catalog. Delete the brand names and the map. Can you tell which school it is? While there are outliers (like St. Johns, Deep Springs or Full Sail) most schools aren't really outliers. They are mass marketers.</p>

<p>Stop for a second and consider the impact of that choice. By emphasizing mass and sameness and rankings, colleges have changed their mission.</p>

<p>This works great in an industrial economy where we can't churn out standardized students fast enough and where the demand is huge because the premium earned by a college grad dwarfs the cost. But...</p>

<ol>
<li>College has gotten expensive far faster than wages have gone up.</li>
</ol>

<p>As a result, there are millions of people in very serious debt, debt so big it might take decades to repay. Word gets around. Won't get fooled again...</p>

<p>This leads to a crop of potential college students that can (and will) no longer just blindly go to the 'best' school they get in to.</p>

<ol>
<li>The definition of 'best' is under siege.</li>
</ol>

<p>Why do colleges send millions (!) of undifferentiated pieces of junk mail to high school students now? We will waive the admission fee! We have a one page application! Apply! This is some of the most amateur and bland direct mail I've ever seen. Why do it?</p>

<p>Biggest reason: So the schools can reject more applicants. The more applicants they reject, the higher they rank in US News and other rankings. And thus the rush to game the rankings continues, which is a sign that the marketers in question (the colleges) are getting desperate for more than their fair share. Why bother making your education more useful if you can more easily make it appear to be more useful?</p>

<ol>
<li>The correlation between a typical college degree and success is suspect.</li>
</ol>

<p>College wasn't originally designed to merely be a continuation of high school (but with more binge drinking). In many places, though, that's what it has become. The data I'm seeing shows that a degree (from one of those famous schools, with or without a football team) doesn't translate into better career opportunities, a better job or more happiness. </p>

<ol>
<li>Accreditation isn't the solution, it's the problem.</li>
</ol>

<p>A lot of these ills are the result of uniform accreditation programs that have pushed high-cost, low-reward policies on institutions and rewarded schools that churn out young wanna-be professors instead of experiences that turn out leaders and problem-solvers.</p>

<p>Just as we're watching the disintegration of old-school marketers with mass market products, I think we're about to see significant cracks in old-school schools with mass market degrees.</p>

<p>Back before the digital revolution, access to information was an issue. The size of the library mattered. One reason to go to college was to get access. Today, that access is worth a lot less. The valuable things people take away from college are interactions with great minds (usually professors who actually teach and actually care) and non-class activities that shape them as people. The question I'd ask: is the money that mass-marketing colleges are spending on marketing themselves and scaling themselves well spent? Are they organizing for changing lives or for ranking high? Does NYU have to get so much bigger? Why?</p>

<p>The solutions are obvious... there are tons of ways to get a cheap, liberal education, one that exposes you to the world, permits you to have significant interactions with people who matter and to learn to make a difference. Most of these ways, though, aren't heavily marketed nor do they involve going to a tradition-steeped two-hundred-year old institution with a wrestling team. Things like gap years, research internships and entrepreneurial or social ventures after high school are opening doors for students who are eager to discover the new.</p>

<p>The only people who haven't gotten the memo are anxious helicopter parents, mass marketing colleges and traditional employers. And all three are waking up and facing new circumstances.</p>

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<p>I missed the link to the article. Where is it?</p>

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<p>Google the title. It’s at Seth’s blog.</p>

<p>The graphic at his blog makes the visit worth the effort. COLA vrs Medical Costs vrs. Tuition and Fees at private U’s.</p>

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<p>[Seth’s</a> Blog: The coming melt-down in higher education (as seen by a marketer)](<a href=“http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/04/the-coming-meltdown-in-higher-education-as-seen-by-a-marketer.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2Fsethsmainblog+(Seth’s+Blog)]Seth’s”>http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/04/the-coming-meltdown-in-higher-education-as-seen-by-a-marketer.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2Fsethsmainblog+(Seth’s+Blog))</p>

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<p>That is a great graphic and helps to understand why so many of today’s parents are so blindsided by education costs (unless they’ve spent a lot of time on CC, of course.)</p>

<p>I graduated HS in 1982. I’m pretty average in age of my D’s fellow students parents. There are a few who are younger, but not by much. In that graph, cost of living, medical costs & college tuition/fees are all traveling on the same line of inflation from 1978 till around 1983; not much divergence till 1988; skyrocketing differences from 1993 on. So those of us who could work our way through college in the early-mid 80’s might not have any idea of how things have changed until we have to (which based on April posts on CC seems to be about the same time that FA packages arrive in the Spring.)</p>

<p>As disgusted as people are with the medical & health insurance companies are with regards to cost, it’s so much worse for institutions of higher education. Especially since med & insurance companies are (often) public companies with transparent financial information due to SEC regulations and higher ed institutions are not because they’re non-profit & don’t have to file the same type of documentation.</p>

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<p>I dunno. After 18 months or so of looking at colleges, including new ivies, old ivies, public ivies, and even a couple of LAC’s, we have found incredible diversity in approaches to education. From hands on tech schools, to intellectual hothouses, from schools emphasizing specific detailed core curriculums to one emphasizing total student freedom in course choice, from from ones focusing on learning for its own sake to ones focusing on coop programs leading straight to jobs. From religious to resolutely secular. From ones where students pick a specialized college as freshmen and have to reapply to get to a different part of the same university, to ones that emphasize the freedom of moving among faculties. </p>

<p>I don’t exactly see the sameness. </p>

<p>And yeah, there’s a lot of wasted paper sent out in marketing flier. Its odd, though, to complain of the waste of resources involved in that, and then to also complain about how little substance there is in them - the lack of substance, AFAICT, is due to the lack of effort put into them, more than the sameness of education. </p>

<p>The increase in costs for services, vs CPI, was noted by economists long ago (Baumol?). He attributed the increase to the greater ease of introducing tech driven productivity improvements in goods production fields. How to increase productivity in the academic sector, while maintaining quality, well I look forward to seeing the answer to that.</p>

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<p>“Things like gap years, research internships and entrepreneurial or social ventures after high school are opening doors for students who are eager to discover the new.”</p>

<p>?? Our D is planning a gap year, and all the colleges she go into are pretty positive about it. They also all talk alot about student research. And international experiences. And interdisciplinary approaches.</p>

<p>Mr Seth seems to be mainly rehashing stuff plenty of people are already doing.</p>

<p>Ergo, Seth has a bright future as a management consultant :)</p>

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<p>Last year and this year are the demographic peak for high school graduates. In addition, the job market, or lack thereof, has led to more HS students opting for college. I would think that an improving economy and the inevitable decline in HS grads will make mass marketing even more intense as colleges fighting for financial survival chase a shrinking pool of applicants. IOW, we are at a point where supply has outpaced demand. This, in and of itself, will bring about changes in the college landscape. Some college will close and others will be scaled back. The good news is that college may become more affordable, either through lower cost of attendance or more financial aid, merit and need-based as college compete on cost. </p>

<p>The reason higher education is “about to crash and burn” is economic. In fact, I would say it’s been on a slow burn for the past decade as costs accelerated much faster than underlying inflation. However, while economic factors dictate that supply will be reigned in, it doesn’t say which institutions will be the victims. Thus, it’s hard to predict the direction in which higher education will go. It is entirely possible it may not change at all, other than just being smaller.</p>

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<p>I think he’s absolutely right.</p>

<p>I would argue that they try to argue distinctiveness in their marketing attempts, the real product is much the same. I have witnessed this many times over as a professor. We had to constantly reinvent ourselves, especially if our numbers dipped or our competitors were doing something different (we always have had a very keen eye on our comparable schools). So we do sustainability, we are ‘real world’ with x, y, z, we have an integrative curriculum that no one else has…90% of it was BS. What we did, was what we always did, the professors, the content, the students, the syllabi, the learned principles, never changed. What changed was on the surface. So now we faculty meet on Monday, we create a common syllabi (pulled together by a secretary), add in a common case on Thursdays, and viola…roll out the ‘new integrative core’. What a joke. </p>

<p>There is a gigantic disconnect between the administration and marketing arm of universities and what professors really do (which is much the same where ever they teach). It is in the university’s interest to convince you they offer something special, but when it comes down to it, its mostly facade.</p>

<p>Do’t get me wrong: sure there are giant differences across the 4000 colleges in the US, but when it comes to say the ones we talk about on CC, the differences between them are ridiculously overinflated.</p>

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<p>There are several things going on here.</p>

<p>1) Baumol’s cost disease [Baumol’s</a> cost disease - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol’s_cost_disease]Baumol’s”>Baumol effect - Wikipedia)
which causes relative costs to rise for goods or services where there is little or no labor productivity growth</p>

<p>2) The shifting of college costs away from government towards tuition and fees, which has caused the average price of college tuition and fees (measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics) to rise significantly faster than the list price of private colleges. I’ve only checked vis a vis Swarthmore’s list price, but I think they should be pretty representative. From 1979 - 2009 the BLS index for college tuition and fees rose at an average rate of 7.8%, while Swarthmore’s list price rose at an average rate of 6.7%. While this may seem a small difference, in the end it means that average college tuition & fees (BLS) rose 34% more than Swarthmore’s.</p>

<p>If we think that a college education should be provided by a tenure track professor in front of 20 (or 30 or 100) students, and don’t want the class size to change, then improvement in labor productivity in providing a college education will be essentially zero.</p>

<p>Interestingly, the average annual increase in Swarthmore’s list price for the past 12 years (4.4%) is exactly the same as the consumer price index for Nursing Homes and Adult Day Care, another service where it is hard to see improvements in labor productivity.</p>

<p>Not that I’m equating college to adult day care.</p>

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<p>fascinating! replying to get emails from cc…</p>

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<p>I thought the points were largely crap.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>All school by definition must give average performance, average education. Life isn’t Lake Woebegone. The idea that all colleges give the same education is both true and false, because yes they all educate more or less but he posits an idea that somehow there are different ways to educate when there is not. We have tech schools, liberal arts schools, etc. Just as we always have. This point makes an argument out of nothing much.</p></li>
<li><p>This is true. We all know the debt issues are huge. My feeling is that people got carried away with the bubble mentality and somehow convinced themselves that a degree from marginally higher ranked school x is actually worth dollars more than a degree in the same field from school y and that the future will always be brighter and you’ll always earn more. That and a complete lack of financial sense. I’ve pointed out countless times that earnings in a field are related to the job description in the field and where you are located. If you take on debt that requires $10k a year extra to pay, then you aren’t going to earn $10k extra a year in your field in your area because your field only pays what it pays. People lost sight of that. </p></li>
<li><p>So what? So what if colleges want to appear more selective. That has nothing to do with the education at the schools. That is just complaining about marketing and how schools try to manipulate the over-blown rankings system to make themselves look good. This can affect actual class size - because that is in the rankings - but it’s like saying your team sucks this year because the underside of their cleats is now a different shade of red.</p></li>
<li><p>This is untrue. Absolutely untrue. OECD figures demonstrate conclusively the link between income and education. A major issue in growing income inequality - and inequality between races - is that fewer kids from minorities and from traditional working class homes are going to college (and can afford to stay in and graduate college). A college degree is absolutely worth getting. The issue is that the cost has become prohibitive for many, even at cheaper state schools, making that entry document into a better life unavailable. </p></li>
<li><p>I have no idea what this point means. Accreditation has little meaning to schools. It’s something they get sometimes. For example, I’ve had kids say to me that BU’s COM isn’t “accredited” because they were told that by someone at Syracuse. The reason is that voluntary accreditation is a choice and BU doesn’t want to do it (and doesn’t want to structure their program to meet an accreditation group’s definitions of what a COM school should look like). That choice matters to Syracuse but not to BU and others in that field. But all that said, if Northwestern puts audiology in its COM school, then that says to me that these are all just choices, with no clear right or wrong. Maybe there would be a problem if all schools were in fact fit to a cookie cutter but anyone with familiarity with many schools knows they are very different in approach and organization.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>So basically there is the one point, cost, that everyone knows is true junked together with a bunch of stuff that either is untrue or which has little meaning.</p>

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<p>okay, starbright</p>

<p>Columbia Core curriculum vs Univ of Rochester, take what you like.</p>

<p>Or Carnegie Mellon and Cornell, apply to the college of your field, vs Lehigh or Case Western - move freely between colleges. </p>

<p>As for what profs in given fields do day to day, well that SHOULD differ more from field to field than from college to college. I mean a latin verb is a latin verb, whether you’re at a LAC, an Ivy, or a community college - ditto for most things. And yeah, some society wide changes, and innovations in tech, are fairly easily copied, and probably should be “we are the college where we avoid global culture, we are the college that till uses rexograph machines”) </p>

<p>OTOH there are fields where there are dramatic differences in what is taught in a given field. For an example from economics, look at what Paul Krugman has to say about “fresh water” vs “salt water” macroeconomics (of course on micro theres less variance, AFAICT) </p>

<p>Our DD is finishing her process of applying to arch. There are 5 year vs 4+2 programs. Drawing/hands on heavy vs CAD heavy. Etc. Though of course there are still basics of what architecture is, driven by accreditation and the nature of the field.</p>

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<p>kayakmom, DH subscribes to his blog and forwarded this to me since I’m becoming a bit of a college junkie. </p>

<p>As we take DS on college visits including our state flagship, MIT and others in between, I sit in these info sessions listening to their spiel and think: What a crock. Come on, people, this is a business. Yet we continue to shlep around on college visits and ring our hands over the perfect fit for DS. Articles like this provide me with a much-needed reality check.</p>

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<p>I graduated from hs in the early 70s as valedictorian. I went to a small LAC (much higher ranked now than it was then) that was considered pretty expensive at the time and graduated with a double major + minor, all in humanities related fields. I went on to grad school and became a college prof in my area of specialization for 15 years, in 3 different institutions (following H). However, the job that I’m now doing calls upon very little of what I studied in college other than my foreign language skills. I do administrative work, problem solve, customer service, PR, public advocacy, etc. My LA education certainly prepared me for that, too. I’m a very confident public speaker (theater background). I’ll probably continue this job until I retire, although I do miss having students. And the most important skill I brought to this job is computer skills. I’m entirely self taught, but customizing databases, designing and building and extensive Web site, desk top publishing, etc. are things it would cost my business a fortune to hire out, if I didn’t do them myself.</p>

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<p>I won’t be looking at his blog in the future. He ripped some of that info, including the graph, from other people’s studies. He is plagiarizing. If he wants to make those points he can at least attribute his sources.</p>

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<p>Seth is being as disingenuous as the college direct mail marketers with his graph of rising tuition. He is using sticker price, which is as misleading as using the full-fare business class price to show rising air travel costs.</p>

<p>The real price for colleges is the net price per student after price discounting (euphemistically called “financial aid” to blur the fact that is functionally equivalent to a blue light special at KMart).</p>

<p>He also ignores the fact that, like the airlines, colleges have a completely variable pricing structure that charges a different price to each customer and approximates the highest price that specific customer will pay for a seat. It’s a very efficient market and difficult to argue that the pricing model doesn’t accurately reflect the consumer’s willingness to pay.</p>

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<p>Having toured many, many colleges, I can tell you that there are major differences among them. Going to a school where the average SAT and grades are definitely in a different cluster level from another does make a difference in terms of enviroment, type of students, level of classes, etc. Perhaps the viewbooks are very much the same, but the differences are quite acute in many areas. Schools that are having budgetary problems and tightening the belt do not have the same services and amenities as others. Some schools don’t have the housing and facilities. </p>

<p>I disagree with that article.</p>

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<p>No one should include Full Sail in the same sentence with St. John’s and Deep Spring.</p>

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<p>^ Well therein lies the rub doesn’t it? One can always “claim” that St. John’s is overpriced because all the Great Books studied there are available FREE at the library. But try getting a teaching job with the claim “I did a St. John’s education … I just did it at the library.”</p>

<p>But my principal complaint with Seth is that he offers no reasonable alternatives.</p>