The 6 Biggest Problems with Higher Ed

Parents Forum
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<p>Ohio University economist, Richard Vedder, participated in a 2011 panel (“Higher Education Reform: Where the Right and the Left Meet”) put on by the Pope Center, focusing on the problems with American higher ed today. He boiled the ocean of problems down to six:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Colleges are too expensive and inefficient;</p></li>
<li><p>Students don’t work very hard and learn little;</p></li>
<li><p>There is an abysmal lack of information on which to evaluate the effectiveness of universities or the return on public investments in them;</p></li>
<li><p>A minority of students graduate on time, and many don’t graduate at all;</p></li>
<li><p>There is a total disconnect between enrollment levels and student curricula on one side and needs of the American labor market on the other;</p></li>
</ol>

<p>6.Federal student financial aid policies have been a spectacular and expensive failure.</p>

<p>Agree? Disagree? Add to or amend his list?</p>

<p>The</a> 6 Biggest Problems with Higher Ed</p>

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<p>I totally agree. I’m not as pessimistic as Vedder is, but these are all problems that need to seriously be looked at.</p>

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<p>This is the sentence that jumps out at me:</p>

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<p>But then you see other studies disputing this - stating that so many more students receive financial aid and merit aid now that the net cost is actually less! So - which is it?</p>

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<p>No, financial aid and merit aid has definitely not kept up with rising college costs. Hence why more students are going into debt, not less.</p>

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I have trouble believing this. Census data I’ve seen shows the population of HS students in 1970 and today to be comparable, while College students is more than doubled.</p>

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<p>To me, the # of college GRADS is more important than the # who enroll, as many do NOT go on to complete their degrees, for many reasons.</p>

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<p>How about the lack of uniform standards? If the value of a college education was captured by the degree, rather than the institution awarding the degree, there’d be much more market pressure on prices (which might also facilitate social mobility). </p>

<p>Unfortunately, as of yet, institutional standards are the best (and sometimes only) indicator of the quality of education that students receive.</p>

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<p>Of course there is some truth to each of these 6 problems, but trust an economist to over-simplify the issues.</p>

<ol>
<li>Yes, college costs have risen faster than inflation. Colleges could probably do more to cut costs, but much of those fast-rising costs are due to the demands of students for more modern academic buildings and housing, high-tech classrooms and computer access, and higher-quality food. On top of that, public institutions have uniformly experienced deep cuts in state funding, resulting in higher tuition to make up the difference.</li>
</ol>

<p>Yes, colleges are innately inefficient. You want efficiency? It’s easy - teach students in 1,000-person lecture halls, utilizing part-time faculty and/or graduate students. Cut all programs that are expensive and have lower enrollments. That should do it.</p>

<ol>
<li>Yes, SOME students don’t work hard and SOME students don’t learn as much as they should. There has probably been some slippage in standards over the last several decades, but I suspect that a larger problem is that a higher proportion of the population is attending college. Some of those students are not well-suited to the demands of a college education, resulting in more students who are not as well-educated when (if) they graduate.</li>
</ol>

<p>We could make college more rigorous and demanding, but that would impinge on efficiency (see #1) and graduation rates (see #4).</p>

<ol>
<li>It is indeed hard to evaluate the ‘effectiveness’ of colleges, but first we should define ‘effectiveness’. At what? I presume from this article that in this case we are referring to the employment value of graduates, when compared to the value for non-graduates? I can see where this argument is going: Standardized Tests, which have, after all, worked so well in the K-12 system, right?</li>
</ol>

<p>It is so easy to decry a lack of effectiveness metrics, but what would you learn if you tried to impose them? Students graduating from Harvard will still be smart, driven and knowledgeable; students from Lower Southwest Regional State less so.</p>

<p>I also love the Return on Investment arguments. Presumably, this means that whenever a student graduates with a degree in Liberal Arts, Communications, Literature, etc., then the government has not received a sufficient ROI because the investment in the institution and the student will not yield the greatest return in the form of increased salary, right?</p>

<ol>
<li><p>It is true that some students don’t graduate or don’t graduate ‘on time’ (i.e. 4 years to a B.A.). We can work on getting students through faster and making sure that students graduate, but that will impinge on efficiency (see #1) and rigor (see #2).</p></li>
<li><p>Yes, there is not a strong correlation between the disciplines that students choose to pursue and the requirements of the job market. Relative to that job market, there is a surplus of psychology, English and Sociology majors (just to name a few), and an insufficient number of engineering, physics and mathematics majors. So, we should encourage or compel students into fields that do not interest them, or for which they have no aptitude? We could channel students into the disciplines with the highest job salaries and the highest demand, but that would increase costs (see #1) and further decrease graduation rates (see #4).</p></li>
<li><p>Federal student aid is not always well-distributed, sure. The biggest problem is the criminally-high proportion that goes to students enrolled in private for-profit diploma mills. If that aid were better channeled to students enrolled in public and non-profit institutions, we would see an increase in the number of students that are well-served by Federal financial aid. But ‘failure’? I don’t think so. There are countless students who would not have college degrees or well-paying jobs without Federal financial aid. How is that a failure?</p></li>
</ol>

<p>In short, these are all complex problems that do not lend themselves well to simple and facile statements or solutions. To be sure, these problems are exacerbated by our bad economy, which causes many of us to question whether or not a college education is worth the money. But there is a wide range of higher education institutions in this country that serve the diversity of students seeking college degrees. It is fantastic to me that yet another bean-counting economist would lump all of those institutions into 6 ‘problems’ that need ‘fixing’.</p>

<p>“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”

  • H. L. Mencken</p>
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<p>Not graduating on time likely has a lot to do with insufficient preparation in high school. A large percentage of college freshmen have to take remedial English and/or math courses covering material that they should have learned in high school.</p>

<p>However, some of the students who do not graduate on time by calendar measure are not taking any extra semesters, because they took semesters off for co-op jobs or other reasons. For example, Northeastern and BYU have low four year graduation rates for reasons other than taking extra semesters in school.</p>

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<p>There is accreditation for both the schools (e.g. regional accreditation versus career college accreditation) and major-specific accreditation for some majors (e.g. AACSB for business, ABET for engineering, engineering technology, computer science, and applied science).</p>

<p>However, accredited schools and majors do have significant variation in (real or perceived) quality, so the uniformity does not come close to existing in most cases (or it exists only in the negative case, where lack of regional accreditation means that most will avoid the school). ABET accreditation for engineering may come closest, but is not close enough to cause much market pressure on tuition, especially since engineering is just a small part of most universities.</p>

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<p>I didn’t look anything up but I think one of us is misinterpreting what you quoted…</p>

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<p>This seems to say that a greater percentage of college students attend non-universities (like community colleges) today than did in the 1970s. What exactly were you interpreting?</p>

<p>Although, I don’t know why that’s so worthy of mention.</p>

<p>I feel that there are some non-sequitors. For instance, the implication that low graduation rates are bad when they go on and say that students aren’t learning much anyway and there isn’t a demand for college educated employees. Maybe students realize this and decide to change their paths accordingly.</p>

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<p>I would like to see statistics specifically for students that start college right out of high school or maybe even up to a year post-high school and see what those numbers look like vs taking into consideration ALL college students. I know a lot of people that take classes in college and really don’t intend on ever really getting a degree. People like that skew these numbers. Also, there are people that are considered “full time” but maybe are only taking 12 credits because they need to work to help pay for school or they went back later in life to college and have to juggle a family, etc.</p>

<p>We went on several college tours this weekend and it was interesting to see the real graduation rate numbers. When colleges figured kids that started in the fall right after their high school graduation, well over 90% in all of the schools we looked at graduated on time. When you looked at students that “graduated in 4 years” that number dropped to anywhere between 40% and 80% depending on the school. “Graduating in 4 years” meant from the time they started college anywhere to the time they finished college anywhere". Transferring from one school to another had a huge impact on that number.</p>

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<p>The problem starts much earlier with education in K-12. The colleges have to work with the students they have been given.</p>

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I interpreted that to mean a smaller percentage of students graduating HS goes on to college, despite Pell Grants. I agree that for profit schools are an issue as is students not graduating. However, as Alf posted, these are very complex situations that are not easily solved.</p>

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<p>Exactly. 50% of ALL Cal State Frosh require remediation in college. In other words, they are repeating high school-equivalent courses, at much greater costs, and pushing back taking real college-level courses. At some campuses, 90% of the Frosh require remediation. Of course, the “simple” solution to the grad rate (a measure of “efficiency”?) is to either not admit such students in the first place, or “fix” K12 or dumb down the curriculum even further. :D</p>

<p>The other major factor is income. Less than a few handfulls of colleges meet full financial need. Thus, many students NEED to work part time to pay tuition and buy books. Many also need to work to support their families. It is no surprise that they take minimum loads each term, which automatically puts them on the 5+ year graduation plan.</p>

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<ol>
<li><p>States and the Federal Government should set up evaluation systems to reward colleges that are cost-efficient, keep tuition reasonable and meet employment needs, and penalize those that do not. That is proposed by President Obama and is being done in Maryland.</p></li>
<li><p>Federal financial aid has been critical to allow more students to attend college. However, it needs to be better directed to avoid being wasted on colleges that are doing a horrible job (which includes a portion but not all of the for-profits).</p></li>
<li><p>The 4 year and 6 year graduation rates are horribly low at many colleges. </p></li>
<li><p>We need more practical education alternatives for fields where there are jobs, which may not require a traditional college degree.</p></li>
<li><p>Way too much financial aid, subsidized loans and energy has been spent by students going to fourth tier law schools or getting humanities PhDs when it is evident that only a fraction of those graduates will get a job that will use that degree. (After July, new federal subsidized loans will no longer be available for graduate and professional school).</p></li>
<li><p>College facilities should see greater use over summer months.</p></li>
</ol>

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<p>If so, why aren’t there new colleges with lower prices and higher quality?</p>

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<p>He needs to put these points farther apart, so it is less likely we will notice the contradiction. If college is so easy, why aren’t more students graduating?</p>

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<p>Isn’t there a very large amount of data that shows that college graduates earn more? How does that qualify as “abysmal” or a “total disconnect”?</p>

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<p>I think it worked for many years until our government allowed subsidized, unforgivable private loans.</p>

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<p>Vedder is an easy target for criticism. I know I have criticized him often! However, not all of his agenda-driven prose is wrong. He is bound to be right on a few counts. My personal view is that, while it is important to re-evaluate our commitments (and dedication) to tertiary education, our true problems are created at the K-12 level, and especially after middle school. </p>

<p>Rather than analyze his contributions to the debate, I’d prefer to point to a series of articles that promise to be interesting:</p>

<p>[Supersizing:</a> Obama’s Higher-Education Agenda, Part 1 of 8 - Innovations - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/supersizing-obamas-higher-education-agenda-part-1-of-8/31632]Supersizing:”>Innovations: Supersizing: Obama’s Higher-Education Agenda, Part 1 of 8)</p>

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<p>small nit, xiggi, but the “true problems” start in middle school (as Bill Gates is now finding out after spending hundreds of millions in 9-12).</p>

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<p>I do not disagree!</p>