The Economic Crisis is Higher Education

Parents Forum
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<p>From the Center for Vision and Values at Grove City College:</p>

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[quote]
The Economic Crisis in Higher Education
By Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson
July 27, 2007</p>

<p>Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson</p>

<p>Is a bachelor's degree in English (or history or philosophy or political science or any other subject in the liberal arts) worth over $30,000 a year? As the sticker price asked by more and more private colleges crosses that threshold, many families are asking that question.</p>

<p>The liberal arts education I received enriched my intellect (though not my pocketbook), but if I had a college-age child today, I couldn't justify paying over $100,000 for a bachelor's degree. It boggles my mind when I learn of a 22-year-old owing over $50,000 with only a B.A. to his name.
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<p><a href="http://www.visandvals.org/The_Economic_Crisis_in_Higher_Education.php%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.visandvals.org/The_Economic_Crisis_in_Higher_Education.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>Why bother to send them to college at all. Just send them to China to learn to trade. Apprenticeship will serve them better than understanding the rules of law, literature, history, philosophy, science and other useless subjects. Most students won't master Horace anyway. No loss there.</p>

<p>In return, our colleges can take in Chinese students to replace ours.</p>

3

<p>A couple of professors at the Wharton School at U. Penn. (I believe they were with Wharton, but I know for certain they were with U. Penn., but I haven't been able to find the article I previously read about it) raised this question as well in a study they did. They said that the return to graduates as a whole shouldn't be assumed, that the notion that everybody benefits from a college degree should be re-examined. Though it's hard for me to imagine someone in my general class (upper middle, graduate of top 20 schools) wouldn't benefit from a college education nearly in every case, it might be like the previously omniprevalent (word I just made up) advice to buy a house: that has turned out to have been a bad decision for a lot of people, particularly those who were really extremely leveraged, or in other words, on the poorer end of the scale. </p>

<p>I am acquainted with someone who has a cleaning company and was talking about going back to college. When I asked why, she was surprised, but I went through the economics of it with her in addition to the other factors. She likes her work -- and can make a lot more money over time continuing with it rather than trying to switch into a more "respectable" field. What's the point? If it gives her confidence, that could be a good value. But maybe part of the problem with her confidence is society's assumption that it's always the best idea to go to college.</p>

<p>The sarcasm below has its roots in the sad reality that our economic competitiveness is eroding. But that's a problem that's already established for us through individuals by the end of high school not in the college choice. By the time a high school graduate is ready to go off to college here, as a general rule, he/she is already dramatically behind the levels of equivalent graduates/students in other countries. Getting a degree that helps writing skills is perhaps better than not doing it often, but when weighed against economics, is that always true? We do need to invest more in education as a society, but I don't see any level of investment getting the average American to take education as seriously as it is taken in China or India, nor will engineers be quite the rock stars here that they are there.</p>

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In return, our colleges can take in Chinese students to replace ours.

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<p>I don't see any level of investment getting the average American to take education as seriously as it is taken in China or India,</p>

<p>Including those who are responsible for curriculum & training of teachers in our nations schools</p>

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<p>
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Including those who are responsible for curriculum & training of teachers in our nations schools

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<p>Or our willingness, in many cases, to pay new teachers an amount that will keep them in the profession.</p>

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<p>
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Enrollment is declining at many private colleges. Many families balk at paying such daunting fees.

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So maybe the law of supply and demand will eventually fix the problems but it's dependent on people thinking through the value question - i.e. is a $180K BA liberal arts degree from a private worth it versus a substantially less expensive college? Is an expensive liberal arts BA degree in non-vocational or non-direct-demand areas really worth the cost?</p>

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<p>Or our willingness, in many cases, to pay new teachers an amount that will keep them in the profession.</p>

<p>Is it the amount they are paid- or the knowledge that they were trained one way in university- and are now expected to take up with one mantra, that will be repeated for two years until its found that test scores are down, and the drop out rate is up.
Then it will be another fad everyone will be expected to extoll.</p>

<p>I don't think you could pay enough to get anyone to stick with that sort of work environment.</p>

<p>Our district is still embracing the fuzzy math bandwagon, even though less than 1/2 the students pass the math portion of the test required for graduation and even though the standards are determined to be too low.
<a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003795680_math19m.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003795680_math19m.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>*The report praised Washington for the algebra taught in elementary school, and for well-developed "mathematical processes," which include communication, reasoning and problem solving. But it also found a lot to criticize.</p>

<p>In elementary school, for example, Plattner said her reviewers — two dozen out-of-state math teachers and professors — found students in Washington are expected to learn about 25 percent less math than the average of the comparison states, nations and organizations. In high school, she said, it was just 50 percent.</p>

<p>She said the reviewers found that some math concepts are introduced later in Washington than elsewhere. Fractions, for example, are taught to Washington fourth-graders, but to second-graders in Singapore and California.</p>

<p>She also said, however, that she's sure that Washington teachers cover some of what the standards miss, such as odd and even numbers in elementary school.*</p>

<p>She is pretty confident that Washington teachers are covering what isn't required- even though that sounds to me like when my daughters resource teacher- when asked why end of the year testing showed she had made zero progress, * said, she was sure that the test wasn't right*.
:p</p>

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<p>Back when the US lead the world in science and engineering, the only real career paths open to smart women were nursing and teaching. Now smart girls (like smart boys), hardly ever go into teaching.<br>
EK, they don't get into fractions until 4th grade? get out the measuring cups and teach it in the kitchen, folks!</p>

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<p>"Economically, colleges can't continue to pay the salaries of tenured professors who have only a handful of students majoring in their discipline."</p>

<p>Wow. The implications of this statement are staggering. Just terminate that handful of "tenured professors who have only a handful of students majoring in their discipline" and the economic crisis in higher education goes away. Eureka! Don't you just love simple solutions to complex issues?</p>

<p>Many tenured professors here in the northeast feel that the proliferation of Teaching Assistants and Adjunct Faculty is a much greater threat to private colleges than the salaries of tenured faculty. The question they ask is "How can you expect clients (i.e. students and their families) to pay $XX,XXX per year when half their classes are taught by part timers?"</p>

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<p>*EK, they don't get into fractions until 4th grade? get out the measuring cups and teach it in the kitchen, folks!
*
I agree but some kids still don't have it in high school
its also difficult to know what is being covered in the schools
for instance I assumed long division was covered-
it wasn't
I think they should do away with tenure perhaps like at evergreen-
some of my daughters best profs werent on the tenure track</p>

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<p>A high % of LAC graduates matriculate to grad school, and this article might explain why: a LAC education and a "vocational" education tend to be mutually exclusive--therefore a LAC graduate is forced to go to grad school in order to be competitive in the "real world" job market.</p>

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<p>well not necessarily
the skills and intellect that got them into a top LAC, added to a rigorous education, can be used to enter the job market without technical training however I do admit, that students who are in a LAC because they like the academic environment and aren't prepared to format those strenghts so they look applicable to a career, may be in college or in unrelated jobs to their degree for some time</p>

<p>dont mind me I always take the opposite tack ;)</p>

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<p>
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The question they ask is "How can you expect clients (i.e. students and their families) to pay $XX,XXX per year when half their classes are taught by part timers?"

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Right. So many undergrad classes are taught by teaching assistants...who are just students themselves! Why in the world should we have to pay so much money for that? (And we probably don't even want to get started on the t.a.'s who are International students with thick accents that their students can't understand.)</p>

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<p>Timely, LAC don't use TA's</p>

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<p>
[quote]
*The liberal arts education I received enriched my intellect *
[quote]
That may be so but I have a hard time discerning it through reading this article. </p>

<p>I can only agree with him that tenured professors like Hendrickson are a payroll burden to any college. If he typifies the quality of professors at the inexpensive Grove City College, I may even conclude that a more expensive college is well worth the cost.</p>

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<p>"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." --Abraham Lincoln</p>

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<p>
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Timely, LAC don't use TA's

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<p>Ahhhh.....I never knew that. Well that would certainly help me understand how you could get a much better education at a LAC.</p>

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<p>
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"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."

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<p>What are the added societal costs of somebody who graduates high school and then goes to work rather than college? Not much and possibly negative, I would guess.</p>

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<p>
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What are the added societal costs of somebody who graduates high school and then goes to work rather than college? Not much and possibly negative, I would guess.

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</p>

<p>A high school grad who happily starts his own plumbing business and does well at it through his/her own enterprise costs society far less, I imagine, than someone who takes on $80,000 worth of debt before dropping out of college and failing in many things before ending up drunk on the street.</p>

<p>The kind of generalization you are talking about is not instructive, to put it nicely.</p>

<p>The question you may have wanted to ask is whether high school students of a certain economic class who don't go on to college are more likely to work dead-end jobs, end up on what public assistance there is, etc. than college students in the same economic class. Let us hope that the college students generally fare better, on average; otherwise, education is not worth it and I think we'd all agree there since CCers as a group are probably going to benefit a lot, or have, from education.</p>

<p>But there's a legitimate question whether for a huge class of these people a liberal arts education is the best route. And I don't think platitudes or poorly specified examples answer it.</p>

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"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." --Abraham Lincoln

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<p>True, but platitudinous and obvious. From my example, applying this statement narrowly to the question of going to college and assuming the answer is always yes: you should always buy real estate because the market always goes up. Is that good advice? And by the way, suggesting a case against college in an environment of astronomical prices is a far, far different thing from claiming people shouldn't be educated. College may enable education, but it doesn't define its limits.</p>

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<p>I see a fair amount of ranting here about TAs. How do professors learn to teach if they don't get experience as TAs? I think of TAs as medical interns and residents -- it's a critical part of learning how to be a college instructor. I would think that not having TAs would be a piece of evidence that a school is not fulfilling its obligation to educate the next generation of college teachers.</p>