Is it just me or does anyone else think this thread has diverged far from the original discussion?
2VU0609, let me tie the tangent back into the discussion. I wasn’t trying to highjack a thread.
The US college system will collapse because our education model doesn’t respond to 21st century changes, particularly globalization. To understand the possibilities for and nature of US education in relationship to other education systems, which may or may not be better, I think that we need to discuss them in ways that acknowledge their specificity and ours.
From my perspective as a faculty member, the question isn’t so much will the system collapse, but whether the nation will collapse. The US system spends money on sports, administration, luxury student life, and even technology that is different than the systems of many other countries. Given the need for an educated labour force, the people–that is, their governments (fed, state, local)–should support free or cheap education, but obviously we cannot do that in a frame where dorm food might include all you can eat salmon.
@mamalion, I quite agree with that last paragraph, especially your mention of administrative costs.
I would add that one of the few quotes that has ever stuck with me is Bill Bennett’s statement as Secretary of Education (early 90s) that we will never fix higher education until we fix K-12. Entirely too much money is being spent doing things twice with regard to remedial education. I teach at a community college and work in the advising center during the summers. My teaching discipline doesn’t expose me to entering students since most of my classes have a sophomore level prerequisite. However, the advising center work exposes me to a significant number of students who test into pre-algebra or basic algebra. It’s one thing for non-traditional students to test at that level since they have been out of high school for so many years, but quite another for recent hs grads to be testing at that level. I have also noticed an increasing number of students who show reading and writing deficiencies compared with what I saw 10 years ago.
I don’t know all the solutions, but I’m sure we could put our heads together with the other faculty members on this board to identify most of the problems 
But isn’t it the case that most college students attend community colleges or commute to their local state universities where they would not use any such luxuries even if they existed?
Now, whether such schools are affordable (just considering tuition, books, living expenses at home, and commuting expenses) and offer the academic programs and majors that students want can be an issue in some places where they are poorly funded.
Yes, PT but for those that have to pay full price or close to full price the actual cost has gone up. And in recent years the overall cost after financial aid has gone up as well. How is it that the amount of loans are going up if these schools are so very generous with financial aid?
Further, if the schools are reporting the aid they gave to the students that actually attend (due, in part, to the financial aid) they are not including all those students that had to go elsewhere, such as state schools, because they did NOT get enough aid to go to the expensive private school.
It is quite the slight of hand to say that costs haven’t really gone up because we are given more money to some kids, and the rest of you it is just too bad because you are so incredibly wealthy that $250K is not a problem. And for many people, even professionals, wages have been stagnant since the recession.
No. But dang, I hope it would!
@qpqpqp Not if all of society adapts to a society without college.
@mom2and, good points. It really depends on what percentile you are in.
For those who are full-pay now, costs have definitely gone up far faster than inflation everywhere. In-state publics are generally still affordable, though. For those making about $100K, the elite privates have become more generous with fin aid but the cost of state schools have gone up and now may be out of reach. For the poor, the elite privates (many with no-loan policies) are generally more generous than before but the federal programs (Pell grant, Stafford loan, and work-study) aren’t close to enough to cover the COA at in-state publics now (they were 25 years ago) so state schools aren’t even an option any more. For those kids, it’s a (highly-selective) elite rich private or big merit scholarships or bust.
The net average costs at the rich elite privates really haven’t outpaced inflation much, but loans have increased because state funding for their publics in general not only haven’t kept pace with inflation but have decreased. Also, because the sticker price at big privates like NYU/GWU/BU have kept pace with the elite privates but their fin aid have not.
I have a suspicion that I will either be the last or second to last generation of students going to college. (at least as the institution stands today) I think with the advent of the internet as an expansive collection of knowledge and a distributor for a new wave of education providers, the education function of college is already obsolete. I only say this half jokingly: If I didn’t need a piece of paper to get a job, I wouldn’t be in college right now. College has essentially transformed from a producer of human capital to an expensive certification bureau that is slowly draining our economy of resources.
I think the future is some kind of online educational platform that would serve as a way to search for and get recommendations about subjects you wish to learn. We easily have the technology to accomplish this. This fight is a cultural and institutional one. As long as employers are too lazy to evaluate job candidates based on something other than a piece of paper, you will never see the cost of education fall because you aren’t actually buying education, you’re buying a job.
The internet is a boon to those who use it to self-educate themselves with an enormous library at their fingertips.
However, not all students are self-motivated enough to self-educate, not all possible books and materials are available on the internet, and not all subjects can be self-educated by just reading (consider lab, art, and music practice, and evaluation of these subjects and writing and research skills).
Indeed, @Darthelmet, books have been around for a long time and it’s been centuries now where books have been inexpensive enough that people can have their own copies instead of having to gather in one place to hear one person lecture from them.
Yet there is learning and community-forming that can’t happen over the internet.
Now, granted, the format may change: maybe the first 2 years done online or in a CC before heading to a university to finish a major.
Online education probably will play a big role in the future. But I believe it will be best provided in the context of a formal college setting/curriculum. There is so much information available to the masses that it is actually too much for most people to effectively self-educate. It takes a knowledgeable educator (teacher/professor) to cull the universe of information on a given subject and present a syllabus that reasonably captures the appropriate breadth and depth of a particular academic subject.
Here is an example: CS is probably one of the subjects with the lowest barriers to entry for self-education now, since CS books, courses, and curricula are readily available on the web, computers to do programming projects are not expensive, and the computer will tell you if your programming project works (granted, it may be more difficult for hardware and theory topics). Significant contributions to open source software projects can demonstrate proficiency to potential employers in lieu of a formal degree or credential.
But, while self-educated people in the software job market do exist, they are still less common compared to those with degrees or formal course work in CS. It is the case that many of those who self-educate in CS do have degrees in other subjects, perhaps indicating that those with the ability and motivation to self-educate tended to have previously followed the college track anyway.
What @prospect1 said. I’ve already pointed out that online education, if done right, is actually more expensive and more time-consuming than face-to-face education, so there’s that, too.
Really, it seems that people keep saying that online education is going to completely upend higher ed (and K–12 gets mentioned sometimes, too) in 3–5 years. Unfortunately for its proponents, that moment has been 3–5 years away for the last 20 years or so.
@dfbdfb I have been hearing about online education in K-12 for a while now, too. I cannot imagine a worse thing. The value of in-person education at these ages is magnified: socialization, critical-thought-provoking discussions, minute-to-minute accountability (can’t just turn that live teacher off when you are bored), the cultivation of creativity through interaction and feedback, attention/focus skills, etc.
Online education does has value for younger students in that the teacher can bring media into the classroom as a valuable, additional tool. But, again, the value should be gained in the setting and context of a live classroom with real fellow students and a living, watchful, caring teacher.
The use of MOOCs, Massive, Open, Online Courses, has failed repeatedly with unsophisticated learners. They may work with college grads who have learned to learn, but not with other populations.
Families in the upper middle income “donut hole” are experiencing very real sticker shock. However, I don’t think the system is on the verge of collapse. Consider that in 1981 the average COA for a 4 y private college (in constant 2011-12 dollars) was $15,306/year (source: http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=76).
For 2014-15, tuition+fees+room+board at Yale was $59,800. Yet, the average n-b grant was $44,915. So the net COA, for those who received n-b aid, was $14,885 on average.
Here are the average need-based grants for several other private colleges with sticker prices close to ~$60K:
$49,469 Amherst
$42,815 Stanford
$40,117 Smith
$39,679 Williams
$38,758 Cornell
$35,594 Macalester
$35,031 Northwestern
The following pdf shows mean need-based aid by family income for Trinity College, Hartford.
http://www.trincoll.edu/AboutTrinity/offices/InstitutionalResearchPlanning/Documents/FinancialAid.pdf
For a family making $60,000 - $89,999 (which is above the median national family income),
Trinity’s mean need-based aid (for those who receive it) was $50,508 for the current academic year (2014-15). At expensive private colleges like Trinity, typically about 30% to 60% of students receive n-b aid.
Many public colleges have full sticker in-state rates below $20K/year (even including room & board).
Many colleges get far more applications than they can accept, even with $60K/y sticker prices.
Yes, but only about half of the students at these expensive private schools get need-based financial aid, meaning that about half of the students come from families in the top 2-5% income range. Students from middle income families find an uphill climb to produce admission credentials that interest those colleges (even the top 2-5% income families who can grease the rails most effectively for their kids still find such colleges very difficult for their kids to get into), so they need to start their list with affordable safeties. Elite schools with good financial aid can be great for students from middle or lower income families who get admitted, but the fact is that few such students (even top-end students from all family income backgrounds) get admitted to them.
The reality is that many less selective private schools and many states’ public schools have been getting less affordable to middle and lower income students over the years. Since most students can only realistically count on such schools (since the elite schools are reach for everyone, and even more of a reach for the middle and lower income students), that is the concern that affects the bulk of the students.
It isn’t just about “learning to learn” or being “self motivated”. Different brains work and learn differently and many people have learning styles that thrive on interaction and questioning and socialization. My HS kid would much rather get dressed and sit in class every day than take and online class (dual enrollment). He finds it so much easier to focus and enjoys the dynamic nature of a live lecture and discussion.
Yes, I believe that’s true.
For students who are not competitive for the most selective (and richest) schools with the best n-b aid, there remain many state-supported or county-supported alternatives that are cheap enough to be affordable with little more than “self help” (student loans and employment), especially if you’re willing to commute from home.
For example, one of my neighbors has a son who was a strong HS student. He’s been commuting to a respected directional state university. Tuition and fees are about $10,100. Even without too much help from the family, that is not a huge burden for a student willing to take part time jobs, summer jobs, and fairly modest student loans. This is by no means the least expensive option in our area, either.
Still, I do think that every state ought to have a good residential college system, that it should be affordable for average middle class families, and that in some states the system may be at risk.