Read this article in the Boston Globe and ask yourself: “What’s the point of a college degree?”
The article assumes that one gets a degree to get a better job and make more money. It describes a program that is cheap and enables low-income students to get a degree, in large extent through online learning.
A couple of liberal arts professors complain that this bargain basement approach is not really a college education. Because they are poor, the students have no exposure to real education.
““The whole premise of College for America is bargain education,” says Amy Slaton, a Drexel University history professor who has been a vocal critic of the model. “Instead of saying, ‘We’re going to help everyone reach the best of the best,’ we’re saying, ‘Here’s the generic, no-frills version for you.’ It pegs the value of the education to what you’re able to pay, instead of helping everyone to achieve the richest, most varied education they can. Why aren’t we asking about how we can bring more classroom time, more expert teaching to everyone?”
Or another question:
Why aren’t we bringing down the cost of higher education with greater student aid? Why trick poor and minority students with a cheap substitute for a real college education? If having a degree matters most, just give out a generic degree that means nothing except you can say you have one. That’s cheaper still. There are so many fake universities these days, who will know the difference?
If we really cared about students and education, higher education would be free, at least in the public sector.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
College degrees are now like having the latest Louis Vuitton knock off….
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I think it turns into two tiers- they’ll retain public flagship universities for the top 10% and everyone else will get the cheap digital version.
It becomes more and more difficult to believe these folks are well-intentioned, I must say. Everything they do seems to point towards driving down wages.
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If a college degree is directly about getting a job (I. e. Training for specific skills) we need to be upfront and call it what it is: vocational education. That doesn’t have to be demeaning; once vocational schools and apprentice schools, now some technical schools, had a proud place in American education. Certainly beats often faux majors today like Communications and General Studies.
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Higher education can’t be free, because it costs money. That sounds so obvious, but for some reason needs to be said. Labor and facilities cost money that ought to be paid for by the people being serviced by the labor and who are using the facilities.
That said, the cost of college is too high and the stigma to not having a degree too strong. So long as you have relatively risk free government loans of any amount and tons of people dying to go, there will be no incentive for colleges to lower tuition.
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Huskie,
I take your point, but in some countries, such as Finland, all higher education is tuition-free. It is an investment in human capital and a human right.
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This mirrors a conversation I recently had with a libertarian friend of mine.
He admitted that in some nations, higher education was free. “But HERE,” he argued, “if you give money to people for college, all that happens is colleges raise their tuitions.”
Why is it that other nations can manage to pull this off, but HERE (as my friend said), giving the equivalent of “college vouchers” would do nothing more than raise tuition?
And if “college vouchers” would do nothing more than raise tuition HERE, would the same thing happen with high school vouchers?
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Diane,
We’ll probably have to agree to disagree on the point of “human right”. You have a right to learn, but you don’t have an inalienable right to another’s labor. I agree with “investment in human capital”, except there are lots of ways to do that, and I question who gets to make the decision that surplus (or borrowed?) money goes to colleges and not to, for example, grants to start a small business. Not to mention giving tax dollars so someone can get an Underwater Fire Prevention degree isn’t really investing in human capital.
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The best definition I’ve heard of a libertarian is young, naive, hubristic white males, just out of their parent’s basement, living off the sacrifice and hard work of past generations.
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Mathvale, I once considered myself to be very libertarian (when I was at the worst point of going through the grotesquely crooked and corrupt “family” court system, which I won’t elaborate on here other than to say that I was briefly jailed for failing to pay child support when I had never actually missed a payment, and that for the last decade I’ve been paying “child support” for a son who lives with me over 95% of the time). The corporate education reformers have moved me to distance myself from the libertarian label somewhat.
My friend is close to middle age, White, and brilliant. He attended Cornell and works as a computer engineer. We met through our wives, who are both pediatric oncologists.
He has two young twins who are currently attending kindergarten in public school, and has recently started to notice some things about their public school that are not to his liking. I’ve been able to point out how a good number of these things are the result of corporate education reform.
We were both “gifted” children, and grew up with the good and bad aspects of that label.
Hubris? Living off the work of past generations? I get the impression that I’m closer to my family’s roots of poverty than he is. When I was growing up there were times that my family was actually on food stamps, and the only reason my father and his siblings (who did not speak English as a first language) were able to afford college was because of government aid.
Meanwhile:
Why is it that other nations can manage to pull this off, but HERE (as my friend said), giving the equivalent of “college vouchers” would do nothing more than raise tuition?
And if “college vouchers” would do nothing more than raise tuition HERE, would the same thing happen with high school vouchers?
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Diane you are absolutely right. Education is a human right. Excluding working class people from Medical school and Law school etc. just shows how much America tilts towards Oligarchy and away from Democracy. I foresee a Latinamericanization of America; with the moneyed classes going to private academies and private universities and the huddled masses left with few recourses except to be the mercenaries and guardians of the ultra rich. Of course, if we study Rome we will see how that scenario turned out. The armed minority can make themselves the rulers of the rulers. Sad to think that slowly we are heading towards dictatorship. But I see that as a distinct possibility. We have been lucky so far. But we may be running out of luck. We are creating a professional military caste which is alienated from the civilian population and Washington. Only the civic virtue and the dedication of the average solider, sailor, airman and Marine to America’s ideals stand in the way of the road to dictatorship. But education is America’s shakiest pillar so there is a real danger if and when we face a national crisis or period of anarchy.
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A good supply sider would increase the supply of higher education.
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As time passes I become wiser and somewhat more mellow. But it’s things like this that truly fire up my blood pressure and reduce my tolerance level. Online learning has its place. However, four years of college is not one of them. My reasons are too numerous to list. Suffice to say,as a parting salvo, I would like to ask: Would the proprietors and peddlers of this ‘model’ want their children to learn this way and bypass the social aspects of college? Seriously?! And who might write a job or post-grad recommendation? R2D2.
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I love computers. I love twitter, Facebook, the WSJ, Good reads and all the resources one gets online. But online certification or education should be see only as a supplement. True education allows you to meet professors to meet other students from other backgrounds and to share goals and interests. To make genuine friendships. To establish clubs. To go to ballgames or museums or concerts together. To plan summer trips or that hike in the National Park. No the proprietors and peddlers of Charter Schools and Charter Colleges want THEIR children to go to private academies and elite private colleges. They just want to make money. Education and training and caring for youth is just an afterthought.
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My question would be, “What is a college education?” or “What is a college education worth?” I know many college graduates who can’t use their degree and will spend a majority of their life paying off the college loans. If a cheap college degree can get you a better job and an expensive college degree gets you nothing, why degrade the cheaper option. My thought is the Ivory Tower needs to begin to reexamine the value of what they consider a college education.
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Dr. Calhoun,
I agree completely, even for kids who get into top schools. There was a study done that demonstrated that those who were accepted into Harvard and went and those who were accepted into Harvard, but opted for a cheaper, less prestigious school, had the same earnings and status 20 years later:
cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/…/dalekrueger_More_Selective_College.pdf
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you are right,higher education commision should be freed .
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We always need to keep the term “free” relative to its context. College education is not something that should be seen as a consumer and provider relationship. It is an investment that should be the shared responsibility of all. The college graduate is not the only one who benefits from their education.
If a nation wants to be successful, they should realize that their success is built on the foundation of its educated population – whether college or vocational. It makes the individual self sufficient and useful. It decreases the need for the government to support them. It makes everyone more productive.
That being said, a college or vocational education should be free to those receiving it. Government and businesses should be investing in it for the benefit of all – including the potential profit of those businesses from a better educated and prepared workforce.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
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FIRST:Let’s take half of the legislators budget or pay or both to fund a camera crew following the legislator anytime day or night that they may be engaging in something that relates to the job of being a legislator so we know if they are truly doing their job and worth their pay…
Additionally this also sounds similar to taking school budget to administer tests that serve as data collection to manipulate and blur truth in education rather than help education.
Maybe even make the legislators have to raise the money and deposit into an account that is administered outside the control of the legislator for the purpose of paying an independent crew. Better yet have the video crew be made up of anyone who has been harmed by a law made by any legislator and has a real ax to grind with government.
Truth and transparency in education paid by taxes but not legislators who are also paid by taxes and stand to gain much more in the way of personal influence with their positions than a public school teacher.
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Back over half a century ago at the U. of Michigan, one of my profs made the following observation. He had gone to college during the depression when they were reasonably sure that jobs would be extremely scarce.
BUT
that was not the reason for going to college. Going to college meant getting an “education”. That concept has been lost when schools started telling everyone that if they went to college they would earn more money which is true but turned the idea o f education on its head. To some degree at least we are the victims of our own success. But corporate CEOs have now usurped the concept of education to mean getting a job – with THEM. people becoming widgets in their industrial mill.
Without a truly “educated” public a democratic form of government cannot exist, the focus of attention by one of the people on the Diane Rehm show this AM.
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I fear we are going backward toward a time when the landed gentry got educated ( by private tutors) and the masses got the least amount of education suitable for” their station in life”. ( in some cases none) In many third world or developing nations, any one with any means and ambition sends their children to private schools while the public schools are mired in corruption and offer a third rate education.
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I agree, Alison. We are going backwards (socially) towards an Oligarchy as found in England prior to 1800 or Latin America. We are witnessing the slow 3rdworldization of American education where many “public schools are mired in corruption and offer a third rate education.” It is sad. It will get worse. I fear for my children and grandchildren. They will look at 1946-2001 as a lost Golden Age.
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I am so thankful for my BA in French from Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY. My parents, a doctor and a lawyer in a small upstate town, luckily earned enough money for me to go there and get a great education and become a French teacher. If I never teach French another day in my life, I will cherish this time in my life. My mom, by the way, grew up poorer than poor and went to public schools and became a science teacher and then a lawyer later in life. I’m sad to see liberal arts schools becoming something only the rich can enjoy. I’m saddened even more by the prevailing attitude in our country that an education is a means only to money-making. Sad times to be sure.
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French, the Queen of the Romance languages, is the path to paradise and wisdom. You will never regret having studied it. I think many private colleges will go bust eventually making education even more difficult to achieve than it is now.
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Community colleges in California used to be free for students. When I attended one in the 1980’s I had to pay a fee of $50. I paid a total of $200 in fees for four semesters. I also had to buy my books and pay for parking. I also received a great education there. I took chemistry, English, Calculus, psychology, history, philosophy, and French courses.
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Those days are gone forever. UC and CAL State are prohibitively expensive for working class families and they struggle to pay JC tuition and books. For one introductory class in Spanish the teacher required $300 in books and materials. Then students see high paying jobs in the oil fields and drop out.
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Ben Ginsberg of Johns Hopkins argues that something like two-thirds of the dramatic increase in college costs over the past few decades can be attributed to the phenomenal growth of college administrations, the proliferation of “deanlets,” as he calls them. So returning college to the governance of professors could have the secondary effect of making college much cheaper, as well as more like an educational institution.
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There are, generally, three main reasons that students drop out of college. The first is financial. Even in-state annual tuition and fees at public universities averaged nearly $11,000 this school year, and if a funding source dries up, the bill can seem insurmountable. Another is inadequate preparation, especially when it requires enrollment in no-credit remedial courses, which can be both expensive and demoralizing. Yet the most common reason people cite for leaving school is that life — a job, family obligations, illness, pregnancy — got in the way.
MUNRO: This is quite true. I left NYU in 1978 mostly for financial reasons. I never left a school or study program because of inadequate preparation. It was a struggle to graduate as my father had a stroke and was semi-disabled with a lot of medical bills. My working in construction and having a part time job in the Marine Reserves I was able to get my BA. But even though I had been accepted to graduate school to continue my MA in history I got zero financial aid so I gave it a pass. I did not return formal education until 1988 when I got my k-12 teaching credential at Seattle University with certifications in Spanish, history and English (I thought this would garner me a job SOMEWHERE.). Previously I had gotten married (1982) and so had a primary obligation to support my wife and children. Once again working in construction I had no chance for an education due my unpredictable hours. I made a hard choice to take a pay cut and go for a job with flex time at what was then Seafirst Bank (then across the street from Seattle University). My first inclination was to go for an MBA and I took classes in computers and accounting. But then I met Dr. Kristin Guest and she said I would be natural for the 5th year certification program. I student taught at Catholic schools and at public schools and in Spanish and Social Studies. I worked full time while I student taught and this caused problems as some schools refused to take me as a student teacher since “I was not fully dedicated to student teaching.” In any case, I was lucky because Seattle University had a lot of graduates both in Catholic schools and public schools and I was lucky to have a kindly Brazilian-American mentor teacher who realized I had a primary obligation to support my family. Let me make it very clear I was only days away from quitting the teaching program entirely. I could not allow my families’ health insurance to lapse nor stop providing for them. My young immigrant wife had small children at home and was just beginning to learn English herself. I promised her that the family would always and I mean ALWAYS come first. Fortunately, after having been turned down my numerous schools my advisor found a spot in an inner-city school no one wanted to go to. In fact they couldn’t get any candidates. So they were happy to have anyone. And my mentor teacher was very sympathetic to my situation. He spoke Spanish and Portuguese (his wife was from Argentina) and we got along straight away. So I was on my way. I worked at the bank nights, Saturdays and holidays for the next two years while student teaching and teaching my first year at Holy Names Academy where I taught of all things French, English and Spanish. I was asked what French background I had and I told Sister Mary Tracy that I had a soldier’s French and my grandfather fought for France and so did my uncle. I took a reading test (in French!) and scored 92. In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king. I studied my father’s French books (he had been certified as a French and English teacher in NYC in the 1930’s) and I did reasonably well. My next goal was to get an MA which I got in Spanish Literature not education. I had a choice to get an English credential or an MA in education and I chose to get an English credential (something that has proved very valuable to me as an ELD/ESL teacher). Many years later I enrolled in the doctoral program at the UVA. I was able to go because I won a full scholarship. I maxed out my salary scale but found many roadblocks. They wanted me to re-do my GRE’s (too far in the past). Then they wanted me to re-do my education classes (too far in the past). So by the time the year was out I still had $50,000 to go and two or three years to get my doctorate I was offered not one cent of financial aid. I was told I was “too wealthy” (I had a retirement plane and a home with a mortgage) to qualify for any aid. Once again I had to make a financial decision. To achieve the doctorate I would have had to quit my tenured job, cash in my retirement, and sell my house. In doing so my son would have had to drop out of school himself and I would not be able to send my daughters to college either. I tried to consider transferred my credits to another in state school but that turned out to be impossible. And now of course those credits are expired too. Many of my students are first time high school graduates. The one advice I tell them is whatever career they go for try to get an achievable goal and finish your degree or program if possible. Medicine and Law are very expensive degrees. Unless you have financial support of a spouse or family you are not going to make it there. They same is true for a Phd. Nursing, Teaching, Engineering are more practical for middle class or aspiring middle class families. And many of my students choose to go into the military. They can’t afford to study and only support themselves. They have to help support their families. The bottom line is college expenses are out of control in the USA. To go into to debt hundreds of thousands of dollars for a BA in liberal arts at Fordham or NYU is insane. I don’t regret not having gone to graduate school at NYU. Because I didn’t I got world experience in the military and in construction. Because of that I established my credit rating and was able to buy a car and a home before I was 30. Because of that I was able to marry at age 26 and we were able to have three wonderful children. I don’t regret getting my doctorate. My scholarship just came too little and too late for me. I wouldn’t exchange my wife, my family and my children for two Phds.
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“What’s the point of a college degree?”
IMHO, there are two kinds of people: leader and follower.
College and vocational school have its distinctive goal in produce leader and follower.
Vocational graduate needs to upgrade in college for engineering degree, master degree then PhD degree in order to advance into research and invention. Yet, we cannot have scientist like Albert Einstein, Marie Curie… in a mass.
Similarly, college graduate needs to continue on their master degree, and PhD degree in order to become philosopher, scientist, or teacher of teachers (=Guru in the field).
All CONSCIENTIOUS people at the highest level of education will be a tremendously benevolent force to alleviate human sufferance from sickness, pain and desperation.
From medical field, engineering field to philosophy and music field, the mass of people on Earth has been benefited from a few LEADERS with CONSCIENCE.
We never forget that charismatic or popular people who if they are NOT conscientious leaders , will be disastrous to the well being of society, like Hitler, Mao Trach Dong, Stalin, Mussolini…
Leaders DO NOT need to be reinforced in learning or in fulfilling their responsibilities. For this reason, if people do not have leader qualities, then college degree is not suitable. However, in order to create a new force of modern slaves with “flashy” DEGREE, all corporate intentionally promote CHARTER SCHOOLS, and ON-LINED DEGREE.
We need constantly improve our mind, body, and spirit under a mantra of a universal CODE OF CONDUCT: honesty, being considerate, and intelligence in knowing our boundary. I rest my case. Back2basic.
PS:
1) HONESTY – in body: do not injure from overdo tasks that is beyond our capacity
– in mind: do not rush to implement any shortcut to attain a quick result.
– in spirit: do not mistake theory for practice because sympathy is NOT the same as empathy.
2) BEING CONSIDERATE: people want to be stress free; enjoy learning within their pace and their abilities; and love applying to teach from their training. Most of all, people need to be viewed as a contributor in their society in their own capacities.
3) INTELLIGENCE: this is the most difficult for people in recognizing their own boundary regardless of their socio-economy or race. I guess that with time, experience, education, and trials and errs, people will gradually learn and accept their own KARMA (=the absolute intelligence = knowing our own boundary)
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