The Right Way to Fix Universities

[FarCenter]

...

In the 1980s, tuition began its still unabated rise as administrators sought to replace declining state support. By the end of the 20th century, the cost of four-year degrees had grown so much that many families mortgaged their own financial futures to secure college degrees for their children. When student loan debt eclipsed the total amount that Americans owed on their credit cards in 2010, a rebellion against fancy academics was well underway. Institutions once deemed essential partners in nation-building came to seem overstuffed and defensive — they enjoyed generous tax breaks yet crankily rebuffed calls for cost containment. This is the historical context in which Congress is summoning universities back to the bargaining table.

We need to start asking which public goods universities are producing and whether government support gets Americans more of them. Taxing graduate students is a crude, destructive mechanism for extracting goods from academia because it would diminish both scientific discovery and the size and scope of the educated public that has been improving our country for generations. The current plan for taxing endowments does not address the problems that rightly drive citizen fury: soaring costs, educational inequality and schools’ resistance to change.

To address these issues, universities must bring new proposals to the table. Using the G.I. Bill as a model, they might expressly commit to provide opportunities for people who would never otherwise attend college. Elite schools could forgo their current business model, in which teenagers from wealthy families are their primary clients. They might instead create new forms of instructional opportunity that are within reach of people regardless of age or life circumstances.

Schools should experiment with this. At a minimum, evening, weekend and online courses — bearing credits offered at modest prices that can lead to workforce-ready certifications — should take their place in the strategic planning of every selective residential program. To pay for the new ventures, universities would persuade their patrons to invest in the futures of all Americans rather than the privileged few.

For their part, both the Labor and Education Departments could create competitive grants encouraging universities to deliver training programs to populations and regions hardest hit by the economic tumult brought about by globalization and technological change.

These proposals may sound radical, but history shows that universities flourish when they work with government to bring tangible value to the entire society. As academics, it’s our turn to make an offer.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/opinion/the-right-way-to-fix-universities.html

[haele]

1. That's all nice and good to say now.

But both the Departments of Labor and Education are going away under the GOP. And probably the G.I. Bill, too.

So Universities will have probably have to cancel their in-house grants all together and figure out how they're going to survive on wealthy Alumni spawn, corporate sponsorship, and foreign students. As for Tuition? The middle class will not be able to afford higher education, nor does the GOP want them to, so you can say bye to Pell Grants and any other way of funding college or university studies without becoming indentured to a bank or fly-by-night "student loan center" run by mobsters.

Haele

[ProudLib72]

2. This already exists

It's called "community college". It's cheaper. It offers smaller classes. It offers weekend and online courses. It offers financial aid packages (most of which are scholarships, not loans). It offers a wide range of fields of study. It offers accredited classes whose hours are guaranteed to transfer to a four year institution if that is the path the student wishes to take.

When I first began teaching, I was under the impression that community colleges were just for the bad students who didn't make good enough grades to get into a "real" university. Then I taught at a "real" college and realized that those students were much, much worse than those I taught at community college.

It has become standard for middle class parents to send their kids to a four year institution, regardless of that kid's abilities or desire. When retention rates drop, the big business model kicks in, and administration tries different techniques to lure more students. Plus, administration loves to place the blame for poor retention on professors. At the same time, the HLC makes its evaluations and decides who gets to keep their accreditation. So administration wants curriculum that is both rigorous to keep accreditation and easy enough that retention will not drop.

What's more, smaller liberal arts colleges have begun to concentrate on STEM to the detriment of liberal arts. This is what happened at the last four year college I taught for. I have no problem with STEM, but a college that calls itself "liberal arts" should retain a good liberal arts program. Instead, they toss it aside and don't tell students who think they are attending to get a liberal arts degree. Quality of humanities classes plunges. Meanwhile, those brand new STEM classes have not begun to take off yet. The overall quality of the college plummets. Administration blames professors, and the cycle continues.

[eppur_se_muova]

3. Yep. The word "training" is always a tipoff. Aim for the current job market, not ...

the propagation of the best of civilization. Sure, it helps to have community colleges providing just that kind of education to those for whom that's really all they need or can use, or, less acceptably, all they can afford. Such institutions serve their own valuable role, and I'm all for seeing them supported and maintained. But we need independent colleges and universitites to preserve and pass on everything we know, however specialized or esoteric, not just what's immediately useful. A free-market approach is pretty much the diametric opposite. Everything about "business model" screams a demand for short-term returns of the most obvious forms, and intangibles inevitably suffer. Prospective students (and parents) need to understand the difference in expectations in higher education -- it's not just the 13th grade, you really need to be *prepared* to receive a good college education -- not just prepared to handle the workload, or the technically difficult material, but the expectation that there is a higher goal whose value may be impossible even to grasp until you have learned more, and along the way a possible realization that your best possible career choice may be something you didn't even realize existed, while your original (likely naive) career plans are not even suitable to you. In other words, expect college to change your life, or your time (and money) is probably going to waste.

[ProudLib72]

4. Not everyone needs college

Fifty years ago a college degree was an outstanding achievement. Now it's expected. But, as you sarcastically pointed out, this has turned college into 13th grade. Now a person needs a graduate degree in order to stand out from the crowd. There are so many negative effects associated with this: it delays a person's entrance into their career, it forces families to mortgage themselves to the hilt (like the article says), it feeds the cycle of business model overburdening colleges with excess administrative roles, and those administrators, in turn, ruin perfectly good programs when they have "brilliant" ideas on how to make their school stand out.

You are absolutely correct. Going to college is now solely for getting the best job; it has nothing to do with learning for the sake of enriching a student's life with knowledge. I would like to see a survey about this. I know that my parents sent me off to college for both of these reasons: career and enrichment. But how many people in this country feel like there is value to education beyond increasing job prospects? My guess is that the number of those who feel education is valuable for its own sake are low and becoming lower.