Is college broken?

I began this post with the title “College is broken,” which is more definitive and alarming. I amended it after a dose of humility (I know, I need more) and the realization several family and friends work in academe, and perhaps they would chime in to a more inclusive invitation.

My concerns about the university system in the United States go all the way back to my daughters’ experience. Both of my daughters attended public universities, graduated in four years with some (but not extensive) debt, learned a lot, enjoyed their college years, and departed with good jobs. My wife and I paid for some of the expenses, but insisted each daughter incur some combination of scholarship/work-study/student loans (skin in the game). So what’s not to like?

It started with the application process. I distinctly recall a high school guidance counselor explaining how she could only write a letter of recommendation to one school for early admission (or was it early acceptance? Early enrollment? It doesn’t matter). When I asked why, since each university is independent (and would not know) and a student could only attend one, she told me they share information, and if she was found to be writing more than one letter, the schools would “blackball” her or the high school! “And no one has sued them for this behavior?” I asked. “Sure, you could, but your daughter won’t get into any decent school while the suit runs,” she told me.

This was my introduction to the organized crime of university admissions. Perhaps you have heard of the lawsuits which have followed, demonstrating collusion in the Ivy League admissions process, and of course the more recent pay-to-attend scandal among wealthy parents nationwide (no surprise to me).

But there was more. Early on for each of my daughters, they were advised by admissions counselors that they really needed to strongly consider taking five years to graduate. We strongly advised them to really consider graduating in four years, because the universities they were attending had to offer four-year degrees in the majors they were attempting. Our daughters made the right choice.

All of that just goes to my personal bias that something was rotten at the university of Denmark, to paraphrase Marcellus in Hamlet. So I began to research it (here comes trouble). Among my findings:

• I think everyone knows there is a strong statistical relationship between attending/graduating college and lifetime earnings (the more of the former, the more of the latter). Many people have come to believe this is a credentialing phenomenon: it doesn’t matter what happens at college, you just get the sheepskin, you make mo’ money. The strongest correlation is between education and earnings. Those who have a passion for some topic and the requisite skills to address it do very well, either rounding our their knowledge (classical liberal arts) or specializing (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, or STEM). Those who either lack or mis-match passion and skills do poorly, diploma-be-damned. Which means college is not for everyone, or certainty not for everyone graduating high school; some may be far better served doing something else at that point!
• What about the “free universal college” movement? If the students can attend for free, there is no risk in terms of debt, and maybe they will discover their talents and passion while at university? Setting aside the issue of cost (for the moment), creating a broad new entitlement in the hope of something good happening for some subset of the attendees is a poor gambit. There are unintended consequences lurking about: how many otherwise strong students will be lured away from academics by the party atmosphere of a multitude of “student-attendees?” It is like prescribing antibiotics for every cough: what could go wrong, until we experience antibiotic resistant diseases?
• Other countries seem to do it well (free university education), why not the US? There are examples of countries which do it well, but none has a system amenable to the US. Some control the overall cost by simply limiting the number of universities (reduced demand equals limited cost). Others track students: in Germany, a test determines which high-school track you attend, which then determines your tertiary education opportunities. I would not want to attend the school board meeting in the United States where such a system was proposed.
• But perhaps the rigorous nature of the university system and its selfless commitment to professional education will affect that wave of “student-attendees.” It is to laugh (cue Johnny Carson)! Sometime in the last thirty years, the academy became big business. Average college tuition is up 260% over that time as enrollments sky-rocketed (supply and demand still rules). The one-hundred richest universities have endowments above one-billion dollars (Harvard tops the list at $36b USD). The federal government abetted this wealth, first by guaranteeing student loan debt, then by directly providing the loans, and then by raising the amounts students could borrow. And since the federal government has no profit motive, even sham schools and non-productive majors (those would be value judgments, tsk-tsk) are eligible.
• How bad did it get? A recent NYT article outlines the for-profit Art Academy University in San Francisco charging $100k tuition for a Masters in something called “design and applied arts.” Surely this is just a for-profit phenomenon? No, most everybody does it, and don’t call me Shirley. USC has an online Masters in Social Work that comes in at a cool $110k in tuition. Pure profit, baby! Since I have social workers in the family (wife and niece), here’s a little joke: how long does it take a social worker to earn enough to pay back such student debt? Never, a social worker doesn’t earn enough to eat, let alone pay back student debt! Check out the article for more astounding examples.
• Worse still, once the cash-cow of new students started flooding into the university system, academe responded not by strengthening standards and tightening requirements, but rather by catering to the masses. I have to admit that I have nothing but envy for the culinary experiences I witnessed at my daughters’ schools: for college, I was “institutionalized” at a place that serve boiled beef. I hold no grudge for the air conditioning, drone-provided snacks, or comfort animals of today’s university system, but the catering extended to the curriculum! Out went mandatory classes in the classics (dead white men, after all). Core curricula became less core and more a la carte: you could replace Western History with, say, “Film, Fiction, and Female in Israel” (University of Michigan course catalog). Not to pick on UM: go to your favorite university or alma mater and you’ll find an equally valid example. Even ten years ago, when I was interviewing new hires, I noticed an increasingly apparent lack of historical knowledge, and this was in the national security field, one which assumes employees have a basic historical knowledge-base!

Now the disclaimer: the US university system is still a global standard. Any list of the best universities in the world is dominated by the usual suspects from the US. Which is to say that some students attending these institutions and getting an excellent education. However, the combination of a huge increase in demand for college, the unlimited supply of debt resources, and the tendency to treat students as customers to be satisfied has resulted in a large number of drop-outs and graduates with huge debt and little education. Worse still, it created a huge disconnect: young people who had been told attendance is as rewarded as performance, and that truth can be personal rather than absolute, now find themselves unprepared in a harsh world, where little matters beyond the bottom line.

I invite others with recent experience in higher education to chime in: crisis or not? Are these problems real, or am I just the guy yelling “get off my grass” on the quad?