Posted on 03/09/2013 10:20:32 PM PST by Kevmo
The Coming Higher Education Bust: “Some Will Survive”
. by John Rubino on March 1, 2013 · 17 comments
To understand how close many US universities are to catastrophic failure, let’s start with the story of Robert (not his real name, but all the rest is true).
He’s 19, a freshman at a state university, a smart kid with eclectic interests but no sense of what he wants to be when he grows up. His favorite class, which he had to battle to get into, is an upper-level creative writing seminar taught by a successful author in which six students, all serious about the subject, submit original work and critique it each week. He’s also taking “computer science as a career” taught by a disgruntled professor who shows lots of videos while never missing a chance to tell the class how little he cares about the subject, and weight lifting, which operates on the honor system; Robert promises to lift weights and the school promises to give him an A.
What’s notable about this menu is that the two fluff courses cost the same as the much more serious and harder-to-duplicate creative writing seminar. Robert’s parents, appalled by the difference between his tuition bills and theirs of two decades ago, are aware of the varying amounts of quality and value they’re getting for the big checks they’re writing. And they’re responding like consumers. They’re looking into local community colleges that offer intro courses in core requirements like psych and sociology for much less, with the resulting credits being transferable to most four-year colleges. They’re researching online schools that also offer cheap, transferable credits for low-level coursework taken from home. And they’ve signed Robert up for an online “health coaching” program that will make him a certified health coach (at worst a nice, unusual resume filler) while generating nearly a full year of credits that several colleges in the region will accept. The idea is for Robert to gobble up a bunch of cheap credits and then transfer to a four-year bricks-and-mortar university for his last couple of years, thus acquiring a degree from a name-brand school for far less than four years of full-price tuition.
Variations on Robert’s theme are happening everywhere, as a combination of technology and sticker shock leads increasingly well-informed parents and students to distinguish between the truly-valuable offerings of mainstream universities and commodity courses and activities that can be had elsewhere for a fraction of the price. The result: a tsunami of creative destruction is bearing down on US higher education.
Wired magazine recently interviewed author and consultant Clayton Christensen, who puts some theoretical meat on the bones of this assertion. In the first part of the interview he explains the concept of disruptive innovation, through which big, complacent organizations are crushed by smaller competitors making low-end, cheap products that gobble up markets from below. Think cheap Japanese cars destroying the US auto industry, steel mini-mills bankrupting Big Steel, and so on. Now it’s Big Education’s turn:
Clayton Christensen Wants to Transform Capitalism
Howe: If you had to list some industries right now that are either in a state of disruptive crisis or will be soon, what would they be?
Christensen: Journalism, certainly, and publishing broadly. Anything supported by advertising. That all of this is being disrupted is now beyond question. And then I think higher education is just on the edge of the crevasse. Generally, universities are doing very well financially, so they don’t feel from the data that their world is going to collapse. But I think even five years from now these enterprises are going to be in real trouble.
Howe: Why is higher education vulnerable?
Christensen: The availability of online learning. It will take root in its simplest applications, then just get better and better. You know, Harvard Business School doesn’t teach accounting anymore, because there’s a guy out of BYU whose online accounting course is so good. He is extraordinary, and our accounting faculty, on average, is average.
Howe: What happens to all our institutions of advanced learning?
Christensen: Some will survive. Most will evolve hybrid models, in which universities license some courses from an online provider like Coursera but then provide more-specialized courses in person.
“Some will survive”…that’s a nice, understated way of saying that many won’t survive. And those that don’t will be the ones that have spent fortunes on non-academic fluff like state-of-the-art rec centers and NFL-caliber football stadiums, while assigning grad students to teach amphitheater 101 classes – all while raising tuition by 10% a year to levels that force students to graduate with tens of thousands of dollars of debt and highly uncertain job prospects. Those schools will be caught between the best, truly-valuable universities and junior colleges, online classes and “alternative” programs with transferable credits. The space in between won’t generate enough revenue to support their bloated costs.
Academia will become an even tougher place for generic PhDs, while turning into a candy store for creative entrepreneurs. So whether this is a good or bad thing depends on where you are in the academic food chain. The typical history major from a mid-range school will be unemployed and default on his loans. The undistinguished academic administrator will be fired and, like a mediocre newspaper editor, find zero new openings available. Entrepreneurs with solutions to the problems of cost, access, and quality will be the Mark Zuckerbergs and Steve Jobs of the next decade. Kids with parents able to shop aggressively and creatively will get good, cheap educations.
In other words, capitalism will work its usual magic and when the dust clears US higher ed will have been transformed from dysfunctionally-overpriced to consumer-driven, varied and highly-advanced. With a lot of pain and casualties along the way. To which parents like Robert’s would say, “bring it on, the sooner the better.”
Greatly reduce the number of those in the second group and the higher education establishment comes crashing down.
By the way,....K-12 education is an ENORMOUS waste of time for the child and tax resources. I would like to see this godless and socialist-entitlement K-12 education-industrial complex collapse! Think about it.
1) Imagine if children could competently enter the workforce 3, 4 , or more years earlier, as my homeschoolers did. The wealth accumulated by the child could be up to a million dollars or more over a life time! That also means increased GDP ( health and wealth) for the entire world to enjoy.
2) Each child in government K-12 socialist-entitlement schooling costs the taxpayer about $13,000 a year. In some cities it is as high as $25,000/year! Wow! Can you imagine the boast to the economy if even half of that money could be put to use in the private economy? Goodbye deficits! Hello, increased wealth for every citizen in this nation.
By the way, I have a doctorate in one of the university-based health professions. Honestly, a **LOT** of the basic courses could be ( and should be) done Online. Some courses could be a combination of Online and recitations with the professor and his graduate students. Obviously, there is **much** that could not be done this way, but the time and money to finish the program could be greatly reduced.
Another problem is college administrators seeing college as a form of wealth distribution. Charge everyone high rates, give scholarships and grants to selective students who are poor or meet “minority” definitions.
This makes it hard to compare costs because so many pay less than the official price tag. And those who pay the price tag are subsidizing the more PC demographic groups.
Here is a list of alternative online courses in addition to Coursera.
http://tamarawilhite.hubpages.com/hub/Alternative-Sources-of-College-Credit-and-Continuing-Education-Classes
Thank you
Illegal. And that is the reason for the education bubble.
Fifty years ago, businesses routinely administered IQ and academic tests to determine what jobs people were suitable for. Then, in Griggs v. Duke Power Co (1971), the Supreme Court ruled that under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, if such tests disparately impact ethnic minority groups, businesses must demonstrate that such tests are "reasonably related" to the job for which the test is required.
So businesses decided to require degrees as an expensive substitute for such tests.
We need to repeal the various "Civil Rights Acts" first.
I've been looking for this answer for 25 years. I could never understand why businesses cared about college degrees.
Then why would they need to learn it?
I believe that, having homeschooled our kids, and having learned some skills on my own.
I remember when graphics programs came out, and designers were making the switch from drafting boards to computers. I bought a Mac, some graphics packages, and was functional in all of the programs within a week.
I was shocked when I found out that colleges were devoting semesters to each graphics package.
I call it "course bloat." It's a lot like research. You pay for research, you get research. You pay for courses, you get courses. You pay for results, you get results.
True. It feeds into the other huge issue which is that kids and or their parents are paying to get these kids brainwashed into liberal think.
It is simply NOT a good investment of time or money.
The smart kids are going to look around and see that the are going to need skills.
The redistribution money will run out anyway, so the smart parents will stop misleading these kids into debt, and they’ll see that
About 75% of colleges are taxpayer funded sinkholes. Most will survive long past their usefulness because of government distortion of the free market. If colleges mostly churned out Republican voters though you'd see funding yanked yesterday.
By the 80's, a high-school diploma was essentially worthless as an indicator of basic literacy. Now, in 2013, a BA is not necessarily evidence of being able to read, write, and think.
But we are at a point where there would be extreme pushback against requiring a Masters degree for entry-level jobs, so the whole idea of using a diploma as a substitute for tests and references may have reached its limits.
I should have said, “It is unlikely that a chip designer or mechanical engineer COULD learn the required math on the job.”
I have met many self-taught computer programmers whom are competent for many tasks but lack essential math background and thus fall flat when presented with a project requiring such.
My grandfather was a mechanical engineer in the Forties and I have his engineering texts and slide rule. He did not learn the mathematics on the job—he learned it at university.
I can always sneak across the border if I ever want to come back.
***Ouch. Double ouch. Of course, the DHS will be all over your ass to enforce the law against you while they sprain their necks looking the other way to not enforce illegal immigration activity.
Yep. I had some clients balk at my fees, 20 an hour for 40 hours at 800 bucks. Compare that with a course... Plus, I got better results. If the student was willing to devote their time, I could get them caught up to where they were supposed to be rather quickly. 40 hours is a full time job in one week.
When you’re failing a course...
My 10 year old asked why we don’t go to the “free” school like our neighbors. I explained that the public school isn’t free - I pay for it through my taxes AND pay for private school.
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