Posted on 11/25/2005 6:02:35 AM PST by billorites
The modern university is a relic that will disappear in a few decades. That prediction was made by Peter Drucker, the management genius who just died at 95 and usually got things right.
His words brought an uncharitable smile to my face as I recently strolled across the ivied campus of Brown University, in Providence, R.I. At the time, maintenance crews were busy removing leaves. Campus officials were still dealing with the aftermath of an especially drunken Saturday night. And most everyone was excited that the football team had taken the Ivy League championship.
No doubt, some education was going on, but the question nagged: Is this an efficient setup for improving young minds? Not very, according to Drucker. "Today's buildings are hopelessly unsuited and totally unneeded," he said. Satellites and the Internet can easily make classrooms obsolete.
We now read that professors at Purdue, Stanford, Duke and other universities are recording their lectures. Students download the talks on their iPods and listen to them whenever. The "whenever" can be while driving, lifting weights or between songs by Black Eyed Peas and the Pussycat Dolls.
The profs say that letting students hear the lectures on their own frees classroom time for penetrating discussions. The same conversations, however, could be held over the Internet -- or, for that matter, in a room at the public library.
Furthermore, the professors could let non-students download their lectures and charge them royalties, just like the Black Eyed Peas. Ordinary folks already buy courses on tape or CD. For example, The Teaching Company is now selling a virtual major in American history -- 84 lectures on 42 audiotapes -- at the bargain price of $109.95. It covers everything from "before Columbus" to Bill Clinton, and the lecturers are top-drawer. Some of them teach at Columbia University, where a single history course runs you $3,207.
Herman Melville said that "a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard." Melville didn't need college to write "Moby Dick." He needed to read and spend time in the world. Before sailing out on a whaler in 1841, he had already worked on his uncle's farm and as a cabin boy on a ship to England.
Peter Drucker urged high-school graduates to do likewise: Work for at least five years. If they went on to college, it would be as grown-ups.
You wonder whether colleges, stripped of their education function, wouldn't find other lives as spas, professional-sports franchises or perhaps lightly supervised halfway houses for post-adolescents. The infrastructure is already in place.
Over at Kenyon College, in Ohio, the students have a new $60 million athletic center. The highlights include a 12,500-square-foot workout area and an indoor track with eight lanes just for sprinting. The pool has 20 short-course and nine long-course lanes. And, like any upscale health club, this one has a cafe.
Speaking of sports, colleges spend huge numbers of "education dollars" on keeping their football coaches happy. For example, the University of Texas is giving Mack Brown a compensation package this year totaling $3.6 million. UT's highest-paid academic, Steven Weinberg, earns about $400,000, and he has a Nobel Prize in physics.
The universities claim that popular football and basketball teams are profit centers that help pay for learning. In truth, few produce a surplus even for their schools' sports programs. Athletics pay their own way at only about 10 colleges, according to Andrew Zimbalist, an economist at Smith College who specializes in sports.
And with all due respect to the Texas Longhorns, if they were such a fabulous cash machine, there would be no need for the Longhorn Foundation. The foundation, which raises money for UT athletics, notes on its website that revenues from ticket sales, television and ads cover less than half the operating expenses of the university's sports program.
University presidents, meanwhile, are working on their own pay packages. Several already make more than $1 million, which has become the new goalpost. Most justify their incomes by their ability to raise money for new buildings.
Of course, these are the buildings that will soon be relics, according to Peter Drucker. Look at these shining new facilities and think: What fine condos they will someday make.
We don't see review of work histories useful for the reasons you've cited. We give a written test in connection with our interviews, at which we try to ask probing questions to assess their potential productivity with us.
I would very much welcome a solid equivalency certification and let conservative and home-schooled students bypass the ridiculous expenses of liberal indoctrination.
HF
Two thirds of all state operated universities could be safely eliminated without a single negative impact on the economy or the culture. What an enormous savings to the taxpayers!
America would not benefit from such a move. It would only serve to even more quickly de-populate many rural states, pump up the competition for those universities still in existance, and put college even more out of reach for many.
Will save this thread and share your post with my college student son--he is pretty aware and conservative.
I like your full description of what he and his friends are up against on the various campuses they attend.
Maybe I haven't looked hard enough, but I have never seen a serious explanation of why the cost of a college education has tripled/quadrupled (???) since the 1970s. Few other commodities have experienced such an unchecked inflationary ascent. I have heard people say that this is the result of bloated budgets and administrative costs at colleges and universities, but I have the feeling that is only part of the picture. Of course, this price increase is only more galling when you consider how much the quality of education has declined during the same time period.
Anyway, what is more puzzling than the cause of this problem is that it doesn't seem to have had much of an effect. In a nation where almost everyone can/does go to college (at least for a while), where is the outrage at this ridiculous price increase? Egged on by the media, people pitch a hissy-fit every time gas goes up by $.50, but for some reason the same folks sit silently by while the cost of an elite college education bumps up $10k in 10 years. Color me confused b/c I just don't get it.
One other thing. I do see one tangible effect of the cost of college on people's lives. I see it factored into the mental calculus married couples use in deciding how many children to have. In fact, based purely on what I hear people say, I would say it is the primary economic reason well-to-do couples choose to have 2 or fewer children these days.
It's sad really, that people would choose to have fewer children in response to this problem than organizing and trying to find a way to stem rising prices in this market.
That's why we make our kids sign for their own loans for college. We have four, and we told them that we would like to retire in relative comfort before we're old and decrepit, and that we paid for Catholic schools for them from grades 1 to 12, so it was time for them to pony up. The older two are finished with college; one is in his last year of Law School, and the second is in his second year of a six year PhD program. We have two more coming up, and they know the drill already, and are looking for more affordable colleges.
Maybe I'm a reverse snob, but I don't see that Hahvad, Yale, Brown or any of the other Ivy Leagues educate anyone any better than some other, less expensive alternatives. Our neighbor's oldest son gave up a full scholarship to Emory Univ. because he was accepted at Harvard. He finished in three years, because he had a LOT of AP credits, but he still owed a bunch of money in loans. He told his Mom a year or two later that he regretted not having taken advantage of the scholarship because he felt he could have gotten an equal education and gotten out without any debt.
We're homeschooling our daughter in high school, and the Community College is a great place to get those Science courses that require labs. It's almost impossible, as an individual, to get the kind of supplies that are sold to schools.
well, you and I are working to buck that trend eh, Centaur?
Ole Miss is about 5K per year tuition only in state now isn't? That's a deal isn't it?
Our kids are getting loans and will pay them back. If we end up coming in to some money from stocks or something, we may help them as we can, but we're not telling them that so they're not expecting it.
They are VEY SERIES about their college work, since they're paying for it.
Has Yorktown received accreditation yet? It's tough enough to get into grad school, I can't imagine most schools would admit someone without an 'accredited' degree.
I don't know. We are certainly "in process," and I think on target for 2006, but I don't know if the final bill of approval has come down yet.
I teach a classroom based course, cause that's the deal, but I make a ton of resources available online including assessments.
The correlation between who succeeds in the class and who attends class is breathtaking.
I'm not saying that someone who never comes to class couldn't score an A. Nor couldn't someone who came to all classes still manage somehow to fail.
I've got five years, ten semesters, of data and the best predictor of final course grade isn't quiz, homework or final exam performance.
The best predictor of final course grade, from a purely statistical point of view, is attendance in class. Show up and you do fine. Blow off class, you'll likely fail.
I agree. Technical trades should be taught in technical schools. Liberal arts and sciences should be taught in colleges and universities.
I don't get it, either.
When my daughter graduates in 2007, she will be $100K in the hole.
And, she didn't foot the bill for all of her tuition.
I think, all totaled, it will be upwards to $150K.
Fortunately, in her field, prospective employers are offering signing bonuses,
and paying off tuition bills.
Hmmm.I've wondered the last several years whether university's and hsopitals might not be financial anachronisms.......
Kudos t oyo and your son...BTW I beleive Bill Gates never completed college...
"well, you and I are working to buck that trend eh, Centaur?"
LOL!
You two are doing your dangedest!
(I know...that's not a word)
So is my daughter.
As the Nana, I'm liking this trend. ;o)
Being debt-free (except for the mortgage on our house) at thirty is priceless.
Ah, yes "bucking trends" is a specialty of mine. LOL.
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