Posted on 04/04/2011 3:10:45 PM PDT by Kaslin
How much should a college education cost? According to the College Board, the average cost of earning a degree at a private, 4-year university is now more than $100,000. If tuition prices continue to rise as quickly as they did during the past decade, a college degree will cost more than $200,000 by the time today’s third-graders are applying. That price tag is enough to cause most parents to break into a sweat.
Is a college degree really worth this cost? Some bright minds think Americans are paying way too much. In fact, Bill Gates--one of the country's most famous college dropouts--thinks it should be closer to zero. He told an audience last summer: “Five years from now, on the web, for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world. It will be better than any single university.”
One could argue that the bright future Gates described is already here. The Massachusetts Institute for Technology has already put all of its instructional materials, including lectures, online and made it available for free. Other schools, including many elite universities, are following suit. For example, using iTunes University, you can already download free lectures from Stanford, Yale, and dozens of other colleges.
The trend of a free and open higher education system will revolutionize higher education, and fundamentally change the way that the world learns. As Gates argues, someday soon, anyone—anywhere in the world—with internet access will be able to learn from the best professors and teachers.
Of course, access to instruction isn't the only, or even primary, reason why most American students go to college. A big part of what today’s students are purchasing for that $100,000 is the degree itself—the credential that signals to employers and society in general that one is able to learn and can survive four years of classes and exams.
But alternative credentialing systems, like AP tests and CLEP exams, are already in place. And the realization of Bill Gates's vision of free online higher education will surely be followed by new credentialing systems that allow people who learn online to prove their accomplishments and signal their value to employers.
Forward thinking elected officials now have the opportunity to expedite the arrival of the free college era, and—in the process—solve a major problem for American families while providing big relief for taxpayers and federal and state budgets.
For too long, efforts to solve the college access and affordability problem have focused on increasing subsidies—grants, loans, and scholarships—for students to attend college. Increased student aid subsidies have contributed to today’s high tuition prices. The College Board reports that total federal support for all forms of college student aid programs was $146 billion in 2010—an increase of 136 percent over just a decade ago.
Instead of this continuing this failed approach—an approach we simply can no longer afford—elected officials should focus on dramatically lowering the costs associated with earning a college education. For example, Governor Rick Perry recently called on the Texas higher education system to develop a new program through which students can earn a college degree for only $10,000. Presumably, this initiative will take advantage of the exciting efficiencies that are happening thanks to online learning.
Leaders in Washington and in state capitals around the country should follow Governor Perry’s lead. Governors and state legislatures should require state-funded universities to follow schools like MIT—putting lectures and course content online for free. Like Texas, state higher education systems should create new credentialing systems to allow people who learn online to demonstrate their mastery and work towards a degree.
Congress and the administration have a responsibility to taxpayers to support reforms that will lower the $150 billion annual burden of student aid programs. For example, Congress could require a college that receives a certain level of direct federal subsidies place a percentage of its instructional content online for free. This initiative would follow the tradition of the Library of Congress—creating a national library of college lectures that all citizens can use. President Obama could use his bully pulpit to challenge universities across the country to do their part to solve a critical national problem.
Very few of our country’s many, big problems have simple and inexpensive solutions. We can’t afford to pass this one up.
American Students are doing the math, it makes no sense for them to go for an Engineering Degree based on how much they will make vs the cost.
These people will either do the work here or over there. It isn’t going to be done by Americans because the cost of the schooling is way too high. These people going after Masters and PHds are the cream of the crop sucked over here by companies using H1B visas.
Even if the program is killed and they all go home, the work would follow them back and not stay here. It costs only 30k a year for an engineer over there. In the US, it costs 40k just for an engineer’s benefits without even thinking about their salary.
The only way to get Americans back in these jobs is to radically reduce the costs. Reducing foreign students that pay for citizen students will cause them to increase rather than decrease tuition on everyone.
Don’t be knee-jerk anti-foreigner. They more than pay their way.
The only issue I have, is foreigners crowding out citizens willing to pay. Colleges and Universities claim they don’t do this but because of the foreigners being more successful in school (many are taking the class for the second time), this is the result on a lot of campuses.
If the kid graduates, after having spent $100-200,000, his parents lost their nest egg OR he will be faced with paying back those expensive loans while working at some dinky job. There are very few jobs that actually REQUIRE anything you learned in undergraduate school today, anyway. Yeah, employers want to see your degree, but only for as long as the guy at Subway wants to see your driver’s license.
Undergrad degrees are NOT worth the money. They have become 13th through 16th grades.
I would think that if you went to a company and showed the boss how you completed all the required courses online and took CLEP tests and proved it, the boss should be impressed that you have already proven you could save money, which every company wants to do.
And $100,000 is way too much money to party and have hot sex on roofs. You could get a job anywhere and do all that for free.
Likely, he already did...these doctors moved from practices in the US back to India....many are in the process of moving back because of the BS bureaucracy in the US ... a.k.a. Obamacare.
“and the only way you got less than an A was being a white male student.”
...or an avowed conservative. Students oppose the doctrinaire leftist ideology at their own peril. In universities, diversity is great as long as its not diversity of political views.
If they dropped all the BS courses and BS professors Like Bill Ayres and his wife, Angela Davis, Karenga who invented Kwaanza, who teach stuff like Black History. Socialism, Arab studies,If they dropped al those feel good liberal BS courses , and teach what is needed it could easily cut the costs.
There is a reason why our country is facing a critical Obstetrician crisis. They can no longer afford the malpractice insurance so they are switching to Internal Medicine or Family Practice, where the insurance is still manageable.
I earned my BS in Engineering in 1984. Non major used books were $20 to $30 and I had one new EE book run me over $300. That book was updated regularly and so was only good for a year and the book stores refused to buy them back.
I won't even get into the cost of my books for my Masters.
My econometrics text for this term was $180. The lowest I could find for a used one online was still over $100.
>>>>...or an avowed conservative. Students oppose the doctrinaire leftist ideology at their own peril. In universities, diversity is great as long as its not diversity of political views.<<<
Well, I’m here. That’s enough right there to get a B- in some quarters.
The fascinating thing to observe is that the leftist intellectuals throw the f-bomb around like its confetti at a parade and use the smear like the worst high school sophomore - yet they have advanced degrees. In comparison, all I have to do is read the posts here, many of which are polite, passionate, and focus on the topic at hand. I’ll take my B- if that’s what it means.
As someone who retired from a university after forty years and at sixty-seven years of age, there are many things that could be done to lower costs. When I was an assistant professor in 1973 I taught five courses and usually had couple of independent study students. A full professor taught four courses and could buy reduced time from research funding. By the time I retired in 2008 a full professor only taught one course per semester without buying time off and an assistant professor only taught three courses to give them time for independent scholarly activities.
If faculty carried the same loads today the costs would be drastically reduced.
There's three logical contradictions in this portion of the post. You want me to list them or do you want to re-think it first?
Reducing foreign students that pay for citizen students will cause them to increase rather than decrease tuition on everyone.
I guess in your world there's no supply and demand price curve.
Don’t be knee-jerk anti-foreigner.
My knee need not jerk at all to be anti-foreigner. I can do it sitting completely still.
The only issue I have, is foreigners crowding out citizens willing to pay. Colleges and Universities claim they don’t do this but because of the foreigners being more successful in school (many are taking the class for the second time), this is the result on a lot of campuses.
I gave a solution to this, but you came up with a muddled way to reject it.
I recently purchased a new copy of the “Atlas of Clinical Microbiology of Infectious Diseases”......$375. Good grief.
My son had well known and articulated conservative views in college and was not bashful in stating them. In spite of this, miraculously he somehow graduated with good grades. I think it was maily because he was likable and worked hard.
Colleges and Universities want to indoctrinate people. Not make it affordable. The education system is a mess.
Without moral and ethical education and standards college is a contagious mortal plague of secularism. It destroys the host.
Bill Gates is right in only a superficial theory of a fantasy that ignores key human natures.
Here’s a clue: College today is about the sports team or the Ivy name branding. Social aspects. Not at all about education.
Will Gates set a Microsoft policy that colleges history is to be forcefully ignored, if not counted negatively, in hiring? Let him back up his delusional fantasies with real action, and learn the outcome of the experiment.
Ive been “attending” Khan Academy http://www.khanacademy.org/ for the past few days, trying to learn the Calculus which I missed 45 years ago - I was too busy “being a college student” to study!
I’ve also “taken” a few of the MIT classes via YouTube. It is great to find this article and the link to the MIT OpenCourseWare!
Next step is to go to the town mayor and a realtor to see if we can get a long-term-vacant strip mall building to use as a free/lowcost “I Am Hungry For Learning” academy using Online Courses and out of work professionals as mentors.
Need to add a bunch of W. Edwards Deming’s quality teaching. We will pull ourselves out of this recession by demonstrating to potentially relocating businesses that we have a workforce eager to learn & produce quality products.
There IS a way to do it!
bookmark
I hope that's true.
I just ordered the books for one of the MIT courses and will see how it goes.
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