Posted on 06/09/2017 4:51:52 AM PDT by Kaslin
"Too many people are going to college," writes my American Enterprise Institute colleague Charles Murray. That's not a response to the mob of students who attacked him and the liberal professor who had invited him to speak back in March at Middlebury College. It's the title of the third chapter in his 2008 book, "Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality."
Since Murray wrote those words, higher-education enrollment has in fact declined, from 20.6 million in 2011 to 19 million in 2016, according to Ohio University economists Richard Vedder and Justin Strehle, who wrote about it in The Wall Street Journal. That 8 percent drop was concentrated in community colleges and for-profit schools.
But enrollment has been no better than flat at large four-year universities, and law school enrollment plunged by 31 percent from 2010 to 2015. And freshman enrollment at the University of Missouri has fallen by 35 percent since the riots during which a faculty member called for "muscle" against a student journalist.
One reason for the flight, Vedder and Strehle argue, is that the costs of higher education keep rising while the returns for a college diploma are getting worse. Tuitions and fees rose by 74 percent, adjusted for inflation, from 2000 to 2016, while the earnings differential between high-school and college graduates fell 10 percent.
For years, policymakers subsidized higher education, along with homeownership, because they noticed that college graduates and homeowners earned more and had stronger community ties than others. The thinking was that more subsidies would produce more of both.
Instead, over-subsidization led to the bursting of a housing bubble, and it seems to be leading now to what Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds identifies as the bursting of the higher-education bubble. The intended beneficiaries were left worse off after foreclosures, and the same may prove true for those with student loan debt (higher today than credit card debt).
It certainly looks as if federal aid and student loan and grant money have been vacuumed up by colleges and universities, which nationwide now employ more administrators than teachers. And this administrative bloat has had additional malign effects.
College and university administrators have done more to encourage and little to nothing to discourage campus violence -- e.g., the attacks on Murray at Middlebury, the riots to bar Ann Coulter from Berkeley and Heather Mac Donald from Claremont, the orgy to punish Bret Weinstein for refusing to stay off campus on "no whites" day at Evergreen State.
Administrators gleefully accepted the Obama Education Department's "guidance" to set up kangaroo courts to deny accused students legal representation, knowledge of charges against them and the right not to testify against themselves -- all to combat a bogus crisis of campus rapes based on misleading statistics. This persecution is documented in detail by KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor in the recent book "The Campus Rape Frenzy."
Administrators have also defended restrictive speech codes, which have made our campuses the part of America least open to free expression, against attacks from the indefatigable Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.
Young people planning their futures might be wise to hesitate to commit their time and money to institutions run by the people committing these outrages. And they have reason to suspect they don't offer much in the way of serious education.
The long march of the '60s generation has politicized disciplines from English to anthropology. University faculties, which range from the merely liberal to revolutionary leftists -- some diversity there! -- ensure that many classes are limited to mind-deadening denunciations of dead white men. Students interested in Shakespeare or American constitutional history need not apply.
Ethnic and women's studies departments have produced, here and there, some worthy scholarship, but a lot more of it is mindless agitprop. Thousands of Ph.D. theses are submitted each year in incomprehensible politically correct jargon, to be unread by anyone except writer and adviser -- or perhaps to be published in the plethora of similarly unread "peer-reviewed" journals, whose peer review process is not necessarily as rigorous as you think. One of these published an obvious spoof article submitted in jest, which was titled "The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct." This piece of anything but scholarship went right through without anyone's noticing it was a joke. It argued that penises are best understood as "an enacted social construct that is both damaging and problematic for society and future generations."
In "Real Education," Charles Murray argued that too many people go to college. Nine years later, it seems that more and more young people are concluding that American higher education -- and its administrative bloat -- is not worth their time or money. They may well be right.
I hope the higher education bubble bursts soon. In the large part, college is just a ripoff.
The cost/value equation is far off in many cases.
If you are going to college for a hard science career, it’s worthwhile. If you’re going because you want the college experience, forget it.
I have one son who is a senior in an engineering program. Another just graduated high school and plans on a career in the skilled trades. Many of his friends are planning tradesman careers too. I’m very happy about that.
One daughter is completing her degree online and saving tons of money.
But then I got a BS with a Math Major and Military Science (ROTC) minor, both those got me employment in the Army and later supporting the Army as a Civilian “Engineer”.
Now my stepson that was getting a drama major I told him his degree would qualify him to work at McDonalds.
Government schools (as much as the very words strike fear in me) need to take a lesson from German schools (assuming they still adhere to this philosophy).
Upon entering the 10th grade your curriculum should be geared towards one of two things:
1. Are you going to collage?
2. Are you going to pursue vocational training/education?
College Level Equivalency Exams (CLEP's) will level the playing field and then tilt it against current institutions of learning.
For most degrees, the answer is no. For some, the answer is yes.
JoMa
[Another just graduated high school and plans on a career in the skilled trades. Many of his friends are planning tradesman careers too. I’m very happy about that.]
Smart move. Godspeed to him.
One comment on one of the Evergreen videos was particularly good — referring to the Evergreen SJW protestors — it was something like "they basically kicked themselves out of college."
We just had the electrician out for 3 days, replacing a 40 year old electric line to our barn/shops that finally went bad. He’s done a lot of work for us over the years & we use him in particular because he does a good, honest day’s work, is very neat (building inspectors love his work) & obviously skillful. He makes GREAT money.
I’ve done pretty well with my English degrees, but that’s because I was able to market my skills in communications and technical writing. I will state that my two years spent at a community college taught me more than I ever learned in the two years at the college where I earned my BA. Graduate school was a waste of time, but at least it wasn’t expensive.
I have been considering a return to teaching — but I’d actually prefer teaching at the same comm college (now state college, I guess) where I had to go after high school. A great school, to be sure.
Certifications are actually more valuable to an employer, just too few of them recognize that. Plus, certifications have to be kept up. Once you have a degree, it’s forever, you don’t have to keep proving you know the stuff.
As usual, the question is describing the extremes rather than reality of the middle.
The question must be is post 12th grade education necessary?
The answer is yes if you want to be worth a damn.
In the present era, one needs to be very literate and have the ability to communicate by writing. One that cannot communicate with a company computer to work and then to do things like annually review the company health insurance and answer the questions has a problem
Locally, a community college was transformed into a job creating center by industrial transformation. The industries gor together and developed curricula that provided both specific and general training for a vast array of workaday jobs.
There is emphasis on basics of english and math. The students learn to communicate. There are more specific areas of study, health caare, office administration, industrial technology, information technology welding and on and on.
Virtually all graduates of the two year program have jobs immediately on graduating. Except...... those that decide to have their course work apply to a four year degree.
To my amazement, the school in question had tremendous, in fact fantastic growth. It is fulfilling the educational needs of students and educational requirements of employers.
The University has suffered. It has had a decline in freshmen that would have flunked out.
My son is looking at locksmithing. A friend of his works for his uncle learning heavy equipment operations. Another is thinking of welding.
College would probably be much more effective if one were required to be 20 before enrolling. Having two years of working in the real world and two years to grow up, not to mention having two years of savings to offset tuition and mitigate the need for so much student loan debt, would go a long way to solving the college crisis in a myriad of areas. Starting your professional career at the age of 24 would not be a bad thing.
I taught college courses for 16 years. I would not advise anyone but the most serious students to go to college. I would also advise being very careful about the school he or she selects.
I like the ancient Greek idea on education.
Student enrolls with a teacher
At the end of the class if the student thinks he has learned something of value he pays the teacher what he thinks it’s worth.
We have a father/son welding duo at church - no lack of work & they went to ND & worked the oil fields - made lots of good money.
The ability to read and comprehend will always be important.
The ability to write is less important for those who "make things work" - plumbers, electricians, auto mechanics, carpenters, and the like.
Hell I knew this 40 years ago
Vietnam War deferments and student loans started the education bubble
A most excellent assessment. Higher Ed is becoming lower Ed. The race hustling and feminist lawyers are dismantling the entire concept to divisive politics driven by hate brought mainline by the likes of Barack Hussein Obama and bill Ayers.
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