

Higher education

The college-cost calamity

Many American universities are in financial trouble

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Southern Lawyer



A. Andros

In the long ago summer of 1962 one scurried about the neighborhood with a lawnmower. The yearly tuition at the flagship state university was $220 a year. At two or three dollars a lawn this meant around one-hundred laws had to be mown . . . or so many tables waited upon . . . or whatever number of bales of hay stacked in order to meet the yearly cost of one's education. And, the quality of that education was pretty good. Adjunct "professors" were unknown and the tenured professors spent twelve to fifteen instructional hours in the classroom each week.

Fifty years later and tuition at that same university is now $13,000 annually while professors labor six to nine hours a week in the academic vinyard and the actual instructor is likely as not some put-upon adjunct who cobbles together various courses in order to stagger through the academic year without having to skip too many meals. On a positive note -- the student "health center" is phenomenal and future debt-slaves have but the shortest of waits to get their turn on the Stairmasters.

Every year I issue the same warnings to my high-school juniors and seniors. To begin with, private four-year colleges are for students from solidly middle-class families with substantial earning power. Many are little more than diploma mills and have diluted the quality of education they offer in order to empire-build with federal student loan funds.

If a student has some self-discipline I suggest he get his "generals" out of the way at one of the local community colleges and then transfer to a four-year state school. These community colleges are basically just high-school with ashtrays but they do allow one to skate through undergraduate requirements in useless disciplines like sociology and political science at low cost.

I tell them they are going to be ripped-of no matter where they attend. Today's faculties are only part of the problem, underworked and politically correct as they may be. On top of them, though, rests a wildly over-compensated cadre of drones -- such as the "Director of Cultural Diversity" at my alma mater -- who cheerfully squeeze the academic lemon (and I chose that word deliberately) until the pips squeak.

Above all -- avoid the loan trap! It is the vast hose stream of federal loan money that allows these alleged places of higher education (although higher that what? is a good question) to steadily inflate their faculties, administrations and facilities like a hot-air balloon made of elastic.

Finally, don't "follow your dream" . . . unless you plan to be a proctologist. Weigh carefully whether the world languishes in despair over its lack of sociologists, political scientists, communications majors and gender studies specialists. The study of liberal arts can be rewarding (it was for me) and, contrary to what one reads, corporations actually do hire liberal arts majors in large numbers. But, few, indeed, are those who will ever use their major in order to put bread on the table.

America is way over-invested in higher education. It has far too much money sunk into perpetuating an under-class of lotus-eaters. The colleges and universities have an unspoken alliance with liberal politicians that follows along these lines: "You keep sending us gobs of federal loan money and we'll keep brainwashing them with P.C. garbage."

You can get a decent higher education in America at a reasonable cost. But, the first means to accomplishing this goal is not a good SAT score, sterling recommendations or an enviable grade point average. What is needed is skepticism, wariness and more than just a soupcon of cynicism about the whole business.

In the long run

Pell grant and federal guaranteed student loans coupled with political correctness ensure that any and every living breathing American can go to college, regardless of aptitude. This in turn created a bubble in the college education market the same way federal guaranteed subprime loans created the housing bubble. Now the bubble is about to pop.

I have always maintained that not everyone should go to college, and that K-12 should be shortened to K-10. By 11th grade, we should know who has the aptitude to succeed in college and who would be better off going to a vocational school to learn a trade/skill. It doesn't mean that they can't go back to school later on, after working hard on their own to ensure success in college. Meanwhile, they can go find meaningful employment to help pay the bills, rather than pissing away federal grants/loans on remedial classes they have no interest in learning.

In addition, we are on the verge of a transformation with Online Education. Online education is now great for those who want to learn for the sake of learning, as the fear of cheating is preventing it from truely taking off as a substitute for a college diploma. However, this can be addressed through in-person certification exams administered by accredited testing agencies. We already have exams such as CFA, CPA, BAR, ARE, MCAT etc. We should expand these to include all disciplines from History, English to Math, Computer Programming, Engineering etc.

What will really drive this evolution is when corporations begin to accept certification exam results as substitute for college diploma. They should work with the college board to expand these certification exams. This will take power away from the few prestigious universities and return America to a true meritocracy, rather than one that's increasingly unequal by conferring disproportionate prestige to a handful of schools that unfairly pursues legacy admissions for children of the rich/famous/powerful/alumni/faculty, race based affirmative action, give preferences to athletes etc.

Agree. As an exchange student in engineering at a "prestigious" US university, I was shocked to see how many useless services are offered to students, and especially how many workers are employed to perform these services. Too many fat layers accumulated over time, and it's time to cut back.

Regarding education quality, I was also shocked. Despite spending a ton of money on text books and other teaching material, students at this top 4 engineering university did not seem like they could compete with the average student in my German engineering university, for which I pay a staggering 550 euros per semester (of course it is funded through taxes, but so are the universities in the US).

The difference is that my own university is much more efficiently run, and students feel less like consumers entitled to a fun amusement-park like experience.


The Economists views are pointed but miss the mark. It is the consumerization of the learning process that is the problem. As the Economist pointed out, schools compete for the best students and staff by providing more and more services to students. For example, at my college, they spends more on student services than they do on instructional materials. This has also led students to believe that since they are paying, they shouldn't really have to study and they should get an A. Many want to know why I haven't made learning fun "for" them.

Mathew Knudson





Funny, some people talk about focusing on trade and blue-collar skills...haven't they realized that good blue-collar jobs have gone?
What happens now is that the developing world is catching up, now we have a globalized world where competition is strong. Regardless of being an educated white collar or a blue-collar worker, from now on, to make a living, to succeed, one has to be very talented and hard working, and maybe work for less.
The era of easy, subsidized life, where any lazy average Joe could make a nice living in the rich world, while people in the third world starved, is over!

A. Andros













How to fix the university revenue model for students and society.

step by step...




This fixes the problem because...





any thoughts?

Adam Onge

Time to buy CDO's for student loans!
When I studied in (West)Germany in the early 70's, I didn't have to pay any tuition fees but now I teach at a University in North America, so of course, I like high tuition fees (except when I have to pay for my kids' education here!). It's all market driven smoke and mirrors (perception if you like). You don't have to be an MBA to know how to maximise profits (return if you wish) on a minimum of intellectual investment. Just water down the courses (put them on-line or let cheap part-time faculty teach them) and charge high tuition fees (money is the metric in MBA-speak). University professors and administrators are not dumber than the MBA's they produce en-masse. Marketing higher education is a piece of cake, even compared to selling real estate a few years ago.
Most University degrees (and most professors) are overrated anyway. Most jobs don't really need a University degree (who's going to do my plumbing?) Vocational colleges (trade schools) should be good enough even for training lawyers, doctors and MBA's. We can't all be Einsteins, not even the professors at Harvard!

Connect The Dots

Advice to incoming freshman:

1. Find something that you love. Something that you can pursue for a lifetime, passionately.

2. Find something that you are good at. Learn from the world's best mentors, teachers and universities. Innovate and become among the world's best.

3. Find a job that will compensate you for doing what you would almost do for free. A job that you feel you will never retire from. Create value for your customers. Be appreciated for your workmanship.


ALL THREE ARE NECESSARY for a fulfilling lifetime career.

To have a passion, a purpose and be productive...that is the meaning of life.


Clearly the problem is not going to be addressed by any single solution but rather by a range of complementary solutions. Focus is one part of the answer: there are far too many courses that lack any real-world justification. America in particular needs more mathematicians, engineers, chemists and physicists and far fewer art historians, masters of human sexuality, sociologists, and the endless stream of politically correct sub-specialists whose years of study yield nothing more than a total incapacity to function as productive members of a post-industrial society.

Then comes technology. It's truly amazing how few efficiencies have been adopted by the academic world. Whereas businesses are continually trying to improve their operations, educational institutions seem determined to remain wedded to what is essentially a medieval approach to knowledge transfer. This not only inflates costs but also precludes fruitful cross-discipline interactions - which is a shame, because it's often these types of interactions that lead to significant breakthroughs. Our PhDs know more and more about less and less, and this is a clear sign of academic failure to utilize both technology and basic common sense in the design of courses of study.

In addition, when was the last time a tenured academic was fired for laziness, incompetence, or general poor productivity? The guild approach to work is totally unsuited for the modern world. So scrapping the concept of tenure would result in a huge productivity boost overnight. It might also get rid of the tedious bores who drone on and on in lecture halls filled with students fighting to keep their eyelids from falling.

All of these reforms will, of course, be resisted by those now in place who believe it is their right to enjoy a cushy and undemanding existence. After all, academia has long been a place to hide for people who don't want to have to deal with the kinds of pressures found in the real world. But it precisely the fact that too many academics are trying to escape from the forces that lead to efficiency and effectiveness that has led us into this mess in the first place.


This policy of everyone needs a college degree needs to change.Its based on a myth that ALL jobs in the future will require adanced thinking skills.
Well here's news not more than 25% of any given population have the ability to productively and consistently engage in higher intellectual activities.Unless there is a breakthrough in Gene therapy this is unlikely to change.
The rest should be given good training so that they can become highly skilled and highly paid blue collar workers or craftsmen.
An assembly line worker at BMW in Germany earns $50/hour + benefits!
What we don't want is people who are less able graduating with useless college degrees and considering blue collar work beneath their dignity and leading frustrating miserable lives as a result.
This sorry state of affairs more than anything else probably explains the hollowing out of the Industrial base in US and other anglo saxon countries.
Being a white collar bank clerk selling iffy mortgages is considered more socially acceptable than a highly skilled blast furnace operator...


"especially when people start asking whether a degree in religious and women’s studies is worth the $100,000 debt incurred to pay for it"

No one has any grounds to cry and whine about being in debt and unable to find a job if they are stupid enough to major in religious and women's studies. Study that if you want to -- after all, study solely for the sake of personal enrichment is not a bad thing -- but endure the burdens of your personal choices in silence please. They are of your own making, and no one else wants to hear your bellyaching.

CnKQ7pSia6 in reply to zmjh

Uncle Sam already spends more than any other developed nation on education (both in aggregate as well as on a per capita basis). In higher eduation, even the top state university (UCal Berkeley) which has substantially lower fees than private universities has a much higher drop out rate. So money is clearly not the issue. It is precisely the government largesse accompanied by little to no accountability that has led to such poor results despite such high spending. So cut out the "put more into higher education" mantra.

I can understand if you feel the need to rant against unnecessary military adventurism, but please try and not forcibly inject that into discussions where it has little to no relevance.

As for the US minding its own business, I bet whichever country you live in, you'd feel very differently if Iran blocked the Straits or Hormuz or China blocked the South China seaway tomorrow. Or for that matter, if you were a West German during the cold war or a South Korean next to a maniacally murderous regime today. If people think so much that the US should mind its own business, why then this bipolar behavior where they keep calling on it to solve problems? The latest one is Syria, before that it was Libya, before that Egypt, and before that the protests in Iran.

Don't want the US to get involved? Fine. Just be ready to lose the good along with the bad. There won't be any more unnecessary wars like Iraq but there will also be nobody to rescue defenseless women from being raped or men from being butchered in places like Bosnia.


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