College goes down the shitter, survey says

[+ stevenkesslar]

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/06/09/national-poll-finds-overall-dissatisfaction-college-selection-process-while-parents

 

Key finding:

 

Sixty-eight percent of surveyed parents said they viewed undergraduate degrees in a positive light 10 years ago but only 44.6 percent saw the degrees favorably now, and there was a similar drop from 73.2 percent to 57.9 percent for graduate degrees.

Only 49.2 percent believed the institutions were paying attention to current labor needs and trends, and 54.8 percent said there was enough of an emphasis on job placement after graduation.

Those are interesting numbers, and possibly scary ones.

 

I think the big danger is that people are going to overreact, and throw the baby out with the bathwater. The survey results above do not say "parents are deciding college educations don't matter" but you could say it suggests they are moving in that direction. Almost every study on college and income I've seen lead to one huge and obvious conclusion: the better the education, the better the job and income, especially if you go into STEM fields.

 

I also think the media is doing as much harm as good on all this "middle class is dying" crap. The data basically suggest is that in the 1960's, when about 1 in 10 Americans had a college education, going to college was pretty much a sure way to become affluent. Now about 1 in 3 Americans are college educated. Most of the affluent are college educated, but increasingly, a college education may only be a sure way to become middle class, as opposed to affluent. But if the lesson people take away is that somehow college isn't the point any more, THAT is a sure way to doom kids who don't even try to the lower class.

 

I don't like the idea of ever flat out saying "liberal arts suck, forget about history and philosophy." But I do like the idea of really putting the megaphone on the fact that college has always been first and foremost about preparing kids for work and careers, and now we have to up our game in that area like never before.

[+ Chris Eisenhower]

Why didn't you tell me you were this smart? I would have slept with you after Trio, and possibly Tropicale as well.

[+ stevenkesslar]

Why didn't you tell me you were this smart? I would have slept with you after Trio, and possibly Tropicale as well.

 

Huh? I thought we did sleep together. Wasn't that what we were doing while you were possibly sucking my dick while I was asleep?

 

Oh, I get it. You were asleep too!

[+ Charlie]

When I was young, the assumption was that a college education would expose you to ideas and information, allow you to discover what you wanted to do with your life, help you to become a mature adult, and if all that happened, you would find some way to support yourself. Now the assumption seems to be that the purpose of college is to provide you with a ticket for a well-paid job in finance, government, business, technology, or medicine, from the moment you graduate until you retire. I find that very depressing.

[bigvalboy]

When I was young, the assumption was that a college education would expose you to ideas and information, allow you to discover what you wanted to do with your life, help you to become a mature adult, and if all that happened, you would find some way to support yourself. Now the assumption seems to be that the purpose of college is to provide you with a ticket for a well-paid job in finance, government, business, technology, or medicine, from the moment you graduate until you retire. I find that very depressing.

 

Well stated....

[BgMstr4u]

Charlie is right. I would take it a step further. The value of a liberal arts education is diminishing year by year as freedom of expression on campus erodes. And that from one who cherishes two Masters and a PhD and would not have traded those years of education for anything. But more and more, indoctrination is the order of the day. Of little value either for a job or for producing an informed thinking person able to see through the crap, whatever the crap du jour may be.

[tyro]

When I was young, the assumption was that a college education would expose you to ideas and information, allow you to discover what you wanted to do with your life, help you to become a mature adult, and if all that happened, you would find some way to support yourself. Now the assumption seems to be that the purpose of college is to provide you with a ticket for a well-paid job in finance, government, business, technology, or medicine, from the moment you graduate until you retire. I find that very depressing.

+1

[+ stevenkesslar]

When I was young, the assumption was that a college education would expose you to ideas and information, allow you to discover what you wanted to do with your life, help you to become a mature adult, and if all that happened, you would find some way to support yourself. Now the assumption seems to be that the purpose of college is to provide you with a ticket for a well-paid job in finance, government, business, technology, or medicine, from the moment you graduate until you retire. I find that very depressing.

 

Yes, and no, I think.

 

Bad news. When I was in college, I was a Wellstone groupie (the guy who tried to stop the Iraq War) and campus crusader who didn't want to major in Political Science because it was too practical, so I majored in Religion instead, and I wrote my senior thesis on the one religion the Dept. didn't offer courses in - Islam - and its struggle with modernization. 100 % liberal arts. Nothing even remotely relevant to today, huh? And my first 16 years employed was with local, state, and national non-profits because I wanted to make the world a better place. Despite every effort on my part to avoid financial success, I credit what I learned in college for my financial success. That's the way I'd like it to work for everyone, and you're right, Charlie, the idea that you go to school solely to focus on STEM and get a job at Google falls short of that.

 

Good news:

 

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2013/08/SDT-racial-relations-08-2013-03-06.png

 

As you can see, college entrance and completion rates have gone way up since I went to school, like double for blacks in particular, and they've gone up even more since you did, I suspect. This chart doesn't show it, but in the last few years for the first time we have gender parity between men and women who are college graduates. So the reality is that while we can idealize the great education we had, most people didn't get it. Today way more people do. That's why despite recent bumps, we have a much higher percentage of the population that is affluent or middle class, and it's more diverse, than when we went to school.

 

I feel the same way you do, but my hope is it's not either/or, it's both/and. It's probably the case that the lower we go down the student test score or GPA rankings, the more likely college is to be a challenge to complete, which is why I think only about 60 % of young people who enter college graduate. To me the ideal of a liberal arts education for all stands somewhere between an elitist myth that never really existed, and a practical goal that we should strive towards.

 

My guess is part of the reason that parents are losing faith in degrees is that they are at risk of concluding that the connection between degrees and jobs is weakening. Whether we knew it or not at the time, or cared about it, when we went to college a college degree pretty much was a ticket to financial success.

[+ quoththeraven]

Charlie is right. I would take it a step further. The value of a liberal arts education is diminishing year by year as freedom of expression on campus erodes. And that from one who cherishes two Masters and a PhD and would not have traded those years of education for anything. But more and more, indoctrination is the order of the day. Of little value either for a job or for producing an informed thinking person able to see through the crap, whatever the crap du jour may be.

 

Huh. One of the reasons I avoided majoring in sociology, which us perhaps closer to my real area of interest than political science and history, is that at the time the department was the domain of doctrinaire Marxists. There were probably a couple of Marxists in the poly sci department, and as it was I wrote an honors thesis on Marx, among others, but they were not doctrinaire. This was forty years ago.

 

Can you please point me to concrete data, as opposed to nonspecific grumbling and speculation, that freedom of expression (which I take to mean the professor's freedom to say what he wants) has been impinged other than when professors sexually harass or otherwise treat students on a basis other than merit? The cases of academic freedom of which I am aware concern tenured professors disagreeing with the administration finding themselves shoved out the door. Where is this indoctrination taking place?

[mike carey]

When I was young, the assumption was that a college education would expose you to ideas and information, allow you to discover what you wanted to do with your life, help you to become a mature adult, and if all that happened, you would find some way to support yourself. Now the assumption seems to be that the purpose of college is to provide you with a ticket for a well-paid job in finance, government, business, technology, or medicine, from the moment you graduate until you retire. I find that very depressing.

Well stated....

+ 1

[jcmiami1]

Plus the overwhelming student debt that is crushing students and families.

[ZhenXBear]

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/06/09/national-poll-finds-overall-dissatisfaction-college-selection-process-while-parents

 

Key finding:

 

Sixty-eight percent of surveyed parents said they viewed undergraduate degrees in a positive light 10 years ago but only 44.6 percent saw the degrees favorably now, and there was a similar drop from 73.2 percent to 57.9 percent for graduate degrees.

 

Only 49.2 percent believed the institutions were paying attention to current labor needs and trends, and 54.8 percent said there was enough of an emphasis on job placement after graduation.

Those are interesting numbers, and possibly scary ones.

 

I think the big danger is that people are going to overreact, and throw the baby out with the bathwater. The survey results above do not say "parents are deciding college educations don't matter" but you could say it suggests they are moving in that direction. Almost every study on college and income I've seen lead to one huge and obvious conclusion: the better the education, the better the job and income, especially if you go into STEM fields.

 

I also think the media is doing as much harm as good on all this "middle class is dying" crap. The data basically suggest is that in the 1960's, when about 1 in 10 Americans had a college education, going to college was pretty much a sure way to become affluent. Now about 1 in 3 Americans are college educated. Most of the affluent are college educated, but increasingly, a college education may only be a sure way to become middle class, as opposed to affluent. But if the lesson people take away is that somehow college isn't the point any more, THAT is a sure way to doom kids who don't even try to the lower class.

 

I don't like the idea of ever flat out saying "liberal arts suck, forget about history and philosophy." But I do like the idea of really putting the megaphone on the fact that college has always been first and foremost about preparing kids for work and careers, and now we have to up our game in that area like never before.

 

Definitely an alarming statistic, Steven. When I was in college my degree choice was very focused, so when I graduated I knew exactly what I was going to be doing in healthcare. I did go to a University that insisted that even Science focused majors receive "core requirements" in both the arts, humanities and business. At the time I was pretty annoyed but looking back I do feel they helped me indirectly, but not directly.

 

In addition to the spiraling cost of education I think what's missing is transparency on the part of Universities. It's almost reached the point where I feel that the Federal government and any institution that accepts financial aid should be required to publish the average salaries, job employment prospects and job titles of every degrees student for a period of five years after graduation.

 

So often we see case examples of students graduating with Political Science, history or basic business degrees who find jobs that leave them incapable of making student loan payments. When someone declares a major there should be transparency and doses of reality surrounding what they're going to be able to do with it.

 

I'm also disturbed by the profitability associated with funding education. I'm immediately distrustful because the global banking system is painfully morally bankrupt. I truly wish the government would fully fund education at zero interest rates so that when people came out of college they didn't have so many chips stacked against their success. It's one of the few things all Americans could benefit from and actually use other than the postal service.

 

Today, I'm still involved with my original career choice but it's taken me in an interesting and enjoyable direction. I wish that every college student today could have some level of security knowing that their decisions to pursue a specific degree was not going to be the specter that haunts them 10 years down the road.

[ZhenXBear]

When I was young, the assumption was that a college education would expose you to ideas and information, allow you to discover what you wanted to do with your life, help you to become a mature adult, and if all that happened, you would find some way to support yourself. Now the assumption seems to be that the purpose of college is to provide you with a ticket for a well-paid job in finance, government, business, technology, or medicine, from the moment you graduate until you retire. I find that very depressing.

 

I think business has been the death knell of liberal arts degrees. They don't want to mentor people and develop skill sets in potential employees who could be brilliant assets if developed. They want to hire and have you hit the ground running, bringing most things to the table; if your lucky you get to add things to your tool chest while your there. I honestly don't know how these young grass get much of a break.

[+ stevenkesslar]

Your comments hit on so many of the key points as I see them that I separated them and will just do a +1 by way of asking questions I think we all ought to be thinking about, if the goal is to get to effective and pragmatic solutions:

 

When I was in college my degree choice was very focused, so when I graduated I knew exactly what I was going to be doing in healthcare. I did go to a University that insisted that even Science focused majors receive "core requirements" in both the arts, humanities and business. At the time I was pretty annoyed but looking back I do feel they helped me indirectly, but not directly.

 

Absolutely. I was just with a client who is a retired professor and administrator who proudly helped guide his college into a health care curriculum that was clearly needed and clearly helped lots of people get jobs. He is also proudly a historian. As we discussed this issue he was passionate about the fact that even if you are choosing a field of study that is likely to guide you to financial success, you should also be required to get a well-rounded education. So the question is, what are the best ways to make this both/and, rather than either/or?

 

In addition to the spiraling cost of education I think what's missing is transparency on the part of Universities.

 

Absolutely. Any effective proposals to throw more money at education are going to have to include standards and accountability. And in some ways it's not about spending more money on education. What we basically did is shifted costs from taxpayers to students, who had to accept skyrocketing tuition and debt. In my mind as a taxpayer it is perfectly reasonable to say I'll pay more taxes to help pay for your education, so you can have less debt, but I expect accountability in return. So the question is, what are the best standards and ways to hold colleges and students accountable?

 

So often we see case examples of students graduating with Political Science, history or basic business degrees who find jobs that leave them incapable of making student loan payments. When someone declares a major there should be transparency and doses of reality surrounding what they're going to be able to do with it.

 

Absolutely. As I said above, I am a poster child for getting a liberal arts education, and I went out of my way to avoid the things that looked like the sure path to financial success. Fortunately, my Mom and Dad made enough to pay for most of my education, and I got Summer jobs, so I had no debt. And ha ha, I'm a smart enough guy with a good enough education that I succeeded financially anyway. But I think it really is a myth to say there used to be some golden day when everybody got this great liberal arts education we don't get today. To overstate the point, that world mainly benefited middle-class and upper-class white men, like me, it was an elitist model, and it all was based on the idea that only 10 % or so of the population goes to college, and they are the best and the brightest, and their degree will end up being a ticket to affluence, regardless of what they study. That world still exists at places like Harvard and Yale. College has always been about jobs as well as well-rounded education. So the question is, what are the best models today, in a more diverse country where more kids of more races and more skill levels are going to college than ever before?

 

Today, I'm still involved with my original career choice but it's taken me in an interesting and enjoyable direction. I wish that every college student today could have some level of security knowing that their decisions to pursue a specific degree was not going to be the specter that haunts them 10 years down the road.

 

Absolutely. One of my clients thinks that any student who gets federal help should be required to complete college at a 4 year institution in 4 years. I think that's a nice ideal, especially if the deal includes taxpayers paying for all or most of the ride, but it has to deal with the financial reality that people have to pay their bills, and not everyone comes from a middle-class family. And the other reason that some students take longer is they take "unnecessary" classes. But in a world where it's more likely than ever that you will bounce between different careers, either within one field or across fields, is it bad to, in effect, be "overeducated?" I would argue you can't be "overeducated" in today's job market. So the question is, if taxpayers are footing some or all of the bill, what is a reasonable set of expectations of students in terms of how much education they get?

 

I'm also disturbed by the profitability associated with funding education

 

Absolutely. If there is one simple, one-size-fits-all solution, I think it would be to ban for-profit education, period. Unfortunately, that would throw a lot of good babies out with the bad bathwater. The Obama administration has made some reasonable attempts to crack down on the worst offenders with the highest drop-out rates where students with inadequate skills were more or less doomed to fail. The other point to remember is Elizabeth Warren is right: the federal loan program is a profit center. The question is, how much sense does it make to weaken our economy long-term by forcing students who do graduate and got jobs to carry heavy debt loads, just so we can have a federal student loan program that in the short-term makes money?

 

I have a personal way of thinking about this. The government, who greatly fear the older voters who AARP organizes so well, is willing to dump limitless amounts of money through Medicare and Medicaid on my 93 year old Mom who has dementia and who bluntly has not future but to slowly waste away and die. I am very grateful for those programs. But why in God's name would the same government say that my Mom, if she were 18, can't go get the kind of education that would make her and her family prosper, unless she is willing to go into massive debt? As long as we stay out of more stupid wars, I don't think these are either/or choices. We can "take care" of both my Mom and her granddaughters. I hope we have a serious debate in this election about our investment priorities.

[+ stevenkesslar]

Speaking of having a debate about our investment priorities:

 

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/06/11/elizabeth-warren-outlines-debt-free-college-plan-calls-more-funding-higher-ed

 

When it comes to this issue, Elizabeth Warren is my gal! I love her.

 

What do you folks think of these ideas?

 

To quote her, on a political level, this is what it boils down to to me:

 

Making college more affordable, she said, would require a boost in federal spending but also greater accountability for how colleges and states use that money -- a “one-two punch” that she said should have bipartisan appeal.

 

“We can do it if Republicans admit that we will never have affordable college without investing more resources in education,” she said. “And if Democrats admit that we will never have affordable college without demanding real accountability in exchange for those investments.”

[+ stevenkesslar]

I think business has been the death knell of liberal arts degrees. They don't want to mentor people and develop skill sets in potential employees who could be brilliant assets if developed. They want to hire and have you hit the ground running, bringing most things to the table; if your lucky you get to add things to your tool chest while your there. I honestly don't know how these young grass get much of a break.

 

One other comment on the role of big business.

 

As a liberal Democrat, I don't view the US Chamber of Commerce as my natural ally. But I like the fact that in the 2014 midterms, they had the effect of taking Tea Partyish wingnuts out of the political process. Whether this means we really get a more moderate and bipartisan Conress that gets things done remains to be seen. Maybe it just got us a Republican Congress that will give us more gridlock. But I think the Chamber and I are mostly of one voice: we need to work toward bipartisan and pragmatic solutions.

 

I think the same thing applies to the growing chorus of businesses that are saying there are serious skills gaps for good paying jobs. As I've said on other posts, this is a great problem to have, compared to the idea during the Great Recession that all the good jobs are gone, or at least gone to China. All my political experience suggests that the Chamber will feel that big business is, in effect, being victimized, and that the problem is that all the taxes they already pay are being misspent by the government, and they should be spent differently so that the government somehow produces more skilled workers using the tax dollars they already have. To me, this is an opportunity for compromise, because it means they are going to be willing to come to the table and figure out something that will help create a better educated and better skilled work force. They clearly are starting to speak about the need for it.

 

Final point: Pew surveys have documented that the Millenials are both the most liberal generation alive today, and the most pro-corporate generation. This makes perfect sense to me. All my nieces and nephews that are financially successful work for multi-national corporations: hospitality, drugs, accounting. They get the picture that their fate is tied to the fate of global capitalism. To me the political emphasis is obvious, and I wish the Millenials would wake up and drive it: we need the best education system that feeds workers into the global capitalistist work force but still tries to balance that goal with traditional liberal arts, and we need to figure out 1000 creative ways to demand that, as part of the deal, businesses at every level help these young people keep learning and developing skills after they graduate and get jobs. Starbucks is one interesting model of how business can do that. Easy to say, hard to do, but I think survey says it is what the young people most effected want.

[ZhenXBear]

Speaking of having a debate about our investment priorities:

 

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/06/11/elizabeth-warren-outlines-debt-free-college-plan-calls-more-funding-higher-ed

 

When it comes to this issue, Elizabeth Warren is my gal! I love her.

 

 

I absolutely LOVE her. She's completely unafraid to take both sides of the aisle to task. Her scathing speech about the necessity to bust Citibank apart and the subtle yet painful links of its alumni to bipartisan campaign contributions and "fox guarding henhouse" mentality at the Federal Reserve were blisteringly passionate. If she ever runs for President she has my vote.

[+ quoththeraven]

I absolutely LOVE her. She's completely unafraid to take both sides of the aisle to task. Her scathing speech about the necessity to bust Citibank apart and the subtle yet painful links of its alumni to bipartisan campaign contributions and "fox guarding henhouse" mentality at the Federal Reserve were blisteringly passionate. If she ever runs for President she has my vote.

 

I've said this before: I think Elizabeth Warren is superbright and her ideas, especially about the financial crisis and economic issues, are on the money. Her background is in law and economic analysis. She works from facts and studies, not assumptions, and she's willing to slay sacred cows.

 

But ... she has never in her life run anything or been an administrator. She is a truthteller, not (as far as I can tell) a natural at legislative negotiation and compromise. She's not enough of a whore, to use Steven Kesslar's term.

 

She is far more useful as a Senatorial gadfly and conscience than she would be running for preside, and her virtues are too intellectual and left-wing for her to win. Much the same can be said of Bernie Sanders.

 

She'd also make a fine Supreme Court justice.

[+ stevenkesslar]

But ... she has never in her life run anything or been an administrator. She is a truthteller, not (as far as I can tell) a natural at legislative negotiation and compromise. She's not enough of a whore, to use Steven Kesslar's term.

 

She is far more useful as a Senatorial gadfly and conscience than she would be running for preside, and her virtues are too intellectual and left-wing for her to win.

 

Maybe, maybe not.

 

My original reason for being for Hillary in 2008 was that I thought Barack should run once he learned how to get bills passed. I actually think that given his lack of administrative experience, he has done a really good job. If he had learned what LBJ learned before being elected, I think he could have done better. Or maybe his problem is he is too nice a guy, and LBJ was better at getting laws passed because he was a total prick. Life is strange, and politics is not always a sport in which nice guys win.

 

I am glad Elizabeth Warren is not running. Regardless of who wins in 2016, I hope she plays a huge role in the Senate. Like Paul Wellstone, the danger is she will only be viewed as a ranter and raver. Wellstone figured that out, and we'll never known what he might have done had he lived. With luck, we'll learn what Elizabeth Warren is capable of. I actually hope I will get to vote for her for President some day, when she is an older and wiser whore. Oh, forgive me. I mean leader.

[ZhenXBear]

I've said this before: I think Elizabeth Warren is superbright and her ideas, especially about the financial crisis and economic issues, are on the money. Her background is in law and economic analysis. She works from facts and studies, not assumptions, and she's willing to slay sacred cows.

 

But ... she has never in her life run anything or been an administrator. She is a truthteller, not (as far as I can tell) a natural at legislative negotiation and compromise.

 

If only we had more people in both the House and Senate that were truth tellers and willing to send sacred cows to slaughter; I find her pragmatism refreshing.

 

If anything it gives me hope that eventually our partisan elder-statesmen (and women) will stop choking each other long enough to notice America's meteoric disintegration soon enough to change course and prevent an extinction level event.

 

Idealistic of me perhaps, but I truly long for an age of willing compromise and progress. As it stands the vitriol the opposing Party has for any sitting President coupled with a fear that he or she might possibly be viewed in the slightest positive light, prevents compromise on any issue. We've arrived at a time where the needs of the Party supersede those of the Nation; a dangerous place.

 

Perhaps this is why I love that old campy Sci Fi movie "Mars Attacks"; when the Martians wipe out all of Congress and most of the Senate; finally we overcome a lack of term limitations!

 

"I'd like the American people to know that they've still got 2 out of 3 branches of the government working for them and that ain't bad!" ~~ Jack Nicholson.

[Frequentflier]

Colleges & universities are too expensive because of too high wages, benefits and (in too many cases) expensive campuses and building programs. The fact loving parents and other relatives will save for decades and then with students borrow to what seems like no limit allows colleges & universities to raise tuition, room/board and fees to absorb the aforementioned savings and loan proceeds plus government grant money. I don't think there is a shortage of government spending, grants, loan programs or loan forgiveness programs. More government/taxpayer support isn't the answer. Less government money and less loan forgiveness may drive students and their families to choose less expensive colleges/universities and perhaps when schools don't "sell out" and have vacancies they might swap their fire hose spending of cash for a garden hose. If you can't get a loan to buy a $100 k car, you'll buy a less costly vehicle that still provides you the necessary benefits. I had loan payments for 10 years and paid off 100%. Can't pay back, don't borrow. New programs that allow students to better evaluate their choice of colleges before deciding is a good thing - how have previous graduates with different types of degrees done after graduation. And we should, like home ownership, stop telling people they will not realize their full potential without a four year degree. To many, a two year or no year advanced degree might be just fine for them. I can hire a college graduate easier and faster for my business than I can find a good, reliable and fairly priced electrician or plumber.

[+ stevenkesslar]

More government/taxpayer support isn't the answer. Less government money and less loan forgiveness may drive students and their families to choose less expensive colleges/universities and perhaps when schools don't "sell out" and have vacancies they might swap their fire hose spending of cash for a garden hose. If you can't get a loan to buy a $100 k car, you'll buy a less costly vehicle that still provides you the necessary benefits. I had loan payments for 10 years and paid off 100%. Can't pay back, don't borrow. New programs that allow students to better evaluate their choice of colleges before deciding is a good thing - how have previous graduates with different types of degrees done after graduation. And we should, like home ownership, stop telling people they will not realize their full potential without a four year degree. To many, a two year or no year advanced degree might be just fine for them.

 

You make excellent points:

 

- Some people are better off in a 2 year program

 

- The track record is that if you just throw money at colleges, they will figure out how to spend it.

 

- New online apps that allow students to make wise and affordable choices are becoming increasingly available, and are awesome. An example:

 

https://www.collegeraptor.com/

 

The only thing I'd dispute is the wording of what you say about government spending.

 

I think the Tea Party strategy has been to defund colleges in hopes that eventually they will be able to force colleges to cut professor pay, make professors work harder, or whatever else it is they think they want to do.

 

Ask my brother and his wife, who are both university professors in schools that have been Ground Zero for the Tea Partyers, and they will tell you that very little has changed in terms of professor pay. He has been nicked, not cut. The bottom line formula goes like this:

 

less federal and state funding for education = more student debt

 

The idea that if we just spend less money, good things will happen is just wrong, and we should admit it. It is fucking up the economy by crippling even successful, bright students with too much debt. I would argue it undercuts the very ideal of an educated, meritocratic democracy built on capitalism.

 

That does not mean we should spend more money. I would love to see proposals that accomplish some form of funding freeze, on a per student basis, and simply reverse the process of transferring costs from taxpayers to students. I don't think it's about giving colleges more money, it's about who foots the bill. The idea used to be that taxpayers footed the bill, students studied and graduated and got jobs, and then paid it forward for the next generation in taxes. We need to get back to that.

[ZhenXBear]

When I was in my early 30's I was asked by a college freshman to attend a football game in the President's box (another story as to why). As I sat there enjoying the game I took note of the cheesecake that was embossed with gold foil signature initials of the President; the lavish gourmet repaste was delicious but it quickly became painfully obvious where tuition money was going.

 

I understand that at times Universities must spend money on such functions to secure large donations and endowments, but having paid for my own education I simply couldn't help but ponder how many semester hours that entire event would have funded, or degrees for that matter.

 

In reading about the breathtaking salaries for Reagents in California is has become pretty clear that some of these 450k+ salaries aren't sustainable.

 

I wonder how many students it took to finance that cheesecake and how many are still paying for it years later.

[+ quoththeraven]

If only we had more people in both the House and Senate that were truth tellers and willing to send sacred cows to slaughter; I find her pragmatism refreshing.

 

If anything it gives me hope that eventually our partisan elder-statesmen (and women) will stop choking each other long enough to notice America's meteoric disintegration soon enough to change course and prevent an extinction level event.

 

Idealistic of me perhaps, but I truly long for an age of willing compromise and progress. As it stands the vitriol the opposing Party has for any sitting President coupled with a fear that he or she might possibly be viewed in the slightest positive light, prevents compromise on any issue. We've arrived at a time where the needs of the Party supersede those of the Nation; a dangerous place.

 

As partisan as things always have been -- and in some ways the rhetoric, if nothing else, was worse in the 19th century, when personal invective was considered par for the course, than it is now-- there was a time in my lifetime when there was more bipartisanship, especially on foreign policy, and less polarization. From what I understand, this might have been a leftover from WWII, when the country was mostly united. Nothing unites us as easily as a common enemy.

 

The Civil Rights Act and other domestic legislation of the 60s could not have passed without Republican votes wrangled by Everett Dirksen behind the scenes. (In other words the Republicans still remembered their Civil War era roots and weren't white supremacists' party of choice back then.) Richard Nixon, may he rest in peace -- bright but neurotic guy who demanded his underlings put protecting him above their offices, which was his undoing -- was a lefty on domestic policy by comparison to Republicans these days. Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan served in an important policy position under Nixon. The EPA and the Legal Services Corporation were founded during the Nixon Administration. He may have made changes along the margins that favored business more than had been the case under LBJ, and his propensity for dirty tricks and seeing enemies around every corner led the FBI and CIA to even greater violations of civil liberties than before, but his administration and that of Gerald Ford largely continued LBJ's domestic policies.

 

This unity remained even under Ronald Reagan, whose administration I still mostly despise but for whom I don't have the hatred I used to have. (George W. Bush's administration and reading excerpts from Reagan's diaries cured me.) Reagan and Speaker Tip O'Neill had a cordial working relationship even though they differed over policy, and O'Neill let his Democrats vote on bills instead of blocking them unless a majority of his party members supported them, as the House Republicans now do.

 

It seems as though things went south starting with the Clinton administration, mostly because the Republicans decided that bipartisanship and putting the interests of the people as a whole first, as opposed to the people who could get them nominated, was no longer in their interests.

 

I don't have any solutions to offer other than to suggest that we get the government we deserve. People complain about negative ads, but they work. They complain about sensationalism in media, but it gets clicks and attention. As Pogo said, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

[+ Charlie]

One of the big problems with such a discussion is the definition of "college," which covers as multifarious a range of possibilities as "dog" does. A community college in the rural South, a large state university in the Midwest, and a prestigious private college in the Northeast can be as different as a Rottweiler, a Whippet and a Pekinese. Different colleges are good and bad for different purposes. If you want to work for Bain Capital, a major DC law firm, or become a research physicist, you go to an Ivy or Stanford, MIT or maybe a top state university like Michigan, you don't go to Cal State Fullerton or Oklahoma Baptist U; it also helps if your parents are doctors or corporate executives. If you want a decent middle class job, you have many more choices, but there are still numerous routes to get there, from a solid state university or second tier private college, to starting in a community college and eventually transferring to a four year school. There are also good jobs to be had with a two year technical degree. If you are a really bright and creative type, and can accept insecurity, you may not need to graduate from any kind of college.

 

Most of the criticism of "college" or "university" education these days is based on examination of a very small slice of higher education, generally the most prestigious schools, the same kinds that the authors of those books and articles went to themselves. Yes, the faculty at the top schools--both private and public--lean strongly to the left, and are paid a lot of money, and often do little actual teaching of undergraduates; that job is left to TAs. But the majority of private colleges and state schools--even the flagship state universities--still have ideologically middle-of-the-road faculty who make less money than they could in private industry or even government bureaucracies, and a high percentage of the undergraduate teaching at the public colleges is done by part-time faculty who eke out a living by teaching several courses at a time at different schools. I have known plenty of these "adjunct instructors," who are lucky to make $30,000/year. The large increases in the cost of a college education are often driven by the proliferation of administrative non-teaching employees, and the obscene salaries and benefits paid to the top officers at many schools and education systems, like the three tiers of the state higher education apparatus in California. The excuse used for paying so much for the presidents, deans, CFOs, etc., is that it is necessary to attract "qualified" people to run things, as though their main qualification is the desire to make as much money as possible.

 

I could go on and on about this subject, but I don't want to sit here typing all night and raising my blood pressure.