Is college pointless?

Permabear

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liah

I think it's very possible to succeed without completing college; there's quite a few notable successes who demonstrate this.

I do, however, think it's dangerous to say it's pointless. Education is never pointless, and without it crime and poverty quickly take hold. I just think there should be more alternatives with equal worth in the eyes of prospective employers, instead of the be-all-end-all being a university education.

Obviously, I speak with some bias here, as I've never gone to post-secondary education. I believe I would be the type to excel in an alternative method of education, unfortunately there is none and I have adapted to learn as much as I possibly can on my own - I am unbelievably lucky to be born in a time period in which I have easy access to the internet, I don't know what I would do otherwise.
There are many others out there like me, and it saddens me to see people like us passed over for jobs we have a wealth of practical experience in for comparative newbies who happen to have a piece of paper that indicates they're, at the very least, good at rote and/or theoretical learning, but doesn't clarify much else.

As for the Libertarian aspect.. I can never agree to any cuts in funding to any form of education. It's simply too valuable, not only to individuals but the development of a healthy and progressive society. If anything, the education system should be looked at and perhaps they can come up with a more efficient system that both educates while keeping in mind alternative learning methods and somehow cuts down on taxes, but I wouldn't be getting my hopes up for it.

Red Hand

It's pointless in many cases. In the past, a lot of careers/jobs started out with apprenticeships where you would gradually learn your trade. I think something like this should be applied to many disciplines such as the sciences and engineering as an alternative or in conjunction to, college.

I know a few French people studying engineering and they have a system in their college (similiar to an IT in Ireland) of getting 6 weeks work, followed by 3 weeks college and alternating like that in their particular course (engineering) which I think is a good idea. Breaks up the difference between the world you will be entering and college.

Furthermore, a lot of what is taught may be very dry, or else, there may be a module that you feel that you won't use or whatever. It can kill your enthusiasm for your subject.

Maybe instead of getting people taught stuff that teachers think is useful, you could say, "ok so you want to study this discipline, so what do you want to be taught?":) That might be impractical, but I do think apprenticeship type teaching would be very useful compared to sitting in a lecture hall all day slowly going brain dead.

Permabear

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amacachi

In a lot of cases it's pointless, obviously. Or at least others having to pay for it will colour it as such.

beeftotheheels

Permabear wrote: »

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It's not just about learning though. It is also about having a nice safe environment in which to play at being a grown up.

My college put all first years in college dorms on a site miles away from the university. The assumption was that every one on that campus was a fresher so it facilitated many aspects of the college, from the SU through to the staff, minding us (and they did).

It meant we were all green babies together. But this also allowed us to engage in debates in a way we might not have done with older students (shocking to think back that as a fresher I was in awe of finalists), it built up our confidence while teaching us to think for ourselves.

And by the time you're a finalist you feel responsibility towards the freshers in your department, you want to encourage them to think and argue (because you're still green but you're not as aware of it).

And then you start work, in my case in the professions, and again you have green babies together but based on the college experience it is not so daunting. And you realize years later that you are actually viewing the new trainees in much the same way as you viewed freshers as a finalist.

Personally I think the experience was invaluable, it gives you a period of time between 17 and 20 to broaden your mind, and have stupid ideals, and explore what those ideals actually mean and feel like a responsible adult without actually having all the responsibility of being a responsible adult.

I think I have learned more in book terms since I graduated by actually reading that which interests me, but I'm not convinced I would have realized what interests me without the mind broadening experience of having gone to college and having met so many different people from so many different backgrounds within the safety net of the college experience.

doopa

Very interesting and timely question.

I wouldn't go the whole hog and suggest we suddenly abolish third level education. However, I reckon we need to move towards more 'continuous education'. For most jobs a college degree isn't required. Its just a convienent way for employers to filter applicants. It says that the applicant is capable of agreeing to a contract of defined length and seeing it through. I'd also argue soft skills are likely to be better amongst graduates. The cost of this filter for employers is being borne by the employee in the form of loans and the taxpayer in the form of subsidies to universities. People continue to go to uni because of the belief that it will lead to better jobs, and on average it probably is still true.

If more training was available to employees on a continuing and on going basis from educational establishments then I reckon this would be a better configuration for all concerns. We do still need educational establishments, because of the networks they form and the reputational benefits that they bring. Accountancy is a good example, many people enter after college and are surprised to learn that they still have to do the many of the same exams that a high school graduate has to do. However, the high school grad will be finished the 'training' before the college grad starts. Why then are there so many college grads going to uni? Banking is similar.

To look at another way if we really do value what is learnt specifically at college then there is no reason not to move to more intensive college education. IMO most technical qualifications could be completed in two years if the student (and lecturer) worked full time i.e. no summer holidays. This would be of benefit to the student, allowing them to accrue less fees, but its of little benefit to the lecturer who is not currently incentivised to teach as much as possible (its not their only activity remember). However, this is unlikely to happen - and probably will never happen for 'elite' colleges. But it certainly could for second tier unis, or you could chop and change between colleges more easily. This is more feasible given the modular nature of things nowadays. I love the Open University model and would love to see it expanded.

There was a really good in our time on radio 4 recently that went over the formation of universities and what they were originally for. To summarise what I learnt - its not what we use them for now.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00zf384/In_Our_Time_The_Medieval_University/

The Scientician

I don't think it's pointless by any means, but it doesn't suit everybody. I also think that if you can, when you leave school you should work for a couple of years, or do something other than college before deciding what course to pursue. A lot of students leave school at 17/18 without a pup's notion what to do education and careerwise and end up picking courses that don't interest them or don't suit them or ultimately turn out to be useful from any economic perspective.

nyarlothothep

If you subscribe to the idea that colleges should solely churn out graduates for industrialists then yes, most of the education provided is pointless from their perspective. On the other hand there is the the knowledge for its own sake position. I think there may be too many people in education. I think a well educated populace is a great thing, a culture of education, learning and independent thinking is something that should be strongly encouraged but the tertiary education sector appears to be over saturated due in part I should think to bad policies, politics and profiteering/status seeking on the part of universities. In addition I think there are too many pointless courses designed solely to get money from students, but that is not to say that all new courses/disciplines outside of the traditional framework are pointless.

Or...maybe its just the growing pains of an advancing world, if you could read and write in the 10th century one was very educated relatively speaking. Now that societies are more complex and we have a greater wealth of knowledge to draw upon the standard is higher.

Annasopra

It depends really what you see the purpose of college as; is it for example just a place to create people for employment? or is it something much more than that? Most of the discussion has focused on employment and the economy but also I think the academy has a much much broader purpose personally; I think it should be a place to educate, develop and nurture students but also to critically engage with itself and with the outside world.

Denerick

I'm an admirer of the classical education; philosophy, history, literature, economics, politcs etc. etc. Perhaps an over-indulgance in abstraction but after all it is (mostly) through abstract thought that we expand our minds, and hence grow more rounded as individuals.

I'm quite skeptical of the utility of the generic business courses, or the many ITs dotted about the country which are conferring qualifications on people who don't really benefit from them or even use them in their future careers.

whydoibother?

It depends what you want to do. If somebody wanted to be a doctor or a vet for example, college is obviously completely essential.

There are some jobs that could be done equally well without a degree, but employers often specify that they want one and if you want to apply you need it. This is not an ideal situation, but having a degree even if it is irrelevant to the job in question, may be the difference between a person being allowed to apply or not. You might say his should change, but a person making the decision whether to go to college or not this minute has to look at the world as it is, not as they would like it to be.

I do think completing a college course shows certain things about a person - a certain level of intelligence, commitment, motivation, forward planning (ability to sacrifice living standard and income now for better prospects later). There are of course many other ways these things could be demonstrated e.g. solid work experience and I'm not saying skipping college means a person doesn't have these characteristics, but college is one legitimate method of showing them and therefore is not pointless.

Finally I think college teaches certain skills - organization, prioritization, time management, analysis etc. Again, there are other ways of acquiring them through "real world experience" (much as I hate that term). Of course there are people who never went to college who will have these skills.

PS - It occurred to me that this McDonalds guy might have an better supply of workers if less people had third level education. I wonder if that influences his decision to encourage people not to go to college. He comes at it from the point of view of trying to staff his outlets, and finding that many people consider themselves too good to work there. Graduates who know they have options do it as a summer or part-time job if at all, with the intention of moving on.

Permabear

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Denerick

Permabear wrote: »

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But my college did do so!

Although a lot of that was of my own volition, my lecturers and university facilitated that self discovery.

Its not all negative.

I think that college is great, and I'd be lost without it myself.

I think the problem is the taboo of not going to college, the expectation that of course you should want to further your education. I remember after 4th year, there were about 5 or 6 girls who all dropped out to become hairdressers. Now, obviously some of them were driven by the idea of not having to do the leaving cert, but some of them really did want to get trained up, and were perfectly happy to live as a hairdresser. And lets face it, there isn't a town in Ireland that doesn't need a hairdresser. It might not pay millions, but it's a job that will always be there, and can be lived on comfortably. It's a skill, and personally I have great respect for people who are interested in learning skills.

These girls were seen as "failures" in the eyes of the school, were actively encouraged (almost coerced) to stay in school. As though they could never make it otherwise. As if they were giving up on life or something. It was quite the opposite, these girls were just ready for life about 10 years earlier than I'll be (I'm 20, still living at home, probably will be until the end of my education).

Some people need college, some people don't. I think it's both pointless and destructive to make people who don't want to go feel they have to.

Permabear

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Annasopra

What do you think the purpose of college is permabear?

beeftotheheels

Permabear wrote: »

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Ah, now that is a different kettle of fish. Criticizing the Irish education system as not being fit for purpose is something I would whole heartedly agree with (as you can probably guess from my references to my campus I packed my little bags at 17 and headed off to get myself a good education elsewhere).

College per se is good. But it is only good if you are interested in it. It supports learning for those with an interest in learning. It should be about critical thought and broadening the mind.

Instead, for many, it is about learning to memorize and parrot back x information. You can learn this just as well, if not better in the real world.

But crucially I think that is a critique of a lot of the Irish system, not of the concept of university.

So, then the question becomes how do we change the Irish system?

doopa

Permabear wrote: »

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Any links to the complaints, just wondering how much of it is bluster and how much is real. If they were really concerned then surely they would vote with their feet and move somewhere else?

Also is it limited to particular fields e.g. comp sci or also to the quality of marketing graduate?

We're stepping higher and higher along the chain of what's expected as a basic requirement for the working world, as time goes on. Now instead of school being a basic and college being a bonus, it's college as a basic and I suppose some kind of postgrad as a bonus.
I think it's probably also safe to say standards have declined as numbers went up.
People argue about reintroducing fees to combat the waves of students taking it for granted and sailing through 4 years of drinking (don't get me started on the ones who ask "should I defer for a year as I am not old enough to drink in 1st year so I don't see the point in going" :mad: ), but I still think higher academic standards need to apply. This would surely lead to less cost, fewer students being there who shouldn't be, and solve the "quality of the average irish graduate" problem.
College itself is not pointless, the genuine pursuit of further education is not pointless; but it's probably heading that way.

Permabear

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Permabear

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doopa

Permabear wrote: »

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OK. So, would you recommend a return to a two-tier system. Whereby the intellectual elite are left to get on with it in TCD, UCC, UCD, presumably the NUIs as well. They produce a small number of highly qualified graduates and the rest of the higher education needs are met elsewhere?

The focus of the argument thus far has been on meeting the needs of industry which is one (of many) aims of a university. However, you don't seem to be suggesting that all uni's are failing in this aim, just some of them? Would that be right?

eco2live

Permabear wrote: »

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I completely agree with this. I have spent over 18 years in the work place and I completed a degree and then a masters part time during this time. To be honest it is more of a test of application then intellect. There are more challenging situations in the workplace. I got a bit bored with education as it mostly rewarded demonstrating that you could repeat the status quo.

I suppose that it is difficult to grade competence without having a recognised benchmark to compare it to. I found it a little frustrating that opinions where only valid when backed by academic references. Like a lot of professions, Academics value Academics far too much in my opinion.

beeftotheheels

Should we then try and "equal but different" approach? Degrees should be about critical thought and not about the actual content of what you learn.

Take for example a degree in accountancy. A contradiction in terms. No critical thought required. In the UK such "degrees" don't exist. Accountants in the big firms tend to have good degrees in varied subjects but not in accountancy. The firms use the degree as a method of benchmarking to hire the bright and interested young graduates who are capable of learning, and then teach them to balance the books.

My sister has a degree in accountancy and works as an accountant. To my mind that was a waste of 3 years of her life (although the Irish system expects that accountants have degrees in accountancy). She had 5 As in her leaving cert and is more than capable of critical thought, is interested in learning etc but the system dictated that if she wanted to be an accountant then she should study that particular drab meaningless subject at third level.

So my suggestion would be that we keep degrees for subjects requiring critical study, and create an alternative for subjects which are designed to equip people with the detailed knowledge required to work in a particular field.

It is then up to employers to determine whether they want to hire someone with a degree (as evidence of a standard of ability and critical thought) or "alternative" (as evidence of a level of knowledge in a particular area).

The obvious difficulties apply to law and medicine but both subjects require critical thought as well as detailed knowledge.

Permabear

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doopa

The BBC would agree with the geography student:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world/middle_east/

I realise its not technically true.

Duffy the Vampire Slayer

I'm currently in my final year of an Arts degree and I agree wth much of what has been said here. I find a major problem is that many people in college have no enthuasism for what they study. I study English and History, and I love both of the subjects. Although I occasionally study topics I don't enjoy I'm generally interested in both fields. However a lot of people in my course don't care for the subjects they study at all. They're merely in college because its the done thing. The same applies to many people I've met who study business or science. Its a mentality I can't understand, I could never study something I wasn't enthuasiastic about.

Bottle_of_Smoke

Think its completely pointless for entrepreneurs so good call by Althucher and Thiel. I suggested something like this instead of college http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=68492047 but was shot down as unworkable by most people. I guess with these guys it wouldn't be taking a risk with the taxpayer's money, though I often believe many college courses are a guaranteed waste of taxpayers money

Perhaps this is two big topics but universitíes IME seem to often suit lazy people who can get the bare minimum grades with last minute cramming for exams and all-nighters for assignments. Though they soon forget everything they learned in this process

Of course its not completely pointless, I'd say most medicine/engineering students work pretty hard, and those courses and some others you really do need a college education.

Things like degrees in film seem pointless to me and in all honesty should be covered done by apprenticeship not university

Byron85

Duffy the Vampire Slayer wrote: »

I'm currently in my final year of an Arts degree and I agree wth much of what has been said here. I find a major problem is that many people in college have no enthuasism for what they study. I study English and History, and I love both of the subjects. Although I occasionally study topics I don't enjoy I'm generally interested in both fields. However a lot of people in my course don't care for the subjects they study at all. They're merely in college because its the done thing. The same applies to many people I've met who study business or science. Its a mentality I can't understand, I could never study something I wasn't enthuasiastic about.

In the same situation myself. I'm doing a major in Sociology with a minor in Psychology. I have a different way of doing and looking at things though compared with the majority of students as i'm a older than most at undergrad level; me being 26 next month.

liah

I can't help but wonder if the mentality towards slacking off in university/doing it because it's "the done thing" rather than a passion, has to do with the primary and secondary levels of education that have killed their learning spirit, so to speak. That's, essentially, what my problem is - school killed my passion for learning so I had to leave school to rediscover it.

I think it's jumping the gun to immediately examine post-secondary education as the crux of the problem - I think primary and secondary play just as vital roles and need to equally be looked at with a view to revision. Passion is beat right out of a lot of kids from primary on. I know a lot of kids who loved reading, for example, until they were forced to read school-approved novels for class and couldn't stand reading after that.

I suppose what's required is more freedom from an earlier age; education that's more tailored to the individual. Better assessments of aptitude early on, allow the student more freedom of choice in course selection and homework selection (e.g. choosing their own novel to read and analyse for English class instead of being restricted to what's available via the school - some schools do this, some don't), better recognition of individual students' passions, better counselling perhaps. But definitely more freedom of choice and more individual attention from teachers, guidance counsellors, etc. who can see what their strengths and weaknesses are and who can educate and guide them without killing their sense of passion for the subjects or forcing them in a direction that doesn't suit them.

Right now in the West it seems everyone's undergoing a McEducation simply for the sake of it, and it's not going particularly well. I know this thread is about the Irish system, but from what I've read over the years, the system I was raised in and this one aren't really that different, and a lot of the same solutions could be used.

Cpt_Blackbeard

I've yet to see a post here that accurately explains what I believe a University's function to be. Most posters here seem to be assuming that a University's function is to educate undergraduates, but - even as an undergraduate myself - I don't agree.

The education of undergraduates is a moneymaking venture which facilitates postgraduates to partake in important research and the formation of new ideas. They pass on their knowledge to students because it is the most effective/only way for them to fund their own research interests.

It is a win-win situation as students will become educated to a point where they can get a job in industry or pursue a career in research themselves. These now-postgraduates will pass on their knowledge to the next generation of undergraduates and the wheels keep turning.

Without 3rd level education this whole process will come grinding to a halt; hence the number of people coming up with new ideas will greatly decline. It may seem like a waste of 4 years but the vast numbers that enter 3rd-level education is needed to keep this stream of innovation flowing.

Valmont

My undergraduate degree was very useful. I went to a small, Dublin based, private institution and in my opinion, received a far better education than my peers in UCD or Trinity (in the same subject) because of the small classes and the university's ability to recruit some brilliant lecturers.

Currently, I'm just finishing up an Msc in a top-ten UK university and I can only describe the entire experience as boring and uninspiring. While most of my classmates sit around moaning about their workloads and how to spend their loan funds, I've been working 25-30 hours a week for a legal firm, not really doing much coursework because it's so awfully dull and repetitive ("How to read a paper") and I'm still averaging a high first. Not because I'm particularly clever or applied but because the standards are low and the coursework is easy for anyone who has worked hard during their undergraduate degree.

I spend most of my time pursuing my own interests, working on my writing, and making plans for the future. This money making racket of masters degrees is a sham and I'm angry for having fallen for it. I stacked shelves for a year to pay for the tuition fees!

To answer the above question- yes, to an extent. With more and more students going to "do a degree" for the hell of it, standards have fallen, the paper has lost its value amid the inflation, and the intellectual atmosphere is quite stifling in certain respects. I don't see a bright future for somebody entering an arts degree program during the next five years.

Valmont

liah wrote: »

I can't help but wonder if the mentality towards slacking off in university/doing it because it's "the done thing" rather than a passion, has to do with the primary and secondary levels of education that have killed their learning spirit, so to speak. That's, essentially, what my problem is - school killed my passion for learning so I had to leave school to rediscover it.

I agree entirely. During the week before my leaving certificate I was in the local library reading a pile of books on everything from Napoleon to psychological experimentation in the 70s. The very thought of sitting down and memorising ten marker-oriented reasons as to why Hamlet was brilliant or to practice drawing an Oxbow lake for the millionth time sent me into spasms of irritability that usually resulted in something being thrown across the library or classroom. Indeed it was this mentality that forced me to leave my first secondary school. Ha.

Permabear

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Zombrex

I don't really think that college is pointless. More that people who have no interest in getting anything out of college go to college because it is the done thing.

That is hardly something to blame college for.

Saying that the person would be better off not going but instead training themselves or getting on the job training seems some what paradoxical. I wouldn't hold up much hope that a person who dosses their way through college would not doss their way through anything else they were doing instead.

Most of the kids in my course in UL expected the teachers to make them work, as had been the case in secondary school. When they didn't a lot of them simply used the 4 years to party.

The issue seems to be more the apathy of middle class kids who have no idea what they want to do or how to achieve it. And that will be the case whether they are at college or not.

If you are committed to getting the best out of college it is a really good place to learn and study, without the pressure of a commercial environment. It is also a good place to meet new people, experience new things (as Chief from South Park would say there is a time and place for everything and it is called college). The person has to be in the right mind set for it and if they aren't it will certainly be a waste. But then I'm not sure what wouldn't be a waste for that person.

Zombrex

Permabear wrote: »

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I don't think anyone has ever become a teacher for the "comfortable salary".:pac:

As for factory systems the current Irish curriculum covers a wide range of subjects from the arts to the technical to the scientific. Students are given choice in selection of subjects. The State also spends millions each year on classes for special needs and training teachers to identify students with particular learning difficulties (I went through the system with dyslexia, as did my brother).

All these things could be improved of course, and these things tend to be the first cut in difficult times, but your cynical take on teachers and their motivations is quite misrepresentative and misleading.

liah

Permabear wrote: »

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The thing is, there needs to be some kind of regulation as to what, exactly, is being taught (e.g. in science, maths, history, etc). As long as the basic facts are covered and remain unalterable, I can see the movement away from state-run schools as a good thing; at the very least it would encourage competition which should, theoretically, lead to quality and better prices.

But then that could result in an even wider class gap for those who can't afford to pay at all (as lack of education tends to lead to poverty, which would then lead to more lack of education, and so on).

I have no idea how it would be viable without some potentially devastating effects, but I suppose the current system isn't exactly viable, either. While normally I'm for a free market, education is too important to mess around with. It can't become something thats quality ascends as your class ascends, which is what would happen if it was dictated by going completely private.

southsiderosie

I think there are a number of factors at play.

I think college is pointless for a lot of kids who are interested in the skilled trades, and there should be much more focus on vocational and adult education. One think I admire about a lot of Northern European countries is that learning is a lifelong process, and spells of unemployment are seen as opportunities to 'skill up'. To be fair, I think there is a lot of latent interest in this kind of thing in the US, but the opportunities are limited for a lot of people, and the cost is increasingly prohibitive.

At mid-level colleges and universities, there is a terrible confluence of consumerism and commodification of education. I think standards have dropped in part because they are too reliant on adjunct staff who teach four courses a semester and therefore a) don't have the time to assign long essays and papers and therefore rely on multiple choice exams and less time-intensive assignments and b) have little incentive to assign challenging work and be a tough grader because they are heavily reliant on student reviews. On the other hand, the students know the work is pointless, but they also know that they need good grades in order to justify the time and in particular the money put into higher ed - they see themselves as consumers rather than students. So there is a lot of grade grubbing on the one side and acquiescence on the other.

At elite colleges and universities, the problems are slightly different. The battle at places like Harvard isn't graduating, it's getting admitted in the first place. So the kids who go are very well trained in taking standardized tests and overscheduling a million different extracurricular activities. They also see themselves as somehow special and unique; yet a significant percentage of them will be chasing the same jobs at McKinsey or Goldman. The problem is, although they are clearly smart and hardworking, they are not necessarily creative thinkers or even risk takers. Hence, I can understand the frustration of venture capitalists in the OP. However, college isn't beating the life out of these kids, the process of getting into an elite college is. Therefore, offering someone lots of money to skip going to Stanford in favor of entrepreneurship isn't going to have the effect I think he expects to get. To me, the more interesting kid is the one who is entrepreneurial enough to start their own business or service in order to work their way through school - that's the kind of kid that probably doesn't need to be there in the first place.

I guess this is a very long way of saying that college isn't pointless, but the requirements for getting into college, the way we think about it as an event rather than a process, and the commodification of education have all served to cheapen the experience somewhat. And any reform of this system will be difficult because there are deep financial interests at stake. But reform is clearly necessary; hopefully if anything good comes out of the current economic crisis, it will be a forced re-thinking of how we manage and conceptualize higher ed.

Bottle_of_Smoke

Wicknight wrote: »

I don't think anyone has ever become a teacher for the "comfortable salary".:pac:

Really? Used to work in a bank and saw teacher's accounts. Looked pretty comfortable to me

southsiderosie

As an aside, there was a long-ish but very accurate assessment (in my view anyway) of the state of higher ed in the US recently in The Nation (a lefty US magazine). It starts out as a critique of the current graduate puppy mill training system, but it is really a broader critique of higher ed in general. A few highlights:

Faulty Towers: The Crisis in Higher Education

...But the answer now is not to raise professors’ salaries. Professors already make enough. The answer is to hire more professors: real ones, not academic lettuce-pickers.

Yet that’s the last thing schools are apt to do. What we have seen instead over the past forty years, in addition to the raising of a reserve army of contingent labor, is a kind of administrative elephantiasis, an explosion in the number of people working at colleges and universities who aren’t faculty, full-time or part-time, of any kind. From 1976 to 2001, the number of nonfaculty professionals ballooned nearly 240 percent, growing more than three times as fast as the faculty. Coaching staffs and salaries have grown without limit; athletic departments are virtually separate colleges within universities now, competing (successfully) with academics. The size of presidential salaries—more than $1 million in several dozen cases—has become notorious. Nor is it only the presidents; the next six most highly paid administrative officers at Yale averaged over $430,000 in 2007. As Gaye Tuchman explains in Wannabe U (2009), a case study in the sorrows of academic corporatization, deans, provosts and presidents are no longer professors who cycle through administrative duties and then return to teaching and research. Instead, they have become a separate stratum of managerial careerists, jumping from job to job and organization to organization like any other executive: isolated from the faculty and its values, loyal to an ethos of short-term expansion, and trading in the business blather of measurability, revenue streams, mission statements and the like. They do not have the long-term health of their institutions at heart. They want to pump up the stock price (i.e., U.S. News and World Report ranking) and move on to the next fat post...

...What we have in academia, in other words, is a microcosm of the American economy as a whole: a self-enriching aristocracy, a swelling and increasingly immiserated proletariat, and a shrinking middle class. The same devil’s bargain stabilizes the system: the middle, or at least the upper middle, the tenured professoriate, is allowed to retain its prerogatives—its comfortable compensation packages, its workplace autonomy and its job security—in return for acquiescing to the exploitation of the bottom by the top, and indirectly, the betrayal of the future of the entire enterprise...

...Here we come to the most important issue facing American higher education. Public institutions enroll about three-quarters of the nation’s college students, and public institutions are everywhere under financial attack. As Nancy Folbre explains in Saving State U (2010), a short, sharp, lucid account, spending on higher education has been falling as a percentage of state budgets for more than twenty years, to about two-thirds of what it was in 1980. The average six-year graduation rate at state schools is now a dismal 60 percent, a function of class size and availability, faculty accessibility, the use of contingent instructors and other budget-related issues. Private universities actually lobby against public funding for state schools, which they see as competitors. In any case, a large portion of state scholarship aid goes to students at private colleges (in some cases, more than half)—a kind of voucher system for higher education.

Meanwhile, public universities have been shifting their financial aid criteria from need to merit to attract applicants with higher scores (good old U.S. News again), who tend to come from wealthier families. Per-family costs at state schools have soared in recent years, from 18 percent of income for those in the middle of the income distribution in 1999 to 25 percent in 2007. Estimates are that over the past decade, between 1.4 million and 2.4 million students have been prevented from going to college for financial reasons—about 50 percent more than during the 1990s. And of course, in the present climate of universal fiscal crisis, it is all about to get a lot worse.

* * *

Our system of public higher education is one of the great achievements of American civilization. In its breadth and excellence, it has no peer. It embodies some of our nation’s highest ideals: democracy, equality, opportunity, self-improvement, useful knowledge and collective public purpose. The same president who emancipated the slaves and funded the transcontinental railroad signed the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862, which set the system on its feet. Public higher education is a bulwark against hereditary privilege and an engine of social mobility. It is altogether to the point that the strongest state systems are not to be found in the Northeast, the domain of the old WASP aristocracy and its elite private colleges and universities, but in places like Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Virginia, North Carolina and, above all, California.

Now the system is in danger of falling into ruin. Public higher education was essential to creating the mass middle class of the postwar decades—and with it, a new birth of political empowerment and human flourishing. The defunding of public higher education has been essential to its slow destruction. In Unmaking the Public University, Newfield argues that the process has been deliberate, a campaign by the economic elite against the class that threatened to supplant it as the leading power in society. Social mobility is now lower in the United States than it is in Northern Europe, Australia, Canada and even France and Spain, a fact that ought to be tattooed on the foreheads of every member of Congress, so directly does it strike at America’s identity as the land of opportunity.

But it was not only the postwar middle class that public higher education helped create; it was the postwar prosperity altogether. Knowledge, again, is our most important resource. States that balance their budgets on the backs of their public universities are not eating their seed corn; they’re trampling it into the mud. My state of Oregon, a chronic economic underperformer, has difficulty attracting investment, not because its corporate taxes are high—they’re among the lowest—but because its workforce is poorly educated. So it will be for the nation as a whole. Our college-completion rate has fallen from second to eighth. And we are not just defunding instruction; we are defunding research, the creation of knowledge itself. Stipends are so low at the University of California, Berkeley, the third-ranked research institution on the planet, that the school is having trouble attracting graduate students. In fact, the whole California system, the crown jewel of American public higher education, is being torn apart by budget cuts. This is not a problem; it is a calamity.

Zombrex

Bottle_of_Smoke wrote: »

Really? Used to work in a bank and saw teacher's accounts. Looked pretty comfortable to me

How much teachers are paid is a matter of public record. How much money they have in their accounts is entirely different. I've no idea what was in that particular teacher's account, I do know teachers don't get paid that much.

Out if interest why where you looking up the accounts of teachers?

beeftotheheels

southsiderosie wrote: »

At mid-level colleges and universities, there is a terrible confluence of consumerism and commodification of education. I think standards have dropped in part because they are too reliant on adjunct staff who teach four courses a semester and therefore a) don't have the time to assign long essays and papers and therefore rely on multiple choice exams and less time-intensive assignments and b) have little incentive to assign challenging work and be a tough grader because they are heavily reliant on student reviews. On the other hand, the students know the work is pointless, but they also know that they need good grades in order to justify the time and in particular the money put into higher ed - they see themselves as consumers rather than students. So there is a lot of grade grubbing on the one side and acquiescence on the other.

Another point in my opinion is the level of "teaching" at universities. Many academics, while undoubtedly being experts in their subjects are in fact $h!te teachers of their subjects, and every academic department has to weigh up the merits an academic brings both in terms of their academic output and their teaching abilities.

I know I tended to love the courses taught by good teachers, be they young lecturers who were working on their thesis', or old relics who limited their academic output to editing materials books but loved teaching.

On the other side I had the privilege of being taught a course by a genuine intellectual heavyweight, but good god the man was dull. I don't think he liked undergraduates, I don't think he liked that we were debating subjects so far below his level. His interest was in the subject but not in the teaching yet his standing in the subject meant that he was expected to teach. And we were supposed to flock to his classes because of who he was when the better answer from an educational perspective would have been to have had someone else teach the class and just get us to read his books.

I'm not suggesting that all great thinkers are bad teachers, many excel at both. But being a great thinker does not require you to be a great teacher.

I think a lot of UK colleges have recognized this issue recently and are putting more emphasis on teaching and the UK university rankings now separate academic standing from teaching which is a good thing, and I think we're now seeing the colleges (and indeed departments within colleges) which invest in teaching move up the league tables.

Bottle_of_Smoke

Wicknight wrote: »

How much teachers are paid is a matter of public record. How much money they have in their accounts is entirely different. I've no idea what was in that particular teacher's account, I do know teachers don't get paid that much.

Out if interest why where you looking up the accounts of teachers?

I saw their salaries come in every fortnight too. I had a job approving overdrafts

whydoibother?

Cpt_Blackbeard wrote: »

I've yet to see a post here that accurately explains what I believe a University's function to be. Most posters here seem to be assuming that a University's function is to educate undergraduates, but - even as an undergraduate myself - I don't agree.

I don't think many people would dispute that research is an important function of a university, but a universities main point is and what an undergrad. would hope to get out of going are two different things. A 17 year old is focusing on the degree. That's the bit that concerns them. They have no idea if they will have sufficient aptitude or interest to go on to research. Most people make the decision about whether it is worthwhile or pointless to go to college from their own point of view, not taking into account the interests of society as a whole.

beeftotheheels

beeftotheheels wrote: »

Another point in my opinion is the level of "teaching" at universities. Many academics, while undoubtedly being experts in their subjects are in fact $h!te teachers of their subjects, and every academic department has to weigh up the merits an academic brings both in terms of their academic output and their teaching abilities.

I know I tended to love the courses taught by good teachers, be they young lecturers who were working on their thesis', or old relics who limited their academic output to editing materials books but loved teaching.

On the other side I had the privilege of being taught a course by a genuine intellectual heavyweight, but good god the man was dull. I don't think he liked undergraduates, I don't think he liked that we were debating subjects so far below his level. His interest was in the subject but not in the teaching yet his standing in the subject meant that he was expected to teach. And we were supposed to flock to his classes because of who he was when the better answer from an educational perspective would have been to have had someone else teach the class and just get us to read his books.

I'm not suggesting that all great thinkers are bad teachers, many excel at both. But being a great thinker does not require you to be a great teacher.

I think a lot of UK colleges have recognized this issue recently and are putting more emphasis on teaching and the UK university rankings now separate academic standing from teaching which is a good thing, and I think we're now seeing the colleges (and indeed departments within colleges) which invest in teaching move up the league tables.

This is so true - knowing your subject does not mean being able to teach it!

Valmont

Wicknight wrote: »

I do know teachers don't get paid that much.

Laughable.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0714/1224274659883.html
Irish teachers are some of the best paid in the world, ironically, with some of the lowest educational outcomes. Look at our recent PISA ranking, it's terrible. 77% of our education budget is spent on wages and the teachers have a very long summer holiday. Cushy, comfortable, inefficient, and unionised. Irish teachers have it very nice indeed.

southsiderosie

bluewolf wrote: »

This is so true - knowing your subject does not mean being able to teach it!

I have found this to be particularly true for math - for example, people who are quite good at advanced statistics just seem to intuitively "get it", so sadly many of them are not particularly good at explaining it to people who don't.

southsiderosie

southsiderosie wrote: »

I have found this to be particularly true for math - for example, people who are quite good at advanced statistics just seem to intuitively "get it", so sadly many of them are not particularly good at explaining it to people who don't.

I think that is why actuaries are required to take a communications course

southsiderosie

Valmont wrote: »

Laughable.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0714/1224274659883.html
Irish teachers are some of the best paid in the world, ironically, with some of the lowest educational outcomes. Look at our recent PISA ranking, it's terrible. 77% of our education budget is spent on wages and the teachers have a very long summer holiday. Cushy, comfortable, inefficient, and unionised. Irish teachers have it very nice indeed.

I find it more amazing that medical specialists who are state employees and are not saddled with $200K of student loans and multi-million dollar malpractice insurance policies still make $225K a year...and don't even bother to work weekends.

Zombrex

Valmont wrote: »

Laughable.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0714/1224274659883.html
Irish teachers are some of the best paid in the world, ironically, with some of the lowest educational outcomes.

And? I didn't say anything about teachers pay in relation to other countries. I said in relation to other careers. I almost make as much as the top salary a teacher can earn and I'm only 6 years out of college. By the time I retire I plan to be making multiples of that salary.

I'm not sure why everyone is having such a problem with this concept. I've never in my life heard anyone say they became a teacher because they wanted to make lots of money :rolleyes: