Inside the Higher Education Bubble
Some students are suffering from family or employment problems that make you want to go slap someone around: emotional wreckage from divorces, kids under pressure to work so many hours in family businesses that they don’t have time for their studies, employers who refuse to work around class schedules, and insecure men who resent “the little woman” trying to make anything of herself. These students may be wasting resources this semester, but perhaps next semester, they will have straightened out their complicated personal lives.
Then there are students who lack some very basic skills. In a recent discussion of the Pell Grant program, one commenter who described herself as an instructor at a community college suggested that Pell Grants should only be available to “those students who can write a complete sentence.” I have not seen many students who are that deficient. I have seen quite a few who lack the skills that used to be learned in junior high school: correct use of “their” not “there”; the distinction between “it’s” and “its”; that a possessive (“parliament’s”) is not the same as a plural (“parliaments”). Trying to teach college level skills to students with such serious educational deficiencies is rather like trying to teach calculus to students who have not yet mastered algebra.
Ignorance can be fixed. This is one of our jobs at a community college: to help students who were not at the top of their high school graduating class reach a skill level that makes a four-year school at least possible.
What cannot be fixed is what upsets me: the students who have no intention of passing the class. We are required to take attendance for the first two weeks of each semester, “for financial aid reasons.” No surprise: a lot of financial aid depends on being a full-time student. Every semester, I have students who show up for two weeks — and never show up again. They do not respond to emails. They do not drop the class. They do get an F. I suspect that they are getting either a grant check, or a student loan — and this is the reason that they are there for two weeks.
I have other students who show up most of the time. They take quizzes — but their scores on multiple choice quizzes are so close to the random guess rate that they could not possibly be studying. They turn in no assignments — or they might turn in one or two out of fifteen. I warn students at the beginning of the semester that even a poor score on an assignment is better than a zero, and that they have no chance of passing the class with a bunch of zeroes. Still, they turn nothing in.
There is a lot of financial aid out there. The Pell Grant program has increased 150% since academic year 2005-6, with federal funding growing from $14.4 billion to $34.4 billion for 2010-11. I hear stories of Pell Grant money being used to buy big screen televisions. Someone I know runs a court-ordered domestic violence treatment program, and offenders sometimes delay paying for the program until their student financial aid checks come in. There is a tsunami of student loan debt being run up by students who either do not care, or do not understand that with a few, very rare exceptions, the only way to avoid repaying that debt is death or total, permanent disability.
This is a bubble. Students who are not serious about college, or who lack such basic skills as the ability to write a five paragraph essay, are not just wasting their own money (if they spend any of their own money at all): they are taking away seats from, and driving up costs for, those students who are ready, willing, and able.
(Also see: “Study: Higher ed bubble could be solved by getting faculty to teach more.”)
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The rise in tuition at colleges and universities is a direct consequence of the federal (and other) loans for students which are tied to the tuition at these colleges and universities. President Lyndon Johnson introduced this program so that every student could pay for his college education – although those in the 1960s and before could afford tuition, including the state schools which did not charge tuition. But the colleges and universities saw gold in them thar hills – and raised their tuition, since students could borrow money tied to tuition!
Well, of course he did. “Educators” are Democrats, mostly. It is just another political payoff. The more the government makes available, the more the price will rise. And of course, there will be those who are just getting the “free” money, gaming the system.
Lyndon Johnson was a teacher before he became a politician. Hardly surprising he favor expanding employment opportunities for teachers.
From 1960 to May 1964 I worked two jobs and paid for my own education at Indiana University, earning a BA. I believe I earned less than $3,000 per year and paid for come classes for my wife, too, until we had a baby. Later I paid my way through an Masters and Doctorate by working. I was self-emplyed during the Masters program and employed by the State of Texas during the doctoral program.
I suspect if the government got entirely out of financing education that the costs of education would fall and people without much money could earn their way again. Certainly, as the author states, many people in colleges and universities have no desire to learn anything. My tallented and well-known wife taught Ceramic Art in a Junior College for a few years, and the interesting thing was that students who were there because they had to choose an art elective didn’t work and did poorly, expecting A grades. Those who were there to learn to throw pots did well and worked hard. Most of those were adults wanting to become ceramic artists, and they all paid their own way.
But if they intend to be eternal dependents – why would they care about the terms of repayment? (No blood from a stone, as it were.) I teach, and I had one such student as you mention – a much older woman who was a non-student. I thought there was a real problem and offered help. No need! She was there to collect the $$ – thinking (and I paraphrase) that she would be dead before she had to pay it back.
The younger ones may not be that terminal… but the idea of responsibility is dead to them. And they are right. One person in debt has a problem.
A country full of deadbeats *becomes* a problem… because no politician would dare suggest it was the little darlings own fault. No, these are more victims to eventually be bailed out.
“…….but the idea of responsibility is dead to them.”
I think this may be a major part of the problem. It’d seem that these ‘entitlements’ of one sort or another are part of the problem also. They’d go hand in hand, right? …….no pun intended.
These students are selling themselves into slavery. They will prove that the payments on their debt will be impossible to pay. Thus, any caring politician will rescue them from slavery and forgive this debt “. . . forced on a child by uncaring bankers”. The solution to this bubble is far to easy to predict. As long as we have “other peoples money” there is a way out.
The ‘education’ before the ‘higher education’ isn’t helping.
There were some women on an online forum discussing the possibility of home-schooling because one of their children’s teachers sent home a note with their child riddled with the wrong spelling/usage of ‘there’ and other grammatical mistakes. Then, a couple more people piped in that they are friends with teachers who make spelling mistakes all over their myspace/tweet/facebook pages.
The idea of children going through the whole ‘education’ from k-12 and not knowing how to barely read and write is appalling and tragic. It’s bad enough when the teachers don’t seem to care but what about the parents? How can any half-way decent parent fathom their children falling through the cracks without helping that child in whatever capacity they possibly can? Yes, just leave everything up to the government to ultimately fail your child. Dumbed down wards of the socialist state. *sigh*
I think that your could not be more wrong on what kids are doing. You are right that there is a degree bubble but achadimic education is a decaying product in the market place. An Electrical Engineer has about twenty years before his employer will seek to replace him with somebody with a new degree. They cost less and it simply looks better on the proposals though an experienced engineer will still be doing the actual work.
The Universities are also thowing US undergrad students up against what are infact Greauate students from other countries. I know of a freshmant engineering class that had a young looking Japanese student who turned out to be 27 with a BS in Mathimatics and Masters in English. He was ejected after a year when his Co-op employer learned that he was in fact an industrial spy undercover. That did not change the curves he blew to high heavens or the Americans he flunked out.
If the Universities were teaching marketable skills most could be forgiven.
So, let me see. It’s the big, bad business people taking advantage of the over-supply of engineers by constantly hiring younger workers to save on salaries. Then there are the smart graduate foreign students raising grading curves to the point where our poor undergraduate American students just can’t pass. A foreign graduate in every class, masquerading as undergraduate? That’s right, the foreigners are sabotaging our kids’ education and making them appear stupid, although they really aren’t. Anti-business and “it’s not our kids’ fault”. Nothing new here.
I think you are being a little harsh. I am close to 60 and have been both a small business owner and long ago an employee of large corporate employers. The idea that companies of all stripes don’t try and dump the engineers or any other type of employees if they can after about twenty years or thirty years isn’t shocking or “anti-business” it is just reality. Obviously this ins’t always the case but you would have to be blind to not notice that it is all too prevelent and take appropriate defensive action. My 20 something children and their friends have all figured out that there just isn’t much corporate loyalty in large corporations in the current business world of 2011. Much of this awareness was gained by watching what happens to their older fellow workers.
Complete agreement. I am now in my 50s. I have more than 35 years of software engineering experience, and I am now unemployable in the private sector. (If you did the math and wondering how–my first full-time software engineering job was at JPL writing telemetry software for the Voyager mission when I was 18.) Even relatively specialized experience that employers are asking for in ads, such as embedded development and writing low level network drivers–gets no interviews. I am making less writing Java code for a state government than I made in 1980 (after adjusting for inflation).
I think that your could not be more wrong on what kids are doing. You are right that there is a degree bubble but achadimic education is a decaying product in the market place. An Electrical Engineer has about twenty years before his employer will seek to replace him with somebody with a new degree. They cost less and it simply looks better on the proposals though an experienced engineer will still be doing the actual work.
The Universities are also thowing US undergrad students up against what are infact Greauate students from other countries. I know of a freshmant engineering class that had a young looking Japanese student who turned out to be 27 with a BS in Mathimatics and Masters in English. He was ejected after a year when his Co-op employer learned that he was in fact an industrial spy undercover. That did not change the curves he blew to high heavens or the Americans he flunked out.
If the Universities were teaching marketable skills most could be forgiven.
Excuse me for asking but are you a product of the American education system? If so, I’m afraid you didn’t get your full money’s worth.
I’ve bolded my reasons for thinking that you were shortchanged. By the way, you (probably) misspelled your name too; if you were fashioning yourself after the James Cameron film, it was called Avatar.
Engineer.
Know any? That’s how they are.
Criticize, and he’ll tell you he’s a scientist.
And Democrats simply LOVE shoving more and more money into higher education. Why? because it subsidizes liberal teachers (who almost always vote Democratic) who teach future generations of liberals (so that they can vote Democratic, especially while they are young and in college). It’s almost like subsidizing lots of union workers. If you do that, of course the union workers will vote Democratic and then the Democratic party gets lots of money from union dues. So by shoveling more and more money into colleges, the Democrats are really creating more and more future Democratic voters.
So why don’t the Republicans stop this? Because they’re scared. If they stopped a lot of college funding and forced the colleges to (God forbid) run economically, the Democrats and liberals would simply tar the Republicans as being “anti-education” and “destroying the future generation of this country.” So what do we get? A lot of college graduates waiting tables, doing odd jobs, and making less pay than many skilled tradesmen simply because they are majoring in subjects that nobody cares about. There isn’t much of a demand out there today for kids majoring in Medieval Art or Elizabethan literature. If you are incredibly wealthy and have time to kill, knock yourself out but studying this stuff. But stop doing it on the backs of the American taxpayer!
Perhaps grants and scholarships should only be given to students who study practical subjects, like medicine, engineering, or computer science. You know, something people could actually USE and get a job in. The time for subsidizing studying Beowulf is over.
I’ve been thinking for a while now that one of the best things the education system could do would be to establish a rule that all instructors in colleges, high schools, middle schools and even public schools have to have some work experience in the private sector. It wouldn’t need to be a lot – even just a year would probably be enough – but I think it would do immeasureable good if that rule were put in place. It would ensure that every teacher has had to do some honest work to earn his or her pay before becoming a public employee.
I remember a remark by one of the regulars on a politics newsgroup. She was apparently a (perpetual) grad student at a college. Not surprisingly, she almost invariably took a leftist line in any political discussion.
Anyway, she said something once that unwittingly revealed a great deal about her: she said she could not imagine the prospect of having to actually work in the private sector under the exploitive capitalist system (or words to that effect). I was left with the distinct impression that she would never seek work outside of academia or perhaps some form of government “service” out of a genuine belief that she would be horribly oppressed. I don’t know what she thought would happen – being literally chained to her desk like a slave in a galley? being literally whipped daily by some grotesque overseer? – but it must have been something like that.
She was, perhaps, an extreme case but maybe not quite as unusual as we might like to think. How many of the teachers in our education system have such a delusional idea about the private sector and capitalism? My feeling is that the best antidote to that kind of thinking is ensuring that all teachers (and those people who are not teachers but also have a hand in curriculum development) have a little bit of real life experience working in the private sector before they can be considered qualified for a job teaching (or developing courses) in a tax-funded school system. In most cases, I expect that the scales would fall away from the eyes of these people and they would no longer be so antagonistic to the whole idea of private enterprise. And that would start the process of purging the educational system of these horrible stereotypes. Then, perhaps, our young people would start to get a more balanced view of the world.
Great idea, but why stop with academics? We should also insist politicians and journalists have some passing acquaintance with the real economy, too.
One of the reasons I preferred night classes to day is that most of those instructors work in their fields during the day. All my nighttime accounting and law classes were taught by working accountants and lawyers. If it’s practical knowledge you’re after, night school is the way to go.
A good friend of mine is the comptroller at a private four year college. He says their evening school is riddled with students who take one class at a time but load up to the max in loans along with the Pell Grant. as long as they stay in school, they can take the loans which are tax free. He figures one family of three women is taking about $15,000/yr in loans EACH!
Another scam that is used is they drop out of a course and then get a refund, hence they two week dropouts.
Time and again my friend has said he would like to report them but what they are doing is legal! Just another example of the Federal Government on steroids.
On another side, I am taking a certification as an energy auditor at a community college. Out of seven people, I am the only one paying his own way. All the others are getting money to pay for the course from the Bureau of Workforce and Training to the tune of $3,800 each. One drives a Jaguar, another a late model Mercedes Benz. Three of them are displaced from the real estate industry, all the rest have jobs. Everyone of them drives a fancier car than me.
I don’t think it’s legal. I would think that a “student loan” would at least imply that you are paying tuition and attending school. If you are refunded your tuition and not attending, that’s fraud. get your refund and send the Feds a check, another story…yeah right.
Mike, I agree with you that it should be something a university administrator can stop. To me, it is the Cache 22 of giving big government more and more and more. Way too much of it ends up being wasted or it gets allocated to someone who won’t make good with it. Better to have smaller government, less taxes and let those who want to bust their ass can find a way. We can;t even imagine how much Federal money goes to for profit education that never gets anyone a job, or hairdressing institutes etc.
TNV- Couldn’t agree more. Personally I have become a Libertarian, I think-smallest possible government, thank you. I will look out for my own.
In case you’re wondering, misuse of student loans is not a new thing nor is it an exclusively American phenomenon.
I live in Ontario, Canada. Our province has a system of student loans and grants called OSAP: Ontario Student Assistance Program. The basic idea is that students who can’t pay for their post-secondary educations from their own or family resources can apply for student loans and in some cases get grants that don’t need to be repaid to help fund their educations.
Anyway, when I was in university, I found many students had an alternate interpretation for the OSAP acronym: they called it either the Ontario STEREO Assistance Program or the Ontario SKI Assistance Program. That’s because of the way they worked the system. These were almost always co-op students who would alternately go to school for 4 months, then work for 4 months, until they completed their undergrad degrees and graduated. They rarely needed the money that was available from OSAP because they were almost always making enough money at their work term jobs that they could cover their tuition and residence during their school terms. But they applied for OSAP anyway and used the money to buy expensive stereo systems or exotic ski trips. That was over 30 years ago. The rules may have changed since then – I really don’t know – but I would be astonished if there weren’t people milking the current system too.
By the way, I expect some people reading this anecdote would ask where the harm is in the co-op students using student loans on luxuries since they’d be repaying the loans eventually. The answer is twofold:
1) some of those loans were actually grants so they weren’t ever going to be repaid
2) in those days, students often failed to repay loans and the banks that had provided the loans under government auspices were often lax in pursuing the students. Students only needed to claim that they couldn’t find work and then move a few times and they often became too much bother for the banks to chase down.
Again, I’m not sure if these particular loopholes have been closed in the current system but I feel sure that even if those loopholes have been closed, many, many newer loopholes exist.
Well, you could blame the young and dumb, yet greedy and unaware of the long term (life!) shackles of the loans that look just like yet another handout from the government. Easy money. Lifetime serfdom. Indentured servitude.
Or you could blame the financial “professionals” and educational “administrators” who offer, promote and market these slave-making overburdens beyond all reason loan programs. They at least, it might be claimed, have the education and smarts to know what hell they sign the immature and dumb up for. Yet they collect a paycheck, vacation, benefits, and pensions so why worry about it. It would be psychologically discordant to consider morally and ethically on a realistic basis. So instead they imagine what a great GOOD they are doing by giving more an opportunity for a higher education.
Ignorance is bliss. And that’s the hallmark of the industry you work at the periphery of. What is the American higher education establishment become today?
A path to lifetime ignorance and indentured servitude for too many, if not most of the youth who enter into it.
The whole idea of college has to re-thought. From my experience, unless you have a specialty degree like engineering, nursing, or somesuch, most grads end up in an office doing a job unrelated to their degree that the employer had to train them for anyway. The psychology degree has to be the worse offender, perhaps because it’s so popular. Of all the people I’ve met with psychology degrees, only one was actually working in the field. If you don’t mind years of effort and mounds of debt to get a degree you probably won’t use, then continue in the current system.
Yes, I know employers want a college degree to prove you have the skills that a high school diploma used to guarantee. We need to fix our high school system. The other alternative is to consider the German system. They put a lot more emphasis on two year colleges.
Government funding of education should be limited to the skills the economy needs. We can no longer afford to subsidize everything.
I’ve been teaching at a community college in Minnesota for the last 18 years and my experience has been very similar to what has been described here.
Over 60% of the students attending our college are not ready for college level reading. 80% are not ready for college-level math. I’m not making up these numbers. These are the results of the test they take when enrolling. These students are still accepted–but I can’t help but become frustrated and wonder why aren’t the highschools doing a better job.
As for financial aide: A couple years ago the our State implemented a policy that if students do not show up for two weeks in a row they are reported as “non-attending,” receive a FN (failure for non-attending), and their financial aid package is looked at with the possibility they may have to return some of the money.
So what happens? Many of them know the game and they make sure they show up once every two weeks. They don’t actually do any work. They just show up once every two weeks until about 60% through the semester and then they stop showing up at all. Apparently at this point even if they are reported as non-attending they don’t have to pay back any money. And, yes, they spend their grant money on personal items not related to academics. One student told me he purchased his fishing boat that way.
Sigh. Why aren’t the high schools doing a better job?
There is so much pressure on teachers to make education as accessible as possible, that in many cases they go way over the line towards expecting virtually nothing of the students.
This, of course, is good for no one. Eventually those students are going to find out that they won’t be rewarded just for remembering to show up on time or completing some token, dumbed-down task (we’ve had administrators suggest that we give extra points for those who are in their seats when the bell rings–a pretty low bar, in high school, no?).
The problem is, is that if you tried to run a school on more truly academic lines, involving setting high standards and maintaining them as far as possible, there would probably be a disproportionately minority and/or disadvantaged group that wouldn’t want to stay and play under those rules. School administrations have to avoid such an outcome at all costs.
You wouldn’t believe the fuss that is made over what’s called ‘access to’ the higher-level courses like the AP courses (which are basically like the normal courses from 40 years ago). There is immense pressure to see that more minority students are placed in these courses. That would be fine if, once placed, they were (i) either expected simply to get on with the work, or (ii) given supplemental coaching as necessary to help them function at this level, including extra class periods to devote to it and/or more than one academic year on the task. But no–that wouldn’t be “fair”! What’s fair is to have them put in the classes they haven’t been preparing for all throughout their academic lives (because that’s what it takes, folks), and–spending no appreciable extra time on it–experience the same success as the kids who are there because of their own or their parents’ expectations. This is unreasonable: it’s as if teachers were giving “the good stuff” only to a select few, behind closed doors, excluding all the others–as if it were a foodstuff to be dispensed. No, to do well in these classes you have to have built up the intellectual capital to engage with it.
Yes, it’s like trying to do serious literary analysis with people who can’t tell apart boy’s and boys, for God’s sake.
I am not sure how much of the problem is high schools not doing a better job, and how much of it is:
Many parents who don’t much care about education, and so their kids do not either. (Until recently, you could actually make an adequate living without much of an education.)
Many kids come from emotional battlefields as the parents divorce–and the battlefield only changes location and nature after the divorce.
Lots of kids are majoring in Drugs of the Western Hemisphere in high school and junior high. One of the more disturbing conversation fragments I overheard while heading to class included this snippet: “You know, meth is a lot more powerful if you put it on an ice cube first.”
I don’t at all dispute what you say; I would simply point out that at least some of those non-education-minded parents (who apparently don’t see it as their role in life to encourage their children in positive directions) are savvy enough to know how to apply pressure to get the local authorities to listen to their grievances, when their children are not successful.
Or maybe, more realistically, they are willingly led by the local community activists who are always looking for evidence of the institutional racism of the system, and who quickly convince them that their children have been systematically excluded from the ‘goodies’ on offer at the public school. (the honors classes, the musical instrument instruction, the AP classes, etc.)
This might be an explanation in many parts of the U.S., but I am in Idaho, where the average class is 99% white. I occasionally get an Hispanic student or an Asian student, and I can’t recall ever having a black student in my classes.
Thank you for the interesting exchange.
I guess I shouldn’t underestimate the effect of parents who are simply overwhelmed by life and the task of being in charge of their children.
I do believe it takes a big commitment, ongoing and unremitting, to support a student through school; it’s obvious that many people, for one reason and another, don’t have the time / energy / ideas to manage it. That’s sad for the students.
I think I have described a syndrome (of what might be called aggressive alienation) seen frequently in the Northeast, where I live.
the reason is the bright eyed and bushy tailed young teacher cannot read or do math himself
how can a teacher who cannot read teach a student to read?
to become a certified school teacher in california requires having a college degree, passing the cbest test (a ridiculous test requiring only remedial skill to pass) and getting a “credential” which involves “education” classes at a college/university (lots of psychobabble and touchy feely pretentiousness)
the other requirement is the completion of stacks and stacks of paperwork and bureaucratic approval
there is minimal, if at all, verification of the ability to grasp the subject matter (the c-best exam could be passed by a 5th grader with proper skills) that will be taught be the teacher
we think the students are dolts— look at their teachers!
Tell me about it–I had to get ‘education credentials’ to teach my subject, because a BA and an MA and an MPhil in the subject in question weren’t sufficient.
Man, what I saw, heard and witnessed in the local ed school–! Such a dumbed-down curriculum, full of victim-finding and villain-locating, lots of easy, rote answers the students were expected to parrot. Luckily, I had very little of this to do.
Of course, how one really learns is by observing successful teachers and (gulp) grappling with the classroom management issues on one’s own. I was fortunate to have had good and available mentors. Could have skipped the ed school altogether.
I was shocked when my nephew showed up with a new laptop soon after he enrolled in a local community college. Used to be, Pell grants were paid directly to the schools and included only tuition–not even books–you had to get loans for that. My nephew’s family is low income and so he receives a free ride plus money for “expenses” which he told me can be anything that can somehow get labeled as “education expenses” so a car would be included if you need it as transportation to school, of course, public transportation, clothes, office furniture for home and on and on.
Face it, the government has made Pell grants into another welfare program. Any and all are accepted into community college and lower tier “B” schools. My nephew has an 8th grade education (mother attempted home school but failed) and then completed a GED. He’s majoring in English yet, his writing is barely middle school level.
The Left is always on the lookout to ingratiate government to the people and what better target than low income college students before they even pay taxes. Sickening!
As a community college (and formerly university) prof, I see that financial aid also causes a lot of persecution of instructors and a lot of wasted administrative time.
If a student fails a course (usually due to lack of aptitude or work), there is a possibility he or she will lose financial aid. Therefore the student needs to get the grade changed or get the course off their record. Accomplishing this requires that a good reason be presented to the administration, and the “good reason” usually turns out to be the instructor.
The student files a grievance that usually consists almost completely of lies, supplemented by distortions, and the instructor has to go to meetings to demonstrate that little or none of it is true. Administrators have to sit through sessions in which the obviously lying student gives his or her pitch, and sometimes these can last for hours and stretch on for weeks.
When this happened to me once, I asked the student what nobody else does: “Is this about money?” He candidly answered that it was, in fact, about financial aid, and that since I wouldn’t change his grade, he would have to pursue his complaint higher in the administration. “It’s not personal,” he assured me.
Some instructors take defensive measures against such problems, such as issuing dishonestly high grades, etc., which degrade the quality of the education the students get and the value of their credentials. So the financial scam infects the institution, making the institution itself a sort of scam.
If it were me, there would be a video / audio camera running in the classroom 24/7.
As a lawyer, I’m guessing that any policy to restrict the making of student loans, on any rational basis, would have, de facto, a disproportionately negative impact upon members of minority groups. Hence it is probably undo-able politically, if not legally. You can fantasize about gov programs helping only the deserving, with little fraud or waste; and immune from the law of limited supply in the face of endless demand. But reality is what you see in front of you, whether you like it or not.
I have been saying since I was in High School (over 30 years ago) that students should specialize starting in their freshman year of high school in either “a work skills path” or “a college prep path”. One of the overarching problems with colleges is the public perception that you can never get any kind of a good job in life if you don’t want to go to college. Life is presented to kids as a choice between a Batchelor’s degree and flipping burgers. Kids graduate high school with no work skills and no prospects. Employers who hire these newly minted “adults” have to start from scratch teaching them the most basic good work habits (like personal cleanliness, punctuality, civility & etc…) A high school graduate is no longer ready to enter the workforce, so what’s the point of high school???
Even forty years ago, we were already starting to get the ‘modern’ style of teacher who would always ask, searchingly, for your personal opinion–on this issue in ‘social studies,’ on this book, on this ‘current event.’ No matter that few if any of us had anything serious and considered to say–I always hated that, much preferred being asked to weigh two (or more) arguments and decide whether one was more convincing to me (at least there’s some content there).
As far as I can tell, from my children’s current and recent experiences, all of school tends to be like this now (barring the math and science, I guess); and I think the students expect this to continue in college! This is what has replaced actual learning about stuff.
To be fair, asking students to express opinions is a useful way to engage them. The error is when this becomes the end of the process. For example, history serves little purpose in making better citizens if it does not have relevance to today. Asking them their opinions can be a starting point to discussing historical events.
You’re right, I was deploring the use of this as a formulaic, one-size-fits-all, discussion program.
It’s no good when the discussion / solicitation of opinions (“But how does that make you feel?”–suppose I’m working on and thinking about my response?–can I get back to you in a few months or so?) becomes the point of the class.
I’d rather students analyze other people’s opinions (preferably written down–yes, analyze something, anything that’s been written down!) than continually consult their own.
Too much of the self-focused stuff isn’t good, in my opinion. (Teenagers have enough reasons to be very focused on themselves outside of class …)
In my U.S. History class, I often throw them relatively demanding materials to analyze. Every week, they are expected to analyze a document, usually a primary source, and give me 1-2 pages of analysis (and some exceed my expectations on this). I had them read Federalist 10 and discuss where Madison went wrong in his analysis of how a federal government would solve the problem of faction–and while not every student did spectacularly at it, some did! I had them read some state supreme court decisions from the antebellum period to understand how the courts avoided confronting the contradictions between free blacks and the dominant racist views of the time–and again, some did very well at all, but even the others I think benefited from having to read something a little more demanding than the textbook.
The Bureau of Labor statistics reports that there are 1,529,500 faculty in the US in post-secondary education. A quick Google search revealed there are currently 14.4 million college students in the US. That’s 9.3 students per faculty member, and this does not include adjunct faculty, graduate students and teaching assistants. This is a bubble in desperate need of popping.
As a community college professor I am surprised you are not seeing more students qualify for a Pell Grant. I realize many of the issues you talk about will not go away with a free education. But it surprises me that community college students would have to take out so much money in student loans, adding of course to the student loan bubble, and forcing themselves to make payments for an education they probably never finish.
Most of what is funding this is probably Pell Grants. (For the sake of the students, I sure hope so; for the rest of us, this isn’t so good.)
How curious that three areas of the economy with high levels of government involvement and monetary input – education, housing and health care – have all shown cost increases far beyond the rate of inflation. Surely that can’t be a coincidence.
I was a (Privet sector} Union Pipe-fitter from N.Y.C. and made a very good living doing a interesting job under adverse weather conditions year in and year out and every day was a learning experience I also “Boomed” around the country when things where bad at home. You have to have people (Almost said men)like me to keep the infrastructure running it’s a complicated engineering processes to pile millions and millions of people on top of one another and avoid the whole heard thinning epidemic black plague thing. There’s a real predigest about skilled blue collar workers who will continue to make good money because we’re necessary.
I had a girlfriend from the Village who’s friends included all kinds of wing-nut over educated psycho babble, spewing waiters, waitress’s and social workers if you really want to pi$$ one of these people off after they tell you about there 6 years at N.Y.U. Women’s Study Center ask them what restaurant they work in “it’s OK I’m a plumber I tip well” They all to a person (almost said man again) complain about money and how little they get paid for how much good they do I was asked once why was I paid so much what good did I do for other people well I keep you alive, disease free and oh yeah I keep the lights on too and as a U.S.M.C. Veteran I kept you safe at night for a couple of years.
When I was younger I was hung up on the fact that I cant spell my grammar sucks but thanks to that gal Nancy-my-wuv who’s farther turned out to be a expert in childhood learning disorders I found out I was disflexec and that saved me from collage thank God
You are a very lucky man.
Thanks for your service, esp. as a Marine, but also keeping the infrastructure going!
We are lucky to have men like you.
I was just making fun of another commenter for bad spelling and grammar. I’m not making fun of you. Must be an attitude thing, semper fi. Unless you shoot rats between threads (that’s a pipefitter joke), you’re probably not the Black Plague guy, but you’re doing a hell of a job with the typhoid and polio, so thanks for that and keep up the good work.
I get the feeling you’d have done pretty well in collage. Spelling can be cured. Bullshit not so much.
You’re a good man, Kenny. Keep up the good work!
I was shocked, on accepting an adjunct post, to be asked to volunteer one Saturday assisting students who could not fill out their federal financial aid (FAFSA) forms without help. You know, to get that free government money.
The forms are extremely brief and straightforward — just a few questions. When I asked why anyone attending college would need help with them, I was informed that many students couldn’t figure them out, because of lack of English proficiency, or lack of reading skills (or, frankly, because they were used to having everything done for them).
60% of the (federally, state, and locally taxpayer subsidized) courses offered in that community college system were remedial. Many of the remedial students were working hard and catching up, and good for them. You can’t help but root for kids like that, and a lot of them had experienced substantial family dislocation — mainly missing fathers. But even among those students, I think a lot of them would have benefitted far more from going to work and taking advantage of on-the-job training and advancement.
McDonalds managers make decent money. It’s a career.
And a shocking amount of what I saw on campus was bunkus — rants about colonialism in classrooms, loud “drumming circles” interrupting coursework, endless ethnic grievance pastiche.
“rants about colonialism in classrooms, loud “drumming circles” interrupting coursework, endless ethnic grievance pastiche”
Part of why I teach (rather than devote more energy to writing for PajamasMedia, which pays much better–but what wouldn’t?) is that I can’t prevent the nonsense you describe. I can at least dilute it by teaching history as a serious matter.
And bless you for it. It’s a crying shame that someone with your publications and commitment to teaching must work for pennies as a temp while the victimization-mongers skate into full-time posts. It happens at every level of the educational machine, from the most elite research centers to the poorest community colleges. I don’t think people realize how very bad it is — unless they’ve been on a campus in the last ten years.
As a retired University professor (of business statistics) I must say that Clayton “hit the nail on the head.” The longer I stayed in the classroom, the more I saw of students who didn’t have basic skills, would not work to overcome lack of skills, and/or “just did not care” because someone else (mom/dad and/or taxpayers) was paying for him/her to be there.
One of my professors, the week before Spring Break, told our class to have fun on our student loan funded vacations. Everyone knows about the abuse of both private and public student loan handouts.
My question is this: why are these handouts sent directly to students’ bank accounts where they can spend the money on whatever pleases them, even if that is not books or board or tuition? I assume that each student has a separate university account like they do at the public university I am attending so why does the loan not just go directly to the university and the student’s account, thereby providing direct funding for tuition, and possibly books and/or rent.
As one of those who was “unable to focus their time and energy on studying for tests and completing assignments.” ( I had better things to do with my smoking 20-something body and attitude), I suggest skipping college and rather invest your time and money in your own business. The same money will get you much more in both education and income without wasting 4 or more years getting nowhere and nothing. Like many moderately rich and comfortable business people who make their own hours, I’m a college drop out, and consider it the luckiest mistake I ever made.
It does not bother me that the government is subsidizing them through taxes and grants…
It doesn’t?? One of the reasons, if not the primary reason, college tuition has gotten so out of whack is the proliferation of public money in the system. No market can work as it’s intended when it’s flooded with a seemingly never-ending supply of public money.
I think you missed the part when I explained that it did not bother me to subsidize this class of students: “There are students attending college who are clearly there for all the right reasons and with the necessary skills.”
It reminds me of this story out of Britain: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8272027/Ofsted-white-boys-held-back-by-low-expectations.html
Most of the story is about white boys doing really badly, but in the 11th paragraph:
If you need to teach phonics to students in the university, it’s a safe bet those students shouldn’t be there in the first place.
Small nitpick: you use the word ‘average’ in describing the average salary of BA-Psych graduates, but describe it with a description that sounds like you mean ‘median’.
As a thought experiment, imagine that you and I sit down to lunch with Warren Buffet. The average yearly earnings of the people at the table is well into the millions. The median is whichever of you or I earn more on a yearly basis. Even if the lunch-group is expanded to 100 of our friends, the presence of Warren Buffet means that many more than half earn less than the average.
In small groups, it is easy to see that the average is only loosely connected to ‘just under half were lower than average’. In larger groups, that is often not obvious. But it still holds.
In general, I have agreed with you since my time as a Master’s student. A later stint as an adjunct prof confirmed this. A large number of students are not attending for the purpose of learning. They attend because they are expected to.
Worse, the adjunct rates I was paid meant that 5% of money the students paid for the course went into my salary. That made me wonder where the other 95% went. (Your mileage may vary; I adjuncted at an expensive private University which paid better than other regional Universities and Colleges. However, it charged students a great deal for classes.)
For relatively small sample sizes, the median and the average may be far, far apart for the reason that you describe. When you are looking at a large sample, the difference between the median and the average is likely to be very tiny. If there are 200,000 psychology graduates, it is most unlikely that there are a small set that are making $500,000 a year, driving up the average far above the median.
I used randomly “poll” older students at my community college. The single question: “Was there anything the institution could have done to prevent you dropping out when you were younger? The universal answer: “No. I wasn’t ready.” There is no way to induce maturity. Doesn’t matter. The institutions need to fill those seats, even if only intermittently and temporarily.
I had a couple of friends at college who had started college and partied their way into almost flunking out. So they enlisted in the military (one Army, one Navy). It is amazing what 4 years enlisted in the military does for your maturity level. This may not be “inducing maturity”, but IMHO it comes close. And, thanks to ROTC, they didn’t need to worry about student loands, either.
We should consider having an apprenticeship program like the Germans. Around grade 10 they divided their high schools into 2 tracks. Those with high academic ability stayed with college prep courses. Others went to apprenticeships, where they got on the job training in skilled blue collar jobs, like plumbers, electricians, machinists, auto mechanics, etc. These apprenticeships were run by the actual companies that need the skilled workers, with gov funding to cover their training expenses. The companies often hired those same workers after the training was over, for very good wages, provided they proved they were willing to really work. This apprenticeship program was one of the keys to Germanies long term leadership in manufacturing and technology. Our main shortage today is not people with english lit or socialogy degrees, but people that can do highly skilled blue collar jobs. It might even be feasable to extent these apprenticeships to less skilled jobs, like secretaries or nursing home workers.
Once somebody realizes they are not smart enough to excell in college, no matter how hard they work, our system does not provide them with decent training, even though they might be hard working enough to do well at many non-college jobs. To prevent this from becomming just another gov boondoggle jobs training program, students should have only 4 yrs (last 2 yrs of HS and 2 yrs of Junior college) at their apprenticeship, and both the company and student must agree, so the company only has to accept aprecentices they actually beleive are willing to work. The students are not paid for the apprenticeship, since it is considered education, not employment. And only companies that actually employ workers at those occupations can provide the apprenticeships, and the apprenticeships must have at least one year of real on the job training. Companies must also provide stats on how many of their own apprentices their companies hire, or how many of their apprentices are hired by others in the same field. This should allow market competition, where students compete to go to the best companies, and companies compete to get the best students, and weed out the scam artists that provide training for non-existent jobs. And companies get the chance to train new workers, with funds that are currently wasted educating students that dont belong in college, without incurring a huge expense on somebody that will just jump to another company with their training.
It is certainly the case that there is not enough vocational training at the secondary level–and not enough emphasis on developing these skills, even for those who are college-bound. I have only in the last few years learned how to use a vertical mill, an engine lathe, and a drill press–all of which are fundamental industrial skills that everyone should have. (You never know when you might have to rebuild industrial civilization.) I wish that I had learned these things in junior high or high school.
One objection to the German tracking system is that the decision concerning who goes into which track is made rather early–I think closer to eighth grade than tenth. Some kids are late bloomers academically. I might well have been mistracked into a vocational role under such a system, and similarly for my son. Once on the vocational track, getting moved to the academic track in Germany is apparently rather difficult.
I do think that the focus on college for everyone is a terrible mistake. Some people simply are not suited to it. Some have come from homes that do not encourage education. I am afraid that the victimization nonsense and racial issues have driven much of the “everyone needs to go to college” idiocy.
The German school system sends the kinder off on different tracks at the end of the fourth grade. If you are going to trade school or university it is fairly well decided when you are 10 years old.
If the little kinder is sent to a Hauptschule, it has been decided that he/she is trade school material. If he/she is sent to a Realshule, the kinder can go on to trade school or higher education depending on how they do on an examination when they or 15 or 16. The obviously smart 10 year olds go to the Gymnasium till they are 19. The Gymnasium prepares them for the university entrance exam.
Is 10 years old too young to start tracking kids? In my opinion….hell yes.
It would be interesting to know what happens if the deciders turned out to have made a “mistake,” i.e., if one of the obviously smart 10 year olds was not successful (for whatever reason–personal, academic, what have you) in the Gymnasium.
From what you describe, it looks as though there is a sort of hedging of the bets, at least for those who go to the Realschule (the decision is made later, at 15 or 16 you say, which doesn’t on the face of it seem inappropriate).
It would be interesting to know if anyone sent to the Hochschule tries to get out of that assignment. Would there be any way to counter it, to pass an exam later after having done some work on one’s own?
I see that the 10-year-olds considered bright have the chance of being sent to an academically focused environment where they will (I hope!) be forced to work hard, rather than coast because it’s too deadly easy. That sounds positive to me, by itself.
For over 20 years now (I’m in my mid-50s) I’ve been convinced that education, especially “higher education”) is wasted on youth. For example, I’ve been given the opportunity to return to school to get the college degree I never could (life got in the way). Two months into this past semester (that’s eight classes) a student discovered she had been dropped by the professor. Eight classes and two assignments – she was in class three times and turned neither assignment in on time. Her Response? “That’s bulls**t, I paid my tuition and therefore I can do as I see fit.”
Is this a representative of our future leaders?
More power to good teachers. Clayton, you are one of them. Your sister Marilyn is another one of those super teachers who I have watched teach. You are certainly correct about some students being more capable than others. We do need all kinds of jobs filled. Someone has to do it, and someone has to teach other training than academic skills. Keep up the good work. From your mother edna.
Funny thing about this article, the USA’s overall education efforts (with all this money being thrown at it) according to a report (subject of a commentary by Charlie Rose on Bloomberg’s TV – May28,’11) of some 50-odd countries evaluated, US’s educational system results fall 26th. Of the top 10, in this same study, 8 are located in Asian countries. So much for tossing good money after bad results. And these Asian nations are second and third tier…way behind the US in GNP or GDP (which ever way one wishes to measure it). Conclusion? It isn’t the money stupid…it’s the teachers, course work, dedication to TEACHING; not national politics and UNIONS. I’m willing to bet not a single one of these 8 Asian schools has a NEA or similiar. So much for “Colletive bargaining rights.” To date, UNIONS (in the USA)have successfully driven what was once a #1 educational system to #26 behind second and third world nations. This is what parents want their children to have as baggage in order to compete in a world moving at “warp speed?” We moved so far down the ratings, it’ll take a miracle to get us (and our children) back to #1.