New Silicon Graffiti Video: An Interview with Glenn Reynolds on The Higher Education Bubble
Since my blog was one of many inspired by Instapundit.com in the immediate wake of 9/11, and since it’s celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, I had wanted to do a video interview with Glenn Reynolds to discuss the history and state of the Blogosphere. Given that he has a new “Broadside” (much longer than most magazine articles, but shorter than most books) from Encounter Books on the Higher Education Bubble and the impact of its aftermath on both students and academia, this seemed like the perfect opportunity. With a little help from the folks at PJTV.com for arranging the video hookup between our two one-man in-home video studios, here’s my video with the Professor, in which he discusses:
- Glenn’s early blogging influences.
- The similar attempts to burrow their heads in the sand by Big Media and Big Education, despite knowing that both institutions are clearly in trouble.
- How a speculative bubble forms and then bursts, and this case, how education costs have completely outpaced the rise in housing and medical costs. (Here is the scary-ass comparison chart by economics professor Mark J. Perry that Glenn mentions during the interview.)
- The relationship between Occupy Wall Street and the higher education bubble.
- Why expensive universities pushed unemployable majors, and why students were so eager to sign up for them.
- Will the bachelor’s degree increasingly be seen as increasingly less important to success?
- How technology could help ameliorate the higher education bubble.
Click on the above video to watch; a handy embeddable YouTube version is available here. And click here and just keep scrolling, for three years worth of our earlier editions of our Silicon Graffiti video blog.
Update: Welcome readers clicking in from:
- Ace of Spades
- The American Enterprise Institute
- The Brothers Judd
- Five Feet of Fury
- Instapundit.com
- Maggie’s Farm
- Mark J. Perry’s Carpe Diem econo-blog
- Small Dead Animals
- And the PJ Media homepage
I think this is the year it becomes painfully obvious that a college degree isn’t really worth the money, depending on your major. If you’re nothing but a Liberal Arts major, then you may as well work the counter at Starbucks. That’s a pretty tough thing to have to swallow after spending roughly $100,000 (or a lot more, depending on where you go) on a four-year degree. The world just doesn’t need that many English, History, or marketing majors. The real world wants practical experience that will help get a specific job done, NOT a thorough understanding of Virginia Wolf. Computer Sciences, Health Care, Engineering, Chemistry, and a few other fields could at least give you a decent job when you graduate. But at the rate college tuitions are rising and with the terrible job market for graduates, there may be even less of an incentive for kids to graduate from college these days.
So I want all of the college kids who voted for Obama in 2008 to answer one simple question. How’s that “Hope and Change” thing working out for you now? Well, you can still do something about it. Vote Republican in the fall. Certainly, things are NOT going to get better if you stick with Obama. Use that education you got and learn from your mistakes and make a real change in November. After all, what have you got to lose?
I believe Revolutionaries need a secret signal when they are out in public. I suggest ordering The Official Beer Of The Revolution.
What does this have to do with education? Well you don’t have to go to college to Party. Get your education on line and with 10% of the savings Party on just like they did in 1356 at the schools of that era. Without needing an entrance exam or a wealthy merchant father or a nobelman father. Democracy in action.
That’s a crock. There is no “Official Beer of the Revolution”. (I’m assuming you mean the American Revolution). The linked page is just one entitled “The Official Beer of the Revolution”. Anyone with a modicum of computer skills can create such a page. Simply creating a page inventing a non-existent honor doesn’t make it a reality.
By the way, the link on that page just takes you to another page which contains a frigging beer commercial. It looks to me like you’re just trying to make a few bucks by duping people into clicking on pages and videos with the pretense of political commentary.
You must be one of the guys Sam was talking about. My condolences.
Uh. I became an aerospace engineer without benefit of a degree. That was in ’86. I taught myself computer science starting in ’75. An I/O board I designed went into the world’s first BBS around ’78. If you wanted it bad enough even in the days of paper you didn’t have to go to college. And I was earning a living while I was learning.
I’m not seeing why there is so much angst about the situation. Of course being an early adopter and way ahead of the curve I have been living in the world we now inhabit for a long time. I’m used to it.
I don’t have a college degree either but I do happen to know that a BBS is purely software and that an I/O board is hardware. You don’t need any special hardware to use or run a BBS.
Who said you need special hardware? All I said was MY hardware. Get in contact with Randy or Ward and ask them. And I did give the boys some minor help with the software. Ask them. They used to come over to my shop on Sheffield to work on stuff. And I visited them as well.
Well OK. I went to UChicago – dropped out after a year. The real signifier for me was Naval Nuke Power School. That opened a LOT of doors. I qualified as an RO. But that school is very good. A 3 year college education in about 12 months. And in engineering no less. And the Navy paid me an allowance, gave me meals, and a place to sleep. If you can – do it.
If you are into Physics (who isn’t?) a lot of Feynman lectures are online. That goes back to ’67 or so. The best.
Interesting advice. I have two very bright teens, one who is interested in aerospace engineering, the other nuclear engineering (among other things, of course). Both love math and science, thankfully.
It’s a tough time to be deciding about colleges. Any other advice you have would be greatly appreciated!
I worked my way up by contracting. Easy to get hired. Easy to get fired. The employer doesn’t take much risk.
The most important thing is to do what you love. Do what you want to eat sleep and drink day and night.
The other thing is math. You must understand calculus. Deep. i.e. get the concepts. But you don’t have to do it much in actual engineering. If the problem requires a LOT of math generally companies will assign a mathematician to your project. You must be able to read it. Algebra and trig are the mainstays.
I blog at:
http://www.ecnmag.com/tags/Blogs/M-Simon/
Have the boys ask me questions. And they should blog. Practice writing every day. Engineers who can communicate are at a premium.
If they insist on school they can go to a second or third tier institution and do well. #3 son did that. NIU – Illinois. But they should work to be in the top 25% of their class. The #3 son was hired before he graduated.
And for amusement they might want to look into Polywell Fusion. And become a Tom Ligon fan. Look him up.
Thanks so much!! I appreciate you taking the time to respond. I will point them in the directions you mentioned. Both understand math concepts easily and are intellectually curious. I just want to give them better advice than I got from my parents.
Tom Ligon, the actor? Not sure if there’s another but I’m not getting the connection…
I did show them Buckaroo Bonzai the other night and now they know their mother’s crazy.
On the UVa story, in addition to the digital/blended learning push, you had the opening of that $12 million dollar Contemplative Sciences Center in April. I think as parents and taxpayers begin to understand that there is a rejection in higher ed that is gaining ground on distinguishing between emotional responses and reasoning based on facts, that will impact a willingness to pay a 6 figure sum for a degree.
I think the same is true for this Lumina Foundation push for a Diploma Qualifications Profile pushing the European outcomes approach that assumes knowledge without insisting on it. In fact it seems to want a future with just projects and portfolios, no tests.
Right now people still believe there is knowledge and marketable skills available for those large tuition payments. If lecturing is deemphasized and all beliefs and feelings are deemed equally valid perspectives vs reasoned argument backed up with facts, isn’t higher ed just becoming a fun, expensive paper credentialling process?
That’s especially true when you look at official initiatives that mandate no differences in outcomes among groups that have had radically different life experiences.
Higher ed is beginning to look like the old Soviet system that wanted economic credit for what was spent producing instead of what anyone would pay for what was produced.
Oh Lord! I met those people. All Dr.’s (PhD) and all published. All barely literate.
Infallible pair. Or, fallible in a nice way. Go Ed Driscoll. Seems your style or haircut has improved. So, you might pass on a rug rethink tip to Reynolds.
Another problem I see which Reynolds does not mention is an inflated need for credentials. Here’s a real life example a friend gave me recently. She was looking for a job and, as a volunteer at a local hospital, noticed an ad on a bulletin board for a job at that same hospital as a porter. The porter’s job is to push gurneys or carts around within the hospital. How long do you think it takes to learn how to push a cart or gurney? Obviously, a certain level of care has to be taken to avoid injuring the patient when it is a gurney but how long do you think that would take to learn?
Would you believe that candidates for the porter’s job had to have a certificate from a community college that involved 8 courses and a full year to acquire? This just struck us both as completely ridiculous for a job that most people could learn in a few hours. Yet this was the requirement put in place before you could even be CONSIDERED for the job.
If we applied comparable logic to other essentially unskilled jobs, anyone wanting to make coffee at Starbuck’s should have a degree in chemical engineering.
This is ridiculous and I see no justification for it. I can’t help but think this is some kind of collusion between the hospital and the college to massively over-qualify unskilled jobs. I’m guessing that the college takes the fees it collects from these would-be porters and kicks back a significant chunk to the hospital. In exchange, its graduates have the inside track for the jobs.
Henry-what you are describing is where this higher ed reform Lumina is pushing is linked to. It comes out of the UN, UNESCO in particular, and is called the Bologna Process.
The part you have picked up on is called Qualifications Frameworks. You are not eligible for jobs unless you have the proper credential. The government gets to regulate private employers by monitoring the credential and then workplace training of all employees. Think of it as an annuity for higher ed as everyone must get training to change jobs. University of Phoenix and its Apollo Group tends to be in these international meetings with a smile on its face I imagine.
What the credential can represent in terms of actual knowledge and skill is limited by the Social Dimension of the Bologna Process. The Social Dimension says a student’s social or economic background is to have no impact and who enters, participates, and finishes degree programs. Since social and economic backgrounds can create real differences in life experiences that affect an ability to do academic coursework as traditionally understood, the practical (and intended) effect of the Social Dimension reform of higher ed is to move away from knowledge.
And if you think higher ed has a choice, the accreditors are on board and they act as the enforcers for whatever social and political vision they want colleges and universities to push. For most institutions every time they come up for an accreditation review they are being forced to move away from what we all think we are paying for towards a vocational/ Social Dimension approach.
Or risk losing the right to participate in the federal student loan program.
Old media would be correct in complaining if they hadn’t refused to do their jobs (kind of like Eric Holder) at least as far back as the 60′s (see Edith Ephron, the News Twisters) and arguably going back to the Scopes trial. (Everything you know about the Scopes trial is false.)