NAS Blog

The Regents of the University of California just voted to embrace a pilot program testing the efficacy of an online undergraduate degree.  Until now, like most research universities, UC has been leery of the online environment because of the thorny problems it poses:  questionable security, dubious academic integrity, loss of “voices around the table,” substantial and perpetual costs.

Conversely, online education does seem inevitable given our technological dependence, a Beltway “college-for-all” mindset, corporate customer service business models, and ruthless competition.  ”It’s the future,” gushed Regent Bonnie Reiss.

Despite teaching online for years and running an online program, I remain ambivalent about the marriage of technology and education.  Showing INXS’s “Devil Inside” to spice up “Young Goodman Brown” used to be stimulating; now it’s just disruptive.  Why jerk students back to the terrain they already inhabit, filled with insistent, continuous, cognitive shifts whose interruptions prevent learning?  Handling electronic information, Nicholas Carr says,

We become mere signal processing units, quickly shepherding disjointed bits of information into and then out of short-term memory.

As one online student just posted, “During the time it took me to read for this assignment, I received 1 phone call, 6 emails, 4 text messages and 1 Skype message.”

At the Young Rhetoricians’ Conference in June, the most instructive point about online education was made by Porsche, a young African-American college student, who said, “I don’t want to study organic chemistry on my computer.  My computer is where I go to have fun.”

The UC Regents would do well to heed her words because Porsche really is the future.

The careful image campaign that the higher ed establishment has conducted for decades seems to be wearing off, if this Washington Examiner piece is any indication. The writer observes that lots of American students now get their high-cost college degrees, but can’t even do basic math. Many of them can (and will!) hector you about “sustainability,” their concerns about social justice, institutional racism and so on — but they can’t work out the simplest of numerical problems.

A large number of jobs now “require” college degrees, but that requirement rarely has anything to do with actual knowledge. It’s a screening device to keep out supposedly less prepared and trainable high school graduates, but it’s becoming clear that many college graduates are no better.

That’s what most people say, but the truth of the matter is that quite a few highly successful individuals never earned college degrees. Some of them have created great companies that ironically demand college degrees for jobs far less demanding than that of their non-college CEOs.

In this week’s Pope Center Clarion Call, Jenna Ashley Robinson writes about people who are very successful but who don’t have any college credentials.

Maybe a future piece should be about people who have college degrees but can hardly even keep a low-skill job.

One of the most depressing articles I’ve ever read in my entire life describes the problem American students face when pondering a career in science. For years, the conventional wisdom was that our education system was failing to properly educate our children in STEM subjects (science, tech, engineering, and math). However, this article in Miller-McCune directly challenges this assumption.

The authors contend that the real problem facing American students is a lack of careers in science. The case they make is compelling: Although the number of graduates receiving Ph.D.’s has increased, the number of job opportunities has not kept pace. This trend is particularly noticeable in academia, where young Ph.D.’s spend years as post-docs, with only a small chance of ever landing a permanent position as a professor. Indeed, the average age of a scientist who earns his first independent NIH grant– a huge milestone in the medical science field– has risen from a researcher’s late 20s/early 30s to the ripe old age of 42.

One of the biggest causes indicated in this article is the flood of foreigners who are willing to take post-doc positions. It doesn’t take an economist to realize that a massive increase in labor supply will both eat up opportunities and drive down salaries. Post-doc positions, which were once viewed as prestigious, are now treated as temporary, cheap labor. With such a dismal prospect for career advancement and compensation, it’s no wonder that American students would rather get an MBA or MD… or to forgo higher education altogether.

This piece in The Chronicle reveals what many higher ed critics of known for years — getting a college degree is no guarantee of prosperity. In fact, many Americans with degrees live in poverty.

Those who keep saying that the nation will get a huge productivity boost by putting more people through college ought to consider the possibility that we’ve already oversold higher ed. The glut of people with degrees who can’t find jobs that pay even moderately well is good evidence that we have.

Conversely, I wish I didn’t have to wait days to get someone to work on my malfunctioning air conditioning here in hot and humid North Carolina.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting opinion piece by Seth Godin called “The Coming Meltdown in Higher Education (as Seen by a Marketer)” [subscription required]. Godin suggests alternatives to the four-year college, such as “gap years, research internships, and entrepreneurial or social ventures after high school,” and believes that “There are tons of ways to get a cheap liberal education, one that exposes you to the world, permits you to have significant interactions with people who matter, and teaches you to make a difference (see DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education, by Anya Kamenetz)” without going to a mainstream college.

Godin argues that from a marketer’s point of view, the typical American college is headed for obscurity for these reasons:

• Most undergraduate college and university programs are organized to give an average education to average students. [See "Seven Imaginary Curricula"]
• College has gotten expensive far faster than wages have gone up.
• The definition of “best” [college] is under siege.
• The correlation between a typical college degree and success is suspect.
• Accreditation isn’t the solution, it’s the problem.

Check out the debate that took place this month between Education Sector’s Kevin Carey and NAS on the need for expanding higher education.

First, Carey proposed a “Race to the Top” equivalent for higher education in an article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed (subscription required). NAS agreed with some of his points and disagreed with others in “To Infinity and Beyond! Kevin Carey’s Race to Over-the-Top.” Carey replied in “Debating RTT4HE,” where he asserted that NAS “just wants to hoard college credentials for the privileged few.” We responded at length in “Expanding Enrollments, Declining Standards: American Higher Ed Prepares to Take the Plunge.”

Do we really want to do to higher education what we have to K-12 education? We might achieve the hollow boast of the most college-credentialed citizenry in the world who also happen to be among the worst-educated.

At the Pope Center, Jay Schalin has a great article listing 10  discredited ideas propagated by colleges and universities. He says academics “tend to live in a theoretical universe, while the rest of America deals with real things with real consequences.” These are the myths he lists (see original article for his commentary on each):

1. There is no liberal bias in academia.
2. Everybody should go to college.
3. Academia is more noble than the business community.
4. Diversity makes everything better.
5. All faculty research is necessary and/or important.
6. Academic freedom means anything goes.
7. Higher education drives the economy.
8. Natural aptitude doesn’t matter.
9. Morality is relative.
10. All cultures are equally good.

As we have seen with Marxism, after radical movements lose credibility and die in the world at large, they remain in higher education and continue to shape the worldview of rising generations. This will also most likely be the case with the rising “sustainability” trend on campus.

As everyone knows, state funding of higher education is notoriously unreliable. After a nationwide surge in direct spending to universities (the boom years), the bust has arrived. Big surprise.

While direct appropriations to state universities have foundered, the state and federal money spent on students increased. This follows public choice theory: politicians spend money to gain the greatest number of votes. There are far more students (and their parents) who vote than there are institutions who want government money.

This is good for those students who use the money wisely and it is good for “school choice”: unlike K-12, students can choose their state college or university. Universities with declining enrollments moan and groan when students head to their competitors. To wit: my own university consists of two campuses: one with skyrocketing enrollment, the other in perpetual decline.

No doubt the news for those wedded to the status quo is bad. Nevertheless, recent trends in nontraditional education have taken off during this crisis. Even before the fiscal bust, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and many others noted that colleges had gotten flabby–not with money but with their way of delivering education in the 21st century.

Campuses facing fiscal difficulty need to get aggressive with educational innovation. Online learning is up (again). Philanthropist Bill Gates is expressing interest in putting his money into improving online education. For the first time, I am using a free online textbook funded by the federal government and distinguished foundations.

Institutions with enrollment and/or funding shortfalls are turning to for-profit alliances. One of the biggest surprises: the National Labor College has formed a for-profit joint venture that retains faculty unionization (NLC is dedicated to promoting unionism). “Bread-and-butter” union faculty ought to take notice: Change or die.

Here’s to a new year hoping that my own institution (Southern Illinois University) starts lighting candles rather than cursing the darkness.

Several years ago, I chuckled when I dropped my young daughter off at a friend’s elementary school. In fact, the school was named an “Attendance Center.” I never learned why “school” was suddenly out of fashion. How apt a phrase for what is happening in higher education, as every politician and president (Bush and Obama included) promise “more, more, more!” A new book is getting acclaim for documenting how simply funding more college “attendees” is a waste of money: Jackson Toby, The Lowering of Higher Education in America: Why Financial Aid Should be Based on Student Performance. Toby hammers home the message that always shocks people when I tell them that most of those who go to college will never graduate with a degree. Moreover, mere “attendance” at a college does little to improve earnings and leaves many in debt. The situation is even worse at community colleges, where politicians at the state and national levels are heavily subsidizing two-year college education. By accepting all, the old whip of “working hard in high school” to “get into college” is gone–every K-12 student knows they can go to college whether they prepare themselves or not. The following excerpt from an article on the abysmal state of community college “attendance centers” highlights how much worse the problem is at that level:

“A cursory look at the data is not encouraging. Although 41 percent of America’s college-bound students enter community colleges each year , only 28 percent of this cohort actually complete their studies and earn a degree , an even more dismal outcome than that displayed at the nation’s baccalaureate colleges, where 56 percent manage to graduate . These depressing statistics haven’t dampened the general consensus favoring support of community colleges because proponents appear to believe that college “access” trumps successful college completion and that “some college is better than none.” Refuting the latter point, U.S. community college non-graduates have only marginally higher earnings and lower unemployment rates than high school graduates and do far less well than their counterparts that manage to complete their studies. The disappointing outcomes at community colleges are to some extent hard-wired into four aspects of their design. These institutions are proudly and aggressively “open admissions” which means that there are no academic criteria to get in except, in most places, a high school diploma. . . .”

Readers interested in learning the graduation rates (and other vital statistics) of any college in America can find it at http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/ Will financial aid be tied to merit rather than a free lunch for everyone, regardless of performance? The political incentives work against any such reform. After all, the citizens of Entitlement U.S.A. believe it is their unalienable right to a discounted (or free) college education. Furthermore, politicians count votes and “something for nothing” is always popular. On we go . . .