But I think we need to ensure the product is worth it first. It seems to me that it is a little like the mortgage crisis. You have to start by making sure the house is in good shape, and appropriate for the buyer.
The article is here http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304672404579181632945326834
I posted two comments on the site because I had trouble with the first one I made. Here is the one that I think got posted.
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As a former professor, I feel I should warn against accepting on face value either “facts” or “solutions” from employees of institutions of higher education. As former Harvard President Derek Bok has noted, they are in a business. I do not think the WSJ would take on face value a report from the employee of a car dealer that proposed a better way to finance a car, especially when the employee notes that everyone gets a great value with a car.
I agree that there is a big problem, in that we need academics to study and create. But we still have to think (and, I’m sorry, study) for ourselves. David Riesman noted in his classic book on higher ed that institutions can easily take advantage of uninformed consumers. (See David Riesman’s “On Higher Education – The Academic Enterprise in an Era of Rising Student Consumerism” .)
Here is just one example of just how easy it has become to be misled by “facts” about higher ed. The National Association of Colleges and Employers published that “…the average starting salary for a Class of 2012 graduate is $44,442…” Their data is from employers. Since “unemployed” is not an employer, the median salary of $27,000 reported by The John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University is a more informative number since it comes from a survey of the grads, themselves. There are many other examples, some of which I have seen personally.
A problem I see with this article is that it unquestioningly reports a solution to a problem – a solution that is probably in the interest of universities – and yet it starts with incomplete data. Namely, that in the past decade, net room and board at four year state universities has grown by 34%. True, it has grown by $3,200. In the case of two year colleges, it has decreased by $780, and in the case of private schools, it has increased by $660. (All of this is in http://trends.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/college-pricing-2013-full-report.pdf.)
The other problem is that the solution is given by a purveyor of education who unequivocally states that her institution’s product, and all such institutions’ products, are worth the price. That is simply not true. I have seen the untruth of that statement up close and personal. I have seen students told that they are learning, while at the same time, almost everyone in the academy knows they aren’t. I was once told “They will just become car salesmen when they graduate, anyway. Who cares?”
Of course, we do have a problem. But just assuming that a college “degree” is always worth the price is not the solution. A better solution would be to ensure that everyone who has a “degree” has an “education”. If we don’t start there, we will have more degreed workers in jobs not requiring a college education, richer colleges, more people in debt, and a poorer country due to this horrendous misallocation of both financial and human resources.”
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