The further I get from being a full-time student, the more I’m convinced that higher education has become a scam.
Think of education as an industry like any other. The industry’s leaders have convinced taxpayers to subsidize their industry by telling them the product improves future workers, and thus the economy. Then convince employers that any job paying more than $8 an hour should be filled by people with a certificate from your industry. Then show teenagers (and their parents) that unless they want to work retail, or — horror of horrors — do manual labor or learn an honest trade, they need to spend between $20,000 to $120,000 to get the industry certificate.
These thoughts are occasioned by this article in the New York Times detailing the amenities that universities offer their students today, and how much money is being spent on them. Remember that whether a university is public or private, it’s your tax money being spent because of our middle-class welfare system…er, federal student loans.
I graduated from a slightly above-average state university, whose president was mainly known for getting drunk with frat boys and convincing legislators to dump loads of money into our campus. The most bewildering thing about the whole experience was figuring out that 80% of the other kids had almost no intellectual curiousity. I’m not saying that’s a virtue, and I’m sure there are plenty of saints in heaven who never cracked a book. However, when you’re shelling out $11,000 a year for an “education,” you’d think more people would act like they’re interested.
I have had some outstanding professors, and I greatly benefited from them. By that I mean that I felt wiser after taking their classes. To say that a college degree ought to mean more than a job qualification is dorky or incomprehensible to most people today. But what other real justification is there? If your understanding of God, man, and the universe is unaffected by your classroom time, then that’s at least four irretrivable years of your life gone by, and in reality you’re not even a better worker bee. You’re just a worker bee with a fancy certificate.
[The Academy Girl, whose blog I just discovered, voices related thoughts on her blog.]
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Amen.
While I tell people, half-jokingly, that I was a much smarter person upon graduating high school than upon departing from a lower-tier Ivy League university, I believe I should be saying it with a straight face instead.
A friend of mine also expressed similar thoughts.
I certainly agree with two sentiments contained herein:
1) Institutional excess: There’s really no need to offer massage to students at a recreational center. Sure, students need a place to exercise, but this sort of thing is just ridiculous.
2) Many kids go to school just because their peer groups are doing it, or it is parentally expected: No intellectual curiosity or goal in mind. They just go because of societal forces that tell them it’s the “thing to do.”
It’s important to note, however, that certain individuals go to school precisely to learn a trade. Accountancy, medicine, engineering, architecture, teaching, and a host of others require professional training. Without this, they wouldn’t have the required background to function in their field of choice. So in some areas, a college degree is the job qualification (and I think most of us would agree that it’s nice to know that our structural engineers know a thing or two about physics ;-)).
As far as student loans go, let me slip in to Shakespearean hyper-drama… O if only any “welfare system” could function like a federal student loan! Unlike other forms of social welfare, I’m actually required to pay the government back. And not all of my loans are at no-interest. Not even bankruptcy can erase my loans. The government wins here; I borrow, and they end up with more than they put in. In exchange, I got a pretty good education. Meanwhile, traditional welfare recipients take and are required to give nothing back. (On a side note, this is consequently why no medical student has a problem finding a couple hundred thousand in federal loans if he/she has the need).
Academy Girl is also dead-on with a lot of her critiques surrounding academia as we know it (but slightly off on many and that’s neither here nor there), so I agree that it certainly ain’t a perfect system :-).
Sure, Josh, you’re supposed to pay the government back — but since the delinquincy rate for student loans is about 20% or so, that’s more of an ideal than reality. (Though from experience, I’d say that many of the “delinquents” are probably not paying because of some paperwork screw-up. That, and because the government guarantees the loans, companies get paid no matter what and they have no great incentive to vigorously pursue their debtors.)
I’ve never noticed that professionally-certified teachers were uniformly good. Also, most of the “vocational” majors like accounting, hotel/restaurant management, or communications are only 36 credits — that’s one full year of study. Why do colleges keep kids around for four years if they can train them for a job in twelve months? My grandfather got a two-year degree in accounting, and he managed to become a vice president for Bank of America. It’s hard to think how another two years of school might have helped him over his 30-year career.
Did anyone else notice that Bryan’s computer can now post to Catholic Light?
Yeah, now all I need is something to say.
Is academia a scam?
Eric Johnson and Bryan Baldwin, of Catholic Light, seems to think so. And I agree. There are many professions that require higher education, but as Eric points out in his comments box, it seems like students are required to jump…
As oneof those whose “certificate” was necessary (Accounting), you are absolutely right – drop all the “professional” careers from university campuses and let the trade schools handle it. It really is a joke. Most degrees are nothing more (and often less) than a trade school certificate, so why drag folks who don’t want the rest fo the stuff through it? You are not a better accountant because you recall Shakespeare (although you may be more interesting at dinner parties).
Some of the “new” Catholic colleges charge modest tuition rates:
Thomas More (Merrimack, NH): $10,000
Magdalen: $8,000
Christendom: $12,970
Ave Maria (Michigan): $9,650
Steubenville: $14,670
Campion: $15,000
Thomas Aquinas (CA): $16,800
In comparison:
Boston College: $27,080
SMU: $20,826
Chicago: $28,689
Virginia (out-of-state): $22,170
If going to a good Catholic liberal-arts school saves you a lot of bucks, maybe you can serve both God and Mammon after all!
As someone who has been a teaching assistant at Cornell University as a grad student, and as an undergrad at McNeese St. University in Louisiana, I can certify that this problem makes teaching absolute hell and non-fun, killing the teacher’s enthusiasm as much as the students. I can also note that, despite the fact that Cornell costs literally five times as much as McNeese, the great mass of unintersted students learn no more at Cornell — nor are the any better qualified or more motivated, despite the exorbinant cost — that the “lowly” state school students; often, in fact, at McNeese there were older students returning to school who brought with them enough wisdom to recognize the value of education, wisdom that their younger classmates utterly lacked. There are always bright lights, but sometimes it’s hard to see ’em through the fog.
Accountancy in Illinois — to become a Certified Public Accountant — requires 150 credit hours before you can even take the test. Hence why my Alma Matter (and incidently #1 Accy school in the country) requires a fifth year for graduate study in preparation for the CPA’s exam.
Dunno that you can get a CPA without having a bachelor’s anywhere else.
Okay, accounting may have been a bad example because it does require more hours at the undergraduate level than most majors. I was just talking about getting a basic degree in accounting — a CPA is an advanced degree like a JD or MA, so one would expect extra studying. The courses — excluding the non-business-related ones — could be completed in two years, unless I’m misinformed. I am always open to correction.
As for most other undergrad majors, I’m quite sure you could do the coursework in a year.
As a chemistry major, you most definitely need all four years, because of the amount of course and lab work. Even if scheduling was not a problem, one tends to build on another. Even then, I needed an advanced degree to be able to get a good job in industry. (I wasn’t interested in teaching.)
But, back in the early ’70’s I did get a nice well rounded college experience. We were required to take at least two courses in a variety of different areas to satisfy the general requirements. (But I did miss experiencing the course Physics for Poets. That sounded like a lot more fun than the standard one that I had to take.)
But the “big name” schools do open doors, depending on what your choice of career is. For instance, if you want to work in one of the “Big 6” (it was the “big 8” while I was in the workforce, it may be a different number now with all the mergers) accounting firms, don’t even think about going to a second tier school because they won’t look at you. So you pay 120K (at least) for your education in order to make about 30K per annum for quite a few years, all the while probably paying back student loans. The CEOs and partners favor students from their own alma maters… and their alma maters are not the state schools or even the second tier private schools.
Today, even in the entry level market, a college degree is required unless you want to be slinging hamburgers for the rest of your life. In my company, people who had been employed for years were told to either start or complete their college degree or you’d sit in that position with no raise from then on. So the over 40 crowd started to attend school to do the same job they had been doing for years. A lot of the reasoning is that a company can say *85%* of our workforce are college grads.
What I find appalling are the kids coming out of schools with IT degrees. They can take apart a computer, program it and put it together again but they cannot write a coherent paragraph.
As an aside… I watched news footage of the cretins at U-Mass Amherst overturning cars and rioting on Saturday night after the Sox loss… my kid would be out of there about five minutes after I found out he was involved in something like that on my dime. Sadly, in a lot of cases, college is a continuence of high school only without adult supervision, but college is necessary if you want to have a crack at making a decent wage.
BTW… my kids will (I pray) be attending one of the smaller orthodox Catholic colleges like Ave Maria for a liberal arts degree and then probably a Masters elsewhere (which seems to be de rigueur these days – a masters degree today equals yesterday’s college degree).
Anna, I wouldn’t classify chemistry as a vocational major. A hard science or a liberal art can fill four years’ worth of classes; hotel/restaurant management can’t.
Colleen, studies I’ve read indicate that while big-name colleges are good at the beginning of a career, after 10 years people end up in the same place. That is, you get an initial boost, but then your progress is much slower after that. I’m eight years into my career, and if I had a B.A. from an Ivy League or even UVa, I don’t think it would help me get another job. I’m questioning the intrinsic worth of most college degrees, not the perceived worth.
You’re totally right about IT degrees. About a fifth of IT workers have IT degrees, which is a good indication of their necessity. I run several Web sites and their backend systems, including programming and database management, and I’ve got a history degree. I’d say that if you want to work on very advanced software projects, a computer science degree would probably help. But network management? Hardware support? Web design? Nah.
Eric,
Yeah, CPA is an extreme case. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it an “advanced degree” though, since all it is is merely a test for certification.
I also question whether or not a B.A. from Columbia or Harvard or a Tier 1 Top 50 Doctorate University would help out your career (but probably not, considering the specific field you’ve chosen in computers). Statistically, the numbers say these degrees are “worth” more. For instance, my Alma Mater pays 40% over the national average for college degrees, and we’re a mid-tier 1 school.
You’re dead on about basic IT degrees, Colleen/Eric. Kind of a waste.
Thing is, you have to adjust for other factors to figure out a particular degree’s monetary worth. Nobody’s saying that Ivy League grads don’t tend to earn more than the national average. What you have to do is compare people with similar intelligence, family background, etc., who go to different schools.
Top-tier students who go to top-tier schools are more likely to succeed than mid-tier students who go to mid-tier schools — but top-tier students who go to mid-tier schools are just as likely to succeed in the long run.
It’s like the statistic that 30 years ago, college graduates made 35% more than high-school graduates, but now they make 87% more. That’s because fewer smart, motivated, virtuous people went to college back then, and now they do. You’re talking about two different populations, and the comparison isn’t a good one.
(When I said “you’re talking about two different populations,” I didn’t mean you in particular, Josh. It was the rhetorical “you.”)
Don’t forget CL’s Steve and John, who have, I believe, three music degrees between them, and both (until Steve’s recent entrance into the seminary) have tech careers. They sneer at ITT and their ilk. At least I assume they sneer. John, are you sneering?