Popping the Higher Ed Bubble

Yesterday, Instapundit linked to an interesting article here about "the next market bubble" being higher education, where government subsidies (obstensibly, to improve access to higher education) have had the unintended (but certainly foreseeable) consequence of inflating the costs of college: "Over the last 10 years, after adjusting for inflation, tuition is up 48% at public schools and 24% at private schools."

There are several important parallels with the recent housing bubble; policy goals of extending participation (in higher education, in home ownership) led to people with serious credit risks borrowing a lot to pay a lot for something that, it turns out, isn't worth what they paid.   (Instapundit also linked to a comment by Dean Esmay explaining his regret about ever bothering to pursue a college degree.)

This bubble, like all bubbles, will have its tragic stories, so I don't want to cheer this on.   But if there's a silver lining, it's that it may make people rethink the value of those four years that polite society assumes you need.   

As someone who resents how those four years are often an indoctrination in politically correct sensibilities (see here), I think this is a conversation worth having.   It's not to say that I didn't love my time at that elite institution I got to attend -- that university mentioned in the article that "recently constructed a fancy dorm that cost $70,000 more per bed than the median home price" -- but I'm guessing there were other ways I could have broadened my horizons and learned more for the money (though I doubt I could have learned more Marx...).   

But I suppose that people will still pursue college degrees until employers start removing that as a "get-in-the-door" requirement for job interviews, and start thinking about how some of the brightest people may be those that don't want to wait around for a diploma (Bill Gates anyone?).   

Any opinions out there about the value of your own college educations?   And what could help pop the bubble of prestige in college degrees (which -- given the leftward tilt of almost ALL colleges -- could be a major boost for the long-term viability of free-market ideas)?

UPDATE:  Welcome InstaFolks!   (Thanks, Glenn, for the link!)   Hope you'll take a look around while you're here.   YeahRight is an eclectic site, mostly focused on pop culture, which somehow is usually only discussed by folks from the Left (or by the crankiest folks on the Right).   So if you're a libertarian or non-cranky conservative, I think you'll enjoy the discussions of music, film, culture, as well as topics like the one that brought you here today!   More on the YeahRight raison d'etre is here.  Enjoy!

Comments

[Jeff P.]

BSEE: well worth doing.
BSLAS (liberal arts and sciences): wallpaper.

I have both.

[Pol Mordreth]

I gotta say, I'm pursuing my degree (BS in IT) online from an accredited nonprofit. 2850 per semester, flat. I'm only pursuing it because it'll raise my salary range by about 10k per year in this area. I also don't have to put up with too much leftist BS.

respectfully,
Pol

[alm]

Did anyone ever hire Bill Gates?

[Skyler]

Well, some people do learn things in school. I personally hated every minute of it, but I learned a lot, not just in engineering, but in philosophy, history, theology, english, etc.

I'm at law school now and hating it even more, but learning a lot. Mostly I'm learning that law is arbitrary and capricious much of the time, but I'm also learning why things are as they are.

There is value to learning, even though the experience is needlessly dominated by a monopolistic control of who can be a lawyer.

[Hogarth]

I can make Jackson Pollack jokes in polite company as a result of my time spent becoming "well rounded" in Engineering College, but I can't truthfully say that it made me a better software developer.

[Bill Quick]

I can make Jackson Pollack jokes...What? We're not polite?

Let's hear it! (What kind of glass does Pollack drink out of? A dribble glass!)

[tom swift]

Several BS, all from MIT. Absolutely indispensable. MS, also MIT - waste of time.

[gateway]

alm:
"Did anyone ever hire Bill Gates?"

No, he DID all the hiring.

Which is better?

[tom swift]

Several BS, all from MIT. Absolutely indispensable. MS, also MIT - waste of time.

[Sam]

My BSEE degree (in 1979) was well worth it to me. One advantage of engineering is that you can pretty much avoid the stuff you are complaining about.

[Brown Line]

I did my BA at the University of Toronto, graduating in 1975. My major was philosophy - not very marketable in itself, though the logic courses I took were superb preparation for my career as a computer programmer.

It was a wonderful experience, worth every penny. I grew socially and mentally, I dealt with people from around the world. Some courses - particular those in Shakespeare, modern English poetry, and medieval philosophy - were marvelous. And I met my wife there (we're celebrating our 30th anniversary next month).

However, the U of T may have been a special case. Its affiliated-college organization is, to my knowledge, unique, and gives the university a breadth that I've not seen anywhere else. Plus, the university was dedicated to undergraduate teaching: all of the superstars - Allen Bloom, Marshall McLuhan, Northrop Frye, among many others - taught undergraduates, and for the most part taught well. And thanks to the extremely generous policy of the government of Ontario of subsidizing all students at the university, not just citizens of the province, I was able to graduate with only a few thousands dollars of debt.

However, college is not for everyone, and it's certainly not for everyone immediately after high school. My two daughters went to college immediately after high school, and benefited enormously from it. My sons, however, both enlisted and served in Iraq. One is now doing underwater construction work on the Gulf Coast, while the other is studying accounting in college.

If I were an employer, I would tend to weigh military service at least as high as a BA, unless I was looking for specialized training (e.g., engineering). Other than that, I'd strongly urge a young person who's at loose ends to consider doing a hitch in the armed services before going to university: the structured environment will help them to grow up and figure out what they want to do.

[Da Coyote]

Could not the addition of useless departments (e.g. Female/Ethnic studies, etc) be driving up the cost? These departments cannot possibly support themselves.

[Aparky]

My wife happens to work at one of the few colleges where there is absolutely zero leftwing garbage. In fact, if you want to take liberal arts, you'll have to go to a different school. It's engineering or nothing at this school. To make matters worse for the liberals, the school has very close working relationships with the military. There are uniforms all over the place - definitely not hospitable to someone wanting to teach Marxist Feminist Economics or other such garbage. The graduation speaker this year was the Secretary of Defense.

The school costs $18,000 per year for everything (tuition, room, board, etc. All of the graduates (450 per year) have jobs by January or February of senior year. Their average starting salary is just over $70,000.

There are good schools. You just have to look for them.

[Mark L]

For a profession a college degree is invaluable. For a trade, it is counterproductive.

Of course this depends on the proper definition of professions vs. trades. A profession is any career where a disinterested professional will outperform an enthusiastic amateur 90% of the time. A trade is a career where an enthusiastic amateur can outperform a disinterested professional 90% of the time.

Engineering, law, and medicine are professions. Journalism, child care, and teaching are trades. (And if you don't believe teaching is a trade explain the success of homeschooling and why the military can produce an instructor with three months of training.)

[RJP]

Oh come on. I agree that college tuition is too high. And my professors were probably kind of lefties. But I voted for Bush the last two elections, graduated in 2001, and wouldn't give back those years for anything. Leftist propaganda is overrated. If it really had an effect, we wouldn't have had Republican presidents the last what, 44 out of 56 years? And in reply to post 1, yeah, if you go for english, maybe it isn't worth it, but to speak and use a foreign language like Russian/Arabic/etc, you need those extra years, and the funding that goes with them. And the sciences do need those four years. It's hard to learn all that crap unless you are a prodigy like Gates/etc.

[hoodie in teh south]

It is "ostensibly". I went to high school.

[tim maguire]

There are a great many jobs out there that you do not need a college degree to do, but you do need a college degree to get. Employers use it as an initial weeding device.

[HGO]

My BA degree is in journalism--worthless, except as a ticket punch and the fact that my schooling allowed me to serve in the Army as an officer instead of a draftee, circa 1960. I wasted time in classes involved with the mechanics and "philosophy" of journalism instead of taking courses like logic, rhetoric and philosophy that would have been useful. J-School is even less relevant, today, when there are so many fewer jobs, let alone good jobs in the declining field. The primary value of the BA or MA in journalism, now, is to provide employment for the faculty. At least it was not costly to obtain "back then."

[Memomachine]

Hmmmm.

1. "I gotta say, I'm pursuing my degree (BS in IT) online from an accredited nonprofit."

Which one if you don't mind my asking. I'm looking around for a college to get a degree.

2. "The school costs $18,000 per year for everything (tuition, room, board, etc. All of the graduates (450 per year) have jobs by January or February of senior year."

Would it be possible to name the school?

...

*shrug* I want a degree but without the political silliness.

[RJP]

Hey memomachince,

Like I said before, the political silliness is kind of hyped. My friends from the sciences vote both Democrat and Republican and have successful careers. If you choose a field like Gender Studies, then yes, you are going to face alot of political silliness, but alot of other fields, even in the humanities, are openly accepting to new ideas. And seriously, if you can't intelligently defend your point of view in the face of people disagreeing with you, then maybe you should rethink your view.

Of course, 18000 for everything is pretty sweet. I would like to know where that is. Grove City in PA is cheap and doesn't use federal funding. Of course, it is pretty religious...even requiring church attendance.

[Steve White]

I'm a physician, and so yes, college was worthwhile. The science courses helped me prepare for med school, the religion courses helped me prepare even better for life as a doctor, and the rest was at least a pleasant diversion from the pre-med requirements.

I went to a small Catholic school that confined the raving lefties to the usual departments, so you could to a large extent avoid them if you so wanted, and I did. And I tended to like whatever it was I was doing at the moment, so I didn't see the core courses as drudgery.

Is college worthwhile? Depends on what you want to do to a large extent. What if you don't know what you want to do? College might be a place to find out, but there are other ways to figure life out (e.g., the military, volunteer service), and those should be seen as just as honorable a choice.

[comatus]

I have a somewhat different perspective. I graduated from a mid-sized state university in 1976, two years late because I worked full-time most of the time and chose a double degree. I have majors in English and Philosophy and minors in History and Physical Geography. The total cost of that was under $10000 (in big Sixties dollars). I was a National Merit Scholar, and received a total of $1000 for that distinction. As reference, my wages during that period varied from one to four dollars per hour, or 25 to 50 dollars per night (no more than two nights per week) when I worked as a musician.

I despaired of being corporately employable, and was heir to a small excavating company, so simply assumed I would be laboring all my life. I never saw a university education as being a trade school or a door-opener; I disdained (and still do) the whores who only wish to be educated that they might be employed. The result for me was that I actually studied the fundamental 'fuzzy' cultural issues that frighten engineers so badly. My plan was to work; my educational ambition was to understand why.

The ethical "easy lays" were education, business and engineering majors. They were easily radicalized because there was no depth to their thinking. The biggest sophomore commie I knew was a mathematics major. Professors I knew in the humanities, even if they were steeped in postwar liberal tradition, tended to intellectually conservative approaches to the great questions. One met boy-marxists, for sure, but they were easily dealt with. And there was a Harvard (Rawls) PhD in my Philosophy department who knew Nozick well; I still attend his lectures.

Chaucer, Boethius and William McNeill were my entertainment: I did not watch TV for six years, and after I graduated I found that a drawback in talking with young women. Also, I missed the thrill of collegiate athletics, ahem. On the plus side, I retired at age 50, own a big house outright, and my son's education is paid for.

To sum up: if you are attending a university only to improve your earnings, you're on a fool's errand. Does no one get an education to understand things? Does no one want to?

I get along famously with my mechanic, and view him on a par with my physician. But face it, kids: an engineer is not a scientist.

[Mike K]

I'm also a physician and went to college in the 50s. At one point, after I had worked as an engineer for a year and decided to go back for pre-med, I couldn't get a student loan as a pre-med. The student aid office person said, "Most of you don't get accepted and we don't consider it a valuable major." So I applied as an English major and got my loan. I took my pre-med as electives and took English Literature as my major. I enjoyed every minute but I wouldn't recommend that choice now. English has been gutted by the deconstructionist folks. Too bad. I told my youngest, and last, daughter that I won't pay for anything but science or business. It's depressing to see what has happened to the college education these days.

[blinkNoodle]

The general "requirement" of a college degree can partially be traced to the Supreme Court decision in Duke Power v Griggs that required any employment test be related to the work to be performed. Given that there were no such tests, and that the cost to design one that could withstand challenge/court scrutiny was too high, employers started to require a college degree as a rough equivalent to an employment test. So the cost of an employment test was increased hugely and shifted to the applicant.

The Supreme Court's decision was eminently fair, but it had consequences.

[RJP]

Mike K,

Really, nothing but business and science? Hard-core language people can easily make more than an entry level business person anyday. I guarantee it. Plus, languages can be folded into business, while business cannot be folded into languages...there are thousands of business majors out there, but not that many who can speak (and by speak, I mean more than ordering a beer) languages like Chinese, Arabic, Russian, etc. etc. And unless you do graduate work in science, you aren't going to be raking in the money, you'll be monkey lab tech work.