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

[Jordan]

All the people who don't belong in college get liberal arts degrees anyway, which have never been worthwhile. Well, except for assuring a McDonalds of a steady supply of shift leaders.

[bobby b]

Went to a small private eclectic midwestern liberal-arts college with an Internationalist outlook and a flaming-Marxist reputation. Went right out of high school in spite of having decided to take some time off, because of scholarship opportunities from the school too good to pass up at the time.

Encountered a small contingent of faculty that was hard-left in their thought, John Lennonish in their vague "Imagine"-centric trust that dictators would smile and join them if only they could rap for a while, dismissive and scornful of productive society, and openly contemptuous of anyone who wouldn't accept without reservation their selection of values as the baseline for proper thought.

Freshmen were stuck with these people, being required to take seminars such as "Paradigms of Consciousness" and "Western Thought as the Driver of Hegomony" and the like.

But once out of the mandatory orientation-lib clutches, you found the hard-science people, and the econ people, and the math people, and they were mostly just incredibly brilliant, personable, charitable teachers who loved educating students in their chosen life's field. While anyone who stuck throughout school to the philosophy/sociology/history/art areas got the full, full-time liberal indoctrination and assimilation, people studying . . . you know . . . things that needed studying versus opinions that needed group hugging got excellent educations that combined technical challenge with intelligent treatments of moral quandries and ethical precepts inherent in the fields, by people experienced enough to have seen them and bright enough to have recognized them.

None of my econ or chem or physics or petrology profs would have ever recommended that we steal corn from poor Mexicans to make our Priuses (Prii?) run.

[M. Simon]

I got to be an Aerospace Engineer by working my way up from bench technician. I avoided Degree requirements by contracting. However, as I like to joke - "I was never qualified for any of the engineering positions I held". However, I had code flying in the SR-71 and F-16.

[Neo]

My BSEE: priceless
My MSCS: required but pretty much useless

[Mark L]

"Does no one get an education to understand things?"

Why? You can do that without going to college.

Certainly, I was reading MacNeill, Chaucer, and Boethius without studying them in class. (Read Chaucer in Middle English when I was in high school. May have read MacNeil in high school, but it but I think I discovered him the summer between high school and college. Boethius was definitely in college because I came across as used copy of "Consolidation of Philosophy" at the school bookstore while getting a dynamics textbook. It made a nice break from studies.)

I suppose if you are too intellectually lazy to investigate stuff without the spur of college -- the structure, the grades and all that -- going there to "understand things" is a good reason to go to college.

[toad]

It has long been stated that the biggest mistake was to put who got what and how much from Federal and State education finance programs in the hands of the Schools financial aid departments. The students should be qualified through a different agency so that when they apply to a school they could ask for the most bang for the buck on their grant,loan, and/or scholarship money.

[comatus]

Mark, I found some empty barrels and a few I-beams out behind the barn. Sent away for a fuel-oil tech chart, copied some model airplane plans and scaled them up. Now I'm a spacecraft builder!

Yup, you can get used copies of great literature at any bookstore, and it's just entertaining as hell. I'll bet you met some terrible literature teacher somewhere, and now you're mad. But reading doesn't make you understand how literature works any more than riding in the car makes you an automotive engineer. And you're certainly an engineering tech of some kind, because your spelling is still inconsistent. Lazy, one might say.

[MikeLM]

Aparky-
I need to know the name this college; I'd like to send a couple of my grandchildren there.

I don't suppose it's Hillsborough College- I am not aware that they are engineering-focussed.

I have two degrees from Harvard - the early 1950's - and my wife is a Radcliffe graduate. Radcliffe no longer exists except as a Feminazi think tank, and we have turned our backs on Harvard. Didn't even go to our 50th anniversary celebration.

(When I worked as a technician in the Harvard Physics department while I was in grad school, the scientists had a saying...

"We all know what BS stands for;

MS means More of the Same;

and PHD means Piled Higher and Deeper."

[Bryan Schmidt]

College degrees have become worthless, thanks to the government thinking college degrees are solution to all of society's problems.

ANYONE who wants to go to college now can, which makes a college diploma as unique as a high school diploma.

My advice, if you're absolutely convinced you need a college degree for your career, is to go to community college, then finish at an in-state university that has a reasonable tuition rate. Going into six-figure debt to go to a trendy private college, or causing your parents that hardship, is a complete waste.

Unless you're going to a true ivy-league school(i.e. Harvard), where you graduate from has little-to-nothing to do with your career.

College degrees are the biggest scam going, and the propaganda never seems to stop.

[moe]

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.

You're not going to be raking in the money even with a grad degree. Neither public nor private science professions tend to pay well, especially when you consider the time and rigors of obtaining advanced degrees in these areas.

[Steve D]

I hire technicians, engineers, business development folks and journalists. The technical folks seem to benefit from college, the good business folks are good because of their willingness to work and think, - though college may be helping them, the journalism majors don't have a clue. We often comment that they should get a refund.

[Wacky Hermit]

Memomachine, I don't know what those schools are, but you might want to look into Utah State University in Logan, Utah. Nice, small college town with a unique mix of amenities (free bus system, opera company, living history farm, etc.)

[Nicole Sauce]

My BA and additional graduate coursework taught me some important strategies to taking on the world and working.

None of the content that I learned has anything to do with my profession.

However, the degrees helped me get my foot in the door for opportunities.

I often joke about how a BA in music and a foreign language made me able to fix computers...?

[Grumpy Old Man]

Send your kid to trucking school. Buy her a Popeye's Chicken franchise.

Lower opportunity costs, less reduction to present value. All in all, a good deal.

[Law School is a Waste]

I attended law school for 3 years, and passed two different bar exams on the first try. But attending the lectures offered by the school had little to do with passing the bar exams. Some law schools are now starting to integrate some practical work (legal assistance for the poor, etc.) into the required curriculum, but when I went it was three years of pure theory.

Law school could EASILY be replaced by lectures on DVDs. Instead of being stuck with the disorganized and incompetent, or the affirmative-action non-native-speaker-of-English professor, you could have lectures by the top attorneys in the country for whatever branch of the law you were studying.

In some states it is still possible to take the bar exam if you study on your own, etc. The only downside is that you will have trouble finding a Big Job when you graduate. But a lot of law school graduates don't find great jobs when they graduate. Don't sign up for law school until you have considered whether you can be admitted to the bar without attending. If you dream of working in government or a prestige law firm, then law school is the only way to go, but if you want to practice in a small town, you might be better off skipping school. You won't have to earn as much per month to support yourself if you aren't saddled with student loans, and assuming you worked full or part-time in a law office during the years you studied for the bar, you'll actually KNOW the gritty details of handling a divorce, etc.

Ten years out of school, 90% of physicians will still be practicing medicine, but only 50% of lawyers will be practicing law.

The student loans are heartbreaking these days. Work in a law office for a year BEFORE you go to law school. If you can't stand the stress and the "all-nighters," or you hate the tedious work, you will NOT enjoy being a lawyer.

[Mauther]

The degree obviously depends upon the major. Architects, doctors, lawyers (not prelaw BS), engineers etc I think its pretty self evident that college is necessary. But the majority of students today graduate with degrees in Business, Marketing, Speech/Communication or PoliSci, which only show they can sit in a classroom for 5 years. I handle new hires for my office, and I have any newbie with a 5year attendance degree go through training under a lady with a GED. Just as a reminder that what ever they did between Cabo and graduation has no bearing on their performance of ability in the office.

[jim l]

35 years ago I got an A.B. (latin for BA) in political philsophy from a small college, then got an A.M. (master's) in history from a research university. I have never practiced either, and for that matter I have never used the economics I learned - i.e., how to derive a production isoquant. But I learned how to argue persuasively, write well and clearly, how to be cunning and shrewd as I thought about people and groups of people, and I learned a work ethic that still holds me in good stead. I now work in a business that didn't exist when I was in college, and I'm really good at it, partly because of what I learned in college and because of the person I became as a result of my experiences at a liberal arts college.

[Mike]

As to engineering and sciences avoiding PC, unfortunately it ain't so any longer.

I work at a Research I university and the federal funding agencies reward "diversity" elements of proposals in a big, big way.

What they fund is what drives things in the long term, so...

[Abish]

I have already been denied the chance to move up because of a lack of degree, I am not going to let that happen again! I attend UOP, but the best school I have ever attended is what I read online. One site I visited was all about logic, what an eye opener that was!!! Education for most of the population is good as a theory, we have just gotten off track in how we are using that theory.

[Roger Sweeny]

blinkNoodle,

It's nice to read someone who understands the importance of Griggs. I disagree, though, that the decision was fair.

The Court required any employment test to be proven to be closely related to the work if (basically) more whites than blacks passed the test. Otherwise, it violated the employment discrmination sections of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

But the Court refused to say the same thing about college diplomas, even though a much higher proportion of whites than blacks get college degrees every year. This privileging of college degrees doesn't fit the logic of the decision.

It gives colleges a great market position, which they have used to amass money and power. Many people think that is a good thing. I don't.

[lloannna]

For the first ten years after enrolling as a freshman, and the first year after graduation (I enrolled in 1997 and graduated in 2007, though only enrolled for a total of fifteen full-time and three part-time school terms -- took time off to work, etc.,) I thought my college degree was more or less worthless from an economic standpoint (I learned a lot, though I should have waited and avoided spending tens of thousands of dollars to grow up and find out what I wanted to do with myself.) When I look at the bills from the US Dept. of Education (and my credit report) that feeling is reinforced. And don't get me started on my choice, at the age of 17, to switch majors from engineering to social science.

On the other hand, I just started a job a few days ago which a) is related to my major and b) absolutely requires a degree. It's even largely compatible with my ethical standards as a Mormon libertarian (hard to find in public service, not that I was being picky) -- and it reduces my debt-to-income ratio substantially. Up till now I've been stuck temping and staffing call centers; on Friday I'm going to an actual staff meeting for the first time since my internship, junior year. Things are looking up.

But I tell everyone I meet who doesn't already have student loans to try ANYthing else before heading down that road. If Mom and Dad (or a future employer, or the US military, or whatever) are willing to pay for it, that's one thing, but I'm paying 12% of my income to the government for the privilege of having this job (finally) and meanwhile, I'll probably never get to go to Europe and I'm already on the old side for having a family (put all that stuff off to stay alive and push towards graduation) and the amortization schedule for my loan says I'll be finished paying it off when I'm in my mid-50s. Did I mention I'm probably never going to get to move to Europe? Oh, well.

(Incidentally, if I go back to school for anything, I suspect it'll be to improve my Russian... either that or to learn Somali; we have a huge Somali-speaking population out here. If nothing else, employers and casual acquaintances are seriously impressed when you say you can read Russian, i.e. decode Cyrillic, which really isn't that hard. My choice of language is probably the best decision I made between 1996 and 2003.)

[Pol Modreth]

Memomachine: I'm going to Western Governors U. www.wgu.edu They just do IT and Edu majors, and it's all self-directed. I'm pulling 18 credits per semester so I can draw full GI bill, and working full time as well. Of course, I was a Nuke instructor in the navy, so I already know how I learn.

Respectfully,
Pol

[RScott]

BSME. Well worth it, even though I write poorly and spell worse than I write. It seems odd to me that my education (along with a bit of luck and hard work) has allowed me to put two kids through university yet it seems that they will be unable to do the same for their children. They have BAs in history and political science. It's obvious they obtained more rounded educations than I did, yet neither has read Hemingway, and the Twain and Orwell they've scanned was only those bits required in high school.

[Mark L]

"I'll bet you met some terrible literature teacher somewhere, and now you're mad. But reading doesn't make you understand how literature works any more than riding in the car makes you an automotive engineer."

Actually, I had some excellent literature teachers. Why else would I be reading Chaucer in high school? And some excellent history teachers. They were one reason I went into engineering. They showed me that is where history was being made in the twentieth century.

Reading is the basis of literature. If you really believe that reading is to understanding how literature works is what riding in a car is to automotive engineering, you may want to go back to that college you attended and ask for a refund. I don't think you got your money's worth.

[andree]

I'm a student at UC Berkeley. I go here because this is the "best" school near my home town. I find politics to be unnecessary in their presence on campus. I'm at school to learn a trade, to be able to support myself, to do good in the world.

Students like me are pressured to go to university. Our parents, our high schools and peers all shove us in this direction. And the way I saw it, taking out loans and going to university and trying to learn something from it was my only ticket to anywhere. I'm from a family of poor immigrants; my parents work for the county. Students like me are looking for freedom and potential. We don't find it in our high schools or in our communities. But with a lot of sifting through the bullshit of a huge modern public university, many of us are still able to find hope and the means for a future. However, many of us will find no future other than food service - this is what our economy has become. I bet lots of these clever folks that "made it" without necessarily having a college education now profit from outsourced labor and enjoy the services provided to them by the latest generation of english/philosophy/sociology graduates now working in the fast food or cafe business.