Four ways banks have ruined higher education
Colleges and universities are padding their bottom lines — and the American public is footing the bill
http://www.salon.com/2012/10/04/four_ways_banks_have_ruined_colleges_and_universities/
Except for a very few degrees, the cost of education has reached the point where, in my estimation, there is no longer any economic payback. When I was doing research on graduate school years ago, at _that_ time (this would be the early part of the ’90s) the _only_ graduate degree that was purported to have an economic payback (meaning that additional lifetime earnings were such that you could expect a return on your investment (tuition, room/board and, most importantly, opportunity costs (most prominent being lost wages))) was the MBA. In my personal experience, the MBA has been cheapened to the point where it can no longer provide that value. I bet that even at Harvard and other top MBA programs that if the student had simply remained in their current job, continuing to climb the ladder, that they wouldn’t get back the costs of getting a full-time MBA. The alternative, for MBAs, is the ‘executive’ MBA, or as I like to call it, the weekend MBA. I went to school full-time for two years (including summers); I am confused how going on weekends for a year is supposed to be equivalent, but hey, such is life.
Anyway, based on my economic analysis, most degrees weren’t worth their cost more than two decades ago and since then I am quite sure that the real (inflation adjusted) cost of education has at least doubled, likely tripled, I am more convinced than ever that the vast majority of people getting degrees (forget the _half_ that fail to complete!) are wasting their time and money. Associates (two year) and vocational (job-focused with little of the artsy fartsy crap you get in university) degrees can provide, based on my research and experience, a much more likely economic value. So, before we even get to Wall Street, I believe higher education is already a big lie. Now we come to the point of the article, the educational-industrial complex. Wall Street (‘banks’ in this article) is working _very_ hard to get as much profit from students as possible. They (and their parents) are in a rather vulnerable spot as they have been inculcated by culture that higher education is an absolute must else the poor little dears will be living as trolls under a bridge somewhere. Very much in analog to the absolute requirement today to get a diamond for your fiance (expect to spend _at least_ three months wages!), anything less and you are a chump not worth the ground she walks on. Diamonds, like education, are not intrinsically valuable outside of a few science experiments, yet a huge premium has been placed on them through marketing and market manipulation. Any of that sound even a wee bit familiar when it comes to education?
OK, I will address each of the author’s points a bit…
1. Privatizing Student Life
To me the most pernicious part of this is the multi-tier aspect. Now, I never was an on-campus student; I transferred from community college and Va Tech, at that time, only allowed freshmen to be on-campus and everyone else had to take part in a lottery system (besides, I had no interest in living in a shared dorm). However, for the most part, except for the age of each dorm they were pretty much the same basic experience. Now, it seems, there is a suite of dorms for the lower class and a separate one for the upper class. That way, we can be sure to keep any mingling to a minimum. How much longer before the students get separate classes? Oh wait, that has already happened: the elite have their own schools!
Of course, to a substantial extent, poorer students already had to make do with less, so simply being a freshman (as opposed to a transfer student (my community college was a personal decision, I wasn’t convinced I was ready for college (indeed, my first trip to Tech was a disaster and I left after a couple of quarters to lick my wounds for a couple of years))) already makes you a member of the (relative) elite. The poor live off-campus, eat a lot of Ramen Noodles (amazingly, I still like the things) and make do with rather minimal living conditions (I didn’t have to deal with that, my middle class background enabled me to live in a townhouse at first and later buy my own house (though I did need roommates from time to time)). So, really, this trend the author is discussing had already been in vogue for at least the last 30 years. The main difference I see, though, is that before it was all internal to the University, now it has been outsourced and a for-profit entity is driving decisions.
2. The Consumer Body
Wall Street wants to produce nice, compliant consumers willing to go deeply into debt to buy whatever widget is in vogue. No sooner had credit cards been effectively banned from the campus when in swoops the big financial institutions with yet another way to make a buck off these credulous students. Even better, the banks now have guaranteed income since simply having the students forced into using their products the students now have to pay a fee. Sounding eerily similar with that great socialist experiment Obamacare at all? The population being _forced_ to purchase a product that is profitable to the corporations supplying it? Anyway, if I had any outrage left in me I would be outraged that this has happened, but now am numb to it.
3. Diluting the Classroom
Really, how is it that any University is OK with the idea of charging full price for a recorded lecture watched at home? When I first heard about this years ago I thought that it would trigger a cratering of the cost of education, what happens instead? Continued increases in the spiraling cost! I keep thinking that at some point all this will come crashing down, but our culture currently looks down on self-taught people and assigns absolutely no value to on-line learning. I believe there really is a vast conspiracy to keep self teaching from being recognized formally, it would put a massive (likely fatal) dent into the profitability of our Great Educational System, so the system acts against it. Some day, I fervently hope, there will be a mechanism whereby you can take a series of exams or whatnot and prove your skills and education totally independent of any ‘institute of higher learning’.
4. The Student Voice on Mute
This is not terribly surprising to me and I see this sort of censorship moving around in waves. If our Great Government will actively pursue and punish (including extra-judicial incarceration and even assassination) of people expressing their Constitutionally protected opinions, why should anyone expect Universities to be any different. Heck, that great bastion of liberals and socialists at Berkeley were pepper sprayed and carted off to jail for their effrontery. This, to me, is just the logical extension of our oligarchy, nothing new, nothing to see, move along…
