Americans Are Losing Faith in the Value of Higher Education.

[PaulKay]

This article links to the NYT but should be paywall free for everyone...so they said anyway. A very good article about the sad state of college education in America.

Americans Are Losing Faith in the Value of Higher Education. Why?

[Dub]

I’m losing my faith in the willfully ignorant.

[Russell Letson]

The "is it worth it" question is not a simple one, especially given the slippery nature of its central term: worth. Monetary worth? Expressed how and over what span of time? Social worth? Expressed in which non-monetary (and perhaps non-quantitative) terms? And worth to whom?

The persistent metaphors in the NYT article are "investment" and "wager," which automatically limit the terms of the conversation to matters of cost and payoff--quantititative matters. Only toward the end does it address political-social-cultural issues, and then mainly via the "populist" commentator from the American Enterprise Institute. (A prime example of think tank=PR agency/propaganda mill.) A university "produces" graduates (or even dropouts) with a range of mental and behavioral traits, some of which are directly career/job-connected and others that are character/social/culture-connected. Both sets matter to the individuals and the social-political-cultural environment they will inhabit for the next decades.

And as someone who has observed these matters close-up for sixty years, from both sides of the desk, I am certain that the unquantifiable parts are as important to the individuals and society at large as the job-skills and financial ROI side. Learning how to learn, knowing how to know, and having a reasonably grown-up world-picture are as important to "success" as falling into a lifelong career. The learning-how-to-learn part got me past the loss of my chosen career
34 years ago, and the knowing-how-to-know and world-picture parts have kept me on an even keel. College (even more than grad school) were responsible for most of that. (Good parenting, a strong K-12 education, and a fortunate marriage didn't hurt, either.)

I've written two long paragraphs on the "business" of education and the pathology of applying business metaphors to enterprises that aren't businesses, but this post is already attention-strainingly long.

[RickW]

Higher education is like health care: we’d all love everyone to be able to get it without having to bankrupt themselves. Which implies then that hard decisions have to be made about what exactly that entails, how it gets paid for, are there restrictions on who gets it? As Omaha used to say when he was around, higher education is a big business now, and has become something it shouldn’t. But, what exactly should it be? While I Iove the thought that people should do it simply for the experience, to enhance thought processes and critical thinking, to immerse themselves in the arts and sciences simply for the sake of it — that was always a fairly elitist viewpoint, a lovely one, but hardly practical. OTOH, should it be nothing but learning how to do a job? In some cases, yes, that’s exactly what it is. But whatever it is, how it’s run is a) insanely expensive, and b) doesn’t pay the people doing the actual teaching shit. Something is very broken in there.

[Marshall]

I haven't read the article yet. But I blame computers and the internet. Technical jobs cane be done by anybody anywhere these days. But physical work is local. Can't hire a plumber from Indonesia to fix your shower.

[Cornflake]

I agree with Russell.

Oscar Wilde once said that a fool is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

[Hobson]

I also agree with Russell. (Odd, since most of the time I don't even understand Russell.) For several years, I had a professional job that didn't require a college degree. Yet many of us had one. I had several discussions with my fellow college-educated colleagues about how we approached the job differently than those who had no college or little college. College taught us how to think differently.

I also remember a conversation with my mother. She never went to college and didn't even finish high school. She stated that she didn't miss anything by not going to college. I didn't even know where to start on that topic, so I let it pass. She worked as a waitress. She didn't understand why as a kid I went to the library and brought home stacks of books to read that I didn't have to read. Clearly college wasn't for her and it's not for everyone.

[Russell Letson]

Our society is full of ideas about the nature and value of higher education, and about half of them are rooted in some kind of foolery. Faux-populists (and maybe a few actual populists) claim it's all about preserving the status/power of the "elites", and snobs think it validates their class-hierarchy values, and social climbers think it's an escalator to the upper slopes of the socioeconomic pyramid. And there's some truth to all those.

Business enthusiasts think that it's just another business and that their spreadsheets and ROI calculations capture every possible value. Which it ain't and they don't. Various kinds of careerists (classroom as well as managerial types) think it's a snazzy, ever-upward-bound job highway. Which it is, for some of them. (On the other hand, adjuncts teach at least half of post-secondary classes, usually at reduced pay and with no benefits.)

Every big, useful social machine has some pathologies. The military is a money pit and a potential source of authoritarian bullies. Legislatures and political parties are honey pots and influence-peddling outfits. Churches are reinforcers of ancient and unhealthy attitudes. Marriage binds together unsuitable couples in mutual unhappiness. Even families, as Philip Larkin points out:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

On the other hand, I'm not sure we'd be better off without parents, politicians, preachers, and maybe even soldiers.

[dradtke]

Got me thinking about my own college education. I've had either various careers with a particular thread running through them, or one long meandering career with different aspects, depending on how you want to define it. From professional theatre (in scenery - which is really just glorified carpentry - and in stage management) to trade shows and corporate events (again, in scenery and in project management) to museum exhibits; at all levels from tiny with no budget to multi-million dollar extravaganzas. It was never particularly lucrative, and sometimes I was unemployed, but I made a living.

And in all that time no one, employer or client, ever asked me if I had a college degree, let alone in what field or from which school.

But if not for the things I did and learned in college, in and out of class, in my major or not, there's no way I would ever have done any of those jobs. I'd still be building houses in the cornfields in Illinois. And probably making more money.

[epaul]

Universities have been around for a couple thousand years, or so. The idea that it was a good idea for most of a country's young to attend one for "cultural seasoning" has only been around for forty or fifty.

It was a good run.

(I went seven years (and another half year (combined) or so of assorted online classes once I got a computer. And sent two kids, five years apiece and counting. I've done my part to keep it going. But, unless I send Casper, I can do no more.)

[jdd2]

As TSMC steps up its global expansion, the company said production at its first plant in Arizona will be delayed until 2025 due to a shortage of specialist workers.

“While we are working to improve the situation, including sending experienced technicians from Taiwan to train the local skilled workers for a short period of time, we expect the production schedule of N4 process technology to be pushed out to 2025,” TSMC chairman Mark Liu said Thursday.

Are those "specialist workers" typically college-educated, or HS grads?

And i doubt anyone at this project will be working from home.

[aquaduct]

This was inevitable. Around the mid-90s with the advent of ISO quality standards in industry, getting a job became much more about having an appropriate certificate (degree or what have you) than actually being bright and competent. Made it much easier on HR departments (who promptly downsized themselves almost out of existence) who only had to collect certificates that could be scanned for key words and then passed on with limited to no mental effort or time spent.

Educational institutions then quickly became places that sold certification and promoted themselves with all kinds of dubious propaganda about the higher long-term investment rewards of a degree/certificate.

That led to astronomically rising costs even for the dumbest and most useless of degrees. Most of that extra income for the schools went to facility upgrades rather than teaching talent as more and more of the teaching was done by significantly cheaper part time contract adjuncts.

When I went to college in the 80s my dad could pay for it (for 3 of the 4 of us kids) and did. When I graduated with my liberal arts degree (neither dad nor I graduated with a 4 year degree in an actual 4 years) I managed to stumble around and landed at Ford. One boss thought I had a gift for control system programming so he made me an engineer which of course lasted until I left Ford. By then everyone had decided you can't be an engineer without an actual engineering degree. I've been pretty fortunate though to get by mostly without saying what my degree is in unless directly asked.

When it came time for my daughter to go to college, we couldn't afford it on relatively a similar salary to my dad's. She's been out of school now (first in the family to do it in 4 years) for a bit more than a decade and we're still helping her pay those damn student loans.

My boy opted for 3 computer classes at the community college and zero long term debt.

To me this crashing of the value of higher education is long overdue. Who needs that when you can make more as a dumb plumber or electrician?

[jdd2]

We paid uni costs out of pocket for our two, one to osaka and the other tokyo--only one year that they were both in school at the same time, and they worked a little for spending money.

Long ago my dad paid for most of my three sibs uni, and summer jobs were the norm. I went in the army first so the GI bill and some grants paid for mine and more (BA in three years and direct into grad school). Then an assistantship, which I turned down the first year since I still was getting GI bill money.

And for how expensive undergrad is, aren't grad programs pretty much all funded now, one way or another?

[aquaduct]

Sept 6, 2023 0:10:30 GMT -5 jdd2 said:

We paid uni costs out of pocket for our two, one to osaka and the other tokyo--only one year that they were both in school at the same time, and they worked a little for spending money.

Long ago my dad paid for most of my three sibs uni, and summer jobs were the norm. I went in the army first so the GI bill and some grants paid for mine and more (BA in three years and direct into grad school). Then an assistantship, which I turned down the first year since I still was getting GI bill money.

And for how expensive undergrad is, aren't grad programs pretty much all funded now, one way or another?

Not sure what you mean by grad programs being funded, but Ford paid for my MBA.

[millring]

From the very outset I doubt the credibility of the polls he cites in the first paragraph.

[theevan]

I haven't lost faith in the value of higher education, but I have lost faith in the institutions. They are more broken than not.

[Rob Hanesworth]

My college education occurred late 60s into early 70s. In regards to higher education, some members of my generation were higher while being educated than others.

[coachdoc]

I have not one regret or doubt at the value of my education. Even here in retirement it treats me well. So grateful.

[coachdoc]

Addendum. Here at the ancient age of 73, I just finished paying off my education debts 2 years ago. Yes. Still worth it.