Education / Youth – Page 49

I Know I’m a Broken Record…

Every so often, a Facebook friend posts an article about colleges that aren’t “worth” the investment of tuition. Usually, these lists are compiled by magazines or pundits out to prove a point, and I just grit my teeth and scroll on.

But recently, the usually responsible Brookings Institution got into the act. An article titled “More data can make college less risky” began with the assertion that the “vast majority” of students go to college because they believe that it will improve their “employment opportunities and financial wellbeing.” The authors recommended that students do what other “investors” do—research their prospective investments.

And what sort of “research” did they suggest?

For decades, economists discussed the average benefits of a college education compared to a high school education with no regard to either field of study or institution. Finally, in 2009, the Census Bureau started collecting data that could be used to assess which majors pay the most,[iii] and then just a few months ago, the Department of Education released data on the earnings of alumni by institution, for all students who receive federal grants or loans. These data can be further analyzed, as we have done, to estimate the economic contribution of schools (or value-added) as distinct from the outcomes attributable to student characteristics (like test scores).

This approach is perfectly fine, if one plans on attending a vocational school.

The assumption that college is a place you go to get job training (and if you can afford it, a social life on a pretty campus) explains so much of what is wrong not just with higher education, but with American institutions in general.

Let me be very clear: there is nothing wrong with job training. There is nothing wrong with colleges helping students acquire marketable skills. But that is not their mission. Their mission is education.

We live in an age where a candidate for President feels free to sneer at philosophers because they make less than plumbers. (Actually, Mr. Rubio, they don’t, but that’s beside the point.) We live in an age where politicians and pundits can and do make ridiculous, factually inaccurate statements secure in the knowledge that only a few “pointy-headed intellectuals” (i.e., people who read and think) will notice or care, an age where ideologues can distort history with impunity because no one has studied it, and cite the Constitution for propositions that would make the Founders turn over in their graves, because their only acquaintance with it is a vague memory of a week in high school government class.

Only in a country that has lost respect for the life of the mind and for intellectual integrity would the Senate vote to deny man’s contribution to climate change. (Perhaps they can vote on the value of Pi next. The Indiana legislature once did that. Or on whether the earth orbits the sun.)

In saner times, we valued knowledge of the arts, literature and philosophy, knowledge of other cultures, science. We valued knowledge for its own sake—and we studied the world in order to understand it, not just in order to make money.

A college that turns out excellent philosophers, artists, musicians, anthropologists and public administrators is probably not going to have alumni earning the highest median wages. That tells prospective students absolutely nothing about the quality of the institution.

I agree that prospective students should research colleges, but not to determine how much their graduates earn.

Here are some questions students should ask: How good are the professors? How selective is the admissions process and how diverse the student body—will you be studying with people whose conversations will enrich your own understanding and broaden your horizons? How large are the classes? Will you be able to interact with your professors, or will you be in oversized lecture halls tended largely by TAs? Will you emerge with a better understanding of the world you inhabit, and an enhanced ability to be a contributing and thoughtful citizen?

I’ve said it before: If your only concern is job training, go to trade school.

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Could Texas Get Any More Embarrassing?

That’s a rhetorical question.

In my classes, when I need an example to illustrate bad public policy (or utter disregard for settled constitutional principles), I can always count on Texas. Patheos has reported on the most recent example of Lone Star idiocy (more recent even than the vote in Houston not to extend equal rights to LGBT folks because you just know that would encourage men to dress like women and use the girl’s potties…), to wit:

The Board just rejected a proposal that would allow experts to fact-check textbooks before they’re approved for use in the state’s public schools.

Let me repeat that because it’s so stunningly stupid.

The Board just rejected a proposal that would allow experts to fact-check textbooks before they’re approved for use in the state’s public schools.

This is hardly the first time the Texas Board of Education has been, shall we say, “controversial.” A 2010 NPR report described that year’s effort to purge Texas textbooks of material the board disliked. The Board made changes emphasizing the “importance of Christianity to the founders,” the danger to the country’s solvency posed by “long-term entitlements” like Social Security, and the causes of the civil war. (Those causes were identified as sectionalism, states’ rights and–oh yeah,what was that other thing?– slavery.)

In this case, Board member Tom Ratliff had proposed bringing in academic experts to review textbooks for factual errors only; the measure was voted down after a lengthy discussion about the dangers posed by “pointy-headed liberals in ivory towers.”

As the blogger says..

Because what the hell do “experts” who work in “academia” know about “facts” and “the goddamn subjects they devoted their entire lives to understanding”?

Just kill me now…..

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Brian Bosma’s Very Good Bill

As Indiana’s legislative session gets underway, there is (as usual) plenty to criticize. (Senate Bill 100 –which ThinkProgress has dubbed “The most anti-LGBT LGBT Rights Bill Ever”–probably tops the list. See their analysis of the bill or Doug Masson’s if you want to understand why), but it’s certainly not the only item on that list.

In the interests of balance, however, it’s worth noting that the news is not all negative.

Speaker Brian Bosma has introduced a really good bill, one that will actually support public education in Indiana. (Given the beating that public education has taken at the hands of Indiana’s Administration and legislature the past few years, this is a really positive change.)

The idea is to incentivize young people to go into education; the Next Generation Hoosier Educator Scholarship program promises to give Indiana’s top high school students an opportunity to earn a full scholarship to any accredited in-state school of education, so long as they spend five years teaching in an Indiana classroom after graduation.

The five-year commitment is based upon research suggesting that, after five years, a new teacher is “hooked”–likely to remain in the profession for the long haul.

Although it is very early in the process, the indications are that the bill–or at least the general approach–enjoys widespread, bipartisan support.

Wouldn’t it be great if the upcoming session of the General Assembly turned out to be one in which Republican and Democratic lawmakers worked together on this and other measures to address the actual problems Indiana faces, rather than yet another iteration of the culture wars that have dominated past sessions? (Just the thought makes me tingly all over…)

Good for you, Speaker Bosma!

Now, can you bury S.B. 100? Somewhere deep?

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A Perverse Idea Whose Time Has Definitely Not Come

I think I’ve written before about how profoundly stupid this is. But I may have neglected to mention that it is also perverse.

And I was shocked to see a Brookings Institute “report” seemingly endorsing it.

“It” is Income-Sharing Agreements (aka “indentured servitude”), currently being promoted by former Indiana Governor and current Purdue President Mitch Daniels as a private-sector remedy for the growing burden of student loan debt.

Income Share Agreements are an innovative tool that will, as I have argued elsewhere, allow students to finance college by selling “shares” in their future earnings. Graduates pay back in proportion to the pecuniary value they get from their degree. If the degree proves worthless, the students will pay little or nothing. If the degree is immensely valuable, then the students will pay back a lot. Either way, the payments are, by construction, affordable.

This is a great idea, if your definition of “education” is job training.

How many “investors” are going to finance that philosophy major’s education? How about the student pursuing a degree in English literature? Or romance languages? or basic scientific research that doesn’t promise a quick payoff, as opposed to training in technologies that generate prompt turnarounds to satisfy consumerism?

Even for students in more “promising” fields, the plan doesn’t eliminate debt; it simply changes the identity of the creditor and the schedule of repayment.

Ultimately, this is one more step on the road to devaluing scholarly inquiry–one more bit of evidence (as if the current crop of Republican Presidential candidates wasn’t evidence enough) of the triumph of American anti-intellectualism.

If it can’t be monetized, it evidently isn’t worth knowing.

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Speaking of Education…

David Schultz–with whom I collaborated on a textbook a couple of years ago–has written a thought-provoking article on the coming decline of the “corporate” university.

The corporate university is being undone by the very forces that created it. The defining characteristic of higher education in the last forty years has been its corporatization, which has transformed the university from an educational community with shared governance into a top-down bureaucracy that is increasingly managed and operated like a traditional profit-seeking corporation.

David points out that–at least since World War II– there have been two very distinct “business models” that have characterized American higher education. The first model was based on public investment in education, and it lasted until the 1970s. “The second, a corporate model, flourished until the economic crash in 2008.”

Public institutions were central to the first model.

The business model was simple: tax dollars, federal aid, and an expanding population of often first-generation students attending state institutions at low tuition. Let us call this the Dewey model,after John Dewey, whose theories emphasized the democratic functions of education.

Beginning with the 1980s, support for all public institutions and programs–including but not limited to universities– began to diminish, and a near-religious belief in the power of markets to cure everything that ails us replaced it.

The corporate university took control of the curriculum in order to generate revenue. The new business model found its most powerful income stream in professional education, including programs in public or business administration and law school, which became the cash cow of colleges and universities. This was especially true with MBA programs, which rapidly multiplied. These programs were sold to applicants with the claim that the high tuition would be more than offset by future earnings.

This business model in part used tuition from professional programs to finance the rest of the university. Students in these programs were able to secure loans to finance their training. The model relied heavily on attracting foreign students, returning baby boomers in need of additional credentials, and recent “baby boomlet” graduates seeking professional degrees as a shortcut to professional advancement.

The consequences of this shift are all around us: ballooning student debt loads, the emphasis on narrow job/professional training and the corresponding neglect of the liberal arts curricula that taught students how to think, the ever-growing dependence on poorly-paid (okay, exploited) adjunct faculty, and the rise of for-profit institutions that promise quick credentialing without the inconvenience of an actual education, among others.

David pulls no punches: as he says, the corporate business model is an education Ponzi scheme, and like all Ponzi schemes, it is falling apart.

Those of us who care about education, who fear the consequences for self-governance of a credentialed but uneducated population, need to figure out how to go about restoring the university’s civic and intellectual mission.

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