Could Obama just butt out of higher ed and go mess up some other area of human existence? We have enough problems as it is, without his outdated and bizarre fixation on the defunct MOOC scam.
I understand that he realizes what a disappointment his entire presidency has been and wants to leave “a legacy.” But in what concerns higher ed he is just like he has been in everything else: he has no idea how this stuff works, he believes there is no time to try to learn, so he comes up with a pastiche of Dem-pleasing and Repub-pleasing talking points and gimmicky half-measures that will improve nothing and will simply destroy what is there.
If you look at what he’s actually proposing, the shit is scary. Take, for instance, the idea of tying the Pell grants to colleges whose graduates make the most money upon graduation. How is anybody going to find out what graduates make? Asking people to report that info is useless. Only the most successful ever do and not even they do it in overwhelming numbers. Do you fill out the questionnaires sent out by your college? Mine doesn’t even know where to find me because I moved 2 months after graduation.
So what’s left? Spying on people? Even more spying? Don’t we have enough of that already?
And gosh, when I imagine the insane number of deanlets, deanlings and deanazoids that will be hired to “ensure compliance”, I just shudder.
The tragedy of the situation is that a good college-rating system is surely needed. But it has to be created by the people who actually work on academia. If 70% of higher ed teachers are adjuncts, then the committee should consist of 70% of adjuncts.
Clarissa's Blog 
Whether the idea makes sense is open to discussion. Technically, implementation is pretty simple. If colleges report the social security numbers for graduating seniors, the IRS can provide the rest. The IRS by law cannot publish individual income data, but it can publish (and does publish) aggegate data.
Frankly, there are a lot of smaller colleges sucking up resources and providing little benefit to their students. Some of these need to go away. By concentrating resources on those schools offering real value, maybe we can get the massive escalation in education costs under control. Education is the one sector where the standard economic laws of supply and demand just don’t seem to work.
It’s also time for parents to realize that it might be more cost effective to send their kids to another country for college than to educate them here.
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Married people declare joint income. You can’t untangle who makes what without spying on people. This is simply punitive for college grads who get singled out for extra spying just because they made a decision to get educated.
Also, there is no other country on the planet where the quality of higher ed approaches the American.
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I am not so sure about the second paragraph. I have met a lot of supposedly educated Americans who are remarkably ignorant and an awful lot of very knowledgeable people who received their higher education outside the US.
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Of course, absolutely. But the system is still enormously better in the US. Whether people manage to use the system to give them all it can, however, does not depend on the system.
I come from one of the worst systems of secondary and post-secondary education in the world. Yet, I’m enormously better educated and brighter than people who have had every expensive tutor, private school and class laid at their feet since infancy. I have a family culture that taught me to squeeze value out if everything. And these people can’t learn anything at the best universities in the world because their family culture doesn’t predispose them to that.
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“Also, there is no other country on the planet where the quality of higher ed approaches the American”
It depends, the higher you go in the US system the better. But lower levels can be a joke. An administrator once told me what everybody knew about the first couple years of American unversity education (paraphrasing) “It’s so we know they know what they should have learned in high school”.
I think one of the best features of the American system is that it allows for restarts. People tend to look at those who change fields as losers in Europe while no one much cares in the US. Also, when a person crashes or falls out there’s no way to get or be let back in (leading to broad acceptance of cheating) while the US system offers third or fourth and fifth chances (the single thing I’d like to export to Europe).
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“An administrator once told me what everybody knew about the first couple years of American unversity education (paraphrasing) “It’s so we know they know what they should have learned in high school”.”
– You are telling me? I’m right in the middle of it, every single day. But it’s ridiculous to punish colleges for the failures of parents and secondary education. We perform miracles here every day, turning kids who are barely literate – and I’m not exaggerating – into productive members of society. And yeah, maybe our graduates will not make millions. But they are certainly better off than they were before we met them. And now we will be punished for not working exclusively with children of millionaires?
Of course, it almost never takes my students 4 years to graduate. But that isn’t because my college is failing. It’s because they all work (as well they should) and not dedicating their lives exclusively to keg parties. Obama is so out of touch that he doesn’t even know why it takes many people so much longer to graduate.
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These smaller finishing schools for the rich and lazy will get all of the Pell grants according to Obama’s plan. The rich Daddies if the graduates place them all in well-paying jobs irrespective of whether they even know how to read.
In the meanwhile, colleges located in economically depressed regions get punished for high unemployment in the area. Unemployment that it’s actually the job of this president to address. So in the end, Obama will punish my college for not doing his job? Yeah, makes total sense.
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There are still a few of the finishing schools left, but not many. Some of those that might have been considered in that category in the past (e.g., Barnard, now part of Columbia) are pretty solid academically. Conversely, there a thousands of small schools lacking the resources to provide first class education.
The calculations need not be biased against less affluent areas. A good model would compare college costs with the income differential between graduates and average earnings in their home area by age group. Since the US is largely economically segregated, this model would compare affluent grads against a higher norm, and less affluent grads against a lower norm. In fact, the finishing schools might actually get downgraded in this comparison.
There are schools in the US where graduates can take as much as 35 years to earn back the cost of their education. At that point, they would ber better going elsewhere or skipping college and putting the money into an investment.
One caveat: some small schools now survive by recruiting students from other countries. This income transfer isn’t factored into the US balance of payments, but may make a material contribution to the economy. Some economists have described education as the principal export business of the US. We need to foster that.
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“There are still a few of the finishing schools left, but not many. Some of those that might have been considered in that category in the past (e.g., Barnard, now part of Columbia) are pretty solid academically.”
– I went to Yale. And that’s what it was: a finishing school for the lazy rich kids in their 20s, 30s and 40s. And our Barnard graduate was a meathead of enormous proportions. So I’m not going to be convinced easily here. 🙂
” A good model would compare college costs with the income differential between graduates and average earnings in their home area by age group. Since the US is largely economically segregated, this model would compare affluent grads against a higher norm, and less affluent grads against a lower norm. In fact, the finishing schools might actually get downgraded in this comparison.”
– Is there any evidence there will be efforts to introduce this good model? The Obama administration is saying this will be implemented starting in 2015. There is not nearly enough time to create models.
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Clarissa, the “good model” approach is pretty routine actually for government statisticians, for two reasons: (1) the stats guys are pretty good and it is the right way to approach the problem and (2) House members from less affluent areas tend to get up in arms when they seen constituents getting hurt.
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“House members from less affluent areas tend to get up in arms when they seen constituents getting hurt.”
– I would love to live in this alternative reality but, sadly, I don’t. 🙂
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“smaller finishing schools for the rich and lazy will get all of the Pell grants according to Obama’s plan”
Of course, that’s the whole point. As Steve Sailer (for all his faults) said: “Have you ever noticed that basically everything you are supposed to believe in these days — feminism, diversity, etc. — turns out in practice to just be another way for hot babes, rich guys, super salesmen, cunning financiers, telegenic self-promoters, and charismatic politicians to get even more money and power?”
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I also have a philosophical problem with the whole idea of judging “effectiveness of education” by the amount of money the person makes. The levels of income vary from field to field, and the fact that some fields are relatively well-paid (let’s say – cosmetic surgery, for example) is an expression of problematic attitudes prevailing in the society more than anything remotely related to “effectiveness of education”.
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Of course! It’s absolutely ridiculous. Should we close down all schools now and only leave those that educate dentists?
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Actually, dentists are not in the stratosphere among medical professionals in terms of compensation. The average anesthesiologist makes $500,000 per year, which in my humble opinion is absurd.
Back in the day when college costs were reasonable (I paid $5,000 per year for Univ. of Chicago undergrad), it was easier to make a case for the moral value of college. Now, for many schools the cost is around $40,000 per year, while an income of $100,000 today has the buying power of $26,250 in 1970 dollars. Put another way, back then, one year’s average income would cover four years of college at a top school. Today, its 3.5 years of income for the average family, not counting the interest in student loans.
Get costs down and we can start talking about life of the mind again. And yes, I agree totally with your point about administrative costs. Athletics as well. Have you looked at coaches compensation recently?
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Those high prices, the bureaucratic bloat, and my old university’s complete and utter failure to do anything meaningful about the monstrously high rates of sexual assault on campus meant that I transferred to a Canadian university, where I’m much happier. I have dual citizenship, so I pay the domestic price, which is far cheaper than what I paid back in the US. But there are many Americans here also who don’t have dual citizenship, but the price of tuition at the international rate for my university is the same they’d pay for their U.S schools anyways. They come here for a campus culture not dominated by sports, for better student resources, and for classes taught by full professors, not an endless stream of TAs. More and more of them will come up here (and, if they can, pursue permanent residency and then citizenship) if the U.S thinks these stupid schemes will fly.
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The only thing that works for Uncle Tom OSama is his image. Oh yeah, I forgot his career after his presidency.
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And why the federal government has something to do with education?
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Because this is the XXIst century. We don’t abandon children to the mercy of their parents who might turn out to be abusive religious fanatics.
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I said the FEDERAL government. I didn’t talk about state government. Here in Canada, except for some research grants, the federal government has nothing to do with education.
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Many states in the US are in the hands of deranged religious fanatics. We either make collective efforts to educate their children or those children will go shoot up half the world. What would you choose?
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Here, state governments run education and that goes well, even in the religious fanatic Alberta.
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http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-02/pynes-education-gaffe-draws-fire-from-opposition-greens/5492838
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Obama’s main target should be the FOR-PROFIT schools that intentionally take in students who are not equipped to pass the courses, do not bring the students up to speed, and allow most students to fail out – because the school gets its money up front from the Federal Government, but the kids end up with educational loans that they can’t possibly pay back and can’t go into bankruptcy to get relief. To my mind, the pertinent measure should be the former students’ ability to make loan payments on time.
I think that the problem with tuition inflation has many causes. Much has been made of the increasing amenities at residential schools. Some of the “amenities” are really necessities – high-speed Internet access available in libraries, classroom buildings, and residence halls. If the library doesn’t have enough seating to accommodate students needing quiet space, then there may be some justification for building micro-single rooms rather than doubles or triples or quadruples in newly constructed dormitories. However, many private schools go overboard in the amenities simply to provide a competitive edge in recruiting paying students. I won’t lie, a single room is great to have (I spent time couch surfing in public areas because I was too spineless to get into a knockdown-dragout fight with roommate and her boyfriend, who had no shame about unannounced unlimited overnight sex in our room). Fully equipped gyms with dozens of machines in each dormitory (in addition to the centrally located gym building) – a frill. A few weight benches, dumbbells, stability balls in a dorm common area – a minor frill, if the space is available.
There are too many administrators.
Ivy League schools are not necessarily “finishing schools”. Some Ivy students work hard and are smart. State schools are not necessarily composed of 100% hard-working students. The reason that you scoff at Ivy students is their commonly held but erroneous superiority complex “just because they got into Ivy, they are better than people who attend State U.”.
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