Kyle Stokes has a good post on some investigatory work being done to determine whether “For-Profit” colleges are doing their students any good or just saddling them with a large amount of debt.
I think some of the debate in that area is going to turn on what the primary value of college is supposed to be for young adults. In some ways, just having a diploma is the end result. The diploma gets you in the door for certain kinds of jobs; allowing you more and better opportunities for employment. A law degree can be like this in a lot of ways. There have been a number of stories out recently pointing out that law school is deficient in teaching students how to actually practice law. For example, unless you take a clinic of some sort (by no means mandatory) you’re unlikely to ever actually see how a court room works or get any tips on how to talk to a client; and you certainly are not getting information on how to run a small business. You might not even be asked to write a contract while you’re there. After getting out of law school; you are probably most qualified to be an appellate court judge since most of your time is focused on reading appellate court decisions.
But I digress. These days you can’t a license to practice law or find a law firm willing to hire you without a law degree. So, in that sense, the fact of the diploma itself is valuable. And, in the same sense, I think for-profit colleges serve that purpose.
But, the diploma is supposed to signify something. Another way of looking at colleges is that they actually improve your mind in some way that is merely denoted by the diploma — the diploma itself is an unimportant piece of paper. That seems to be where for-profit colleges fall short; but, I’m not sure how closely traditional college diplomas are correlated with turning out individuals whose mind has been improved in any particular fashion. Employers, I think, have some notion that this is what they are trying to screen for when requiring a diploma; but maybe they’re just screening out the riff-raff.
Don’t get me wrong; I fully intend my kids to go to college. I’m not sure they have any notion that stopping at high school is an option (and, in our house, it’s really not.) But, they have a Dad who is a nerd that is constantly evangelizing how cool it is to know stuff; so, hopefully, they’ll get the diploma that is useful in and of itself, but also one that will denote a great deal of learning.
The cynic in me says that the difference between for-profit and traditional college is increasingly just an IRS distinction. (I should take this time to point out that I do work for a public university and that these opinions are my own). I think college has been over-sold to students over the past few decades. “Go to college so you can get a good job” is the mantra high school students hear. Many of them are surprised when a degree doesn’t translate directly into a job.
So while we add ever more students to colleges and saddle students with many thousands of dollars of debt, we’re simultaneously hurting the trade professions. Septic tank repair will never be a glamorous job, but even electricians and plumbers seem to have suffered a loss in prestige.
My daughter is nearly two decades away from college, but the approach my wife and I intend to take is to let college be optional. It sounds crazy, especially for two college graduates, but we’d rather give her the option. If she wants a career that doesn’t require a degree (e.g. electrician or auto mechanic), it’s better for her long-term finances to not rack up ungodly amounts of debt to pursue an education for education’s sake. That can be done later, when she’s grown up a bit.
I’ve been amazed at how much of a difference there is between my time as an undergrad and my first two semesters of grad school. Putting a 5-year gap (plus a marriage, mortgage, and child) in between has made me a much better student.
Ben, I think it’s just that students are worse.
It’s been 15 years since my undergrad and I think I could still manage B’s with my life load of stuff to do.
I would agree there isn’t much distinction between the two, at least at the administrative level. Maybe even further.
While I work at a public university (opinions my own, blah, blah, blah) it seems more money driven than before. I think many state universities are trying to get more out of state students. About 3 times more “profitable” than in state. Which is so warping their mission, but when state funding is less than 20% of your budget…
My kids have a fairly secure path to college thanks to their grandfather. However, they’ll probably be more qualified in middle school than some undergraduates I’m hearing about.
Intellectualism is in a sad state right now. When is the New Enlightment/Renaissance coming?
I’m always skeptical of theories that essentially amount to “kids these days” (with their drugs/rock&roll music/whatever). Maybe the students today are worse — certainly it’s possible the colleges are being less exclusive because they need more money. On the other hand, seems to me that the class work my kids are doing in first and second grade is more advanced than what I was doing at the same age.
Doug,
I am, too. However, for at least 5 years I’ve asked friends, family, professors I studied with and professors I haven’t studied with (and from different disciplines) and then are of the opinion that the middle portion of the student body (say 70-80%) are trending to being worse students.
In fact, talking with a professor he told me about a junior in engineering that can’t find the slope of a line.
Think on that.
The bottom 10% are the bottom 10% (and maybe that student is in that group) and the top 10% are better (I think) than when I was in school.
The problem is that the middle 80% are slouching towards the bottom.
My mini-rant is that why would someone go into engineering in the USA? We don’t really make much any more. At least not at the levels that sustains an engineering professional like it used to.
The problem is that there is far too little emphasis on the humanities and fine and liberal arts, not just for people majoring in a technical field but even for humanities students.
We’re producing a generation of people who can design all sorts of cool nifty little gadgets but don’t know that in Hamlet everyone dies in the end. I’m not sure that’s a world I want to live in.
To be honest, I’m becoming more and more of the opinion that undergraduate education should consist solely of the humanities and fine and liberal arts.
Technical fields, and even mathematics and physics (which have traditionally been included among the liberal arts) are easy to understand. You can learn them from a book on your own, if you so choose. It’s the humanities and liberal arts, which actually require complex critical thinking and rigorous argumentation, that need dedicated and intensive instruction.
One of the questions is what is school (and by extension life in some sense) is for. Is it merely vocational — teaching you how to do a job; or is it more than that — teaching you how to be a citizen and a person as well.
There are very few jobs that a degree should be required for. Law, medicine, education, and engineering, for example, make use of concepts that have been developed over generations.
Outside of those fields & a handful of others, I’ve rarely heard a good argument for a degree in preference to actual work experience. Since so many businesses are ran by MBAs, they seem to expect the person working on the factory floor to have a 4-year degree. As a result, we now have people just trying to get their modern union card in the form of a BA or BS.
There is a whole other rant in here blaming MBAs on the decline of business ethics & making businesses last generations instead of to the next quarter, but I’ll save that for another time.
To Doug’s last sentence, teaching you how to be a citizen & person happens around preschool. I’m pretty sure that if you don’t understand how to play well with others by that point, you’re not going to get it as part of your degree.
Not to minimize the ability to play well with others, but I think that’s slightly different from what you’re getting with a background in the humanities. The former is very definitely important; but I think the latter helps you make sense of the world and your place in it.
You don’t necessarily need a college degree to educate yourself in the humanities; but, if you don’t get a grounding in school at some point, chances are you’ll never pick up the habit and get too busy to make it a priority.
My view, though, is that in order to educate yourself in humanities, you must have a willingness to apply the information in the first place.
I know many 4-year grads that passed the tests but didn’t actually use the information they were given to broaden their views. I also know others like myself that have sought this information on their own without a teaching assistant spoon-feeding it.
I’m sure there is a correlation between collage grads and a broadened viewpoint. I’m skeptical of causation, though. I think the person’s willingness to accept new ideas has been determined well before they get on campus.
It is somewhat like the link between violent video games & violent children. Do the games make the child become violent, or do kids with violent behavior seek out violent games?
Well there is good reason to question the practices of some for-profit colleges, like with any issue, it’s important to consider all sides of the issue. The mere presence, much less prosperity being enjoyed by for- profit colleges suggests that there is a market for students who do not fit into an aruably antiquated and narrowly defined traditional college market place. Diversity of students are disproportionately lacking in more traditional colleges and universities. While some traditional colleges may be attempting to diversify their student base, the data shows a remarkable failing in this regard. Where preexisting markets do not meet the need, secondary markets can and often do.
Whether or not students are more or less prepared for the workforce with traditional colleges or the emerging for-profit institutions remains arguable as well. What is not arguable is that there is a finite demand for select professions, a saturation in the supply, and a lack of preparation for certains other industries. These disparaties are reflected in labor statistics and have been for over a decade.
A primary concern regarding for-profit schools is what I see as lumping them all together. Anytime a group is summized as “one”, there is room for misinformation, bias, and assumptions. Just like corporate efforts operate in diverse ways or like any college is unique to it’s own values, mores, and practices – so are the for-profit schools unique.
Rising costs, decreasing graduates, and increasing economic demise suggests something is not working at the post secondary level of education. It’s time to look at the bigger picture, rather than earmarking one easy target.
Thanks for the plug, Doug! To complete the vicious cycle of link-love… We linked out to your post here: http://bit.ly/sF8rOi :)
Interesting point that college degrees are “supposed to mean something.” Other than seeing the film “The Paper Chase,” I can’t speak to the value of a law school education in real-world legal practice… but I can tell you that the balancing act you describe in your post — and everybody here in the comments section seems to be kicking around — is something Indiana’s higher ed institutions are discussing now (see: http://bit.ly/vDgXCy ).
@gizmomathboy hits the nail on the head, as far as one Purdue person tells me: students admitted at the margins are *not as well-prepared as they were 30 years ago.
30 years ago, though, the unprepared students would silently drop out without much fuss — it was the student’s fault. What’s changed is that there are institutional pressures (e.g. state ed policy people) putting the onus on Purdue, IU, et al., if the students who aren’t as well-prepared drop out.
You need to be reading Bryan Caplan on this subject. The “signaling” theory of higher education (that the degree is just signaling to employers that you are a good potential employee) fits the available data very well.
There are of course some professions where a degree is required (lawyers, doctors, and engineers), but even in those cases, the degree has been mandated by state licensing regulations, which have been captured by the professions themselves. They use those regulations to stifle competition and limit the number of people entering those professions (which seems strange when you consider how many lawyers there are). Remember that, in the past, people became lawyers and engineers without that degree. Some of them were pretty good lawyers and engineers, too. The 16th President comes to mind.
I think that this would be a moot issue if college, both for and non-profit, didn’t cost so much. The drivers of tuition inflation don’t seem to be well understood.
There is a whole other rant in here blaming MBAs on the decline of business ethics & making businesses last generations instead of to the next quarter, but I’ll save that for another time.
No, let’s have that discussion now. I think the whole concept of an MBA is bogus. “Case Studies” have all kinds of pedagogical issues and unscientific biases, and they’re the bedrock of the MBA.
You can get most of the business knowledge that you need from a couple of accounting classes at a community college.
The Chicago Tribune did an amazing analysis regarding college student performance. They followed individual kids from high school to college, using public school vs. college GPAs. The drop in GPAs was atrocious, and most of the kids were going to bogus state schools like Illinois State.
I don’t know if kids in the past were as poorly prepared for college as today’s kids, but there is no question that today’s students are poorly prepared. What is most frightening to me is that they seem to be most poorly prepared in the subjects that are tested the most by No Child Left Behind: Reading and Math.