Is it time to return to campus?

The pandemic has us questioning the safety of just about everything we took for granted just a few months ago.  With the school year upon us, we must now worry about the safety not only of our children but also ourselves as those wee ones may not get sick but could act as carriers of the virus.  The opening of college campuses poses an even greater risk as students travel from all parts of the country.

The possibility of converting college education to an online -- rather than in person -- experience, has many questioning the cost of a college degree.  Of course, if such a conversion caused a reduction in tuition, the universities would still be stuck with the massive overhead of the land and buildings they own.

The debate is not new.  Following the Great Recession, many questioned the value proposition of a college degree as many graduates couldn't find jobs with incomes sufficient to pay off their student loans.  Historical data continues to support the value of a degree in terms of lifetime income differentials between those that have one and those that don't.  But past is not prologue.

I have been questioning the value of a college degree for some time.  I first wrote about it in 2012 (Is the education we want the education we need?), pointing out that industrial powerhouse Germany relies on an apprentice program to enable the middle class to obtain good-paying jobs. 

In the following year, my headline read "Don't Send Your Kids to College."  In that post, I suggested we not take it as an article of faith that a degree will provide the skills to get a good job and recommended parents and students take "responsibility for the outcome, discovering what employers want" to get the training and education that's right for the job market. 

In 2015, I suggested we replace our expensive universities with a lower overhead model that combined online education with semi-annual visits to lower cost facilities in "It's time to replace our universities with..." 

Later, I asked the rhetorical question "When will the university bubble burst?"  Perhaps the time is NOW!

WHO WILL LEAD?

When will the university bubble burst?

A local business owner I know has hired several Rochester Institute of Technology students to write software. “Are they graduates?” I once asked him.  “Some are; some aren’t,” came the reply. He didn’t really care.  He only cares if they can do the job.

He’s not alone. “Coding boot camps” are popping up all over the country.  Venture Beat reports that the percentage of bachelor’s degrees in computer science has dropped by half since the turn of the century.  Meanwhile, the graduates of coding boot camps are growing at 280 percent per year. 

And, it’s not just computer science that is experiencing changes.  

Roger Martin, former dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, compares the state of our business schools to that of General Motors before their bankruptcy.  In his analogy, tenured college professors are stand-ins for UAW workers with lavish salaries and benefits.  Martin points out that enrollments in the nation’ B-schools are being propped up by an increasing percentage of foreign students.  The annual number of graduates has doubled in the last 20 years as tuitions skyrocket and demand for grads tumbles.

So, how are universities responding to these disruptive forces?  By raising tuitions, of course. 

A key driver of tuition increases – at least at public universities -- has been state budget cuts.  However, there are other forces at play.  Costs are spiraling upward as universities add amenities and build new sports stadiums.  So, students take out larger loans supported by federal government programs and graduate into a job market that doesn’t offer economic opportunity sufficient to pay back the loans. 

Meanwhile payrolls are increasing not because faculty salaries are on the rise but rather because administrative staff is growing at twice the rate of faculty.  As administrative expenses increase, colleges reduce costs by augmenting faculty with part-time adjunct professors.

So, the complete picture looks like this:  kids go away to college, pay exorbitant tuitions for an education delivered by less than qualified teachers in classes they can attend online from their posh dorm rooms.  All of it is supported by loans that banks wouldn’t make were it not for guarantees from the federal government. 

Does that sound like a sustainable model to you?

When I was at the Naval Academy, there was a cross-town curiosity called St. John’s College, a hippie haven “known for its distinctive curriculum centered on reading and discussing the Great Books of Western Civilization”.  To this day, St. John’s eschews costly amenities that attract a lot of students – intercollegiate sports, swimming pools, hot tubs and movie theatres – in favor of providing a great education. 

I grew up during the Cold War and the space race.  Engineering was the most valued degree.  A degree in liberal arts was then, as now, often derided as inapplicable to a demanding job market.

Yet, I have to say that St. John’s is on to something. 

The founders – among them Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and Webster – advocated for a national university.  In Washington’s words, “a primary object of such a National Institution should be, the education of our Youth in the science of Government. In a Republic, what species of knowledge can be [more] important … than to patronize a plan for communicating it to those, who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the Country?”

The founders were well aware that government institutions decay over time.  A national university would provide for a common understanding of philosophy and history.  Should not graduates be prepared to contribute to our society based on a fundamental understanding of our institutions of government, our history and our social needs? 

And, yet, we hear more and more about students who don’t want to hear anything that might challenge their understanding, beliefs or feelings.  Students at Columbia objected to a classroom discussion about the origins of Ovid’s poetry because it included a summary of violence and rape in the times of the Roman Empire. 

Speakers have been shunned because their views don’t fit the social and political narrative of the students.  IMF president Christine Lagarde and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice were cancelled as commencement speakers by Smith College and Rutgers University, respectively, because they represented institutions and points of view that were deemed to be politically incorrect. 

A better response might be to demand a balance.  If the university invites Paul Krugman, demand John Mauldin.  If the special guest is Dick Cheney, insist upon John Kerry too. 

We should expect our universities to produce graduates with an understanding of how to contribute to our society by engaging in productive work and by having the perspective to constructively participate in our national dialog.

Otherwise, you might as well go to a coding boot camp.

WHO WILL LEAD?