Education in America Part II: College

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Dear Abby:

Last week I waxed poetic on the theme that American Education is in trouble, following up on several earlier posts that concluded pretty much the same thing.  Trying to improvise a fee-for-service version of the world’s most important activity: educating the young, the US has found, to its dismay that, businessmen on up, everyone wants to make a buck from the woes of the Education disaster, but no one really knows how to fix it.  The party that has to gain is The American People itself.  But The American People has no voice, and does not have the expertise, and last of all, does not have the political power or the will to change the game.

Turning to College education, our friend Rebecca Schuman writing in Slate magazine has a scathing indictment of tertiary education in the Greatest Nation On Earth.  She says that it is overpriced, and often deceitful.  The deceit comes in certain colleges that have been set up to provide what they consider a utilitarian college education for those who cannot afford the inflated price tags of typical institutions.  But these schools only deliver a mockery of education.  She calculates that, on the average, the college degree cost has increased 500% from what it was 19 years ago.  Compounded annually—I’m delighted that I can do this—it works out to an annual rate of increase of —just a second, please— 8.84%.  This is a lot more than the overall annual rate of inflation.

She knows what she’s talking about.  Where does the money go?  Not to professors.  To (1) Presidents and administrators, who demand wages comparable to CEO’s of big businesses, (2) expensive cosmetic touches —landscaping and pretty buildings, and (3) comfortable housing and expensive facilities for the students, who, she says, are more than likely to trash them anyway!  Read the (very short) Slate feature, for the full impact of Rebecca Schuman’s wit.

Colleges are well practiced at explaining these expenditures.  Presidents and administrators are hired in order to generate funds for the school.  In fact the only function of many college presidents is to give an occasional speech, and make the rounds, collecting money from alumni and well-wishers.  The grounds and buildings, and the fancy facilities (including football fields) are to attract rich parents to enroll their offspring at the institutions concerned.

It is easy to believe that this sort of thinking presumes a very low estimate of the intelligence of parents of prospective students, but the strategy seems to work at many schools.  Parents often judge the quality of a school by the attractiveness of the buildings.  Rebecca S suggests that schools should go on a revenue diet, because kids are happy to get away from home anyway, and will be perfectly happy to camp out practically anywhere.  On the other hand, she probably underestimates just how much of an attraction the opportunity to play varsity sports is, certainly among some of the muscleheads who provide most of the dollars of typical colleges.  Yes; kids will actually pay to play football in college, and yes, girls will actually pay to attend a school with football players.  I wish it were not so.

It was just today over supper that I was deploring the situation in which I found myself in Calculus 3.  I was trying to explain to my class why something was so.  But a significant number of students gave me the distinct impression that all they wanted to know was what to do.  (They were impatiently waiting for me to tell them what the next step is, rather than to guide them towards arriving at the next step themselves.)  Now, knowing what to do is just a small part of the whole task set before a student.  In a technical school, all you need to know is: what to do.  Just turn the wrench three turns, or whatever.  But in college, the faculty wants to tell you what the situation is, or what makes the setup be the way it is, which in turn requires doing whatever needs to be done.  But the mindset of some of my students tells me that they belong not even in technical school, but in a factory, with an instruction book, preferably one with pictures.  I can’t deal with this “Just the answers, man,” attitude.  Education is not just a collection of recipes.  Only amateur cooks are interested merely in recipes.  Is it surprising that education is in such a sorry state, if all the teachers were, in their youth, just interested in recipes?  Why, it is like learning everything from amateur cooks!  Or worse, like a medical school where the students are taught:

Step one: give them an Aspirin, and ask them to call you in the morning.  (If they don’t call, they’re better, or maybe dead.  If they do call, go to step 2.)
Step two: order a whole lot of tests, and have them come back when the results are in.  (If they don’t come back, they’re either dead, or better, or they can’t afford the tests.  If they do come back, go to step 3.)
You get the idea.  Medical practice by recipe!  Thank goodness doctors don’t do this.  Hopefully.

“Disgusted in Pennsylvania”