Another aspect of this I will sometimes hear people argue: Griggs vs. Duke Power made it essentially illegal for companies to IQ test prospective employees. Therefore, companies require the expensive university degree signal to ensure a reasonably intelligent workforce.
As far as I know, the US military is still exempt from this requirement, and if you ace the ASVAB you might end up running a nuclear reactor on an aircraft carrier (which seems pretty high stakes!) without a college degree, whereas companies making the latest DoorDash clone require college degrees for people messing around with CSS files.
Increasingly, at least amongst companies in deep blue-tribe areas and industries, e.g. Silicon Valley, I also think the college degree requirement is a useful filter for the kind of cultural conformity being demanded at these places. If you can make it through an average four-year on-campus degree, you either weren't culturally red-tribe in the first place, or you quickly learned which opinions you couldn't express out loud without social censure, and will fit right in.
I attended at top liberal arts college from 1987-1991. The annual cost of tuition + room/board at the time was about $16,000/year, which was considered expensive. Through grants, work study, summer jobs, and parent contributions, I had about $25,000 in debt when I graduated.
I managed to pay off my debt by the time I was 25.
Today, my alma mater costs $74k per year.
There is absolutely no way I could ever recommend anyone attend in good conscience today.
I am a big believe in Stein's Law: If something can't go on forever, it won't.
Academia has set itself up for collapse.
- Tuitions are unaffordable.
- More schools are publicly declaring themselves institutions of advocacy, not education.
- Grade inflation has devalued the educational outputs of a university.
- There are too many free or low cost alternatives available for someone to gain knowledge.
- Universities continue to focus more on underpaid post-docs for instruction, undermining the whole point of in person learning from the best in their field.
Prices keep going up, yet every other trend should be pushing for reducing costs.
In a world where knowledge is free, and seemingly given a value of zero, the ONLY value of a college education is that of a luxury brand.
Interesting how the system was modeled after Europe nobility circles and yet Europe (especially continental Europe) never seemed to adopt the notion that baristas and masons needed a degree. When I was in Europe shortly after getting my "paper" I was amazed by how many very smart people that I met had never gone to University.
My first thought was “wow. Who hurt you?”. You, more than most, seem to have benefited handsomely from a college education. But after a re-read and mulling over your arguments, it’s hard to argue. Universities tend to be a very self-serving class. They typically generate most of the political class which which has the power to feed the beast.
Hopefully what you describe will happen — it would be a better system, not just in avoiding debt but also because these sorts of online classes would probably be a better signal of conscientiousness than in-person college — but I am less confident than you. If online classes have been possible & actually existed for this long, why have they not replaced college earlier? Besides, college graduates are highly influential on Blue Tribe culture, including the Democratic Party & (I think) much of the courts & the federal bureaucracy, & that culture includes a belief in the importance of education & of the products of universities, which makes me expect that if these sorts of economic changes happen they will try to get the government to somehow incentivize or mandate a university education along the lines of the current system.
(I also wonder what the effects of a collapse in college enrollment & revenue would be on scientific research, probably the most important result of college, but https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/04/22/1960-the-year-the-singularity-was-cancelled/ suggests that they wouldn't be that bad because putting a larger fraction of the population in college hasn't been very effective at producing useful knowledge & inventions faster, & perhaps the opposite.)
I also notice that you have listed "work ethic" as not genetic, which as far as I know (from looking it up online briefly: I am no sort of expert on genetics) is not entirely true. Conscientiousness may be less genetic than many other personality traits, but the studies I found on the subject [1] indicate that a substantial part, though less than half, of the variation in conscientiousness is genetic.
I think you missed some of the historic purpose of universities, or at least glossed over them, as your comment that some universities will still benefit form in person attendance. They were also places you could effectively be a patron of the inventive class. I mean historically, you had a lot of rich people doing the gentleman scholar thing. The problem is you aren't necessarily going to came up with the idea, and the ideas make those who can exploit them more wealthy. Either by being kept minds, or by networking with the wealthy to get the short end of the stick post networking on your inventions, this mostly works out as a positive if you are the person making things that can make more money.
There area bunch of universities that create value. It's just that granting diplomas is not that value. But, inherently, the stuff that is worth while is a game of numbers. You NEED to mash as many people through the sieve to avoid missing that value. They just don't want to pay for it, so do as much as possible to shift the cost onto the people who are just there for the piece of paper.
If you are there for the piece of paper, the game has been for quite some time to get it as cheaply as possible, because mostly nobody cares about the brand name on the diploma outside of a handful of prestige universities.
Quite an indictment of the educational system. .There is passion behind the story. As one who graduated long ago (50's), I was in the group that was destined to college in a town where one high school was for college bound and the other for trades. That system has been gone a long time. I did not join my peers and eventually worked my way through college, then grad school in hard science. My late wife took a different path into business after college then, in semi-retirement after being an executive she did a Masters in Special Education where she encountered the current insane system at the middle school level. As a teaching intern she was often confused by others who thought her a master teacher despite still navigating the system. Eventually she was beaten down by school administration during the budget crunch in 2008. Too many kids with needs, no resources and she felt unvalued. More to the point she was distressed at "standardized" teaching which she thought wasn't challenging students adequately. She enjoyed co-teaching with inspired people but too many were just marking time. In my case and hers the degrees were needed to do the job.
But I can agree that the public university campus is more like a place to bid time awaiting papers. But students imagine they are chosen ones with special insights. They pick schools with attractive features other than academics and the schools oblige to attract the customers. The university newspaper is full of pablum about success of any special category of person, minority, female, LGTBQ, etc. Rarely are students in sciences or engineering ever noted aside from the odd female in say, engineering. The purpose seems related to making the students happy, insulated from reality but amplifying how special they are. At least for public universities the debt load is much lower than more exalted schools. Even so, few students seek employment while in school most seem content on using the loans for living expenses.
Like much of life, anything free is likely not worth much in reality. If gaining an education is easy with little appreciation of loan terms, then the easy path gets followed. And that system creates more of the same. Of course, the moneyed continue on but by the third of fourth generation wealth can be squandered. Unlikely for the very rich or well connected. They move from college to that high salary if properly connected. Not so the average person as they discover the easy life has ended.
As you note perhaps the system we have created can't be reformed, particularly because important rice bowls with sinecure abound. A serious relook at the loan program might start to reduce the damage, but likely impossible politically. OTOH, the excesses of the current system are becoming more obvious. Can we afford such a waste of human talent?
Wasn't there a program that paid people to not attend college?
Tuition is already calculated per semester hour, and most universities (state ones, anyway) are liberal about accepting transfer credit (my kids frequently would take the same course at community college and transfer it in, even when they were enrolled at four-year college; now that many courses are available online, this is a much more viable proposition). We should go a step further and allow students to bid what they are willing to pay for a course (perhaps constrained within a tuition budget), even a particular section or instructor. The price signal sent by a market-based system could allow resources to be allocated more rationally.
In the real world, over the past few years I have seen growth in certificate programs for people who do hands-on work in health care, IT, and many blue-collar occupations. I have no idea where or how those numbers are collected, but they are having a real impact on the job market. In many cases, although a four-year degree is not required for the job or the certificate, the people getting the certificates are graduates of four-year institutions who are looking for jobs in fields that have nothing to do with their majors. This is the future.
I like your analysis but am wondering how it evolves when you consider all of the education complex's friends who exist in government spaces, where the power to tax resides...
"handing out more degrees does nothing to change the job profile of the United States. The job market still needs just as many garbage men and ditch diggers and baristas today as it did thirty years ago"
...because more college grads does produce more high-paying jobs. Arguably adding more workers for high-paying jobs is even better at creating those jobs than adding more workers for low-paying jobs because there's more demand for the former. Saying that the amount is fixed is the lump of labor fallacy.
Another aspect of this I will sometimes hear people argue: Griggs vs. Duke Power made it essentially illegal for companies to IQ test prospective employees. Therefore, companies require the expensive university degree signal to ensure a reasonably intelligent workforce.
As far as I know, the US military is still exempt from this requirement, and if you ace the ASVAB you might end up running a nuclear reactor on an aircraft carrier (which seems pretty high stakes!) without a college degree, whereas companies making the latest DoorDash clone require college degrees for people messing around with CSS files.
Increasingly, at least amongst companies in deep blue-tribe areas and industries, e.g. Silicon Valley, I also think the college degree requirement is a useful filter for the kind of cultural conformity being demanded at these places. If you can make it through an average four-year on-campus degree, you either weren't culturally red-tribe in the first place, or you quickly learned which opinions you couldn't express out loud without social censure, and will fit right in.
I attended at top liberal arts college from 1987-1991. The annual cost of tuition + room/board at the time was about $16,000/year, which was considered expensive. Through grants, work study, summer jobs, and parent contributions, I had about $25,000 in debt when I graduated.
I managed to pay off my debt by the time I was 25.
Today, my alma mater costs $74k per year.
There is absolutely no way I could ever recommend anyone attend in good conscience today.
I am a big believe in Stein's Law: If something can't go on forever, it won't.
Academia has set itself up for collapse.
- Tuitions are unaffordable.
- More schools are publicly declaring themselves institutions of advocacy, not education.
- Grade inflation has devalued the educational outputs of a university.
- There are too many free or low cost alternatives available for someone to gain knowledge.
- Universities continue to focus more on underpaid post-docs for instruction, undermining the whole point of in person learning from the best in their field.
Prices keep going up, yet every other trend should be pushing for reducing costs.
In a world where knowledge is free, and seemingly given a value of zero, the ONLY value of a college education is that of a luxury brand.
Interesting how the system was modeled after Europe nobility circles and yet Europe (especially continental Europe) never seemed to adopt the notion that baristas and masons needed a degree. When I was in Europe shortly after getting my "paper" I was amazed by how many very smart people that I met had never gone to University.
My first thought was “wow. Who hurt you?”. You, more than most, seem to have benefited handsomely from a college education. But after a re-read and mulling over your arguments, it’s hard to argue. Universities tend to be a very self-serving class. They typically generate most of the political class which which has the power to feed the beast.
Hopefully what you describe will happen — it would be a better system, not just in avoiding debt but also because these sorts of online classes would probably be a better signal of conscientiousness than in-person college — but I am less confident than you. If online classes have been possible & actually existed for this long, why have they not replaced college earlier? Besides, college graduates are highly influential on Blue Tribe culture, including the Democratic Party & (I think) much of the courts & the federal bureaucracy, & that culture includes a belief in the importance of education & of the products of universities, which makes me expect that if these sorts of economic changes happen they will try to get the government to somehow incentivize or mandate a university education along the lines of the current system.
(I also wonder what the effects of a collapse in college enrollment & revenue would be on scientific research, probably the most important result of college, but https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/04/22/1960-the-year-the-singularity-was-cancelled/ suggests that they wouldn't be that bad because putting a larger fraction of the population in college hasn't been very effective at producing useful knowledge & inventions faster, & perhaps the opposite.)
I also notice that you have listed "work ethic" as not genetic, which as far as I know (from looking it up online briefly: I am no sort of expert on genetics) is not entirely true. Conscientiousness may be less genetic than many other personality traits, but the studies I found on the subject [1] indicate that a substantial part, though less than half, of the variation in conscientiousness is genetic.
[1] e.g. Bouchard & McGue (2003) "Genetic and Environmental Influences on Human Psychological Differences" https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1002/neu.10160?download=true or Luciano &al. (2005) "Heritability of conscientiousness facets..." https://genepi.qimr.edu.au/contents/p/staff/CV448.pdf
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/student-loan-horror-stories-borrowed
I think you missed some of the historic purpose of universities, or at least glossed over them, as your comment that some universities will still benefit form in person attendance. They were also places you could effectively be a patron of the inventive class. I mean historically, you had a lot of rich people doing the gentleman scholar thing. The problem is you aren't necessarily going to came up with the idea, and the ideas make those who can exploit them more wealthy. Either by being kept minds, or by networking with the wealthy to get the short end of the stick post networking on your inventions, this mostly works out as a positive if you are the person making things that can make more money.
There area bunch of universities that create value. It's just that granting diplomas is not that value. But, inherently, the stuff that is worth while is a game of numbers. You NEED to mash as many people through the sieve to avoid missing that value. They just don't want to pay for it, so do as much as possible to shift the cost onto the people who are just there for the piece of paper.
If you are there for the piece of paper, the game has been for quite some time to get it as cheaply as possible, because mostly nobody cares about the brand name on the diploma outside of a handful of prestige universities.
Quite an indictment of the educational system. .There is passion behind the story. As one who graduated long ago (50's), I was in the group that was destined to college in a town where one high school was for college bound and the other for trades. That system has been gone a long time. I did not join my peers and eventually worked my way through college, then grad school in hard science. My late wife took a different path into business after college then, in semi-retirement after being an executive she did a Masters in Special Education where she encountered the current insane system at the middle school level. As a teaching intern she was often confused by others who thought her a master teacher despite still navigating the system. Eventually she was beaten down by school administration during the budget crunch in 2008. Too many kids with needs, no resources and she felt unvalued. More to the point she was distressed at "standardized" teaching which she thought wasn't challenging students adequately. She enjoyed co-teaching with inspired people but too many were just marking time. In my case and hers the degrees were needed to do the job.
But I can agree that the public university campus is more like a place to bid time awaiting papers. But students imagine they are chosen ones with special insights. They pick schools with attractive features other than academics and the schools oblige to attract the customers. The university newspaper is full of pablum about success of any special category of person, minority, female, LGTBQ, etc. Rarely are students in sciences or engineering ever noted aside from the odd female in say, engineering. The purpose seems related to making the students happy, insulated from reality but amplifying how special they are. At least for public universities the debt load is much lower than more exalted schools. Even so, few students seek employment while in school most seem content on using the loans for living expenses.
Like much of life, anything free is likely not worth much in reality. If gaining an education is easy with little appreciation of loan terms, then the easy path gets followed. And that system creates more of the same. Of course, the moneyed continue on but by the third of fourth generation wealth can be squandered. Unlikely for the very rich or well connected. They move from college to that high salary if properly connected. Not so the average person as they discover the easy life has ended.
As you note perhaps the system we have created can't be reformed, particularly because important rice bowls with sinecure abound. A serious relook at the loan program might start to reduce the damage, but likely impossible politically. OTOH, the excesses of the current system are becoming more obvious. Can we afford such a waste of human talent?
Wasn't there a program that paid people to not attend college?
Good read as always.
Tuition is already calculated per semester hour, and most universities (state ones, anyway) are liberal about accepting transfer credit (my kids frequently would take the same course at community college and transfer it in, even when they were enrolled at four-year college; now that many courses are available online, this is a much more viable proposition). We should go a step further and allow students to bid what they are willing to pay for a course (perhaps constrained within a tuition budget), even a particular section or instructor. The price signal sent by a market-based system could allow resources to be allocated more rationally.
In the real world, over the past few years I have seen growth in certificate programs for people who do hands-on work in health care, IT, and many blue-collar occupations. I have no idea where or how those numbers are collected, but they are having a real impact on the job market. In many cases, although a four-year degree is not required for the job or the certificate, the people getting the certificates are graduates of four-year institutions who are looking for jobs in fields that have nothing to do with their majors. This is the future.
Great post! Do you mind if I quote you in my blog at some point?
I like your analysis but am wondering how it evolves when you consider all of the education complex's friends who exist in government spaces, where the power to tax resides...
I disagree with:
"handing out more degrees does nothing to change the job profile of the United States. The job market still needs just as many garbage men and ditch diggers and baristas today as it did thirty years ago"
...because more college grads does produce more high-paying jobs. Arguably adding more workers for high-paying jobs is even better at creating those jobs than adding more workers for low-paying jobs because there's more demand for the former. Saying that the amount is fixed is the lump of labor fallacy.