Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Higher Education Bubble

24 Comments

When will it pop?

He makes a point that doesn’t get made enough — that what kind of degree you get matters, but a lot of these children (and particularly the ones who are shifting back and forth between occupying Wall Street and occupying their parents’ basements) don’t get that. Nor does the student loan program.

[Update a while later]

In defense of classical studies.

24 thoughts on “The Higher Education Bubble”

  1. I guess in an industrial society the only function of college is to train the workforce. It also appears to be the one thing the Tea Party Libertarians, National Socialists and Communists all agree on – “non-technical” degrees should be abolished.

    So I guess its time to toss old Thomas Jefferson’s vision of higher education out of the window.

    [[[“I look to the diffusion of light and education as the resource to be relied on for ameliorating the condition, promoting the virtue, and advancing the happiness of man.”]]

    Thomas Jefferson, 1822

    I should also point out that higher education was one of the few things he felt the government should subsidize as part of the general welfare.

    “”A system of general instruction, which shall reach every description of our citizens from the richest to the poorest, as it was the earliest, so will it be the latest, of all the public concerns in which I shall permit myself to take an interest.”‘

    Thomas Jefferson, 1818

    BTW next year he put his statement into action by founding the University of Virginia as a state supported college which he considered among his greatest achievement 🙂

    1. You should be scolding your friends in #OWS who think puppeteerring degrees are markettable. The commentariat here already knows that such degrees have little extrinsic value.

      1. It also appears to be the one thing the Tea Party Libertarians, National Socialists and Communists all agree on – “non-technical” degrees should be abolished.

        It only appears that way to people who can’t read for comprehension.

        1. What do you expect from someone who sees Birchers in every Tea Party rally? Certainly not intelligence, I hope.

          2. Larry,

            Actually the Koch Brothers aren’t even bothering to hide their connection anymore. From the Washington Times.

            http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2011/nov/4/herman-cain-offers-koch-brothers-fraternal-embrace/

            Cain offers Koch brothers a fraternal embrace
            by Seth McLaughlin

            Published on November 4, 2011

            [[[“I am the Koch brothers’ brother from another mother,” Mr. Cain said during his keynote speech here at the fifth annual “Defending the American Dream Summit” in Washington D.C., which is being hosted by Americans for Prosperity, the tea-party aligned group founded and financed by David H. Koch.]]]

        3. Rand,

          Your point on what degree you get mattering. Actually its more what you do with your degree.

          1. Your point on what degree you get mattering.

            a) I don’t see how a claim that what degree you gets matters translates to either “some degrees are ‘not acceptable'” or that “colleges should not offer non-technical degrees.” I still await an explanation for this illogic.

            b) Is it your claim that what degree you get matters not at all? That an MFI in puppeteering is going to be just as valuable on the job market as a bachelors in petroleum engineering? Really?

          2. Rand,

            Funny you mention a degree in Petroleum Engineering. I recall New Mexico Tech in the early 1980’s. One year the Petroleum Engineering grads were getting multiple big dollar offers. The next year oil prices had crashed and not a one received an offer. As least a couple I knew simply went home to work their dad’s farm. Another ended up working full-time as a dispatcher for the campus police (only a High School diploma needed…) and was glad for the job. When the oil industry came back he passed on the new boom, preferring to have a steady job instead. Never heard about the two that went home to the farm.

            But then just look at all the unemployed aerospace engineers at the moment, and the declining aerospace workforce, an industry mostly dependent on government funding cycles for jobs in the up swing while in the down swing the unemployed scramble to make ends meet by doing consulting and odd jobs out of their field.

            Yes, what a degree is worth is based on the demand for the field at the moment and the individual’s ability to put it to use. So a MFI in puppeterring may not be a bad choice if you like entertaining folks and have the self-reliance to be self-employed. BTW Jim Henson did OK 🙂

            So yes, its more about the individual then the degree.

          4. Yep, he did do it without a degree, and so did Glenn H. McCarthy 🙂

            Not to mention how well Steve Jobs and Bill Gates did in the computer fields without a degree.

            Again, its what you do with what you learn and the degree you get, not the diploma itself. But just as a college education and diploma guarantees a job in socialist countries many in the U.S. seem to think that it should as well, especially those in fields like engineering and the physical sciences.

            As a side note, that is why in my management classes I require students to spend some time studying of the bios of entrepreneurs, so they learn its the drive within that is critical, not the degree. As Dr. W. Edwards Demming stated, a college degree is merely a “Learners Permit”, nothing more.

    2. I wouldn’t abolish any degree subjects. I would make classes and degrees which don’t teach marketable skills ineligible for public financing. If you are willing and able to pay for a puppetry degree yourself, so be it.

      1. The solution is to get gov’t out of it altogether. They shouldn’t be picking the winners and losers.

        1. They aren’t now. All students have equal access to financial aid regardless of the degree program they are in.

      2. Peterh,

        So who would decide what is marketable? A fellow classmate of mind got a Ph.D. in Astrophysics from a school with a good reputation. He ended up having to go back and get a masters in education so he could teach science at a California High School. Its doesn’t strike me his Astrophysics Ph.D. was very marketable…

        At the same time I know a number of folks with masters in liberal arts fields that are doing well working for private corporations.

  2. Jefferson would roll over in his grave if he could see the curriculum now offered by this fine institution.

    1. Yes, their dropping the requirements for studying ancient languages and moral philosophy would be especially disappointing to him.

      http://www.virginia.edu/uvatours/shorthistory/

      [[[Jefferson considered the founding of the University to be one of his greatest achievements. Undertaking the project toward the end of his life—after a long, illustrious career that included serving as a colonial revolutionary, political leader, writer, architect, inventor, and horticulturalist—he was closely involved in the University’s design. He planned the curriculum, recruited the first faculty, and designed the Academical Village, a terraced green space surrounded by residential and academic buildings, gardens, and the majestic center-point—the Rotunda.

      The University opened for classes in 1825 with a faculty of eight and a student body numbering sixty-eight. Jefferson took great pains to recruit the most highly qualified faculty, five of whom were found in England and three in the United States. Instruction was offered in ancient languages, modern languages, mathematics, moral philosophy, natural philosophy, chemistry, law, and medicine.]]]

  3. When I was 14 years old, I understood the basic cause and effect relationship between what degree you got in school and what work you would do when you got out. If you wanted to be an engineer, you got an engineering degree. If you wanted to work in finance or accounting, you got a business degree with emphasis on finance and accounting.

    Now I know young people today have been bamboozled with all kinds of propaganda that is divorced from reality. However, they should at least be able to make the same basic cause and effect relationship that my friends and I made at 14 years old.

  4. I have come not to defend classical studies, but to condemn them. This great nation should not look back to Italy and Greece, for those countries are insolvent economic basket cases. Even looking at their classic periods, one can fast forward and again, they become insolvent basket cases.

    No, this country should look to Switzerland. Sure, the list of Swiss classics begins with shooting an apple of a guy’s head and ends with some girl yodeling in a meadow, but mastering such literature takes little time away from finance, accounting, and engineering.

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