The Value of
Collegiate Education
This will probably be a fairly short post, and is mainly set
as a thought piece for further discussion later. The thrust of this piece is found in the question,
what is the value of a collegiate/university education? And my thesis[i] is
that it is a garnering of life skills that are only reflected partially (albeit
centrally) in the credit hours obtained in the classroom.
Given the rising costs of higher education, rising at rates
well above inflation/GDP growth, one has to ask what is driving this? I have had friends say that the work done by
the US federal government to make the cost of borrowing for college
cheaper/easier has driven an easy money panacea that has enabled this growth of
cost[ii]. I have had others comment on the ballooning of
administrative staff that have little if any contact with the classroom as
driving overhead to unprecedented levels[iii]. Several journals have blamed the demands of
the Higher Ed student today for ever more costly recreation programs and facilities,
wow factor dining spaces and offerings, and a portfolio of near opulent
residential offerings[iv]. Retorts have included defenses as the need to
have market attractiveness in a competitive
collegiate atmosphere, burdensome legislative mandates, rising cost of faculty
salaries, increased facility construction/maintenance as well as information technology costs, and
a host of other factors. Today, even, was
an article that cited the growth of “experiential learning” (while not
mentioned therein, there is a significant cost attached)[v]. Other evidence points to the cost of
research, vice the support of it given declining grant funding sources in
federal and state public entities[vi]. Some have simply said or implied that
colleges are cabals that hide under their non-profit designations to obtain and
hold onto massive amounts of endowed dollars that spin off profit making
ventures and become self-serving to the detriment of the student/attendee,
especially in regards to their financial future[vii]. As is typical in most things in life, there
are kernels of truth in all of these criticisms and defenses, but none hold the
full story, and none get back to understanding what is so valuable about a
collegiate education.
To that point, what do I think is the value? As discussed in a locker room a few years
back, my thesis is that the value of the traditional, residential, collegiate experience,
is that colleges/universities are the one place, at least in theory, that you execute
a set of studies, while simultaneously engage in a place that is unfamiliar and
has people from many walks of life that you would not otherwise encounter,
forcing you to defend, grapple with, and revise your own understandings as well
as learn how to learn, with others and on your own[viii]. While the effort to take classes and study a
specific academic subject area is the glide-path/centering aspect, it is the
life learning skills that are gained not only in the classroom, but also on
campus and in the community around it that make college/university the cauldron
of success that it has proven to be over millennia[ix]. Thus, I contend that an online degree or a
part-time collegiate effort is fundamentally a different animal than the
traditional course, one that indeed gets the centering 60% or so of the experience
and value, but leaves some critical aspects out.
The challenge is measuring this. Heretofore, many analyses have focused on
such measures as life time earnings in comparison to the cost of collegiate education
and its financing[x]. They have made comparisons to those with
degrees and those without degrees in terms of unemployment[xi]. I even put some thoughts down in regards to
how one puts numbers and makes an analysis of the pursuit of higher education
in a post last year. Our default
mechanism continues to be in monetary or actuarial terms, and that is perhaps the
core problem. Humans not only are driven
by economics (albeit it is a highly significant driver), we are also driven by
emotional, physical, and mental fulfillment.
And these factors don’t fit easily into dollars and cents or percentages
and raw numbers. Putting such deterministic
language around your ability to relate to people and appreciate the innate
beauty of a piece of art, or a thread of thought, or even the diversity of
another person, is often fool hearty and at least disingenuous to the full
value of what it is we have experienced, or learned, or come to know. While I admit to being a pragmatist at heart,
I also know that a purely pragmatic approach to almost any problem is often
found wanting. We wouldn’t have smartphones,
or airplanes, or improved health outcomes, if we didn’t also dream big, debate
forcefully, and passionately engage our world.
Such is the value of education, in the end. It is certainly about the GPA and the credit
hours taken, but its full valuation is also in the friendships made, hard
knocks taken, social and emotional soup negotiation, and the leadership/rigor that
you are able to exhibit.
[i] It is noted that I have
now been working in higher education in a full-time capacity since 2006; in
both administrative and faculty roles. For
more information on my background, see my resume/CV: http://adweb.clarkson.edu/~ebackus/Resume.pdf
[ii] James Stewart, a
fraternity brother of Omega Lambda Tau, has been at the forefront of this,
often citing news reports, and other more libertarian/Austrian School economic
analyses
[iii] George Will not too long
ago was blaming sustainability efforts at colleges/universities as the latest
example of this. He has also commented,
similarly, in the past, about diversity, inclusion, and other programs.
[iv] I am not going to cite
specifics, but this is fairly easy to Google.
[v] http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/07/08/looking-for-a-college-with-lots-of-opportunities-the-schools-location-really-does-matter/
[vi] Documented in several
journals and publications, especially when compared, in real dollars, to the
1960s.
[vii] While a bit more callous
than his thesis, Brian Farenell, another fraternity brother of Omega Lambda Tau,
has been highly critical along these lines of thinking. I will caveat here that for-profit colleges
are, in my quarter, living up to this characterization. That said, I cannot subscribe to this
thinking in the general sense.
[viii] A caveat here is that, as
one looks at the tapestry of collegiate offerings in the US today, one can note
that this depiction is waning in some quarters.
For instance your chance of finding a liberal leaning political
scientist at Liberty University (http://www.liberty.edu/)
or a pro-choice advocate at Ave Maria University (https://www.avemaria.edu/) is highly unlikely. Similarly, finding a critic of feminism at
Skidmore College (http://www.skidmore.edu/)
or a critic of climate change science at Oberlin College (https://home.oberlin.edu/) will be a
difficult chore. Thus, this is a
depiction of what the mainstream in collegiate educational environments are,
not the totality of them. There is
indeed concern that the “free flow of ideas” in American colleges and Universities
is threated by political/religious indoctrination or enforcement (whether
implicit or explicit) through speech codes, doctrinal statements, and
legal/financial obligations. This is not
new, so much as it is newly pronounced, and has become increasingly challenging
to abate systematically.
[ix] Note that the first
University, properly understood, was in Timbuktu, at least several hundred
years BC; never minding the Academies of Ancient Greece, the Universities of
the Golden Age of the Middle East, and the Medieval institutions in Europe
brought forth as a part of the pre-enlightenment and enlightenment
efforts.
[x] Money magazine, for
instance, uses this as part of its rankings
[xi] Angel Cabrera, President
of George Mason University, made this very comparison this morning: http://president.gmu.edu/2015/07/over-qualification-a-dangerous-term
No comments:
Post a Comment