At Public Universities, Warnings of Privatization:
Taxpayer support for public universities, measured per student, has plunged more precipitously since 2001 than at any time in two decades, and several university presidents are calling the decline a de facto privatization of the institutions that played a crucial role in the creation of the American middle class.Graham Spanier, president of Pennsylvania State University, said this year that skyrocketing tuition was a result of what he called “public higher education’s slow slide toward privatization.”
Other educators have made similar assertions, some avoiding the term “privatization” but nonetheless describing a crisis that they say is transforming public universities. At an academic forum last month, John D. Wiley, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that during the years after World War II, America built the world’s greatest system of public higher education.
“We’re now in the process of dismantling all that,” Dr. Wiley said.
The causation reasoning employed by these university presidents is not much different than the fallacious logic used in promoting Pell Grants.
Value by fiat
The central underlying element to Senator Pell’s reasoning was skewed: those with college educations earned more money not because of the framed stamped and signed parchments hanging on the Living Room wall, but because they had some kind of intellectual training that gave them a competitive and productive edge over their non-educated brethren. And for the better part of 30 years, this “go to college and become rich” mentality has been unfortunately, successfully trained into the minds of several generations of not just boobus Americanus, but much of the developing and industrialized world.
While it is impossible to predict what could have occurred in lieu of a subsidized and socialized higher education system, one could arguably be just as justified in claiming that without State interference an increase in privatization will play a crucial role in the creation of a larger American “upper class” (i.e. everyone becomes wealthier).
And speaking of collegiate tuition, the latest edition of Forbes is running an article (available only in the print version) entitled Who Needs A College Campus. A brief synopsis flying around the net:
Did anyone read the “Who Needs a College Campus?” article in _Forbes_ (28 November 2005)? The author–David Gelernter, a professor of computer science at Yale–presents his vision of the future of online higher education and claims that “outside the top tier [schools], more and more students will discover that electronic courses offer education with less fun, less atmosphere, less political nonsense–and a lot more choice and less cost. Good teachers will be liberated to peddle knowledge around the world. Top scholars with international reputations may discover, to their astonishment, that they can earn nearly as much as their dentists. Students will be liberated to buy education from suppliers all over the globe.” Gelernter also suggests that “[c]omputerized courses will never be as good as small seminars with first-rate teachers. But they might be better than big lectures with mediocre teachers.” These are thought-provoking statements. I wonder what those of you who are interested in online teaching and learning see when gazing into the crystal ball.
Additionally (as mentioned at ACRLog), the Chronicle of Higher Education is also discussing this issue in the article How Will the Future Shake Out?:
When people contemplate the future, they rarely do so with any balance. It is utopia or dystopia. So it is with higher education. Over the last few months, The Chronicle has gathered the thoughts of a broad cross section of higher-education experts on where they see academe in the year 2015. Optimists see the more than 4,200 colleges and universities in the United States as flexible enough to shift gears as student populations rise and then fall, and the economy grows and shrinks. Pessimists see decreased student access, higher costs, and falling prestige.
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My alma mater, William and Mary has been on a long-term campaign to gain greater autonomy from the Commonwealth of Virginia. As I understand it, the Commonwealth took it over after the student body was killed off by the Civil War (or as we learned it at W&M “The War of Northern Agression”)
“…those with college educations earned more money not because of the framed stamped and signed parchments hanging on the Living Room wall, but because they had some kind of intellectual training that gave them a competitive and productive edge over their non-educated brethren.”
They earned more because they had hard proof of their intellectual training and productive edge. This is called signaling. It reduces the informational asymmetries inherent in the hiring process.
rakehell sez;
“They earned more because they had hard proof of their intellectual training and productive edge. This is called signaling. It reduces the informational asymmetries inherent in the hiring process.”
Well, sort of. But in a system of over 4100 US colleges and universities(http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0908742.html)of wildly differing quality within and without each degree or program, and 15 million enrollees, exactly how is a university education supposed to “signal” a given candidate’s chance of success in a given job? The odds against this being any more meaningful than sorting by age or zip code are worse than you could imagine.
“Well, sort of. But in a system of over 4100 US colleges and universities(http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0908742.html)of wildly differing quality within and without each degree or program, and 15 million enrollees, exactly how is a university education supposed to “signal” a given candidate’s chance of success in a given job?”
For jobs that require specific skills, a degree is an important signal. Would you want to hire an autodidact doctor? Or an autodidact anything? College reputation and GPA help sort further. Some employers ask for transcripts, or at least ask in interviews what courses were taken. That said, it “reduces” not “eliminates,” informational asymmetry.
What is your real name? Maybe I can reply you on your Facebook page.
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