Is a college degree worth the cost? You decide.

This is not a discussion about facts, this is a discussion about public perception, and how the education community often misses the target on communicating to the general public. Before we start the discussion, please watch the following video Is College Worth the Cost? You Decide:





Now, look at this report, The College Payoff:  Education, Occupations, Lifetime Earnings .  This report gives facts and figures about how much more a college grad can make than others with lower or no degrees.

In these two examples we see how people are informed about the value of a college degree.  The examples also illustrate each one's power to form beliefs about issues that are widely disseminated in the popular press.  Example 1.  A higher education has lost its value.  Example 2.   The higher the degree the more money you will make.

In example 1, Mr. Schiff wanted to make a humorous point for his audience and he cleverly did it.  He went to an area where jobs are high pay, exotic jobs and employ young, healthy workers.  He knew the high probability that the people he would interview had some college and many had degrees.  He didn't ask the young folks he interviewed why they had not found a job:  if they would relocate, what they had done to win a job, what were their grades in college and if they were having fun working in the red light district of New Orleans with lots of other young, lively adults.

The other report has the quick appearance that if young people go to college, they will earn more.  Anyone that says that needs to go back to college and take statistics and re-read the report.  The stats in this article give you probability and averages not a guarantee.  The students in the Schiff report are represented in The College Payoff.  It is those nasty areas in the bell curve of life that folks miss.

At the end of the academic year, a faculty member came to me after visiting with a recent grad.  She had just spent a couple hours with the young lady who was weeping and distraught.  She had not found a job and was facing huge financial loans.  All the young lady could say was, "I thought if I got a college degree a job would be given to me."

College gives you opportunities.  Degrees come with no guarantee just opportunity.

Is Higher Education Causing Lower Enrollment with the Message We Give Students?

We have backed ourselves into a corner by creating a non-sustainable system of funding education.  For many years we have worked on making college affordable for everyone and did so well we have come full circle.  Students can afford college now, but only because of loans, Pell Grants and other federal funding.  This way of financing higher education is coming to an end as graduates are struggling to pay back the debt they occurred and warning the next generation of college students to be cautious about the cost effectiveness of a degree.

In this article, Five Reasons "Why College Enrollment Might Be Dropping" three out of four reasons enrollment might be dropping point to funding.

The article and I agree that the most critical determent to grow or maintain enrollment in the future is that the career path students take might not factor well with the salary they will earn and their ability to pay back loans.  Right now, the main marketing slogan colleges are using to attract students is that a higher education is a pathway to a high paying career.  Come on now, who are we kidding with this?

Not all students go to college to be rich, or famous or obtain a high powered career.  The fact that students go to college, major in what they love and end up in a low paying career is not a new phenomena. It has been going on since we invented higher education.  Some students choose majors knowing that they will probably never get a high paying job in the career: vertebrate paleontology, ornithology, veterinarian, social work, teaching, religion, English, French, fine arts, music and I can list many, many more.  The reason students major in those areas is that they want the lifestyle the career gives them.  In fact, sometimes the end result will be that their major becomes an avocation; not a vocation.  But that is OK 

Students chose college and the major because they loved the learning experience and, whether or not they even land a job in their major, they will continue as life long learners and dabblers cultivating and expanding on the knowledge and skills they loved in college.  The skills that will land them a good job are writing, critical thinking, antithetical skills, content knowledge, technology, ability to meet deadlines, communication, work ethic, leadership skills, networking, working in groups and self confidence.  Those come with every major.

We do have to fix the expanding cost of education.   There is no doubt about that but some adjustments will come naturally.  The reduction of students opting to go to college will be the market force to prod higher education back to a fair market price. Less demand the less you can charge for the product.  Capitalism is going to start working here.  Adjusting to market value will be a new experience for higher education but one that will force change in how and when education is delivered to students.

But more important is that we are kidding ourselves and students if the only incentive for going to college is the end result of a high paying job. That belief brought throngs of students to college feeding the higher education boom.  That belief will also put us out of business with the next generation of college students.  Higher ed is in the throws of  understanding if we are in the business of education or job training and then packaging a clear message to students about just what they are paying for, what are the rewards, and exactly what a college education will do for them.

What if MOOCs take off and students begin learning on their own and get jobs?  In the late 90's I listened to college professors who thought that online learning was never going to be considered a valid education choice, that a science major could complete a degree, part time, while working, and for profit institutions could lure students away from traditional college.  These thoughts never held true.

Students who are going to take advantage of MOOC's are those who come to college for self satisfaction, interesting in learning about what enchants them, are self motivated, and will be life long learners.  Sounds just like the students we want in college doesn't it?  They will also be the students who are conscious of cost as well as the quality of education they receive.  They can take a MIT engineering course for free versus one from a the local community college that may as scholarly and rigorous to them, but not as prestigious to a future employer.  

What higher education faculty have been promoting forever is that they are in the business of education, enlightenment and achievement.  This still holds true today with faculty's message to students.  As we cut costs and evaluate what is the role of higher education in the next century we have to change our advertising message to students that is more realistic to the product they will walk away with - a richer, fuller lifestyle.

We Have Shot Ourselves in the Foot; Now the Leg?

We are entering a new public attitude toward higher education and it ain't good.  It is change.  But we aren't sure what the change is going to look like. So we have to analyze what is happening in and outside of the ivory towers to understand the direction we have to go.  This isn't the first time.  Higher education has taken a turn as the economy and industry needs changed in the U.S.  In the beginning, the main job of professors was to teach.

Universities first started mainly as teacher colleges and some prestigious colleges were to educate the rich, white and privileged.  That changed after WWII when we realized after the birth of the nuclear bomb that we needed technology and a lot of it.  With technology we needed a trained workforce from blue to white collar that not only would build and manage technology but create innovative products.  From the transistor radio to the iPad.  The main job of professors flipped to research and science, math, engineering and technology became king.  We even designed our intelligence tests to measure students' probability of becoming a physicists.  Like all kids want to be a physicist!

Now the economy of the U.S. is changing.  Higher education has been able to raise costs easily as federal aid and government backed loans increased as the cost of an education increased.  More and more students have entered college than ever before.  And, standards have been interpreted to have slipped.  And there seems to be an anti-intellectual movement in the U.S. And college loan debt has exceeded credit card debt in the U.S.  So now everyone is questioning if everyone should go to college.  This is all pointing to the perfect storm!

Legislators have pretty much had it with so many high school students going into college, their not being ready, and having to paying for them to take remedial courses that catch them up to what they should have learned in college.  Faculty complain about having too many adjuncts and at the same time complaining that they have to teach more than two courses and adjuncts, at a small fraction of tenured faculty's salary, complain that they can only teach two.

Pretty much the system is not functioning well.  As a result, we have boards beginning to micro-manage colleges.  In Texas they have begun measuring the worth of each faculty member by people with no experience in education.  We even have a hard time defining what constitutes a good teacher.  Sigh.

In the next couple years, experts in education are going to have to work fast to fix higher education before local and state boards jump in and stir up the waters.  However  industry will hold a trump card as the U.S. goes from a consumer economy with intellectual property to sell and finance our treasured lifestyle to a ...........? economy and maybe a different lifestyle.  Colleges will have to adjust to what they need.