Todays Rant, or: The Cost of Higher Education Some people are dissecting the recent theory promoted by Brookings that the college debt situation for young people in this country is somehow not any worse than it was decades ago: theawl/2014/06/that-big-study-about-how-the-student-debt-nightmare-is-in-your-head-its-garbage?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A%20TheAwl%20%28The%20Awl%29 Well played. Similarly, Im always a little miffed when people use the if you think education is expensive, try ignorance!* argument (see: theatlantic/business/archive/2014/06/why-college-is-like-sunscreen/373282/). Sure, people with degrees do way better than people without degrees, so you are going to pretty much have to pony up for college if you are able to, no matter what the price, but that doesnt mean college is worth it (i.e., proportional to the value the institution is providing to each of its students). Its the same way you are going to take on $100,000 in debt to get life-saving heart surgery if thats what it takes to, you know, not be dead--but you are still allowed to feel like you got stiffed if the procedure only cost your doctor $10,000 and shes pocketing the remaining $90,000. Obviously this is hyperbole, but the fact remains that colleges could provide students with an equal or higher quality of education than they do now for a significantly lower cost. What prevents this from happening is, A. The power of brand names and the supposed importance of alumni networks have led parents and students alike to believe that going to that top-tier school is 100 percent worth it, no matter what the cost; and, B. The corresponding desire of all higher-ed institutions of any quality to be considered part of that elite top tier (again, no matter what the cost). This is made even worse by the fact that, while the population of college bound students ballooned as the millennial generation reached college age, nobody was building new colleges to satisfy the increased demand. You dont see Bill and Melinda Gates going out and dropping a cool billion to start Gates University (although that would be badass, and they should totally do that). The entire higher-ed system has fallen prey to the perverse incentives that are created by allowing incoming students to finance a major lifetime purchase without entirely understanding the long-term implications; a purchase which is facilitated with easy credit subsidized by the government; and a debt obligation from which remorseful borrowers are unable to extract themselves due to exceptions written into our bankruptcy law. This has led to the commercialization of institutions that compete for a limited pool of top students, as well as prestige, by building extravagant new facilities as incentives, and then passing on the associated costs to the naive student--who all the while is receiving a diminished quality of education because her college has slashed tenured positions and assembled a hodgepodge collection of adjuncts who, while extremely committed to educating their students, have no job security and are getting paid a relative pittance. In short, higher education--particularly when it comes to private colleges and universities--is a bubble created by perverse economic incentives: People are paying ever more for a product with precisely the same (if not less) intrinsic value; not because they believe the product is worth the cost, but because they have to buy it if they want to optimize their chances of ending up only semi-screwed, rather than totally screwed, over the long term. The only people who benefit from this are the bankers and higher ed administrators who get to bring home the big bucks skimming a few mill off the top of a bloated system. Sound familiar? ____________________________ *This phrase really is meant to defend the valid position (to which I subscribe 100 percent) that society as a whole should gladly pay to ensure everyone can obtain a basic level of quality education, as this will result in progress and economic health over the long term. However, its also a good shorthand for the common argument that can be otherwise summed up as, stop complaining about how expensive college is: net-net, youre still making more money than if you didnt go to college, which is the totally bunk argument that totally pisses me off. Every time.
Posted on: Wed, 25 Jun 2014 14:05:47 +0000
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