Raising a University’s Ranking: Hike Tuition and Build Out

A great New York Times article from a couple months ago highlights part of the problem of enormous waste at American universities:

How to Raise a University’s Profile: Pricing and Packaging

The article profiles George Washington University in DC that used to be a safety school for children of wealthy families who could not get into Georgetown or University of Virginia (interestingly New York University is also mentioned, which used to be considered a safety school as well). By gaming the statistics of the US News and World Report rankings, GWU has now risen to number 54 in the rankings. Of course, these rankings are mostly meaningless and measure statistics blindly without analyzing the reasons behind a lower or higher stat. For example, the rate at which students graduate within four years of initial matriculation is weighed heavily as an indication of an excellent program that streamlines systemic processes with superb advising so students graduate “on time.” Institutions with lower four-year graduation rates are punished in the rankings, even though the lower rate could be an indicator of a rigorous academic program that holds students to high standards (i.e. they sometimes fail and need another year to graduate). Any institution can ensure a high four-year graduation rate by enabling students to pass all their classes and requiring they take 15 credits every semester. A diploma mill would rank extremely high in this US News & World Report category, which obviously makes no sense. Using statistics without analyzing the roots and meanings behind them is foolishness.

GWU raised its reputation by hiking tuition to one of the highest levels in the country. It’s the “Gucci” syndrome of where a product is judged superior because it has the highest price tag. And building extravagant buildings and recreation centers created an “institution on the move” facade. It worked for Gucci, and for George Washington University and New York University. They were middling safety schools in the 1980s that are now considered beacons of learning and academic prestige. This is not to say that both schools have some excellent professors and resources (as Gucci uses high quality fabrics and leather), in addition to great locations, but a good chunk of a student’s tuition goes to unnecessary pomp and circumstance. This is an irony that shouldn’t be lost on graduating students as they hear that marching tune at their graduation ceremony… your tuition also went to fund a dean of graduation and possibly a whole office dedicated to that one day.

Fake Schools, Real Babies and the American Dream

The Feds busted a few “schools” that enrolled students, mostly from Asia, giving them I-20 student visas, but didn’t require the students to attend classes. In essence, the students were paying tuition for a visa to visit and then live in the US:

Feds: 3 collected millions in fraudulent school scheme

The silliest part of the article is when the Feds accuse the schools of being a national security threat because terrorists could be using these student visas as cover. Puhleazee. First, the students were mostly from China and Korea, which are hardly terrorist hotbeds. Second, any student issued an I-20 student visa has already gone through a vetting process by the US government and its law enforcement apparatus. If there were any suspected terrorists among the “student” applicants, then they would have been flagged and denied well before entry. This accusation is just another federal government smokescreen to make this fraud into something it’s not really about, and play security theater (which they love).

So what is it really about? It’s about money and people from overcrowded countries wanting to come chase this thing called the American Dream. These people feel it’s a human right to live where they want to live. For most of human history, people picked up and went wherever they wanted to start new lives. It’s only in the past century that nation-states have established strict rules and regulations at the borders to keep people out. And it doesn’t work very well still. Why? Because people don’t want to live on top of each other in super crowded conditions. South Korea is an advanced country with modern amenities, but it’s also really packed with people. And that includes even the countryside (I’ve been there). Koreans come to the US not because they’re fleeing any terrible conditions in Korea, except the lack of breathing room (physically and socially). This is even doubly so for Chinese, who live in a packed country where most people live on the eastern seaboard. Even though China has made great economic strides, many Chinese want to come to the US for the space, and the opportunity to one day own a house that is not physically attached to anyone else. That’s the real American Dream in 2015: some breathing room, as economically China and South Korea are on parity with the US these days.

Some Chinese are so driven to realize this dream that pregnant mothers arrange to come to the US to give birth so the child gets US citizenship. Recently some entrepreneurs offered services that arranged for a fee to bring Chinese women to the US to give birth but they were busted by the Feds who claimed this was fraud. How is it fraud? As far as I can see, the women and the entrepreneurs played by the rules. They came to the US and gave birth, and by US law, the baby gets citizenship. That’s the rules of the game, and they played it fair and square. If the Feds don’t like it, then change the law so not all babies born in the US are citizens, instead tie citizenship to the birth of the mother as many countries do. The companies offering these services should not be shut down and arrested, the fault is not in their business plan, the fault is in the structure of citizenship law itself. Change the law and don’t punish the entrepreneurs.

Studying Chinese (or pretty much any language) Will Not Get You a Job

If English is your native (or near native) language, then studying another language will not do anything to help you get a job. Unfortunately many students believed the mirage of learning a language as a false gateway to riches in a distant land, and thought spending a year or two (which is really isn’t enough to learn Chinese or most languages anyway) upping their language skills would make them more marketable. In fact, it doesn’t.

U.S. students losing interest in China as dream jobs prove elusive

You will spend a year learning basic Chinese and then realize there are quite literally millions of Chinese people who not only are native speakers of Chinese, but also know English way better than your Chinese will ever hope to be (remember most of them have been studying English diligently since kindergarten). The logic of most corporations is to hire locals in China and other countries, and not import American or British expatriates who will cost more anyway. In addition, local employees in China and other countries count as diversity hires, which ticks off another box on the corporate social responsibility factoid sheets.

Don’t study a foreign language because you think it will get you a job. In fact, it won’t help you at all. And I can attest to that from personal experience as well. If you want to study a foreign language because you dream of reading Dostoyevsky in the original Russian or understand Latin American cinema without subtitles, then that’s wonderful for your personal intellectualism. But don’t study a language under the delusion that it will help you get a leg up in the job market as you’ll only be disappointed.

Are We Near The End of Today’s College and University System?

Unfortunately, the answer is no. Long story short, there are powerful, entrenched interests committed to maintaining the currently profitable structure of colleges and universities. Change will not happen until students (and parents) en masse demand accountability and results, and then stop enrolling. Joe Nocera in the New York Times makes some good points about the current problems of American (we can include global, since other countries mimic the American system to a large degree) higher education:

Joe Nocera: College for a New Age

As stated on this site previously, there are only three things that a college/university needs: great teachers, great students and great resources (labs, digital library, art supplies, etc.). The rest is superfluous, yet students pay a fortune for the tremendous waste of administrators and staff assigned to athletics, curriculum assessment, marketing, public relations, diversity, etc. Many of these separate offices and administrative functions could be greatly streamlined and reduced to a faculty service role, saving a ton of money in student tuition. Faculty governance is supposed to be the bedrock of American higher education anyway, so let’s do away with the administrators and stick them back in the classrooms (if they can teach well).

Nocera hits at the usual suspects:
1) Bloated and wasteful athletic programs that have nothing to do with the educational mission of a college/university. Replace them with intramural athletic programs that are great for students, faculty and staff to interact and exercise. There is no reason to maintain the myriad number of teams, coaches, staff, travel expenses, scholarships and facilities required for NCAA sports. Athletics is the single biggest waste of money on campus, and should be cut down to intramural programs that benefit the entire community socially and physically.
2) Universities (and colleges to a lesser degree) emphasize research over teaching, but what students really want is great teachers that inspire, educate and mentor them. Most students care little (if at all) if their professor publishes in a first-rate journal; they just want a great communicator who cares about their learning, and knows how to teach. Yet teaching is devalued by the university, and professors who concentrate on teaching are looked upon with suspicion as intellectual dilettantes who only want to be popular with students.

Where Nocera misses the plot is believing online classes and degrees will replace “real life” classes and institutions. A big part of the college experience is the social community that is formed with fellow students, and sometimes professors. It’s just not the same sitting at home behind a computer to get this invaluable experience and contacts. Steve Ballmer became President of Microsoft by hanging out with Bill Gates at Harvard playing poker late at night. Unless telepresence makes huge technological breakthroughs in the near future, these kinds of friendships and networks just won’t form in online classes. Colleges and universities are about more than hitting the books. Friendships, experiences and interests are made that can last a lifetime. Learning face-to-face with peers and professors is a more effective learning environment than posting comments in a discussion board and reading assigned texts alone. The virtual cannot replace the real in education.

As for those powerful, entrenched interests preventing any meaningful change in higher education, that will be the subject of another post…

Do Not Dilute Standards for “Diversity” at New York City High Schools

The best public high schools in New York City (Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech) have one of the most most egalitarian and meritocratic admissions systems in the United States. There is a test for admission, and only the students with the highest scores are admitted. Nothing else matters. This is how it is done in many of the world’s schools, particularly in Asia, but, unfortunately, not in the US, where diversity seen by some as a great value even though one is born into a “diversity class” and cannot achieve or change this status. Every year when the statistics come out for next year’s freshman classes at these high schools, it shows little, if any, increase in the number of students who self-identify as Hispanic and African-American:

Lack of Diversity Persists in Admissions to New York City’s Elite High Schools

In the article, at least, no one is saying the test is biased against certain socially constructed backgrounds. The test itself is the same stringency for all its takers. The only advantage examinees can acquire is to take (and take to heart through hard study) prep classes geared to doing well on the exam. If you don’t study hard, then you don’t do well on the exam. Nothing else is taken into consideration, including legacy admissions that unfairly favor the children of alumni. It is very rare in the US for an institution to maintain such high standards without eventually submitting to political pressure to lower standards to achieve a socially desirable end. It is hoped that the New York State legislature does not water down the exam or entry standards for these meritocratic and superb high schools. This is one time when the dysfunctional nature of Albany legislative politics bodes well for nothing being done, which is the best possible outcome.

Most Private Colleges and Universities Not Worth the Cost

Another private college closing soon in the US:

Sweet Briar College to Close

With tuition approaching $35,000 plus another $12,000 for room and board, the cost versus benefits of a private college/university (that is not an Ivy) is just not worth it. Yes, many of these private institutions offer 50% “scholarships” to almost every student in a somewhat dishonest marketing ploy to attract students who feel proud to receive a “scholarship,” but even that is no longer enough to attract potential students in such a tough job market. In other words, $17,000 tuition plus $12,000 for room and board is still a lot of money. That’s about $30,000 per year (not including all the other ancillary expenses of life) over four (maybe five) years to get “credentialed” in a starting job that pays on average $40,000 per year with long hours and little job security. And, of course, many graduates cannot find any salaried jobs at all, and taking hourly wage work that they didn’t really need a higher education degree for in the first place. It’s finally coming to the point that young people and their parents are asking the question: “Is the high expense worth the cost?” Short answer: In most cases, it’s not.

Unless you’re going to an Ivy League or a Stanford, MIT, Chicago, and perhaps a few other truly elite private institutions, the so-called prestige of a private university degree is just not worth it. Small liberal arts colleges like Oberlin, Swarthmore, Williams, etc. are indeed excellent higher education institutions that are committed to teaching (which is what most undergraduates care about most: great teachers) but most employers and the general public have little clue about these schools. They might as well be Sweet Briar College or some other small failing institution in the minds of most people, and they have little prestige outside the rarefied air of people who read the New Yorker and Atlantic magazines. Yes, you do receive a great education there, but don’t kid yourself that the “prestige” of the name is going to be some magic ticket to a great job after you graduate. It’s not.

Receiving a great education can’t be said for the myriad other small colleges that dot the country with little to justify their high price tag. In the New York City area, there are around a dozen small Catholic affiliated colleges that charge high tuition but have no prestige (ignore the phony public relations spiel they print in glossy brochures and websites) and nothing to differentiate themselves to justify the cost. Students of middling means would be better offer in almost every case going to City University of New York or State University of New York, and actually get a better education (the public institutions attract much better faculty with higher pay, excellent benefits and pensions) while saving a ton of money. It is completely irrational to go to these small colleges when there is a clearly superior, inexpensive alternative available, unless one has wealthy parents footing the bill or you don’t mind taking out huge loans (just don’t complain later when you have to pay them back). Don’t get lured into the false prestige game as aprivate college degree is not going to give you a leg up in the job hunt when compared to your public college competition.

Remember that a great school requires three things: great teachers, great students and great educational resources (labs, art materials, library, etc.). That’s what you should look for when choosing a school. The rest of it is fluff, but you pay a high price for the fluff and that will be the topic of a future post.

Getting (and Keeping) a “Good” Job in 2015 No Easy Task

While the US government and news organizations report better employment statistics month-by-month and quarter-by-quarter, the anecdotal evidence does not paint as optimistic a picture. Of classmates from high school, undergraduate and graduate schools I attended, the only ones who enjoy secure positions with good salaries work for the government: whether that be universities, schools, law enforcement (local and federal), fire departments, career officers in the military, or part of the professional bureaucracy (positions that do not change after elections). Those who went to work in the private sector made some good money for a while, but eventually lost their position due to a number of factors:

1) Company implosion – working at Lehman Bros was high-flying for a while, and then nothing afterward (Lehman is a CV stigma). Another was a VP at Nokia in the early 2000s, and then the marketplace shifted and Nokia pretty much collapsed along with its jobs.

2) Job sector implosion – almost everyone working in journalism got hit badly.

3) STEM age ceiling – hired straight out of university but by the time you reach 40, you’re old and overpaid, so you get dumped for a new college graduate. This is particularly true for computer science majors, who also have to compete (on a not level playing field) with STEM (H1-B1) visa immigrants.

For those who suffered one of those three fates, it has been hard to find new positions not just akin to their old ones, but anywhere even near it. Most have tried starting their own businesses, and I think that’s the new wave for the future. If you work in the private sector, don’t expect to stay there for very long, and you’re especially vulnerable once you get to the 40s and 50s age range. Most young people would be wise to get a job in the public sector for stability and security, very good benefits, and even a pension. Though I have a multi-year contract at my current fine job, who knows what could happen after that? More thoughts on jobs in upcoming posts, including an experiment I have been conducting since last fall.

David Carr’s Boston University Syllabus

As the final Media Equation column with David Carr, the New York Times discussed and put a link to his Boston University journalism course on Medium.com:

David Carr’s Press Play Syllabus on Medium

As someone who has done some university teaching in the US and abroad, I was impressed at how Carr’s syllabus was content-rich with little fluff and tedium, and its attractive presentation on Medium.com (not as a Word doc or PDF). At other universities I have taught, a template is provided not only for the syllabus format, but even much of the content is already provided. There is little ability to make the syllabus one’s own personality, and looking at Carr’s (whether you liked the content or not), it definitely had his personality. When I was an undergraduate, my favorite professor’s syllabus was never more than a page. It had his name, office location, course reading list, brief research paper description, and exam dates. He was also a bit of an anarchist who believed a good university only needed three things: great teachers, students and library (everything else was superfluous and beside the point). Homogenization is the byword of university education today with little room for personality, innovation or creativity. Education as bureaucratic tedium, with accreditors setting up phony assessment tables and charts to “prove” that students are learning is the norm. The students might be passing the tests (which they are taught to pass or set up to pass), but they have little passion for learning. The course and professor are simply obstacles to pass on the way to a degree and a job, and university gets the money from students who cannot default on loan repayments.

Maybe because of Carr’s star power, he was able to write the syllabus and teach the class the way he thought it should be done. Maybe behind the scenes, the BU journalism program rewrote and formatted his syllabus to make the accreditors and assessment administrators satisfied, but in his classrom Carr was presumably able to teach… truly teach. And his students were surely better off for it. If students want better teachers and a valuable education, then they need to “vote” with their wallets and go to schools that value inspired teaching and service. Unfortunately, those are very few, until students demand better.

Originally posted: http://www.mccarthyism.com/2015/20150216.htm

US Colleges Giving More Money to Foreign Students

American colleges are looking to provide more scholarship and grant money to foreign students, particularly from China, in order to economically diversify their international student population:

US Colleges Seek Economic Diversity Internationally

In the Associated Press article, there is only one reader comment at the bottom but it tells the other side of story, “what about the poor American students?” It probably sounds great in principle to give more money to poor students in other countries to study in the US, but considering how huge the student debt load is for American college students, one would think there would be some kind of uproar from US students to get a larger piece of the financial assistance pie. Instead, it doesn’t seem like any students are complaining perhaps because they figure they will be able to pay back all those loans one day after they find a well-paying job (good luck). American students at most US colleges and universities are a pretty cowed bunch when it comes to challenging their administrations on boondoggles and runaway spending on useless administrative and staff positions. It’s still a bit shocking that even money does not motivate them to speak out and question administrative decision-making. Perhaps because they see themselves as such transient populations that they will be gone soon enough before any substantive changes would be made. That is a pity. It may be noble to give more money (and precious seats at prestigious institutions like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc.) to foreign students, but American students could use more help as well. In essence, US college financial magnaminity should not come at the cost to US students who foot an ever-increasing tuition bill.

Originally posted: http://www.mccarthyism.com/2015/20150209.htm

Private Figures Should Keep Their Good Reputation Until Conviction

As mentioned here at McCarthyism.com a few days ago about the theatrics of the SOTU, here’s another prime example:

Sulkowicz Let Down by Obama Speech

New York Senator Kristen Gillenbrand invited as her guest Emma Sulkowicz who has gained fame as a performance artist carrying her mattress around Columbia University in New York City to bring awareness to the issue of campus sexual violence. The article is also a good example of how being able to talk back using the comments section is an interesting way to see a newstory through other people’s eyes (whether you agree or not with their viewpoints). The premise of bringing Sulkowicz to the SOTU to raise awareness seemed to fail as most people in Congress and government did not know who she was or why she had gained a certain degree of fame. Sulkowicz was disappointed that Obama did not call attention to campus sexual assaults, but really it would be impossible for the President to speak on every serious issue facing the country/world within the short of amount of time alloted for the speech (and shorter attention spans of the public). That is not to downplay the issue of campus sexual assaults, but only to say there are probably other issues that grab the attention of everyone in the country such as jobs, war, health care and the economy.

But what is most worrisome about Sulkowicz’s case is the accompanying theatrics itself. When a woman makes a charge of being raped, her identity is shielded by the media unless she publicizes it herself, as Sulkowicz did. That’s fine. The problem is the guy she accused of raping her has had his name splashed all over the media even after he was exonerated by the police. To be accused of rape or sexual assault is one of the most harmful statements to a person’s reputation. It should be a law that people suspected of a crime should not have their reputations destroyed before receiving due process. Sulkowicz’s continuing to accuse a classmate of rape after his exoneration (which means there was not enough evidence for an indictment, but does not mean she is necessarily lying either) is libelous; but it is the media’s fault in printing his name in the first place. The law should be that printing a suspect’s name before a conviction (even under indictment) should be illegal with stiff monetary penalties for publishing the person’s name. The infamous perpetrator walks done by police for the media cameras should also be illegal; they harken back to the barbaric time of locking people in stocks for public embarrassment. If people are truly innocent until proven guilty, then grant them the dignity of privacy and reputation until they are convicted by a court of law; the current system is a sham and a shame of justice.

Originally posted: http://www.mccarthyism.com/2015/20150125.htm