School's Out Forever

Anyone who reads my stuff knows I’m more of a word-person than a numbers person. Having said that, let’s look at a few statistics:

• In 2003, the annual tuition at Northwestern University was $28,000. That year, $28,000 represented 53% of the median US family income. Today, one year’s tuition at Northwestern is $40,223 and the estimated “cost of attendance” is north of $56,000.  Today's median family income is $48,250 or about 83 % of the annual tuition cost. That’s just tuition. If you actually want your student to eat and sleep as well as attend classes, you’ll need about 15% more than the median disposable income. At the current rate, Northwestern’s tuition will cost nearly double the median family income by 2048. In other words, it will take two years’ employment to pay for one year of school. Again, that’s just tuition. If you figure the total cost of education, we’ll cross over the two-times mark in the 2020’s. (Thank you, Andrew Ferguson and Crazy U).
• Retirement savings have lost approximately of two trillion dollars since 2007.
• The University of California Board of Regents is currently debating a budget which would increase the tuition by 16% for the 2015-16 year.
• The average student loan debt upon graduation was $24,000 in 2009, up 6% from the previous year. The total student loan debt in January 2009 was about 11 billion dollars. In March of 2010 it reached 36 billion. That’s a jump of three times the debt load in fifteen months. (Source: Student Loan Corporation).
•  According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for recent college graduates ages 20-24 was 10.7% in August, more than double the rate for those 25 and older who have a bachelor’s degree.

Enough numbers. We get the point. The current post-secondary educational model in the United States may not be completely insane but it’s certainly not wearing its cheese fully on the old cracker. Many parents pay breathtaking amounts of money to help put their children through college; the rest of the education is paid for by the students through jobs or loans. Upon graduation, their loan-shackled children enter a job market where there aren’t enough jobs because, among other reasons, the people currently in those jobs cannot move up to create a vacancy, because the people in the generations above them are still working because they can’t afford to retire because their retirement fund was decimated and they’ve got to put their kids through college and probably provide a place for them to live when they graduate.

Well sure, someone just thought, college graduates may be going through a difficult time now but the economy will turn around and when it does we won’t quibble over all that lovely money the universities demanded of us, to educate our children, right? Because it costs over a hundred thousand dollars to create a really smart college graduate, right? Money equals success, right?  By that logic, since we’ve never spent more on our students, we should be creating the finest college students ever. Right?

Um...

A few more statistics:

• Only 40% of full-time college students graduate in four years. 
• Over the past fifty years, self-reported weekly studying time has dropped by nearly 50%. 
• In 2010, about 44 percent of all letter grades issued were A’s compared to about 15% in 1960 when the most common grade, at 35%, was a C. That’s a three-fold increase in As over Cs. Where did all these A’s come from? Have we gotten three times smarter, or are these grades skewed?

Take a look at this interesting chart. If you’re not into charts, I’ll tell you what caught my attention: Since 1970, the total number of Ds and Fs has hovered at around 10% during which time the third-ranked grade, A, shot past B and C to be the most prevalent grade issued by 2000.  And As continue to climb in popularity. Some people might argue that the inflation of A’s over C’s might be a function of the baby-boomers taking over higher education. Others might suggest that the high expectations placed upon college graduates encouraged them to work harder. My sense is that the “gentleman’s C” has been replaced by the “whiners’ A” and that, increasingly, grades are as meaningless as shoe size when it comes to measuring true qualifications.

Hey, I’m not against a college education. Far from it. What I am against is the college machine or as I will hereafter refer to it, Big Ed. But I do understand how things got out of hand. A university is a business, even if they don’t like to think of themselves that way. In the early eighties, when the boomers were finished getting their college educations, the schools saw a drop in demand -- demographics and all -- so they started to rebrand themselves to appeal to this new smaller population, to Generation X. “We’re the university with the new...science buildings! Dorms! Stadium! Sky boxes for everyone!” And the market approved. And it was good.

Then the Boomer’s children started arriving and they were very beloved of their parents. People who are beloved come to expect things to be nice. People who were doted on in childhood, driven a mile to Cross-Country practice, aren’t going to accept spending four years someplace where they aren’t comfortable and emotionally supported.  We began to see a Vice-President of Student Success, a Residential Communications Coordinator, a Coordinator of Learning Immersion Experiences, a Director of Intramural Athletics. And a sushi chef. The next thing you know, it takes two hundred thousand dollars to have a proper college experience. But hey, cheer up. At least you know they’ll graduate with an A average.

A friend’s daughter is an outgoing girl and an indifferent student. Because she is sufficiently athletic and plays a sought-after position on her team, she got into the school of her choice, which was mostly her choice because she likes their athletics program and wanted to be able to root for them. Her grades are fine. Then again, everyone’s grades are now fine. See above. She’s certainly not studying. Last year, she got through Physics by buying the notes and tests from a student from a previous year. Her logic is that she’ll never need Physics again, so why should anybody care? Her goal is to work in PR for a sports/fashion company and spend the rest of her life saying “Rah!” for a living. Since her family has taken out federally-backed loans for her education, I feel as if I have a cent or two invested in her education and I’m here to say this is a waste of my money. I don’t begrudge the girl an education. I do begrudge her a 160 thousand dollar apartment. At my most cynical, I start to think for some people, college is just a place to park for several years so they’re not pestering us for a job just yet. It’s become day-care with a dorm key, a stadium and a Coordinator of Learning Immersion Experiences. And, yes, a sushi chef.

After almost two years of looking at elementary and secondary education for my book, I’d gotten used to the idea that everyone is thinking about how to make teaching -- and learning -- smarter. We might not agree on what “smarter” means, but we’re arguing about standardized testing, smaller versus larger classes, sex-segregation for math classes, combined-grade classes, home-schooling, and so much more. Everything is open for debate. And then we see them graduate from high school and our options become:

·        Pay a lot of money to a full-time college

·        Two years in community college (if you can get your classes)

·        Do something else

Why aren’t we talking about smaller, more nimble schools? Why was it only the skeevy and borderline-criminal for-profit colleges who tapped in to the idea that people aren’t always available during the day, eager to start a class but only in September or January? Why are there so few programs for students who might be ready to start some college classes after middle school? Does the fact that only 40% finish in four years mean that a four-year college no longer makes sense? Does any of what is accepted in upper-education make sense? Why is there an assumption that education has to modify and expand in reaction to this seismically-shifting economy, but only through the twelfth grade? For the first time last week, I heard someone talk about apprenticeship as a possible solution to the skills gap in the US and I nearly cheered out loud.

I can only speak for myself, but I’m interested in educating my child to view learning as something which happens every time she looks around, as something which will need to be created, and re-created, and could come from anyone at any time. With any luck, with that kind of schooling, she’ll be able to pay for her own sushi chef.

Next time, where your college tuition goes in 2011.