College in Trouble: Still Worth It?

A recent CNN documentary, “Ivory Tower,” takes a thorough look at higher education. Having watched the documentary, here are five issues raised in the documentary about which I provide my own perspectives:

• Total student loans have surpassed one trillion dollars in value.
• Lack of employment for graduates after college.
• Lack of rigorous education connected to student culture of drinking and partying.
• The disparity between certain colleges in terms of graduation rates.
• The rise in costs for colleges, especially in hiring more administrators than faculty.

On student loans, I think that families and students need to think more clearly about the costs of college. As a listener to the Dave Ramsey show, I have been inoculated against student loans (and all other debt.) Public state schools are usually great deals. Many states, such as Georgia’s Hope scholarship, provide reduced tuition for students who do well in high school. In other words, college can be affordable.

A college degree is essential (with notable exceptions such as Bill Gates) to good employment. But it is not a guarantee of good employment. In other words, history majors should not expect a well-paying job once they finish their history degree. They would do well to double major, and add nursing or computer programming, if they want a full-time job within months of graduation. Colleges need to do a better job of telling students that the liberal arts are essential, but not instant lottery tickets.

The University of Virginia, last week, has suspended its fraternities. More schools should look into that. Marijuana does not help students absorb more information. Climbing walls are fun, but such amenities are also driving up college costs. Families and students should be much more interested in the actual education a university provides, than its amenities.

Graduation rates measure how many incoming students graduate at a given college over four or five years. Elite colleges have graduation rates above 80%. Some colleges have graduation rates under 10%. That is a result of different classes, different families, and different school experiences. Colleges with low graduation rates have to work harder to get their students up to the college level. Solutions for the problems of a community college will be very different from fixing Harvard’s issues.

Finally, colleges might trim their costs if the federal government did not provide so much money. As a teacher, I cannot fathom why colleges have hired more administrators in the past three decades than faculty. One thing the documentary, inexplicably, did not focus on was the rise of adjunct faculty.

The documentary also highlighted a pilot program between Udacity and San Jose State University, showing greater failure rates in the online classes than in traditional on-campus courses. Quick fixes, such as online education, are shallow and will only cause more harm.

Focusing more on education as a society, parents preparing children for college, and keeping costs affordable are three worthy goals. How do you think college has benefited you? How has not attending hurt you in life? What should colleges do differently?