By Professor
Doom
A recent report by the American
Council on Education
(a university lobbying group) may set a record for the most hypocritical
document of 2015. The report’s hysterical findings are that universities are
overregulated, and that regulation needs to be cut back.
I’ve discussed an earlier torrent of
tears from a Poo-Bah who cried similarly. It was easy to qualitatively show the
gargantuan intellectual dishonesty in the Poo-Bah’s arguments, and a look at the institutional tax forms showed quantitatively that, well, he
used a sparing hand with the facts.
As I’ve said many times, simply looking at
one Poo-Bah, one school, isn’t enough to understand what higher education is
today, and the Council’s report (written by 16 Poo-Bahs) shows once again that
the systemic corruption and incompetence I’ve shown at many individual
institutions applies, in fact, to most institutions of higher education.
So, let’s look at some highlights of this
report:
--keep that in mind: these guys get
$160 BILLION dollars, and are complaining about the regulation of that money.
Before going further, let me first discuss
how much legitimate regulation and oversight I, personally, have undergone in
the last 15 years (I could go further back, but I want to stick with this
millennium, where my memory is clearer).
Here goes:
0 Hours.
Ok, I qualified that with “legitimately”,
but the 12 hours or so of oversight I’ve had really hasn’t been legitimate. Yes,
some dozen times over the last decade, an administrator (with no education or
credentials relevant to my subject) has come to my class and watched me for an
hour, giving me plenty of advanced notice that she was coming. Afterwards, I
get the requisite advice to have more group work, go slower, eliminate material
students didn’t already know, and other silliness.
Then admin gets a copy of my syllabus, and
writes down what book I’m using for the course. I follow the syllabus and use
the book, but the gentle reader needs to understand that many colleges are completely unhinged from education, because this is all the “oversight”
most schools have.
Faculty with Ph.D. in Math Education:
“[Professor Doom], I need your help. I’m trying to show that i = -1.
Me: “You mean to say that you think
i, the imaginary number, is the same is -1?”
Faculty: “Yes. You took math classes,
so I figure you might know a trick that can help?”
Me: “Sorry, can’t help. Usually it’s
represented as ‘the square root of -1’, but you can’t put it on a real number
line anywhere.”
Faculty: “Yeah, I know. I tell my
students that i is basically the same as -1, but I can’t seem to show it.”
Me: “That’s because it isn’t, sorry.”
--Honest, using Education degree
holders to teach actual subjects is not a good idea. But at the school where
this took place, there’s no way to do anything about a teacher that is flat out
teaching wrong information. Since almost nobody graduates from that school or
moves on, I guess the harm done isn’t so bad?
But that’s the entirety of oversight to
see if I’m doing a legitimate job. When I covered other faculty’s courses at a
questionable community college, time and again I was stunned at how little was
going on, and when I stood near the door of other classes in progress, and
reviewed the tests/material in other courses, it was easy for me to see how
much of the coursework was not legitimate (and sometimes, the instructors were
giving the students flat out wrong information!).
What of all that regulation the Poo-Bahs
are crying about? There is absolutely no regulation whatsoever, at least at the
federal or state level, that in even the slightest way, helps to assure
legitimate education is going on in the classrooms of higher education. I’ve shown this already.
Since there is no regulation in that
regard, what, pray tell, is the regulation the Poo-Bahs are crying about?
“In addition to sometimes receiving too much information, consumers are also often given information that is not very accurate or meaningful,” the report said.
It cited the federal definition of the graduation rate, which takes into account only full-time freshmen who start and finish at the same institutions, even though increasing numbers of students transfer and finish somewhere else.
--“consumers” are what admin is calling students. Funny, they force us to refer to them as “learners”, but the hypocrites don’t even think that much of the little
Wait, what? Poo-Bahs don’t like telling
incoming customers/students about graduation rates? I don’t blame them:
graduation rates are miserable.
Many community colleges have a graduation
rate below 10%, and even industry leader University of Phoenix only boasts a 9%
graduation rate. Why shouldn’t students be told that the chances of them
getting something for their student loans that would help them pay off the
loans are minimal at best?
Crying about the definition of
“graduation” is silly—these Poo-Bahs know full well that only about 12 credit
hours transfers, at best, between one school and the next, so students that are
transferring around from one school to the next repeatedly really shouldn’t
count for graduating until they actually graduate. Our administrators in higher
education know what’s going on, and have set up the system to be this way. It’s why 80% of community college
students are victims, after all.
Instead of crying about the definition for
graduation rate, the Poo-Bahs could suggest better definitions. These guys have
Ph.D.s, after all, research degrees that supposedly indicate they’re capable of
thinking creatively. For example, how about “Graduation rate is the percentage
of students that start here and graduate at an accredited institution, somewhere,
within 6 years”? Six years, after all, is the average
amount of time it takes for students to get their “4 year” degrees now. That’s just looking at the graduates, of
course—most entering students don’t get degrees, ever…and again, administration
knows this. Every institution is only too happy to brag about graduates, it’s
simple enough to keep six years of records (I mean, every US citizen has to
keep 7 years or more of tax records, why are Poo-Bahs unhappy at requirements
that are less than for most people?).
Why are our institutions so devoid of
integrity that we would need regulation to get them to tell our kids that “4
year degrees” take 6 years? Why not just be honest in the first place? Why are
Poo-Bahs unhappy at the prospect of giving honest information?
The Poo-Bahs, after all, are very
complicit in helping those students transfer around, since that way the
Poo-Bahs can plunder even more Federal loot in the Pell Grant scam (and, hey, why isn’t there enough regulation to
keep track of the NAME of students receiving $5,000 of free Pell money? Again, a system of integrity would
have long since had this level of record-keeping to cut down fraud, instead of
encouraging it).
It’s so laughable to complain about lack
of regulation. Most courses have no requirements BECAUSE there is no
regulation. The majority of “college” coursework is just rehash of the same material
that is already available in the public schools. Heck, much of it is below the
9th grade level, despite this being in violation of Federal law. Honest, it’s hard to complain about regulation when most community colleges operate in open violation of
the law.
Conflict of interest? But, the Poo-Bahs
that control our institutions of higher education also control accreditation (the supposed “regulator” of higher
education, and riddled with conflicts of interest). These guys are so used to
investigating themselves and clearing themselves of wrongdoing that they’re
incapable of realizing conflicts of interest anymore. I mean, when the Federal
government is helping to point out conflicts of interest, you’re know the advice
is coming from an expert.
Just one more for now from a summary,
mining the full report for additional laughs is just too easy:
The precise cost of regulations on
higher education is “difficult and time consuming” to determine, the report
said. But it cited a 1997 study at Stanford that found regulation cost 7.5
cents of every tuition dollar on following government rules.
--to clarify: $160 billion (from
above) goes to the institutions, but they hate that they have to spend well
under $16 billion making the Federal government think they’re doing a
legitimate job.
Let’s take this at face value. Heck,
let’s move it to 10 cents of every tuition dollar is spent on following
government rules. Sounds like a lot right? I’m no fan of government regulations,
and I fully admit all (or nearly all) of them are a waste of time and effort.
But let’s put that in perspective:
At most institutions, the bulk of their
revenue comes from the Federal government in one form or another. Tuition has
been rising 5% or more a year, year after year after year. So, for TWO of those
years, tuition increases were needed to pay for all the regulations. Past that
point? All the free money coming from the government may as well have no
strings attached at all. So why all the other tuition increases?
Seriously, if you had one major customer,
one who was responsible for the vast majority of your HIGHLY PROFITABLE
business, a customer that, if you lost him, would put you out of business within
a year, would you be upset at giving that customer a 10% discount, or spending
10% of what he gives you to make him happy? Gee whiz, I’m just one guy, and
most stores will give me a 10% discount if I buy twice as much as the usual
customer.
As a final demonstration of the immense
intellectual dishonesty here, let’s suppose the Poo-Bahs are correct that the
government regulations are the problem with the expense of higher education
today. All those government regulations are coming from all the government
money the institutions receive.
Any Poo-Bah that honestly feels the
regulations are too much can just stop taking government money. Seeing as there
isn’t a single Poo-Bah from an accredited institution in the United States
stepping up and saying “We’re not taking any more Federal dollars because the
regulation is just too much trouble”, it’s clear that no Poo-Bah honestly
believes the regulations are too much trouble for the money involved…and yet
they all cry in unison about the regulations.
Hmm.
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