Only 9% Of Recent Students With Debt Think College Worth It

By Professor Doom

     So, there’s celebration that more females than males have degrees from higher education…it’s natural to ask if degrees are worthy to have nowadays.

     We’re raised from a very young age to believe education is everything, that, always, the best, most important thing for a human being is school. Ok, we’re told “education” is everything, not that school is, but we’re told school is the way to get an education…pretty much the only way to get that education is to stay in school. And so our kids graduate high school and move on to…more school.

     I believe education is a valuable thing, precious, even, but I want to talk about school, more specifically, higher education, or college, or university, which all refer to the same thing, more or less. As a nation we’re paying a fortune to put our high school graduates into higher education, it’s very fair to ask, “is it worth it?”

     “Worth” is a touchy subject, but ultimately it’s a personal one. I don’t think it’s worth $10,000 or more to get a ticket to the Superbowl, but obviously, people freely pay this…the buyers of such tickets obviously think it’s worth it.

      Higher education isn’t quite like a ticket, of course, since the bill generally doesn’t come until after you’ve made the purchase, and you don’t really know what you’ve purchased until later.

     The sellers of higher education insist with great confidence that higher education is worth it, always. So what do the purchasers of the very expensive higher education say about the value of their product?

Half of U.S. College Grads Agree Their Education Was Worth the Cost

      Look at that, half of our college graduates believe that they paid a fair price for whatever it is they got out of college¹. Considering that, for many, higher education is a government product, this is pretty stellar. Other government products, like speed traps, don’t get anywhere near 50% satisfaction from the victims citizens, and I bet our soldiers aren’t real wild about another major product of the US government, wars.

     Now, this survey was on around 30,000 people, and they took effort to make sure that the sample was representative of the US population. Well, the population of college graduates, anyway, and moreover graduates over the course of the last few generations. I’ve never claimed that higher education was always a problem, what’s become of it recently is the issue.

     Focus on more recent graduates, and the numbers change for the worse:

Alumni who graduated between 2006 and 2015, and thus into a less stable employment market, were less likely to agree that college was worth the price. About 38 percent of those graduates strongly agreed with the statement.

    As we get closer to today, the satisfaction drops rather sharply. Focus on the last ten years, and only 38% of recent graduates think they got fair value for today’s version of higher education. The distinction is relevant.

When my father went to the same college I do now, his grade was usually based entirely on the final exam, though sometimes with a midterm counting for something. Attendance was optional and even a required textbook was rare, since Chaucer or quantum physics don't change much based on the book you are reading.
Today, as little as 20% of your grade is based on any exam, and most of your grade is based on hundreds of meaningless assignments that pile up if you don't get to them right away. Often, they're all based on a book that is horribly written to the point of being incomprehensible and useless outside the course, but costs around $200. You're graded on attendance, which combined with the homework makes it hard if not impossible to work to pay for college on your own and do it on time. I even had a professor grade notes, something I have not had to deal with since middle school.

    This is a rather important difference, at least for me, because higher education of 30 or more years ago was a very different creature than what we see today. There are many courses where passing is trivial. A sample course from a nearby university makes 40% of the grade homework from a book where the answers are for sale online for $9 or so, and another 20% of the grade is based on attendance, and sets a grade of C to 50% or better; show up every other day, and you pass. I’m not kidding, and studies show many courses aren’t even this challenging. Higher education today is relatively easy, and very expensive, but it was a very different beast a generation ago, where tuition was far lower and passing was far more difficult, at least on far more campuses than today.

     Part of the reason today’s higher education is a mess is the student loan scam, and the satisfaction numbers drop further for the people suckered into taking on debt:

Among graduates who took out student loans of any amount, 33 percent said they strongly agreed that their education was worth what they spent. As their amount of student debt increased, the graduates were less likely to see the value of their education. About 43 percent of graduates who borrowed $25,000 or less strongly agreed that college was worth what they paid. For those who borrowed between $25,001 and $50,000, 30 percent strongly agreed with the statement.
Among alumni who were in more than $50,000 of debt, only 18 percent said they strongly agreed that college was worth their investment.

     Like every other product, as the price increases, the number of people that think the product is “worth it” drops. We’re now down from 38%, to more like 33% or less of college graduates think their education was worth the cost—it’s almost certainly lower than 33% for the more recent, more indebted, college graduates. Let’s just call this 30% of graduates in the last six years who also took on debt really think their college time was worth it.

     But…wait a second, this study only looked at college graduates. That’s not a fair restriction at all. Everyone that goes to college pays, not just the graduates. So, to really get a fair estimate of people that think college is worth it, we need to consider everyone that’s paying for it, not just the ones that graduate.

     Measuring this sort of thing is hard, as students might leave school, then come back after a few years. That said, we know that around 70% of community college students fail over an infinite timeline, and most students in higher education are in community college. A 2 year program in community college, as one might suspect, is far, far, easier to graduate from than a 4 year degree program…it’s a safe bet that over all of higher education, we’re looking at a similar failure rate, if not much lower. It’s a generous assumption to say, then, that college graduates represent about 30% of those who go to college. 

      I have to make another assumption here, but I trust the gentle reader will concede the point: the people that go to college and fail, receiving nothing from it besides expense and a waste of time, will nearly all agree that college was not worth it. Certainly those that, in addition, are in debt for nothing won’t think they got a good deal.

     Now let’s put the data together, for higher education as it stands today for our students taking on debt. 30%, probably less, of students who go into higher education actually graduate; not all take loans, but that’s an upper limit for the loan takers. Of those graduates who do get loans, 30%, probably less, of college graduates with debt think college is worth it.

     Put those two numbers together and we have an upper estimate of the students that take loans for college, manage to get a degree, and think it’s worth it. 30% of 30% is:

 9%.

     Seriously, more than nine out of ten students think they’ve made mistake by taking out a loan for higher education. Not to put too fine a point on it, it’s very clear that taking on debt to go to higher education is a decision that the majority of students regret. So now can we get rid of the student loan scam?

     Granted, there are many good schools out there, and in those good schools, I’m sure the percentage of people that think they’re getting fair value is quite high. But, for every MIT, Harvard, Yale, and the like, there are dozens and dozens of colleges that simply take students in, wring them dry of their student loan money, and churn them out…and the vast majority of those students certainly feel that college wasn’t worth it.

      My numbers might be off a bit, I admit…but we’re looking at around a 9% satisfaction rate here for what we’re doing in our higher education system with the student loan scam. It’s time to take a long hard look at all the changes of the last few decades, all of which are paid for and wouldn’t exist except for the student loan scam: the “student as customer” paradigm, the microagression coddling, the perpetual dumbing down of the coursework, the social promotion at the college level, and the huge remediation scam that makes 90% of coursework in college not even college level coursework.

      The previous are all due the idea that getting and keeping more students means more money for the institution because of those loans; in turn, this money has led to the “vision for excellence” foolishness, the bloating of our administrative caste, the skyrocketing administrative pay, the ridiculous real estate building/buying spree, the insane focus on sportsball over academics, the grossly increasing class sizes, the prostitution of our graduates, and all the rest.

      It’s time to ask in all sincerity: are all these changes really helping our citizens get a satisfactory education? 

      Now, much of the dissatisfaction can be attributed to the student loan scam, but please realize that even without restricting to indebted students, we’re only looking at an upper end of 15% satisfaction…and that’s still terrible. Just how many signs that something is very wrong in higher education today do we need?

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

1.    To be fair, half say “strongly agree” their education was worth the cost, as opposed to lesser levels of agreement, or disagreement, but since this is the standard our rulers of higher education set for themselves, I’m going with the study’s numbers based on this level of agreement.

Females With Degrees Outnumber Males…Good News?

By Professor Doom

     “Theese eeese pure eediocy!”

--a German professor’s response at a faculty meeting regarding accreditation recommendations to put an outreach program to attract female STEM students inside of an outreach program to attract female STEM students. The previous sentence is typed as intended.

     It’s no secret that females are being courted aggressively in higher education, and I’ve listened to many a (female) administrator bloviate about how females are under-represented in higher education, how yet another program is to be established to attract females, as part of the institution’s mission to make education available to all, regardless of gender.

     Despite the stated good intentions regarding gender equality, I suspect administrative motives. 

      I don’t waste time trying to explain to admin that giving bonuses to one gender over another is actually a violation of principles…there are far better reasons to lose one’s job than simply pointing out an everyday-type hypocrisy in higher education.

     Anyway, I imagine the following headline caused an administrator or two to pump her fist in the air in victory:

For the first time in history, a bigger share of American women than men have college degrees

     I’m not trying to rain on anyone’s parade, but…are we sure this is a good thing? One might reason that if more females are getting degrees, more females are going to college, and statistics verify intuition here. 

     Now we have a problem. I’ve documented quite well in this blog what higher education is nowadays, and, again, the data makes it pretty clear that most people that go to college to get degrees are victimized by the experience. Most students drop out without getting a degree, after all, so that headline could just as easily read: “A bigger share of American women than men are victims of college.”

“…the percentage of male students on campus has plunged from 100 percent in 1917 (when it was an all-male institution) to an estimated 41 percent for the graduating class of 2015...”

      What happened to make the most common victim of our current higher education system a female, as opposed to male?

      As is often the case, I can’t help but compare the Poo Bahs that run higher education to tobacco company executives, and, again, the comparison seems valid, as I’ll explain. 

     First, a bit of history. In the 19^th century, most smokers were male. At this point in time, most people that died of lung cancer also were male—other than noting miners seemed to get it more often, there wasn’t much of a connection to smoking until much later (but cigarettes of this era were far less processed than the cigarettes of today, which are deliberately crafted to become more addictive). Females were, socially, discouraged from smoking in this era, and even as late as 1908 a female was arrested in New York for smoking in public.

     As the years progressed, lung cancer became “equal opportunity” and now females get lung cancer at rates very comparable to males. I bet the gentle reader can guess what else increased to parity with males, but allow me to be clear: female smokers.

      What happened to increase female smokers? Well, smoking is a business, and it’s just good business to seek new markets. So, a century or so ago, big tobacco hired marketing experts to make smoking attractive to females.

However, it is questionable whether smoking would have become as popular among women as it did if tobacco companies had not seized on this opportunity in the 1920s and 1930s to exploit ideas of liberation, power, and other important values for women…

     Yes, tobacco executives also promoted cigarette smoking to females as a way to increase their sexual attractiveness (hard to believe, in retrospect), but note the targeting of “liberation, power and other important values for women.”

     I’ve often compared our Poo Bahs in higher education to tobacco executives, although in the past those comparisons are mostly how both seem to target the young and vulnerable, and take advantage of the innocence of our young to trap them into lifetimes of cigarette addiction or student loan debt.

      Allow me to make that comparison even stronger, by noting that, much as tobacco executives ruthlessly exploited women’s desires to trap them into cigarette addiction, higher education administrators suckered females into college loan debt, by promoting how “education can increase independence” and such. Could it be that women are getting extra encouragement to go to college?

     It takes little effort to find many, many scholarships that are targeted strictly for women; while I’m sure there are such for men, they sure don’t see to get advertised much.

     Now, this is just basic business, much as a drug dealer gives the first dose for free to “just try it and see if you like it,” higher education gives females scholarships to “get their foot in the door.” One might think that this means females end up with less debt than males, but all the extra scholarships don’t seem to help:

AAUW's findings tell us that women are disproportionately likely to take out loans; among 2007-2008 graduates, 68 percent of women borrowed money for college compared to 63 percent of men.

     So, much like tobacco companies created the “smoking culture” of the US military by giving free cigarettes to soldiers during WW2, creating a bunch of addicts once the war ended, our “leaders” in higher education have suckered females into the student debt trap, indebting them forever despite the scholarships. Once again, the questionable tactics of our tobacco company executives far too aptly compare to our self-appointed elite “leaders” in higher education. 

     There’s a sinister side effect to the gender bias of higher education, however. It’s a trivial matter to look around in higher education and see signs that women are welcome, and men…not so much. Should I even bother to mention how a male might find Women’s Studies type courses a bit intimidating? What of all the anti-male “take back the night” festivities? I digress, but it’s curious nobody speaks of the many macro-aggressions against males on campus.

     So, is it a good thing that women now have more degrees than men? Only if a college degree is really worthwhile, and, bottom line, we’re finally starting to question if education, particularly as education is defined today, is worth today’s extremely high prices. Seeing as higher education is now creating prostitutes to get degrees, and prostitutes after the females get the degrees, I’m pretty hard pressed to believe so.

     Next time around I’ll look some more general answers to the question of whether the people going to college even think it’s worth it.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

Missouri: Sportsball Genie Out Of The Bottle

By Professor Doom

     While the #1 cause of the decay of higher education is the student loan scam, the #2 reason is the obsession with sportsball. Faculty must jump through hoops to get lightbulbs replaced, must ration their use of the printer because the department begrudges spending $5 on paper to print study guides for the students…even as tens of millions of dollars are readily spent on new athletic buildings, as the highest paid officials on campus are now sportsball coaches, despite no campus mission statement saying anything about supporting athletic teams.

      Many campuses now devote more money and space to sportsball teams than any academic subject, and administrators trip over themselves to support athletics, to the point that academic integrity is ignored so often that student (sic) athlete-related scandals hardly merit a mention in the news unless it is truly epic in scale.

     Faculty have long since learned not to mess with the student (sic) athletes, to give such students (sic) special leave and consideration when it comes to grades and assignments. Even professional athletes seem to command special attention if they decide to go back to college. It’s just not a battle worth fighting—we all know that student (sic) athletes are on campus as entertainment, so we rubber stamp the athlete’s grades and wish him well.

     While athletes are mostly untouchable on campus when it comes to academics, administrators are completely untouchable in most every regard. I’ve documented more than enough ridiculous antics by administrators, with no real penalty to the administrator beyond strained back muscles from hauling huge bags of plundered money around.

      More and more power has been given to athletics over the years, and it’s quite possible that a tipping point has now been reached.

     Anyone casually following the news in higher education has heard of the fiasco going on at the University of Missouri. The ridiculous cry of “racism,” along with witch hunt against microaggressions for which there is no rational defense, has gripped another campus with paralysis. I should note that none of this would happen if we had real leaders in higher education, instead of the self-proclaimed “leaders” that are only on campus to loot, and thus make all decisions in terms of what decision will facilitate more looting, instead of making decisions with integrity and helping humanity in mind.

     Thus, when there’s a cry of “racism!” administrators on campus rush to coddle the students—the source of the sweet, sweet, student loan checks that are easy to loot—instead of maturely considering the accusations (usually vague if not outright false), considering the victims (usually nobody is hurt in any meaningful sense), and deciding the wisest course of action would be to encourage the student to ignore the silliness and get back to studying.

     Students have learned how this works, and I suspect many of them enjoy watching the buffoons administration scramble to deal with irrelevant accusation after irrelevant accusation in the stupidest way possible. Alas, the students don’t realize that watching these clowns administrators run around to put out nonexistent fires comes at a price—inevitably, a new “diversity” fiefdom is formed, staffed with another dozen or so very expensive Senior Pro Assistant Vice Presidents of Irrelevancy, and tuition gets jacked up to pay for it. Perhaps I shouldn’t hold administrators in such disdain for the apparent foolishness…they do seem to win every time there’s another vague accusation.

      Well, until now.

      After weeks of protests, a Poo Bah in the University of Missouri’s system actually resigned over his handling of the racism fiasco. This is amazing, as I’ve documented so much theft, fraud, and corruption on this blog, and those things never get resolved quickly, if at all. But this guy actually went down within weeks.

      What’s the difference?

“…Then, on Saturday, Nov. 7, at least 30 members of the university’s football team linked arms with the hunger striker and gave an ultimatum: if [Poo Bah] Wolfe didn’t resign, they would boycott all football-related activities. That included a game scheduled for this coming Saturday. …While it would be an exaggeration to attribute Wolfe's resignation…largely to the players' actions…”

     What, it would be an exaggeration to claim the quickest resignation ever was due to the sportsball players asking for the resignation? Au contraire! If he didn’t resign tout suite, a game would have been (gasp!) cancelled! Please understand, the resignation wasn’t about integrity. Administrators don’t make decisions based on integrity, instead the decision was based on:

“…the amount of money the university stood to lose if the players had boycotted this weekend’s game. Though Missouri has struggled to win this season, had the strike taken place, the university would have owed Brigham Young University $1 million, per the two universities' game contract…”

     Weeks of protests, even hunger strikes, did absolutely nothing. But the team threatens to miss a game (and cost the institution a million bucks), and suddenly admin decides an administrative head will roll, after all. Compare how quickly this response/resignation came to, say, the 18 year long scandal at UNC (where no Poo Bahs resigned over it, and the primary administrators involved were rewarded for their efforts in the cover-up, while whistleblowers were punished). At UNC, athletes weren’t complaining, so no resignations required. Hmm.

      Does the gentle reader suppose that sportsball players at other institutions got the message? If sportsball players, as a team, refuse to play, they can totally shut down the higher education system, getting Poo Bah after Poo Bah removed until they get whatever they want. Free degrees? Sure, why not? Elimination of all academic coursework on campus? Sure, why not…wouldn’t want to have a game cancelled, after all.

     Well, they can do this until a Poo Bah is finally anointed who says “Wait a second, this is an institution of higher education, we’re not a sportsball institution. I’m just shutting down all the athletic programs and taking this university back to education. Go away, student (sic) athletes!” And just like that, tuition would drop 30% or more and the massive financial drain that is athletics (at 90% of institutions) ends.

      I admit that’s not going to happen anytime soon, but the genie is totally out of the bottle, and I sure doubt the administration at any school will have the strength, wisdom, or, I daresay, leadership to deal with it in the proper way.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com