Parents Must Protect Students, Higher Ed Won’t

By Professor Doom

      So I’m looking at a post by a reader, explain how she’s helping her child not become a victim of predatory higher education. It’s disturbing that so much effort must be made to protect a child from administrators that prey on the innocent and vulnerable in much the same way pedophiles and tobacco companies do.

      Like so many, she’s realized that higher education doesn’t quite make as much sense as it used to:

My husband and I are in our 50's and went to college before the internet. Back then, college was the best way to gain knowledge. Today, college no longer holds the monopoly on knowledge that it once had. As a secondary teacher, college is also not the only way to make a decent living. In fact, many trades pay better than the jobs the more liberal arts type of majors end up working.

 

     It is nothing less than astonishing how much the world has changed in the last 30 years. I can ask the most obscure trivia question in the classroom, and dozens of students will whip out their phones and get the answer for me in seconds. Knowledge probably needs to be measured differently today, and I concede maybe we should consider having more job skills taught in higher education. 

      No administrator will consider this, however, since selling that mandatory “gen ed” coursework generates such sweet student loan loot.

We also want her to come out with some real job skills based on her preferences. She had no idea what she wants to do other than write children's mystery books, but has decided that she wants to work regular day hours and be seated most of the time, so a business certificate it is.

 

      Note the above carefully. The parent actually asks the child what she wants, and puts together a plan for that goal. This is so “old school.” Every semester when I was in college, I was asked about my major by my advisor, had to consider what I wanted (I was a chemistry major and almost a computer science major before settling on mathematics)…and had to register for courses towards that specific goal.

     In today’s higher education, administration screws the students. “Just take these bogus courses for a few years and figure it out yourself” is the primary “planning” that administration gives students. I’ve had countless students, years into their degree programs, “just one semester away from graduation”  the students tell me, who still haven’t taken even the introductory courses for their major yet.

      Again: parents need to work with their children now to figure out what they want, as administration has no more interest in helping kids succeed than a pedophile or a tobacco company executive.

     Our administrative caste in higher education has expanded, and expanded, and expanded. The entire purpose of our college system is education and research, supporting students and faculty. What are administrators for?

      Faculty loathe them, because all too often, administration makes things more difficult for faculty. It’s very clear these guys aren’t there for the faculty.

       Our students are getting deeper in debt than ever before, take longer to graduate than ever before, and are dropping out more as well. It’s very clear the administrators aren’t there for the students, either.

      The reader describes her own experience in higher education:
    

I am a graduate of a JC in California. It allowed me to save a boatload of money. I transferred 69 units after two years going both summers. I was a very motivated student and the transfer system worked well for me.

 

      I’m hard on community colleges (also called Junior Colleges, or JCs) because I’ve seen firsthand how they’re rife with corruption and incompetence, and how integrity among the faculty there is penalized to an alarming degree. That said, I admit it’s possible to use a JC in the way it’s intended, to get a good budget education. It’s rare for a student to really benefit in these places, however, as administration puts up so many roadblocks to student success.

      How did she get so lucky?

However, my father had gone to college and sat down with me and showed me in the college catalog EXACTLY what I needed to do and how general ed worked (regarding transferring AND earning an AA/AS). He explained what regional accreditation was and what did and did not transfer from junior college to a 4 year institution. I did not get this info from the JC; I was fortunate enough to get it at home.

     Her father knew what the college system actually was and walked her through it. Sadly, this explains why our predatory “leaders” in higher education, especially at the community college level, are so motivated to hunt down kids from families with no college experience: they’re much easier to exploit, because their parents can’t warn them of the traps.

     The mother finishes up by mentioning her old JC is now being plundered:

San Francisco's JC recently almost lost its accreditation because it DID NOT HAVE ENOUGH ADMINISTRATORS!!!!!! I kid you not. Jerry Brown, our governor played hard ball and threatened to pull all 111 of California's JC out of WASC. I am not sure what happened, but if he hadn't stood up to them, the 90,000 student at SF's JC would have been failed by WASC.

       I’ve covered this school before, showing how accreditation actually helped plunder the school. Accreditation, instead of assuring the legitimacy of an institution, is now in on the fraud. The people running our institutions are the same ones that run accreditation, so it’s little wonder the whole system is set up for fraud on ever increasing levels.

       Higher education used to be about education, but thanks to the student loan scam, it now has a need to be about job skills instead. This is a shame, but with so much money on the table, I respect albeit dislike this reality.

       Higher education used to be about integrity, but, again thanks to the loan scam, there is little integrity. Administration’s avarice exponentially expanded into integrity’s absence. No more can you count on the institutions to treat our kids fairly…instead it’s up to the parents to watch over them some more.

       Please, gentle readers, if your kids or a neighbor’s kids are just starting out in college this year, or the next, or the next…consider exposing them to this blog, or my book (which addresses the higher education system in detail, with documentation).  Please, help them, do what you can to keep them out of acquiring deep debts for useless course credits.

      A higher education system with integrity would do as I ask of the gentle reader, but that system is fading fast. It’s up to you now.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

     

Pedophiles, Tobacco Execs, Administration

By Professor Doom

     With classes starting up, I feel the need to try to warn those most vulnerable to predatory higher education. Please, gentle reader, if you or someone you know is the first in the family to go to college, read this carefully and pass it on to other potential victims.

Talking Head: “The pedophile drove an ice cream truck through residential neighborhoods, seeking his prey…”

--I’m paraphrasing, but it seems like I’ve head the like a few times over the years

Talking Head: “Tobacco Executives were charged with marketing their product to teens, by posting advertisements near high schools…”

--Again, I’ve heard more or less this sort of thing a few times.

   

The above are common enough themes in the local news: pedophiles and tobacco companies naturally do what it takes to seek out the innocent and the ignorant, to exploit as victims. While I grant that this may be as natural as what spiders do to flies, there’s a human element to the above that changes things. Human beings who target the young and vulnerable like the above are viewed as scum, and face scorn from society at the very least, if not criminal charges.

Higher Ed Administrator: “We’re targeting kids right out of high school, especially those from families who’ve never had anyone go to college…”

     I was told the above many times while at a shady community college. The glow in administrative eyes as they said this I interpreted as a nearly missionary zeal, much like going into the jungle to make new converts. Of course, missionaries do what they do for sacred reasons; at the very least, they don’t get free mansions to live in, royal salaries, and golden parachutes for their efforts.

      More and more as I study higher education, I see how the student loan scam has warped it to nearly beyond recognition of the system I went through. A recent post from a reader, carefully going in detail how she’s protecting her child from the predatory higher education administrators we have now, really highlights how the system has changed…and how wrong I was about the missionary zeal I thought I saw in administration. 

     That zeal is more akin to the lust of the pedophile and the greed of the tobacco executive than the righteousness of the missionary.

      Allow me to go over some highlights:

I have a daughter starting college in the fall. Your posts have given me a lot to consider. We are starting our daughter in a 30 unit certificate in general business with a few gen ed classes along the way. This way, if she absolutely does not like college, we have told her she can quit, but not until she at least finishes the business certificate so that she will have some job skills (we will have her take quite a bit of accounting).

     This first paragraph illustrates what the student loan scam has done to higher education. The loans have allowed tuition to soar to ridiculous heights. 50 years ago, a minimum wage worker could earn most of a year’s tuition at an ivy league school in a summer job, while today’s tuition is more than a year’s salary (minus the higher taxation of today) for a professional worker. Back then, pursuing higher education was a personal matter, of no long term concern if the student dropped out. Today most students go deep into permanent debt for their higher education.  Higher education today is a lifelong financial investment at best, and more of a very risky gamble for most kids.

      Because of this, it’s no longer reasonable to pursue knowledge as an end, at least not through going to college. College tuition is now so ridiculously expensive that job skills, not knowledge, are a quite legitimate primary concern of reasonable people entering college fresh out of high school.

      Now, most high school graduates are not “reasonable people”; it falls on the parent now to watch over the child entering higher education, to protect that child from predatory higher education administration…in much the same way a parent must be wary of the machinations of pedophiles and tobacco executives.

     The key takeaway here: parents must care for their children even in college, because administration does not care about its victims any more than a pedophile or tobacco executive. Admin seeks out kids from families that never went to college, because these kids have nobody to warn them about every trap admin sets up

      The parent realizes that college is not set up with the current reality in mind:

“This is backwards to what most college students do. They take their general ed classes first, then start in their majors. But, if they drop out, no one cares (employers) that they took some general ed classes because they don't have any marketable skills.”

     Back when higher education was a personal matter, it was fine that most study was based around the general things that scholars believed educated people should know. We still have these “general education” courses, and administration has front-loaded these courses into degree programs. Most students drop out before getting to any applied courses, leaving college with a few hours of gender studies, a few hours of psychology, a few hours of speech, a few hours of diversity courses…but nothing in anything anyone will actually pay for, just a bunch of isolated introductory courses with material anyone who reads a book can completely master in a few weeks.

Our daughter is not a particularly good student and is young emotionally, so going to a four year college was not an option. If she finishes the business certificate and wants to go on, we will have her transfer to the private college where my husband is an instructor. The school where he teaches does not have the business classes like our local JC, so we want her to start there and gain some job skills because we are not convinced she will be willing to attend college for at least four years.

     Hey, lots of kids come out of high school “young emotionally” and not particularly good students. Higher education used to treat these people with integrity, with enforced “honor codes” and professorial mentors and curfews and study halls and such, especially for “freshman” students who have just arrived on campus. These “draconian” rules kept the young from hurting themselves, and helped them to gain the skills to become a successful adult, and possibly a successful scholar.

      Administration has gotten rid of all those inconvenient rules, because they cut into growth.

Admin, my first year of college more than a generation ago: “You need to report to your faculty advisor, and set up a class schedule with him. You will not be able to register for classes without a signature from him approving your schedule, and certifying that the courses you register for make progress towards your degree.”

--here, the faculty mentor was doing a job with integrity, making sure I navigated the system properly to get my degree.

Admin, 2016: “Log in online and sign up for courses. You get the most amount of money if you sign up for 12 credit hours exactly. Your check will arrive in 6 weeks.”

--here, admin tricks students into a trap. A student taking 12 hours his first semester has no chance of graduating on time...and yet that's the advice given at my community college, like most community colleges.

      Now, administration takes advantage of these young people, screwing them into huge loans for coursework admin knows is of no value, and doesn’t even try to help them learn how to be good students, doesn’t even try to guide them towards success in a degree program.

     More on this next time.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

My Books

Soon, our campuses will be filling with students, and I'm looking forward to the start of classes. That said, I know there are people out there about to make a last minute decision to rush into college, to take on huge debt for the chance of getting a degree that will lead to a magical high paying job.

I would be remiss if I didn't give such people a chance at a fair warning.

Higher education today is, for most institutions, a fraud on many levels.  The first year or so of posts on my blog covers it all, and I encourage the interested reader to start from the beginning. If you want a full discussion of the massive fraud that is higher education in print, please consider getting Why Johnny Can't Read, Write, or Do 'Rithmetic Even With A College Degree, which also includes dozens of references to reports and documentation showing exactly how it is that a college graduate can easily leave college with no measurable gain in any skill or ability, but many thousands of dollars of debt.



For most people, simply not going into higher education is the best choice. If you know someone thinking about going into higher education, this book might save them from making a life-destroying decision.

 If I can't dissuade you from what is the best choice for most people in higher education today, and you are determined to get a degree, any degree, as simply as possible, as cheaply as possible (and, for cheap, nothing beats University of the People, with $1,000 a year tuition costs), with the least chance of failure, allow me to present a Plan B:

My book, What To Do If You Are Failing in College covers all the pitfalls administration has set up, and shows how to avoid the traps that have been set, traps that will prolong you or your child's stay in college much longer than could possibly do any good.

You can already buy books on how to study, how to take notes, and my book only has a little to add to all the "study and work hard" advice already out there. Instead, I focus on the reality of college...what you should be doing the first week of classes, the first month, by mid-terms, by finals. What you need to have done before you even sign up for your 5th semester of classes. What your 4th year of coursework should look like, regardless of your major.

In short, I cover how to really play the "get a degree" game, in a way that no other book addresses. If you really want to go to college and get a degree, this book has far more real information than you'll get from any administrator, who for the most part is highly motivated to trick you into any number of traps administration has set up to prolong your stay as long as possible.

I thank the gentle reader for his patience; a new post will be up tomorrow.

Alabama: Tenure OUT Strongman IN

By Professor Doom

     Alabama is removing tenure, but before I get to that, I feel the need to give some background:

     The degeneration of higher education, slowly increasing over the last few decades, is now visible to the casual observer. The free-fall reduction of standards to the point that social promotion is unimpeded in college, to the point that you can find graduates that can neither read nor write nor perform arithmetic any better than before they set foot on college—much less at all!—is turning our higher educational system into a joke, and why we’ve slid from the top country to the 11^th in higher education, in less than a generation.

     Key to this destruction is the student loan scam; any school that is accredited qualifies for these student loans. As accreditation cares nothing for education, this has provided a huge sum of money to any institution willing to give a tiny fraction of that loan money to the accreditor. Would you give $250,000 to an accreditor in exchange for a billion dollars in loan money which you don’t have to pay back? It’s not tough to see the opportunity for profit here.

      For-profit schools have reaped tremendous rewards from the loan scam…with blind accreditation, there was nothing to stop this. I’ve covered these places in detail already, however.

      We’ve had immense growth in our public institutions. Our universities, even our community colleges, have grown to the size of townships, with many campuses now supporting tens of thousands of students. Standards fell to accommodate the size, but only to a point. Accreditation has failed in every way, but the faculty at the old schools insisted upon at least minimal standards. With tenure protecting the faculty, rapacious Poo-Bahs had real limits to their pay and the growth of the institution, and they hate that.

     Thus community college systems sprang up rapidly in the last twenty years. Community, or “two year” or “junior” colleges are a relatively new phenomenon (relative to the thousands year old idea of the university). They first became relevant around 1920, but only recently, the last few decades, have become huge things dwarfing university campuses. While we take them for granted in the United States, the rest of the world has nothing much like the plague of community colleges. 

     The new community colleges are very different from the older ones. A century ago, community colleges were built with the universities as a template: faculty could get tenure, and both scholarship and standards were relevant. While I’ve documented and seen with my own eyes incredible levels of fraud, incompetence, corruption, and unprofessionalism at community colleges, there are some legitimate community colleges out there, mainly these remnants are from the first days of the community colleges.

      In the last few decades, as the debasement has accelerated, more recent community college “systems” have been slapped up. These don’t use universities as a model, instead they follow the for-profit model. These “modern” schools are staffed by deeply exploited and powerless adjuncts, who generally can barely feed themselves on their pay, despite their advanced degrees. The profits generated, instead of going to shareholders and CEOs like in a for-profit school, are funneled to a huge and hugely overpaid administrative caste.

     Alas, the fraud of these new schools has become established, and “best practices” means that the older schools can follow suit, to become little more than milking factories, draining out the loan money from warm bodies before spitting them out on the street.

     But wait…the old schools can’t become completely debased so quickly, as those tenured faculty still think there should be some sort of standard to higher education. How to respond to this problem?

     Alabama will solve the problem by removing tenure:

Bill would end community college tenure, give board more control

 

     And just like that, whatever legitimacy community colleges in Alabama had is snuffed out. It’s so weird, our higher education system is the epicenter of leftist dogma, and yet all we see here are the workers being screwed while the ones on top make out like bandits. Ok, any student of history won’t find that so surprising…maybe it’s not a coincidence history is no longer taught in schools?

     So what’s the new plan for community colleges in Alabama?

“…make the Alabama Community College System a corporation…and establish discipline and termination procedures.”

--emphasis added

     How much more clear could it be that Alabama will adopt the same model as the for-profit education system, a system that is fundamentally known as corrupt and invalid?

     Look, I understand tenure has real potential for exploitation, and I have mixed feelings about it, at best. The fact is, however, every plan that has come from our “leaders” in higher education has been about giving them more power, and every plan that’s been executed has made education worse. This means that, in general, if our leaders in higher education want it, a person of integrity needs to be against it on principle alone. 

     Thus at this point I’m forced to cast aside my ambivalence towards tenure: admin wants to get rid of it, therefore it would be better for higher education to keep it. It’s that simple anymore.

      Without faculty, educators, making decisions and setting standards about education, who will do it?

“The way I see it, giving the community colleges more autonomy is good if you have good strong board members and a strong chancellor who are setting good policies — that’s a good thing,”

--emphasis added

     I find this point of view about education absolutely fascinating. To heck with scholarship, to heck with education, what is wanted is strength. How demented do you have to be to honestly believe strength is the most important thing about education?  

   

     That’s right, get rid of the faculty, and let a strongman take over. It’s so weird to watch our campuses all turn into microcosms of Marxist utopias: incredible wealth for the people with power at the top, everyone else starves. 

     There’s essentially no chance standards will be maintained in the new system:

She also said the change would give the community colleges more uniformity for deciding things like a remediation requirement for incoming students.

     Ah, here it comes. Please understand remediation has been a disaster for higher education, a huge fraud fleecing our citizens out of incredible sums of money while enriching the administrative caste of our bloated campuses. Over 90% of community college is non-college material now, and only the deathgrip of the tenured faculty has kept even a little college on community college campuses.

     I promise you, the strongman will kill that last 10% in exchange for even greater growth profits.

“She also said current salary schedules for instructors would be null and void under the legislation.”

     And just like that, the teachers making over $20,000 a year will find their pay halved, if not worse…while the strongman at the top gets a huge pay raise. Bottom line, this is a power grab for the last bit of loot in a doomed system, nothing more.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com