Distrust of College
Just a quick comment about diverging views on whether college is "worth it" or whatever. This is the kind of thing I have in mind:
I think it's important to bear in mind that there are at least two distinct things going on here. Yes, the right wing media uses college professors and activists as its go-to punching bags, and so there are probably right wing parents out there who think their kid would be better off not attending an elite school like Swarthmore or Columbia or whatever, and they're mostly wrong. Very few students who can get into those schools should go somewhere else or should skip college.
But I think "college" doesn't have a settled meaning when we have these discussions. For people with certain attributes (high grades, high test scores, money, well-educated or well-connected parents), "college" means precisely places like Swarthmore and Columbia, with their excellent teachers, vast academic resources, and generous financial aid. For other people, "college" might mean, at best, a flagship state university with mediocre academics, relatively little financial aid, and a cultural focus on athletics. And again, that may be the best case scenario. There are a lot of schools out there that do not teach very well and do not confer a degree that is worth very much.
I believe we would probably improve society much more by investing in colleges and universities at the "low end" than improving our already-excellent elite universities. There is a very real sense in which the system is "rigged," but it's not quite in the way that Republicans tend to mean. We lavish resources on students at elite schools and many of them graduate with minimal debt. (I don't really know the details, but I believe I have friends who paid next to nothing at the elite college we attended and graduated with, like, four-figure debt at worst.) Meanwhile students at public universities struggle to pay tuition, struggle to graduate, and are generally not on the same kind of career track when they do. This bifurcation is exactly the kind of thing that can make our society seem so unfair to anyone without the resources (financial, cultural, whatever) to get on the right track. (If nothing else, bear in mind that a substantial number of students at elite colleges are "legacy" admits who might not have been able to get in on their own merits. This is a baffling way to run a society.)
The irony here, as always with the GOP's modern "populist" bullshit, is that it is the GOP that wants to defund state universities. So the party of Social Security, Medicare, and well-funded public education gets labeled "elitist" because of its demographic makeup, while the party actually trying to immiserate the working class makes political hay out of the unfairness of our system.
But that shouldn't blind us to the realities of our post-secondary educational sector and the substantial unfairness it imposes.
and this from WSJ/NBC, showing Trump voters, WWC, rural residents, self-identified poor/working class, young people, etc. say college not worth the cost https://t.co/FYlU1YUjVp pic.twitter.com/4JWm26cEKC— Catherine Rampell (@crampell) December 29, 2017
I think it's important to bear in mind that there are at least two distinct things going on here. Yes, the right wing media uses college professors and activists as its go-to punching bags, and so there are probably right wing parents out there who think their kid would be better off not attending an elite school like Swarthmore or Columbia or whatever, and they're mostly wrong. Very few students who can get into those schools should go somewhere else or should skip college.
But I think "college" doesn't have a settled meaning when we have these discussions. For people with certain attributes (high grades, high test scores, money, well-educated or well-connected parents), "college" means precisely places like Swarthmore and Columbia, with their excellent teachers, vast academic resources, and generous financial aid. For other people, "college" might mean, at best, a flagship state university with mediocre academics, relatively little financial aid, and a cultural focus on athletics. And again, that may be the best case scenario. There are a lot of schools out there that do not teach very well and do not confer a degree that is worth very much.
I believe we would probably improve society much more by investing in colleges and universities at the "low end" than improving our already-excellent elite universities. There is a very real sense in which the system is "rigged," but it's not quite in the way that Republicans tend to mean. We lavish resources on students at elite schools and many of them graduate with minimal debt. (I don't really know the details, but I believe I have friends who paid next to nothing at the elite college we attended and graduated with, like, four-figure debt at worst.) Meanwhile students at public universities struggle to pay tuition, struggle to graduate, and are generally not on the same kind of career track when they do. This bifurcation is exactly the kind of thing that can make our society seem so unfair to anyone without the resources (financial, cultural, whatever) to get on the right track. (If nothing else, bear in mind that a substantial number of students at elite colleges are "legacy" admits who might not have been able to get in on their own merits. This is a baffling way to run a society.)
The irony here, as always with the GOP's modern "populist" bullshit, is that it is the GOP that wants to defund state universities. So the party of Social Security, Medicare, and well-funded public education gets labeled "elitist" because of its demographic makeup, while the party actually trying to immiserate the working class makes political hay out of the unfairness of our system.
But that shouldn't blind us to the realities of our post-secondary educational sector and the substantial unfairness it imposes.
posted by James | 10:06 AM
5 Comments:
I think when media/conservatives talk about "colleges" they mostly mean elite institutions + flagship state universities. So all of that elite discussion is in fact about the same colleges, and these colleges unambiguously do help with jobs.
But as you say what ordinary folks mean when they talk about college not being worth it is sometimes a different thing: a lot of non-elite colleges are either useless or actively scammy. But I'm skeptical that making these colleges "higher quality" in whatever sense is going to do much for their degree premium. First, a lot of the premium is about credentialism and proving that you can jump through the same pointless hoops for four years (in practice this also helps to weed out people who have difficult circumstances). The only way lower-tier colleges can "improve" on these dimensions is to maybe take mandatory attendance.
I'm generally skeptical that college has much to offer the substantial majority of people. Of course it is important that people with academic ability should be able to go to college regardless of socioeconomic status. I would think the best way to arrange for this is to have state schools have much larger incoming classes and much higher attrition rates. (At present I think we only really give out F's for people who are dysfunctional, maybe we should be happier giving out F's to people who try but are not capable. But this requires a larger social shift...)
I mean I basically agree with all of this.
I just don't think more investment is necessarily needed anywhere in the college system, at least it should be a lower priority than reallocation of existing resources. An institution like (say) UT Austin has about 50k undergrads, split up into cohorts (more or less) as 14-13-12-11. I think it would be better and more egalitarian to have it be 35-6-5-4.
I think your bifurcation model misses most of the real differences. To think of colleges and capture the meaningful variation you need a three part model. Elite schools. State and community colleges. And for profit colleges. The question of if a college is “worth it” will mean different things at each of those level.
(Are there any circumstances in which for profits are worth it?)
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