Comments on: Re-imagining Higher Ed

By: Ann Wilbur

Ann Wilbur — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 22:36:07 +0000

I attended college in California for my first two years but transfered to Ohio State to finish up. I felt too many people in college in CA were there for a free ride and demanding everything be “dumb down” and cheap. Ohio State had a better class of students and more interested in paying their own way and learning.

By: Harry P.

Harry P. — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 19:37:09 +0000

There is a lot of waste involved with college education in the USA. Here are my suggestions and comments:
1. Instead of 4 years, why not 3 years? Most of the course work that I took for my BS in Engineering were wasted on French, musical theory, and even public speaking.
2. Have more practical courses. For example, an engineering student should also learn factory design, manufacturing, economics, MIS, and even more hands-on design and manufacturing. More internships as well.
3. Why are the colleges on beach-front property? Why do the buildingslook like Georgian mansions?
4. Why are there so many liberal arts majors? In China, they don’t study philosophy or art history. They major in engineering, and soon, they will employ our liberal arts major.
5. We should have more of our kids be able to study in lower-cost countries like India or South America. After all, Newton’s first law is same everywhere.
6. Why is there an over-emphasis on sports in colleges and high-schools?

By: Rob F

Rob F — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:43:40 +0000

Listening to the show made me wonder what exactly is the value of higher ed. Is it supposed to convey the traditional “liberal education” or is it supposed to be a glorified online vocational school where ever-increasing numbers of digital workers are expected to get the latest degree program du jour?

Neither of the speakers addressed the fundamental issue of supply and demand – when more people have college degrees, the relative value of that decree declines. Already the value of an MBA has been eroded by the exponential jump in the number of institutions offering MBAs in the 1990-2000’s.

The speakers fretted that college degrees will make us less “competitive” in the global marketplace. Yet two of our most economically successful businessmen – Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, were both college dropouts.

By: ex grad student

ex grad student — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 18:42:48 +0000

One way to increase the system’s ability to absorb more students would be to de-emphasize research at our universities and, instead, focus on teaching. Teaching has become a mere distraction for professors because they know that tenure decisions are purely based on research. Outside of the hard sciences, where research provides high value to society, research should be secondary to teaching. Incentives need to be changed for professors to reward them for teaching rather than research.

By: twenty-niner

twenty-niner — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 17:34:14 +0000

“I want to see scholarships available to all based on need as long as the students are in good standing.”

On the contrary, scholarships should be based purely on merit. Academic competition is no longer “us against us”, it’s “us against the world”, and the world is winning. I have friends from India who graduated from IIT, one of the best engineering schools in the world, and the only way in is by way of a nationally administered test. Everyone has an equal chance to take the test, so it’s completely fair. And these fellas came from very modest means. They just studied their behinds off and didn’t sit around playing XBox all day.

While we are looking to the rest of the world to teach us how to run our health care system, we should also be looking at their schooling methods, which are rooted in rigor and discipline.

By: jon

jon — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 14:25:33 +0000

For a different approach to improving American higher education, and risking the appearance of a plug, I would like to recommend a few books: Stanley Aronowitz’s The Knowledge Factory: Dismantling the Corporate University and Creating True Higher Learning and Against Schooling: For an Education that Matters, and Jennifer Washburn’s University Inc. Perhaps you could have them on as guests to deepen the conversation?

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 03:42:49 +0000

My comment is similar to some others posted here. Let me say that I believe that everyone should have a chance at higher ed. The country will be much better off if everyone is as educated as they want to be. I am a doctoral student myself. HOWEVER, as long as higher ed is tied to expectations of knowledge-worker type jobs, it is a very bad idea to try to send everyone to college. That’s how things are now. We disparage anything but knowledge-worker/office-worker type jobs as a society, and make anyone who doesn’t go to college feel like a loser. We treat them as losers. This is ridiculous. A healthy economy needs ALL sorts of people doing ALL sorts of things, not just sitting at desks pushing papers or bits around. That’s what we’re heading for: a nation where EVERYONE sits at a desk and pushes paper or bits around. Does anyone honestly believe that we can survive if that endgame is reached? This is quite obviously tied in closely with the immigration issue. We need to look in the long-run at what Americans DO for a living, and value everyone and every contribution they can make, from digging ditches up to being a university professor.

By: Phillip Jordan

Phillip Jordan — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 01:23:26 +0000

I still remember the surge that came from the Sputnik scare. In my senior year, we got a test that Hungarian students got to enter college. out of 150 points, I got 57. THAT WAS THE HIGHEST SCORE IN MY ENTIRE SCHOOL! In Hungary I would have been digging ditches. Mind you, Hungary had been, 3 years before, flattened by Soviet tanks. Education is illegal in this country. Look in any scientific professional journal: American names and faces are conspicuous by their absence. Where are the rays of genius being reflected and combined? Not here. Intelligent behavior is relentlessly punished here.

By: Alexis

Alexis — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 01:21:08 +0000

I am at this moment tending to my online intro bio course that I teach as an adjunct professor. My job is the equivalent of cheap migrant labor in academia. I am paid term to term, with no guarantee of work the next term. No contract is in my future. It is understood among my peers that the longer one works as adjunct faculty, the LESS your chances of getting a “real” teaching job, one with benefits, and a livable wage and some idea how much work one might have in the coming year.

This is about as “no-frills” as it gets. If students aren’t driven to be at school, are seeking a diploma rather than an education, they don’t value their time in class. They want cheap schooling and prefer to avoid those annoyances such as assignments and tests. Why encourage more of these students to attend, and thus create more jobs such as mine which exploit workers who are desperate to work and teach in their field.

Don’t get me wrong… I teach because I love it. I just wish I could keep doing it and feed my family. I won’t be able to do so. Maybe I’ll just go back to school and get another degree…

By: Haoming Qiu

Haoming Qiu — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 01:19:32 +0000

California (which has one of this country’s best systems) just cut about 9 Billion dollars from its system affecting both the CSU and UC systems causing tuition hikes and enrollment cuts. Other states with budget deficits are facing the same issues. How on Earth are we going to increase enrollment when we can barely maintain what we have today?

By: Josh

Josh — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 19:41:28 +0000

Can someone on the show speak to the impact of athletics on higher education, both positive and negative and its effect on the quality of the education at schools that invest significantly in athletics?
Thanks.

By: ellen b

ellen b — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 19:38:20 +0000

I got a BA but my job didn’t really require one, and college wasn’t worth the effort and cost, tho I did enjoy it for a few years. Then I forced myself to finish, while working, while I should have quit. We need more training of youth for skilled trades in partnership with highschools. Many Europeans do this easily and thus have paying jobs and can achieve stable family lives with purchasing power and security. I hope Obama stops pushing college for all and pushes job training –for good jobs without college. Not everyone loves to read all day. Trades require smarts and ability and their status should be pushed, not lessened compared with college.

By: Susan

Susan — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:28:07 +0000

Not enough emphasis is being placed on the non-traditional part time student. On-line and night classes are crucial to many part time students because they must work full time, generally during the day. Also, I have not heard any discussion about satellite campuses. Satellite campuses allow students in rural communities, or towns that just happen to house the main university, to attend class in a regular classroom and interact with the professor via a video and tv monitor. Also, the computer screen can be shared by all so the students can see everything the professor does on the computer.

By: Jim

Jim — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:57:56 +0000

The soaring cost of college makes it harder and harder to gain a return on investment. The college rankings obsession makes it harder and harder for lower tier graduates to get a decent salary to pay back the student loans.

I think there is a direct correlation between the rising tuitions and the ease of receiving student loans and the colleges have been complicit in the creation of an unnecessarily debt-laden young professional population. There is no way tuitions could rise so fast if students could not borrow to pay it – the colleges wouldn’t be able to build the fancy campus centers, dorms that feel like hotels, nor acquire property tax-free real estate. But also consider that these loans are being peddled to minors and people in their early 20’s. Imagine if a 30 or 40 year old was offered an unsecured $200,000 loan with no income and no assets whatsoever – wouldn’t you think there was something fishy about that? Maybe even more troublesome when the financial aid centers who promote the loans are paid off by the lenders who in turn paid off the congressmen who legislate these loans out of the bankruptcy system.

Also, the pressure for students to take “unpaid” internships is almost criminal. By making unpaid internships essentially a requirement of future employment, it has (1) created an indentured servitude situation for college students and (2) depressed both labor demand and wages for recent college grads because an unpaid junior or senior can do the same work for free. This creates unemployment but more importantly vast UNDERemployment which makes it so hard for recent grads to get a start as professionals and even harder to start to pay back their loans.

I love Obama’s intention and strongly believe in the holistic value of a liberal arts education, but I just don’t think we live in a country where his plan is going to benefit the whole population – in fact, it will probably lead to more class stratification and create a huge poverty class of graduates from lower tier schools who are trust into a servitude to large banks who own their student loans.

As a final note to give credit where it’s due, Northeastern is an excellent example of a college that actually makes an effort to train their students and allow them to build relationships with employers while in school. I think that more apprentice programs like this are much needed.

By: Ann

Ann — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:57:43 +0000

The cost issues need to be addressed based on need. I taught at a state college in South Carolina for 22 years. During this time the “Education Lottery” was implemented which is based on the the Georgia Hope Scholarship where students must have a B average to be eligible and then keep the B average to keep the funding without regard to need. As a result, the scholarships mostly favor the higher income students. Lower income students with lower grades must depend on loans and work We all know that it is harder to be successful if a student is working long hours. Many students, particularly from small rural schools, who earn a B average in HS are not adequately prepared to meet the requirements of college at that level. As a result, the rate of students who loose their scholarship is very high. There are many very good students who earn mostly B’s but occasionally earn a C+ or C. Even though they may be hard working and more disciplined and motivated than some of the B students who could be even better with a little more work, they are cut off from the opportunity. I want to see scholarships available to all based on need as long as the students are in good standing.

By: James

James — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:50:50 +0000

It strikes me as dishonest to omit from this conversation the fact that higher education bureaucrats are even now frantically trying to “differentiate” themselves by gaming the US News and World Report rankings. The slavish efforts to win higher ranking—for example, by seeming more “selective” by soliciting applications from people who will not conceivably be admitted, or paying non-needy high SATs scorers with the tuition dollars of the lower end of the class—are a scandal. The fact that these two won’t talk about it simply indicates its power.

By: Trudy

Trudy — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:43:40 +0000

As an adjunct professor in the midst of negotiations for a full-time job with a major university in Boston, I can attest to the fact that many universities, including the high-priced private ones, rely heavily on under-paid yet dedicated adjuncts to deliver instructional content. This reliance ultimately undermines the quality that universities strive to deliver.

I worry that the no-frills concept will merely serve to expand this reliance on part-time staff. The end-result will be inferior quality across the board. How do the guests of this show propose to deal with the issue of recruiting and retaining qualified, dedicated faculty as this is essential.

By: Erin

Erin — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:35:26 +0000

While no-frills online courses are appealing to me as a working adult with a mortgage, I’m not totally swayed just yet. It is difficult to imagine going back to school when everybody I know with a bachelor’s is unemployed or underemployed, and everyone I know with a graduate degree is a barista somewhere.

Granted, higher education should be about more than just a career track, but the cost of it in this country makes it unrealistic to consider for any other purpose.

By: Amy Marcarelli

Amy Marcarelli — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:32:23 +0000

I am wondering how these university presidents see traditional liberal arts education fitting into the future university system. I am an early-career assistant professor of biology at a technological university, and my sister is a graduate of Northeastern, and I understand the benefits of focused, technological based education including on-the ground experience like co-ops. But, from my own experience, I feel that the broad based, liberal arts education that I received as an undergraduate at Colgate University was essential for teaching me the problem solving, speaking, thinking and writing skills that allowed me to pursue a PhD. Is there still a place for the liberal arts in today’s university system?

By: Donna Burgess

Donna Burgess — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:26:30 +0000

Are you mad? Or just looking to perpetuate your colleges? What good is a college education or a degree if there are no jobs? Millions of recent grads walking around with degrees and working in dead-end jobs or in volunteer situations. I know…I see them stocking shelves in the grocery stores. Companies will merely go to (the country) and find the bachelor or masters degrees where they can pay the least.