Productivity in Higher Education
One story you hear about college tuition, one I’ve often told myself, is that rates go up because it’s a Baumol’s Cost Disease situation. The faculty are highly skilled workers. And technological improvements in the broader economy drive up the productivity and wages of skilled workers. But the actual productivity of college professors is not encountering any technology-driven enhancements in productivity — you’ve still got men and women standing in lecture halls or sitting around seminar tables talking to people. So costs rise.
In a very interesting Washington Monthly article, Kevin Carey argues this isn’t really true and cites a whole host of technological innovations that colleges have put to use lowering the price of undergraduate education. But rather than those improvements being passed along to students in the form of lower tuition, they’ve just made undergraduate education more profitable at the institutions in question. The resulting situation is no good for society at large. More productive educational models, and more affordable education, would be a big plus. But it doesn’t happen because, for the reasons Carey outlines, the higher education marketplace is pretty dysfunctional — students and parents have almost no accurate information about the quality of the product being offered, and in some respects a high price or lavish spending on things that aren’t educationally useful, can be used to signal quality. And it’s extremely difficult for an institution to demonstrate that it’s offering a relatively cheap, but still high-quality, educational offering.
62 Responses to “Productivity in Higher Education”
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November 28th, 2008 at 9:04 am
And of course, the result of this upward spiral of increased profitability of undergraduate education for the university is a dizzying upward acceleration of faculty salaries….hey, wait a minute!
November 28th, 2008 at 9:17 am
Ed B. is right: there’s something extraordinarily wrong in Carey’s reasoning (and your acceptance of it). While I’ll be happy to see my university stop wasteful spending, little of it can be attributed as rising faculty salaries. Carey ignores the role of declining state support for colleges and universities, and while that’s not the entire story, omitting that from the picture undermines his credibility.
November 28th, 2008 at 9:26 am
As an adjunct faculty member caught up in the insane arms race of trying to find a job earning 45k or better (I have publications that would get me tenure at a top-20 university, but getting interviews is a struggle) this sort of thing drives me into a murderous fury.
Seriously – can’t anyone look into faculty salaries before making this sort of outlandish claim? Even most faculty at, say, Harvard, are paid *way* less than comparable professionals, to say nothing of the struggling adjunct trying to feed a family on a couple thousand dollars a class. Faculty salaries are NOT THE PROBLEM ANYWHERE.
AAUP Salary Survey
November 28th, 2008 at 9:39 am
What is a problem is spending 45K+ a year on a liberal arts education that in most cases will require the student to go onto to graduate work(spending another shitload+ a year)in order to get a livable middle class wage.
I mean, spending 800+ a month on student loans is cool and all, but it’s even better when you realize your college degree you are paying off is almost useless in your search for a decent job.
I’m gonna be pretty pumped when school’s start charging 60k a year. That will legitimately be education I can believe in.
November 28th, 2008 at 9:41 am
These results are not surprising. “Education” is only one of the products that are provided by colleges and universities. Other services delivered to students include: a place to live and eat for four or more years; the availability of a variety of non-educational and quasi-educational activities and entertainments; and access to a social network. It is also widely understood by parents and students that admittance to a university community provides a broader cultural formation that, though educational, is less tangible and less measurable. The university also bestows on the graduating student a lifetime “branding” which has value in the broader world as a signal to others of one’s general intelligence, cultural attitudes and social connections, apart from any details of the education the student received.
Innovation and dynamic adaptation to the broader economy is very difficult in the current system (maybe not an entirely bad thing). New company start-ups are rare. Absence of the profit motive depresses incentives to change and limits capital investment. The university system itself is ancient, and is in many ways incorporates some of the last vestiges of a medieval system of organization and governance in the modern world. Systems of faculty accountability are largely maintained by the faculty themselves, and at large research institutions are only weakly connected to the services provided to students.
November 28th, 2008 at 10:22 am
Whatever the causes, college tuitions have been rising faster than the increases in the real incomes of degree recipients. At some point, the tuition investment will no longer produce a positive payoff, and then colleges will either have to find a way to cut tuitions or face declining enrollments.
November 28th, 2008 at 10:31 am
At some point, the tuition investment will no longer produce a positive payoff
I can’t cite any statistics, but I think the last few years have shown that Americans are willing to take on massive amounts of debt for even modest lifestyle increases. If a college education continues to offer even a small chance at a well-paid professional career, people will probably take on whatever debt is necessary to get such an education.
November 28th, 2008 at 10:38 am
Dan,
Do you really think that most state universities provide the same level of services as you describe:
Other services delivered to students include: a place to live and eat for four or more years; the availability of a variety of non-educational and quasi-educational activities and entertainments; and access to a social network
Do you really think that the students are directional state university really benefit form a social network, or quasi-educational services, or even live on campus.
One of the real problems in the U.S. is that the children of the elite who attended Ivy leagues or extremely selective universities want to make educational policy based upon their expereinces.
What makes universities expensives at the high end is that just slipping down a little in the pecking order takes so many career opprotunities off the table.
November 28th, 2008 at 10:46 am
Don’t forget federal financial aid. A school that lowers its tuition gets less financial aid: they maximize the sum of dollars from Uncle Sam and students/their families.
November 28th, 2008 at 10:48 am
I thought Carey was pretty off-base when he described universities with high status as a luxury. The reasoning (although possibly not true) is that a degree from a competitive university shows potential employers or whomever a student’s ability to work hard. This adds to earning power over a degree from a less competitive university. That is certainly an issue of status, but I am not sure it makes sense to think of it as a luxury.
Carey’s objections about the educational value being the same show an unwillingness (at least in this article) to look beyond the issue of cost is only part of a larger issue about what exactly is the value that undergraduate education adds to its students. That being said, high cost is the clearest way higher education negatively affects its patrons and society.
November 28th, 2008 at 10:50 am
I agree with Kafka, and I’m not sure what I would do if I was the father of teenagers. Each year tuition goes up, the value of the college degree in the job market decreases (too much supply, lots of underemployed overqualified college grads). However, there don’t seem to be many other options. Its not like you can take the tuition money saved and invest it in the stock market and get a higher return.
November 28th, 2008 at 10:53 am
To continue from my orevious comment, just as a degree from a competitive university is alleged to help suggest intelligence and diligence over a degree from a less competitive unversity, a college degree DEFINITELY suggests intelligence and diligence over the absence of a college degree. I believe this relationship is more clearly backed by the available evidence in the United States than are differences between colleges.
November 28th, 2008 at 10:53 am
Great. Now we can cut out the faculty entirely, and double the pay of administrators.
November 28th, 2008 at 11:01 am
To continue from my previous comments, the economic advantages from different degrees (which I should emphasize are perceptions) can all change and one thing that could be a catalyst for this change is, as Carey implies, people give up on colleges in large numbers because the tuitions are too high. I am not good at blog-commenting.
November 28th, 2008 at 11:26 am
Matt, you really thought that the increasing costs of universities had something to do with faculty pay? That’s completely ridiculous.
November 28th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Rather than Baumol’s disease, I think we need to look at theories of bureaucratic empire-building / rent-seeking. While we can debate the extent to which professors are overpaid prima donnas (in some fields, profs. aren’t paid very well at all), they are a shinking piece of the pie – inside higher ed reported that ‘administrators’ outnumber faculty. Much of what universities are doing seems more like what Robert Frank (the economist) would call a “positional arms race.”
November 28th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Public policy should be focused on improving the prospects of people who don’t go to college. People are so outraged about the uneducated GM workers making $29 an hour + benefits. Well if there were more workers like that, the University of Phoenix would be out of business in no time, and that would be a good thing.
November 28th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Two points:
1) It’s puzzling that lower tier universities/colleges are not more innovative –because there are HUGE opportunities for innovation.
2) Probably 60 percent of the college courses could be FAR Better taught at a computer via educational software. By tailoring the pace of instruction to the background of the student and by presenting it in a FAR better format than some TA droning on at a blackboard.
3) PLUS the university curriculum (including the Ivy League) is utter shit — much of what it teachs is of little value and there is a great deal of valuable info that it DOES not teach.
4) What really stifles innovation is branding — parents and students fear that the student’s life will be heavily damaged if the student doesn’t graduate from HPY. Even though those institutions number a fair number of failures among their alumni.
5) The reason why the Ivy League survives is that it IS NOT disfunctional — when viewed from the viewpoint of those who sustain it.
Their goal is to undermine and enslave the restless energy of 50 million young people who have the intelligence and vigor to destroy existing companies and wealth stores.
So the elites set up a rat race that dooms anyone who steps onto the treadmill. Few 22 year olds can startup a company after exhausting themselves on 4 years of gaining worthless knowledge and accumulating $80,000 in educational loans.
They have to eat –so they join the corporate rat race. Which gives out trival rewards for major accomplishments. But around 28 years or so, the young person marries, has a kid and no longer has the freedom to do anything but do a steady,dreary slog to a few years of retirement and a lavish Social Security check with the best health care Medicare can provide.
November 28th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
I’m sorry, but that article was just really lame. He finds some big room in a mall at VTech where they teach math classes by computer multiple choice exam and this is considered an educational revolution? If there are certain standard introductory subjects that can be effectively taught via a combination of text, video clips, and multiple choice exams then sure, this is a way to improve efficiency. For better or worse, most topics cannot be taught this way. If your goal is to cram a bunch of rote facts or basic procedures then this could be fine. I can see teaching food safety or something this way. Maybe that’s all math is for VTech engineers.
November 28th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
I’ve worked as an academic for twenty years. I have to point out a few issues with this argument and with the linked Wash Monthly article.
First, my salary as a physics professor with 20 years experience is 2/3 of my wife’s salary as a K-5 music teacher in public schools with about the same experience. Faculty salary increases at most colleges match inflation in a good year and get skipped whenever times are tight.
Second, the linked article implies that you can so too increase productivity. Just park thousands of students in front of computers with TA’s available and voila! Pass rates increase.
There’s so much wrong with this I hardly know where to start. First of all, I don’t doubt that pass rates increase, especially at major research institutions, for a couple of reasons.
One is that effective instruction has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the reward structure at research institutions and so is not generally on the faculty’s radar. They do little more in a lecture than just throw the book up on the board, and students could generally do just as well if you simply gave them the book and told them to come back for the exams.
Second, and following from the first point, assignments are generally never graded or even looked at. And, even with the best of intentions, due to the press of other issues students will not generally do things that are not graded. So a large part of what the computers do is simply enforced problem solving.
That is, indeed, valuable but it requires problems that can be put in a machine-assessable format. This covers a very small space of the available problem types. Ask a machine to score an explanation written by someone with imperfect understanding of concepts or even terminology. Ask a machine to determine intermediate states of knowledge from verbal explanations and craft a line of inquiry that leads toward conceptual change. Machines can barely parse well written English sentences, let alone extract meaning from run-on and partially contradictory text written by students who are wrestling with complex ideas. Machines don’t do complex.
You might argue that intro classes don’t involve complex ideas. I, after all, largely teach intro physics, not general relativity or quantum field theory. But complexity is not determined by the state of the art in a field, but rather by the steepness of the slope encountered by the learner. Newtonian physics deals with human sized objects moving at human typical speeds, situation for which evolution has fitted us with ways of reasoning by the seat of our pants in a complicated world with lots of friction. There is evidence that some of these reasoning patterns are actually hard wired in the brain. And all of them are non-Newtonian to one degree or another. So you have ways of thinking that are mostly at an unconscious level at this point in your life and seriously interfere with your learning of Newtonian physics (see diSessa’s 1993 article on phenomenological primitives). That makes the material complicated, even though it is 300 years old. There’s a reason why Aristotle did not invent Newton’s laws.
Most research faculty don’t understand any of this any better than you do. That limits their ability to achieve conceptual change. That is even more true for TA’s since at least a working faculty member has prior experiences to draw on, even if he is plumb ignorant of how people learn.
Finally, pass rates are irrelevant. I know how to enhance my pass rates too. Ask only problems that have been seen before and grade on a curve. Have students memorize the formulas of physics and learn to apply them. The problem is that I have hard data showing that this style of instruction, prevalent in major universities, causes no change whatsoever in student’s reasoning patterns (see Hake’s survey of 6000 students comparing different styles of instruction). But they’ll pass. Passing is not the same as learning.
In my classes, I use lots of technology. But I use it to set up situations in which students predict results that do not occur. When then, through discussion, figure out what led them to the wrong predictions and construct new ways of thinking that lead to correct results. I pose for them ambiguous, incomplete and poorly structured problems that require them to think through the process of constructing models of real phenomena and figuring out how to match the laws of physics to them.
In the end, the central flaw of the Monthly article is the same flaw that you will find in traditional instruction — it views instruction as the delivery of knowledge to learners. The faster it can be delivered, the better. But knowledge cannot be delivered. It has to be constructed. The mind of the learner must change the way it operates, and that, not faculty, is the brake on the learning process. Parking students in front of computers with minimally competent TA’s who will show them what to do rather than helping THEM think through the reasoning process — that doesn’t cause change. It accumulates a large library of special cases that can be drawn upon to match against future experience. Bransford calls this routine expertise — you can do anything that is like what you’ve done before — as distinguished from adaptive expertise. What exactly should we be shooting for here?
The Russian psychologist Vygotsky views knowledge in terms of zones. There is the zone of actual development — things you know how to do already and you’re wasting your time if you continue to study them. Then there is a broad swathe of things you have no hope of doing except in the sense of following a recipe in a cookbook. In between lies the zone of proximal development — things that you could do with a little strategic assistance. According to Vygotsky, all learning occurs here. That assistance is called “scaffolding” and it is a very picturesque image of what is going on. Scaffolding is not showing someone how to work a problem. That is what TA’s with computers are doing. Scaffolding is pointing the student’s mind in the right direction and then letting them work. Instead of saying “work the problem like this,” you’re saying “here’s something to think about; see what you can do with it.”
Learning comes from the failure of existing knowledge. But that can only happen if you put your existing knowledge out on the table, watch it fail, and understand why it failed. And that can only happen in the context of feedback that is aware of the cognitive and developmental processes involved and what sorts of behaviors and verbal patterns exhibit evidence of intermediate states of development. There are computer systems that can do this in limited ways with strictly circumscribed problem spaces (e.g. Anderson’s intelligent tutors). And TA’s, by their very nature, have exactly zero knowledge of any of these issues.
So okay, students pass. They can calculate projectile trajectories with the greatest of ease. But if they still tell me that rolling objects slow down because the force of their motion dies away, if they still tell me that a ball thrown vertically reaches it’s highest point when the force of its motion balances the force of gravity (and yes, these are real examples from students who were formula whizzes), have they really learned anything?
The constraint on learning productivity is in the learning process. Students’ minds must change the way they operate. There are ways to make this more likely to happen, but there is no accelerator you can step on to speed the process up. All the technology in the world does not change the nature of the problem because it does not change the nature of the human brain.
November 28th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
And also: one of the least important things a college can offer is quality education. That and three bucks gets you a Starbucks. My institution, Spelman college, has sent more African American students on to Ph.D.’s in the sciences than Harvard, MIT and Stanford combined. A good education is not the reason to go to Harvard. You go there for the network, and in the end that will carry you much further in life than a quality education ever will.
November 28th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Fair disclosure – I am a adjunct trying to land a real job in academia
There are several problems with this evaluation – the first, is the constantly forgotten fact that productivity in academia isn’t only about educating undergraduate, it is about producing new knowledge – publish or perish: by that measure productivity is very high, and new technology – computers, the internet, google, has been widely embraced and has contributed to an enormously productive academic world. Yes much drekh gets published, but so does lots of good stuff.
Secondly, given the much of academic is manned by graduate students and adjuncts who (as well I know) are paid shit, teaching and publication are enormously cost efficient measure by the rewards paid to those who are actually doing the teaching and writing; moreover, event for those who gain a tenured position, academia is dramatically underpaid at least in the humanities and arts – apparently America wants these subjects taught while being unwilling to pay the teachers reasonably.
Finally, higher education should be a filtration system – to put this another way not every one should be intellectually capable of completing a bachelors or higher degree for these degrees to be meaningful; while at the same time America has convinced itself that higher education is the only path to both a better job, and in some mysterious fashion, more equitable income distribution in our society. The result is that many public universities and community colleges are attempting to educate students who shouldn’t be there, or technical subjects that they really shouldn’t be teaching at all.
The result is predictable – a knowledge production system that is enormously efficient – and is largely subsidized by the people concerned – not the public purse: a teaching system that is enormously efficient when measured by the rewards given to those who teach, and a system that is overall immensely inefficient because it is trying to perform too many disparate functions – and commentators and blogger constantly offering simple solutions for complex problems that are almost indistinguishable from uninformed gripping absent the Web 2.0 overlay.
November 28th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
see Paul Camp.
I, too, teach at a University. He has made many of the points I would make, but better.
I especially like the part about Vygotsky. I hadn’t heard of him, but had intuited his ideas. We’re trying to help students create and develop mental frameworks.
One point this thread has talked around. Vocational and non-vocational education. Its possible that vocational education could be taught in front of computer terminals (I doubt it — I wouldn’t want my physician trained that way) but broader educational goals can’t be accomplished that way.
Finally, I really liked Paul Camp’s comments about formulaic learning in physics. I’ve watched my daughter go thru high school chemistry and physics courses. At exam time she and her classmates were wizzes at calculating trajectories or balancing chemical equations, but concepts were fuzzy and short-lived.
November 28th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
1) I had not read the Virginia Tech article before I made the comment above about computerized instruction being possible for much of the college curriculum. I was basing my comments on an electrical engineering course I took in 1975 –in which the professor used computerized instruction and on my son’s experience with Stanford’s Educational Program for Gifted Youth.
2) There are four or five universities around the USA which focus on development of highly gifted K12 students. Those with very high scores on IQ tests and other standard tests given at certain stages in K12. Stanford in the West, Duke in the South, John Hopkins in the MidAtlantic, Northwest in the Midwest. They focus on identifying and developing young people who show genius capabilities, especially in math and science. For their enriched program, they all use Stanford’s EPGY computerized instruction programs. My son was in the program for a while and was shortly working at 2 grades above his schools K12 curriculum –and his school is one of the best K12s in Pennsylvania. He later was admitted to Phillips Exeter Prep –
November 28th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
My disagreement with Paul Camp –and many academicians — is that they posit a college freshman experience which does not exist. For two millenia , Academia has been dining out on Plato’s old idea re a philosopher somehow mysteriously emitting a spark which starts a flame in the mind of his student.
But people who have gone to college know that is utter bullshit –at least for the undergraduates. Yes, one occasionally has a professor that has significant influence upon one –but such are definitely the exception.
It is also curious that academicians have such contempt for the acquisition of Knowledge –versus the learning of how to Reason. Our discovery, storage and transmittal of knowledge is what truly distinguishes mankind from animals –our accumulated knowledge is the real treasure of our civilization.
Take an urban citizen at random, stick him naked in the Alaskan wilderness and see how quickly he dies. The Harvard philosopher trained in Socratic reasoning would probably die the soonest. But put someone trained in our accumulated knowledge of survival techniques and see how he lasts.
I would rather have a doctor trained at a computer terminal in our accumulated medical knowledge than a philosopher who thinks he can recreate 2 millenia of experience by correct reasoning.
Philosophical training is no remedy for deep ignorance of the important facts — as Matthew illustrates here daily when he tries to discuss subjects (war, military, economy, business ) of which he is largely ignorant. Matthew is very bright –but I would not want him leading me in battle or operating upon me in a surgery or building a house for me.
November 28th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
To reform education, we need to strip academia of its power to certify.
The US government should define the courses required for degrees and should conducts exams similar to GREs by which students are awarded credit for degrees in the curriculum.
The student should be free to acquire the knowledge to pass the exam in a course by any method he chooses — by self-study, by computerized instruction, or by traditional university classes.
For his job applications, he should merely have to point to the government certificate that he has a BS in subject X — with no requirement that he identify how he obtained the BS.
That will force universities to compete on delivering instruction in the most efficient and lowest cost way possible –instead of the unrestrained, unjustified, hideously costly featherbedding by which they currently operate.
November 28th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Re: Don Williams’ mumbo jumbo.
Where to begin.
1. physician training. I teach at a med school. We use a lot of computerized instruction, but there is no replacement for mentor-based instruction, group problem solving, excellent lectures (although they could, in principal, be taped) labs, observed student interaction with patients, and on and on. The didactic stuff is the easy part. In fact, expert systems are better at some forms of differential diagnosis, etc, than brilliant physicians. The tricky stuff is personal interaction. How does a physician interact with/observe a patient and extract important information and, at the same time, deliver appropriate advice and and treatment. Also important is that the physician consider himself/herself a perpetual intellectual and student.
2. Funny he should mention “exeter”. Isn’t that where small group interactions and small teacher-faculty ratios are emphasized? Prep schools, which cost in the neighborhood of $40k/year teach in a manner similar to excellent liberal arts colleges and not in the manner of typical high schools or colleges.
3. I simply don’t get the Alaska stuff. Yes, our educational system is not aimed at survivalist problems. So? I have an interesting personal experience along those lines. Ivy league education doesn’t help much in the jungle (where my experience took place). But I just don’t get the point.
4. I dont have patience for the rest.
What I know is that our k-12 system is broken, especially in the middle school and high school years. Our collegiate system is very expensive, but works a lot better. The collegiate system is not great for vocational training, but is producing the world-leading innovators, scientists and intellects that we need Strangely, the two systems barely interact.
November 28th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
“But rather than those improvements being passed along to students in the form of lower tuition, they’ve just made undergraduate education more profitable at the institutions in question.”
you know, matt, the article really doesn’t say that. not even close. much less does it provide any evidence for that claim.
it never says that schools are making larger profits, nor than anyone in those schools is making larger profits. it does suggest that sometimes in state systems, the state general revenue fund does rake off some profit. but that too is a far different thing from saying that the university or anyone in it profits.
i’m pretty surprised at that inaccuracy on your part.
November 28th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
What makes colleges so expensive? Bricks and mortar. The words and the experience of faculty members are cheap.
November 28th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
I would rather have a doctor trained at a computer terminal in our accumulated medical knowledge than a philosopher who thinks he can recreate 2 millenia of experience by correct reasoning.
Another great moment in the annals of false dichotomies.
Read what Paul Camp said about knowledge again in the long post. Read it slowly. I’m not optimistic that you’ll get it, precisely because it is the kind of “knowledge” that is not easily transmitted via a computer screen, but we can always hope.
A lot of your stupid ranting in the past came into focus for me in this thread.
November 28th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Don Williams (at 18) writes:
2) Probably 60 percent of the college courses could be FAR Better taught at a computer via educational software. By tailoring the pace of instruction to the background of the student and by presenting it in a FAR better format than some TA droning on at a blackboard.
Even if such courses could be better taught (and I see little reason to believe so), more students do not finish such courses than do finish them. Many of my colleagues who have taught online are ceasing to do so; while I make no claim as to this being a wide spread phenomenon, I have also heard folks who teach at other institutions say much the same thing.
The real problems with American tirtiary and post-gradauate education have lots more to do with a bloated administration, very often made up by people who haven’t taught recently or who have never taught. These folks like gimmicks (online ed being one such, the endless use of bad powerpoint being another). They are also often enough in cahoots with the standards folks (everyone likes the idea of good education, but see Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics on the ill-advisedness of overly precise measures being counter to what is good for life).
At least at my instution, many of us have learned that doing what the administration wants us to do (they call it improving retention, once that’s fixed they’ll call it improving success or pass rates) leads to a whole series of potentially seductive invitations to become corrupt (lower standards, give an extra point here or there, that sort of thing). Otherwise, what Paul Camp (#20) says.
As for Don Williams saying I and those like me posit an undergraduate experience that doesn’t exist, come into my parlor, oops classroom…..Not much we don’t get to see.
November 28th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
I am wondering about Paul Camp’s problems with his physics students’ answers. Those seem like mistakes that could be avoided by having a clear understanding of the difference between the physical concepts of force and energy (yes, there’s other stuff going on, but I’m keeping it simple). Now it probably helps when you have a person, as opposed to a computer, teaching these things, but that seems to be about a problem in their knowledge, not some huge thing about education being done contrary to certain kinds of psychological speculation.
Now I am willing to acknowledge that an undergraduate education (based on the ideas about learning championed by Paul Camp but with its own rich history of course) is useful in creating leading innovators and intellects and happy, humane citizens and not just as a signal of being able to work hard and work smart, but does it really need to be (in theory) four years long? That is (this is where the blog post started) a lot of money and time for something that, at least in the cases of skilled professionals and great scientists and scholars (who seem to use “undergraduate” as a perjorative with interesting frequency), largely a credential to get more credentials. Of course, this is all far removed from the issue of what colleges are doing with the savings in labor costs from using new technologies, so whatever.
November 28th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
That is to day in my most recent post, a problem with the delivery of knowledge as opposed to the construction of knowledge, but I understand that the construction of knowledge involves elements of delivering of knowledge, the distinction being that it tries to do more with it.
November 28th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Re cube’s comment ” I simply don’t get the Alaska stuff. Yes, our educational system is not aimed at survivalist problems. So? I have an interesting personal experience along those lines. Ivy league education doesn’t help much in the jungle (where my experience took place). But I just don’t get the point. ”
————–
The point being that we have pleasant lives because of a complex civilization based upon the knowledge we have accumulated over 3000 years. Without that knowledge we are nothing — not even the equal of primitive savages who at least understand their environment well enough to survive.
Academicians don’t understand or appreciate the underpinning of our lives — the semi-hidden infrastructure which supports us — and so have contempt for the training of the people who support us.
Yes, we need innovation and creative thinking –but we also need to preserve and sustain what we already have.
November 28th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Don Williams (at 34) writes:
Academicians don’t understand or appreciate the underpinning of our lives — the semi-hidden infrastructure which supports us — and so have contempt for the training of the people who support us.
Not much one can say about a thought so ill-informed as this one really is there. Whole realms of academic life just don’t exist in Mr Williams experience or philosophy. Come into my classroom, its really not a parlor, and almost everything that goes on has to do with the infrastructure (pretty damned obvious infrastructure actually) that entangles us with each other and the world. I’m an anthropologist. Kudos to Ian Hodder of Stanford for the idea of entanglement.
November 28th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
I can tell you why college tuition has been going up. College’s are doing a whole lot more.
The big thing they added when I was in school back in the late 1980s was a fitness center with indoor volleyball courts, basketball, running track, weight machines, etc.
The cafeteria which had been simple had been upgraded and now had pizza huts and such in it. The chairs and tables that had been built in the 1950s by the engineering class as part of an experiment in mass production had all been replaced with brand new stuff.
The buildings all now had air conditioning. There were computer labs everywhere, copy machines everywhere…
Lot’s of new construction, lot’s of new equipment. Student dorms had been torn down and apartment buildings constructed.
The list just goes on and on.
Way different from the way I lived, which was way different from how the school was when my father was there in the 1960s.
November 28th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Please, no more of this. As a student I was subjected to computerized learning. I’ve had computerized learning shoved at me in the business world.
I’m a computer programmer and I HATE COMPUTERIZED LEARNING! I rather have a text book, seriously. It’s so much easier to learn, because I can take that book with me anywhere.
And people pushing portable computers with books on them. Guess what? You’re part of the reason things cost more too.
November 28th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
Re djeri’s comment “Come into my classroom, its really not a parlor, and almost everything that goes on has to do with the infrastructure (pretty damned obvious infrastructure actually) that entangles us with each other and the world.”
————-
Oh, horseshit.
Modern day academia gets $Trillions of dollars from the US taxpayer — and it’s salient characteristic is refusing to contribute anything significant in return lest it put its ricebowls at risk. There are few people more craven than our modern day scholars.
Wall Street set up a Derivatives Casino that has brought the US Economy to the point of collapse. Anyone recall any loud warning from the many Departments of Economics around the country?
President Bush lied through his teeth re why the Sept 11 attack occurred — and remade US society based upon his Big Lie. Anyone recall anyone in our many Departments of International Studies –other than Juan Cole — warning the country that Bush was a bald-faced liar?
After a number of years and thousands of deaths in Iraq, Mearsheimer and Walt finally pointed out the obvious — the malign influence of the Israel Lobby. But why did they –highly renowned tenured professors at Harvard and University of Chicago — have to go to BRITAIN in order to publish straightforward facts? And why did so many of their peers remain resolutely silent re the whole issue?
One of the more hilarious incidents in academia recently was the Michael Bellesiles Arming American scandal. In which Bellesiles received History’s most prestigious award — the Bancroft Prize — only to have that award rescinded after people OUTSIDE the History profession showed how Arming American was a crock of bull.
Who has the greatest influence in our national debates — Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly — or Professors in the Top Twenty Departments of Political Science?
Even the “teach students how to think” claim is unfounded. Look at the industry in which much recent innovation has occurred — the computer industry — and you see major corporations/product lines created by COLLEGE DROPOUTS –not by professors of Computer Science.
Because if a young person wants to create something new, the worst thing he could do is take the advice of college professors — waste four years learning obsolete technology and acquiring knowledge of peripheral relevance at best.
November 28th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
PhD in computer science here…
I actually thought that the article was interesting up until
Learn math via multiple choice tests? Hahahaha. Bwahahahah! MUAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!
Seriously.
Here’s another wopper!
Was this really the effect of the math emporium? Perhaps there is another explanation… grade inflation, anyone? Could it be that the multiple-choice emporium tests are not as rigorous as those created by the professor? Or that the professors are simply harder graders?
Chicago Basketball is floppin’ like its hot here.
November 29th, 2008 at 2:51 am
I’ve taken a couple hybrid online/classroom courses. Genetics featured an online lecture (powerpoint slides with audio) coupled with an in-person lab that ended with some practice problems and Q&A, and Intro to Computer Programming with extensive handouts to go with the textbook and then an on-campus lab with the prof. Both courses were with organized profs who probably would have been very good in the traditional format, but these were really awesome experiences.
November 29th, 2008 at 8:24 am
Mr Williams,
You know not what you speak of, unless by this you mean we should just junk the entire education system. But then, your entire comment (at 38) is a non sequitor.
November 29th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Re djeri’s comment “But then, your entire comment (at 38) is a non sequitor.”
————
How so? — I point out that our deeply disfunctional national discourse over the past 8 years has been filled with ignorance, contempt for the facts, and deceit. Everything contrary to the rational values of the Enlightenment and ,allegedly, the values of academia.
My point being that Academia receives $Trillions from the US taxpayer — but is absent without leave from most of the debates that decide our existence.
Academia allows Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly to seize the national podium — WITHOUT THE SLIGHTEST CRITICISM. Academia claims to teach –but teachs the general population nothing. Not even the most corrupt medieval bishops showed such strong inclination to hide in luxurious cloisters.
Modern academia is descended from those corrupt priesthoods. And, as Edward Gibbon pointed out, that 2000 year old tradition is one of knowing on which side one’s bread is buttered — of scholarship based upon the principle of “He whose bread I eat ,his song I sing.” Of ALWAYS siding with power and wealth –for a few crumbs — and never with the common people.
That’s because the “National interest” does not hand out endowments, grants, consulting contracts, and corporate sinecures.
November 29th, 2008 at 10:19 am
1) The medical schools earn their keep. The engineering schools also. But the schools of business and the liberal arts are a plague on society — their “creativity” being focused on plausible sophistry in the service of wealthy agendas, their creation of “new knowledge” being the creation of new cons to run on the public.
Economist Larry Summer and Alan Greenspan waging a fierce jihad against Brookley Born’s attempt to regulate Derivatives in 1998, for example. Although even Harvard didn’t have a strong enough stomach to keep Summers long term — merely enough moral flexibility to make him head of Harvard for a few years.
November 29th, 2008 at 10:28 am
1) In addition, much of the new knowledge which is of value to our society is created outside Academia — NASA contractors exploited space and put up comms and weather satellites.
Defense contractors create the weapons systems which protect this country.
College dropouts Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steven Jobs, Michael Dell, and Larry Ellison created the computer industry. Although universities do eventually try to capture the new inventions so that their curriculum is not more than 10 or so years out of date.
2) Much of the knowledge which sustains our society is preserved and transmitted outside the universities. If avian flu –or derivative defaults — turn pandemic, ask your English professor if he knows how to refine iron ore and make steel. Or how to make crops bear in low-input gardens without Home Depot fertilizer and tractors. Or how the local water delivery system works. Or how one controls the power grid.
November 29th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
College dropouts Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steven Jobs, Michael Dell, and Larry Ellison created the computer industry. Although universities do eventually try to capture the new inventions so that their curriculum is not more than 10 or so years out of date.
Those people deserve credit for being very successful in marketing and selling computer products, but none of them are inventors. Gates and Allen founded Microsoft to produce an interpreter for a language created at Dartmouth, BASIC, and later bought 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products and renamed it MS-DOS. Jobs is a fantastic marketer who popularized the mouse from Stanford Research Institute and windowing system from Xerox PARC, but he’s not an inventor. Dell figured out good business practices for maintaining minimal inventory and building computers based on the IBM’s personal computer cheaply, but he didn’t invent anything in computer science and even the PC didn’t bring anything new that hadn’t been seen in university research labs long before. Larry Ellison founded Oracle to copy IBM’s System R database, which was based on researcher Edgar Codd’s work.
Computer science at universities (and at a select handful of corporate research labs) is decades ahead of what industry uses. The most popular programming languages like Java are made up of features from the 1970s. C# 3.0 was notable in that it drew some features from Haskell, a 1980s language. This shouldn’t be surprising. Research has to predate development and deployment.
November 29th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
To follow up on Jon Orly, the technological revolution of the past few decades was built around universities. Its no fluke that all of the technology centers, such as silicon valley, are in close proximity to major universities. The intellectual interchange has been critical.
This is in interesting contrast to the technology of the 19th century. Edison, the Wright brothers and Ford, for example, were not university educated. Edison didn’t think too much of basic science. But, from the early 19th century onward, innovation and invention have been closely tied to university research. The college dropout class, standing on their own, wouldn’t have gotten very far.
And, importantly, ALL advances in basic science are tied to colleges and universities.
Examining the relationship between technological advancement, university education and university research is a fascinating issue. fantasizing that the innovation of the 20th and 21st centuries were independent of universities is a frightening misinterpretation of recent history.
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