Splinter article: The Revenge of the Poverty-Stricken College Professors

[ciao_yall]

5) Enforce budget decisions at the state level for the public institutions that explicitly make the trade-offs in how many students can be served by paying real wages to hard-working folks.  Make explicit that the community college can only serve N students with the resources available and refuse to admit more than N students without a plus-up in resources to address larger enrollment.

Newsflash... plenty of bureaucrats out there who don't care if they turn students away. Not their problem. Those is the rules.

You've missed my point: we probably should be turning away students so that the ones who are enrolled are actually getting an education.  As Hibush points out, the system can support good education, broad education, or low cost education with at most two of those three at any one time.

Personally, I'd rather we opt for good education that is free to the small number of people who can benefit instead of pretending that a degree is the same as an education and that either degree or education is really going to help the rapidly approaching future where we don't need all the people we have.

So, higher education and the resulting access to economic and social power should only be for those whose family income was high enough to afford high quality schools in the first place?

[polly_mer]

5) Enforce budget decisions at the state level for the public institutions that explicitly make the trade-offs in how many students can be served by paying real wages to hard-working folks.  Make explicit that the community college can only serve N students with the resources available and refuse to admit more than N students without a plus-up in resources to address larger enrollment.

Newsflash... plenty of bureaucrats out there who don't care if they turn students away. Not their problem. Those is the rules.

You've missed my point: we probably should be turning away students so that the ones who are enrolled are actually getting an education.  As Hibush points out, the system can support good education, broad education, or low cost education with at most two of those three at any one time.

Personally, I'd rather we opt for good education that is free to the small number of people who can benefit instead of pretending that a degree is the same as an education and that either degree or education is really going to help the rapidly approaching future where we don't need all the people we have.

So, higher education and the resulting access to economic and social power should only be for those whose family income was high enough to afford high quality schools in the first place?

No, that's not what I'm saying.  I grew up in a small rural place with parents who never made it into the middle class, went to college on a full scholarship, and am now very comfortable.  However, SPADFY applies very strongly in regard to education.  Many people are not academically minded and thus letting them enroll in college is wasting educational resources that could go to people who would invest the time and effort into their own education and then be solid contributors to society.  Indeed, one thing killing small rural towns in the US is having many of the motivated people who will succeed at something leave because there are no jobs, even for just the bright, motivated high school graduates.  The inner cities have similar problems with a disconnect between what a formal education prepares one to do, what successful people without a formal education are doing to keep the community running, and what the value-added of a college degree is for someone who wants to live in the community and yet have a middle-class lifestyle as well.

I absolutely am saying we're doing it wrong now by being so broad in admissions, but not supporting the people who will benefit the most and then be the most useful to society.  We're missing out on people who would do good things with more social power because they are already, as people without college degrees, leaders in their schools, churches, and communities.  We need those leaders at higher levels (region, state, national, international).  I'd much rather take a chance on the student who has been ill-served by their K-12 education, but continues to show curiosity and willingness to learn while being a solid contributor to the family and community than have more classrooms with under motivated people who push back on the value of any classes that aren't immediately fun.  I'd much rather invest in the middle-age person returning to college to learn more than keep trying to convince 18-22 year olds that classes matter and the students should be prioritizing studying over whatever else is available on campus for entertainment in the off-hours after the hard work of studying is done.

If we were serious about valuing education, then we'd be more serious about filtering for people who will benefit from an education and ensuring they have as much as education as they can hold while also filtering other people into other areas away from formal classes where those students warm-bodies-in-the-classroom are just wasting everyone's time and money.  Many countries around the world apply that filter to limit enrollment in postsecondary education to those who will benefit and that's how many of those places keep the cost to the student free or at least affordable.

Education is a never-ending need for money in a society and we have other needs as well.  One strategy for having enough money for education is restricting the demand side to a truer demand instead whatever it is we've got now where students don't want to learn, teachers aren't supported enough to teach, and everyone knows the system is not providing education while claims abound about how important education is in the modern world. 

[spork]

Per the above, here's a thought experiment for people in the USA: what portion of your employer's current enrollment would vanish if post-secondary intercollegiate athletic programs simply did not exist? For my employer, which runs NCAA Division III teams, the figure is probably at least 10-15 percent, and is overwhelmingly male in composition. These are people willing to go into debt to engage in recreational activities; an actual college education is very much a secondary concern.

[polly_mer]

Per the above, here's a thought experiment for people in the USA: what portion of your employer's current enrollment would vanish if post-secondary intercollegiate athletic programs simply did not exist? For my employer, which runs NCAA Division III teams, the figure is probably at least 10-15 percent, and is overwhelmingly male in composition. These are people willing to go into debt to engage in recreational activities; an actual college education is very much a secondary concern.

Super Dinky College was open only due to nursing and DIII athletics.  One year at a low in the enrollment, the football team alone was a quarter of the enrollment and that was during a time that the football team had had zero regular-season wins in several years.  However, Super Dinky College hired a new head football coach who made it his goal to recruit players with a lot of heart.

The statistics on who should get credit for admissions ran strongly in favor of the coaches over the official admissions office.  Discussions ensued and no one got a raise for being a fabulous recruiter nor did anyone get fired for being a poor recruiter.  For perspective, the head football coach made about $35k/year, which is more than the admissions counselors by several thousand dollars.

The most interesting part of the story was how hard that head football coach pushed his players to take advantage of the college education for which most of them were paying a substantial fraction of full price of $20k/year.  The tutoring center staff was about half additional-duty assistant coaches who mirrored the composition of the team and so had credibility that one can be an athlete, train to be a coach on the side, and take education seriously in a field that likely will lead to a job in a smaller town or inner city (e.g., teacher, police officer, small business owner, social worker).

[Trogdor]

Nobody for the most part actually makes a living as a novelist.  Or a professional musician. (Our city' symphony orchestra pays less than 30K a year to its principal musicians).  Or as an artist, etc.
But yet this myth persists that there are people who make a living from writing novels.  Because it's a character that appears on TV, in movies, and even in novels.

Which is ironic, since the novels that feature these mythical wealthy novelists are written by novelists, who should know better. Perhaps this is just authors projecting their wishful thinking onto the page?

[marshwiggle]

You've missed my point: we probably should be turning away students so that the ones who are enrolled are actually getting an education.  As Hibush points out, the system can support good education, broad education, or low cost education with at most two of those three at any one time.

Personally, I'd rather we opt for good education that is free to the small number of people who can benefit instead of pretending that a degree is the same as an education and that either degree or education is really going to help the rapidly approaching future where we don't need all the people we have.

So, higher education and the resulting access to economic and social power should only be for those whose family income was high enough to afford high quality schools in the first place?

There's an inherent assumption here about what people ought to value in life that is not helpful. Not everyone wants a white collar job and a big house in the suburbs of a city.

I absolutely am saying we're doing it wrong now by being so broad in admissions, but not supporting the people who will benefit the most and then be the most useful to society.  We're missing out on people who would do good things with more social power because they are already, as people without college degrees, leaders in their schools, churches, and communities. 

This is part of my point. There are many people who are content with their lives, and have the respect of their communities. University is not required for this, not can it guarantee it.

If we were serious about valuing education, then we'd be more serious about filtering for people who will benefit from an education and ensuring they have as much as education as they can hold while also filtering other people into other areas away from formal classes where those students warm-bodies-in-the-classroom are just wasting everyone's time and money.  Many countries around the world apply that filter to limit enrollment in postsecondary education to those who will benefit and that's how many of those places keep the cost to the student free or at least affordable.

Education is a never-ending need for money in a society and we have other needs as well.  One strategy for having enough money for education is restricting the demand side to a truer demand instead whatever it is we've got now where students don't want to learn, teachers aren't supported enough to teach, and everyone knows the system is not providing education while claims abound about how important education is in the modern world.

I totally agree with Polly on this.

[histchick]

The state legislature, however, keeps resisting calls to allow colleges to teach not-ready-for-college students, and insisting that high schools are doing their jobs in preparing the students, so, there we are. Sigh.

That's the other part of the equation: why are there so many high school graduates who aren't ready for college and yet aren't already solidly on some other life track?

<hitches up pants and steps on the soapbox>
When I was a kid in the small rural town, few in high school were enrolled in the college prep classes; those who were planning for college were thinking teacher, nurse, a fair number of doctors/dentists/vets, and the occasional engineer.  Instead, most people in high school were in general education preparing for life after high school as people who would likely either enlist in the military or do some on-the-job training as a literate person.  Some students were already working in apprenticeships because they were not academically minded.  Middle-school included mandatory shop classes for everyone with the idea that people should try working with their hands along side the academics to make better choices since so few people would end up in college.


I have to wonder why we keep insisting that everyone be academically minded once basic literacy and numeracy through algebra has been achieved.  We have other needs in society and enough people who like to do many of those needs that we should be doing better at helping people pick something they like to do that needs doing.

<steps off soapbox>

My mother and I were just talking about this over the weekend, and we wonder the same.  After high school, she trained as a cosmetologist and supports the idea of more students training for vocations rather than being forced into a bachelor's program.  I completely agree, and also wish that more employers wouldn't require a college degree for entry-level positions that don't actually require one.   

[pigou]

It strikes me that this debate, as well as others about wages, is a lot about what people "feel" they should be paid. But most people have no idea what a fair wage for their skills is -- probably vastly underestimating how many others are qualified to do their work. (And, conversely, vastly overestimating how many people have the skills for, say, senior executive positions that pay millions.)

When a college puts up a teaching adjunct position that pays $3,000 for a class, they usually end up with more than one qualified applicant. The one thing you can take from that is that the college isn't paying "too little." If anything, it's paying too much. The corner store with a "HELP WANTED, $10/hr" sign that's up for months? That place isn't paying enough.

[bioteacher]

There is a reason Biodad and I are thrilled beyond words that Bioson is attending a techincal school. He's in an 18 month program in automotive technology. He could have gotten a job out of high school with his 2 years vo-tech, but for reasons I'll not go into here, this was a good move for him. He took the "free upgrade" option to get an associates degree at the same time by taking a few extra courses. He has taken out some loans, yes. but in the end, he's going to be highly employable and well paid in a job that cannot be sent overseas. If he contuse to live frugally for the next few years, he can pay off his loans quickly... far faster than your typical 4 year college student ever will. And if he gets into the BMW program they have on-site, which I think he has a fair chance of doing, he'll even be guaranteed a job at a BMW dealership when he's done with that extra 16 week class.

If I were younger and had the physical strength for it, I'd be signing up for trade school myself.

[Trogdor]

It is worth pointing out, I think, that if we actually started diverting a significant portion of under-prepared highschool graduates away from college, and towards vocational programs, many colleges would close, and many of us would lose our jobs. College enrollments are already in steep decline.

Whether or not that's a valid reason not to do so is open to debate, but the consequences seem pretty obvious. Colleges would shrink, and there would be fewer of them.

[polly_mer]

It is worth pointing out, I think, that if we actually started diverting a significant portion of under-prepared highschool graduates away from college, and towards vocational programs, many colleges would close, and many of us would lose our jobs. College enrollments are already in steep decline.

Whether or not that's a valid reason not to do so is open to debate, but the consequences seem pretty obvious. Colleges would shrink, and there would be fewer of them.

Perhaps I was not blunt enough: I am explicitly proposing better student filtering to eliminate reliance on poorly paid adjunct armies and to consolidate academic jobs into fewer, but better paid jobs with better prepared, better motivated students in fewer institutions.

One problem I'm trying to prevent is having institutions just abruptly close because they run out of money instead of having the foresight to change to really career/job focused (certificates, mid-career continuing education), merge, or teach out gracefully.  Many jobs that would be lost under purposeful filtering and consolidation will be lost anyway as the demographics shift in ways that aren't likely to shift back in any reasonable time.

Even if we do nothing purposeful, the decline in HS graduation combined with the realities of how even most of those traditional-aged students do not go through most colleges/university in 4 years of full-time study while living on campus according to the 1950's ideas of students means higher ed is already changing.  One reason the "is college worth the money?  NO!" crowd is increasingly vocal is the observed effects of the discrepancy between the hype and the realities that not all colleges are providing good enough education because even graduates managed to box-check their way through several years of courses without acquiring either substantial new content or good problem-solving/critical thinking habits.

[downer]

It is worth pointing out, I think, that if we actually started diverting a significant portion of under-prepared highschool graduates away from college, and towards vocational programs, many colleges would close, and many of us would lose our jobs. College enrollments are already in steep decline.

Whether or not that's a valid reason not to do so is open to debate, but the consequences seem pretty obvious. Colleges would shrink, and there would be fewer of them.

Perhaps I was not blunt enough: I am explicitly proposing better student filtering to eliminate reliance on poorly paid adjunct armies and to consolidate academic jobs into fewer, but better paid jobs with better prepared, better motivated students in fewer institutions.

One problem I'm trying to prevent is having institutions just abruptly close because they run out of money instead of having the foresight to change to really career/job focused (certificates, mid-career continuing education), merge, or teach out gracefully.  Many jobs that would be lost under purposeful filtering and consolidation will be lost anyway as the demographics shift in ways that aren't likely to shift back in any reasonable time.

It would be nice if there was less reliance on poorly paid adjuncts. Is more filtering of student admissions and more career-focused training going to achieve that? Could anything achieve that? It seems unlikely. As unlikely as bloated administrations deciding to have fewer administrators.

Maybe if there were colleges that put the emphasis on full-time faculty, with smaller numbers of adjuncts and administrators, and they were much more successful and attractive to students (or the students' parents), then the free market would work its magic and then there would be significant changes in current trends. I don't see any real sign of that happening.

[polly_mer]

Somewhere, someone is making choices that lead to armies of adjuncts teaching underprepared, under motivated students so we're spending a lot of money for going through the motions without actual education.

I repeat, human beings are making these choices that have entirely foreseeable consequences.  Refusing to go through these motions at each institution would  reduce the ability to pretend.

And, yes, someone who is being really underpaid could decide to fix that situation right now by walking out and getting a different job. 

[downer]

Somewhere, someone is making choices that lead to armies of adjuncts teaching underprepared, under motivated students so we're spending a lot of money for going through the motions without actual education.

I repeat, human beings are making these choices that have entirely foreseeable consequences.  Refusing to go through these motions at each institution would  reduce the ability to pretend.

And, yes, someone who is being really underpaid could decide to fix that situation right now by walking out and getting a different job.

So you wish things were otherwise. You wish people made better decisions. Me too.

But is there any realistic chance of current trends changing in the next 20 years? No. The use of adjuncts will just grow. Tenure will be weakened. There will be more administrators. Many small colleges will close or merge.

I'd be interested in signs that these trends are changing. Are any politicians advocating more job-focused training instead of college? Have any states been pushing programs that would mean young people go into job-training instead of college? Has any department decided that there are enough PhDs in their area and they don't need to contribute more to the problem so they will close down their graduate program?

[polly_mer]

First, I will state that things will not continue on the same path because of the demographics shift and the money issues.  Cuts to funding will continue to be made and places will fire adjuncts as well as even tenured faculty as money gets tighter and fewer students exist.  Consolidation and growth of online will kill even state branch campuses.

Saying the problem is bad, but not acting on it by leaving academia if employed at an institution well below the elite line means one doesn't really believe how bad the situation is.  I really, really believe and would much prefer that choices be purposefully made instead of just letting places run out of money and hope those were the right ones to close (spoiler alert: many will not be the right ones to close in the big picture if the goal is a functional society with a good mix of book-smart and street-smart people spread across the entire US geography).

Are any politicians advocating more job-focused training instead of college?

Have any states been pushing programs that would mean young people go into job-training instead of college?

Yes.  This is a common theme in many places using the term "Career Technical Education" (CTE). https://careertech.org/WIOA has information on the federal program.  You can investigate your state's plan using the tab on the top of that page.  12.5 million people are currently enrolled in official CTE programs (https://careertech.org/CTE).  For perspective, 19.9 million people were enrolled in college in the US in fall 2018 (https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372).

Similarly, apprenticeships are also a big push.  For example, https://www.apprenticeship.gov/become-apprentice has the official national Department of Labor programs.  President Trump signed an executive order to support apprenticeship programs: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/3245/

Mike Rowe is a celebrity promoting this issue https://www.mikeroweworks.org/about/ and https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathycaprino/2018/08/30/dirtiest-man-on-tv-mike-rowe-takes-on-americas-skills-gap-problem/#2aff1bc6da55  President Trump is an example of a politician who supported Mike Rowe's foundation at the most minimal level, when other high-profile politicians did not: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jul/30/mike-rowe-recounts-charity-event-story-to-explain-/ 

Has any department decided that there are enough PhDs in their area and they don't need to contribute more to the problem so they will close down their graduate program?

Shutting down graduate programs is solving the wrong problem when the goal is to have a highly educated population doing great things in the world outside the ivory tower.  A solution is to limit admissions to people who can be fully funded on a livable stipend and treat grad school years as true apprenticeship years recognizing the work as part of the learning.  A related solution is to change the graduate program experience to include internships and related experiences that allow an individual to explore relevant jobs that exist outside the ivory tower as well as gain graduate-level depth in the appropriate knowledge area.

Some of the middle-tier institutions with mostly master's programs actually do a very good job at placing people into middle-class, non-academic jobs because they are supporting the region, not focusing on preparing mostly college-level teachers.  Again, that's a shift in mindset that can be done at individual programs that will help the national picture better than the sometimes blunt calls for non-elite graduate programs to just shutter.  If we view education as personal growth, not just job training, then having local master's programs is a benefit to society even if a given program has literally no new professors in the last N graduating cohorts.

The problem I see isn't too many people with deep knowledge in given areas.  The problem I see is a logical disconnect between the assertions of what a good liberal arts education is supposed to do for one and the actual results of people who earned a degree in a liberal arts field, took crappy jobs or no job, went to graduate school in that same liberal arts field and then insist that the only job they can get is teaching/research in that liberal arts field.

On a different thread, a divide has appeared on whether what one does between college and grad school is important when hiring for an academic position.  I think it's extremely important for the teaching-mostly, mostly general education load positions because what individual choices were made influence how one teaches general education classes and how one views college. 

Someone who worked a career ladder to become store manager of a fast-food joint with a BA in history and then went to grad school will have a very different perspective than someone who kept taking fast-food-entry-level jobs to not quite cover all the bills, took out debt to go to grad school in fields where the academic job market is tight, and then has been adjuncting in combination with the same minimum-wage-entry-level jobs to not quite pay the bills while only applying for academic jobs.

Observing what people do with their education is fascinating because many people do really interesting things all the way along their lives.  Other people, though, seem to get stuck on thinking that the one thing they found is the only thing worth doing and thus sell their time and effort for peanuts instead of continuing to look for other interesting things that would pay better.

Pay isn't everything, but being financially stable enough that one can take a risk and not be completely screwed because of $400 is a good place to be.