Do You Really Get What You Pay For? - Part II

Yesterday we commented on some of the causes and effects of the disaster our public school systems have become. Today we'll extend that thought into the higher education arena. First, some figures to support the argument that public schools are graduating students who are unprepared for college.

Three out of four graduates aren’t fully prepared for college and likely need to take at least one remedial class, according to the latest annual survey from the nonprofit testing organization ACT, which measured half of the nation’s high school seniors in English, math, reading and science proficiency.

Only 25 percent cleared all of ACT’s college preparedness benchmarks, while 75 percent likely will spend part of their freshman year brushing up on high-school-level course work... Students are most likely to need remedial classes in science and math.

Even more damning, "...80 percent of college students taking remedial classes had a high school GPA of 3.0 or better."

Take it from one who has to teach classes full of unprepared students - students who can't write a simple complete sentence, much less a full paragraph; students who have little to no grasp of basic grammar; students who can't solve elementary math problems - it is beyond frustrating. I can handle the frustration. But can we as a society handle the more serious consequences?

And what are some of those consequences?

If I as the professor dumb down the class to accommodate those less prepared, the better prepared students feel like they're just repeating high school. They get bored, distant, and develop bad study habits. Even worse, they are being held back from reaching their full potential.

(Side note: state universities receive government funds based on a complex formula that in large part is based on admission, retention, and graduation rates. If reasonable standards are enforced, less prepared students aren't admitted or later drop out, decreasing the government funds funneled to that particular school.)

Taxpayers, of course, also suffer. They are in essence paying twice for students to learn: once in high school, a second time in remedial college classes.

And of course taking remedial courses means the students themselves take longer, and pay more, to graduate.

Which leads to another problem: mounting student loans, and a so-called 'higher education bubble.'

It’s officially a crisis. Student loan debt has hit the $1 trillion mark, exceeding Americans’ total credit card indebtedness.

The real problem is that we’ve been running a higher education bubble, one that -- like the real-estate bubble -- has been pumped up by cheap government money. Since 1999, student loan debt has increased by 511%, while disposable income has increased by only 73%.

That’s because when the government subsidizes something, producers respond by raising prices to soak up as much of the subsidy as they can. College is no exception. Tuition has been increasing much faster than disposable income, and families -- believing that a college education is a can’t-lose investment, much as they used to think houses were -- have been making up the difference with debt. After all, we’re told, student loan debt is “good debt,” because a college degree guarantees more earnings.

The problem is, “college” isn’t an undifferentiated product. Companies can’t hire enough mechanical engineers, but there’s no bidding war for majors in Fine Arts or Women’s Studies, degrees that cost just as much, but deliver a lot less in terms of employment. In an economically rational market, it would be harder to borrow money to finance fields of study that were unlikely to produce enough income to pay back the loans. But since the federal government subsidizes everything ... there’s no incentive for lenders to care, and even less incentive for colleges and universities to care. They get their money up front, after all -- just like the people who wrote the subprime loans that fueled the housing crisis.

So what's the solution? Well, like most complex problems, there is no simple solution. But there are a few simple steps to take that would put us on the road to a solution. The steps are not exciting or glamorous. Nor are they easy. But nothing worthwhile is.

First, improve how we measure and reward (or punish) the job public schools do in preparing their students. Standardized tests have their place, but they are limited. Other, less objective measures also have a role. The trick is determining how to blend the two in assessing student preparedness. One way might be to increase or decrease funding to K-12 school districts based on the number of remedial courses their students have to take in college.

A second step would be to reemphasize the value of vocational education. It is not feasible, or even desirable, for every student to go to college. There are plenty of available, good-paying entry level jobs in the trades that do not require a college degree. We need to send a strong message to high-school students that there is value and honor in vocational careers.

Third, reduce the cost of a college education. It's absurd that kids are graduating from college with six-figure debts that they have no chance of repaying. Insisting that students meet reasonable standards before they are admitted (I've worked at universities where the only admission requirement was a high school diploma) would be a start. Eliminating unnecessary and 'feel good' programs would also help. (The university I'm currently at has an administrative department for freshman success, and another one for sophomore success. Presumably juniors and seniors can succeed on their own.) Furthermore, tenure reform is long overdue (I could write a book on the disadvantages and abuses of the tenure system).

There's lots more that can be done, and lots of detail work involved in these three steps that goes way beyond the bare bones put forth here, but we need to get started ASAP.

Not acting just means we'll get more of the same. More unprepared students, more unaffordable college education, and more failure on a broad front. Let's stop kicking the can down the road and fix the problem now.

In other words, let's not be like congress...