What is a college education worth today ?

This post was stimulated by a recent article in the Harvard Crimson. The absence of historical understanding is breathtaking but the willingness to rely on an all-powerful government is no surprise. College education seems to be a matter of indoctrination these days. Somebody even made a movie about it. At the University of Delaware, the effort to indoctrinate students was even an official policy. Those with a suspicious nature have been wondering about what is going on in universities these days. Tuition seems to be climbing at a rate well above inflation. What about knowledge ? Well, the results don’t look good. Note that some of the students tested are from elite, very high tuition universities.

UPDATE: Yale University thinks it knows the solution More diversity ! Let’s hire another 120 diversity experts. What else are African American Studies majors to do ? Or Native American Studies majors ? Or…

Note in the table that Ivy League university seniors score well above (64.1%) state university (47.4%) seniors, but look closely. Ivy League seniors score only 0.1% higher than Ivy League freshmen ! State university seniors score 2.9% higher than state university freshmen. I have been advocating a program to eliminate waste in college education. Harvard and Yale and Princeton are brands. There is intense competition to obtain admission. It is almost considered a sure-fire path to a successful career in investment banking in New York City. These elite universities should award a degree to the student admited once the payment of four years tuition is received. There should be no need to actually waste four years and hundreds of hours of professors’ time on an education that adds only 0.1% to a high school senior’s knowledge of the world. I’m sure most of the faculty of those “research universities” would appreciate being allowed to devote themselves to important tasks. They spend so little time on undergraduate education as it is, they would appreciate the end of hypocrisy.

I make an exception for science education, in which serious information is exchanged between student and teacher. High schools have their own set of problems but at least public high schools aren’t charging tuition and thereby implying that they are worth something. A few years ago, the culture of Yale rejected a $20 million donation rather than establish a program in Western Civilization. From the linked speech (Given by a prominent Yale alumnus): “The unwillingness or inability of faculties to require, or even suggest, a basic common undergraduate curriculum in the humanities and the arts for all students is a central fact of University life today. It is a well-nigh universal phenomenon, certainly not limited to Yale. The causes are varied. One notable factor-which I have found singularly unpersuasive-has been the suggestion, by persons purporting to be concerned with the interests of minority groups, that a survey course or general education in the Western tradition represents a threat or an insensitivity to minorities. Of course, Yale had its defenders. The latter article ends; “As the curtain goes down, there are bodies lying all over the stage; one can’t help but think that everyone involved is worse off. Yet if I were to teach this drama, it would be as a comedy, not a tragedy; and surely the restorative moment, even in this act, is Yale’s refusal to cede control of faculty appointments to outside pressures.” Jonathan Lear is [of course] a professor of philosophy at Yale.

The Duke rape case is instructive in the matter of whether “political correctness” influences humanities faculty today in universities. Take a look at the famous “Group of 88” who accused the lacrosse team members of rape. What do you see ? I see three math and scence professors. The rest are humanities or African American Studies faculty members. I rest my case.

UPDATE #2 I have found an explanation for the Duke fiasco that sounds reasonable. Professor Borjas quotes Stuart Taylor and K.C. Johnson’s book.

“Duke sought to join the Ivies, Stanford, and MIT among the nation’s leading institutions. It chose to do so, however, on the cheap: bypassing the sciences (where the combination of salary and lab costs for a new hire ran around $400,000), the school focused on bringing in big-name humanities professors, for whom the only startup cost was salary. Politically correct leftist professors were in vogue nationwide, and the leftward slant of Duke’s humanities and social sciences faculty accelerated…” That sounds about right to me.

I can not see a justification for a humanities degree from an expensive elite university. Imagine what the parents of Duke humanities students are getting for their tuition. Lest one think that Duke might be ashamed of the radical agenda of its leftist humanities faculty, Duke philosophy chair Robert Brandon said “We try to hire the best, smartest people available,” Brandon said of his philosophy hires. “If, as John Stuart Mill said, stupid people are generally conservative, then there are lots of conservatives we will never hire.” If you are willing to pay a high price for something, what do you get ? More of the same.

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7 Responses to “What is a college education worth today ?”

  1. cassandra says:

    Poor ol’ Western Civ, so “useless” to these bien pensants. Yet the criteria by which they conign it to the ash heap of history are themselves the residue of…Western Civ.

  2. Eric Blair says:

    Great post, Dr. K. I try to use the “principle of reciprocity” in these kinds of situations. What would people say if, as happened until the 40s and 50s, universities were pretty much conservative bastions? There would be no question that academia was being intellectually dishonest. There was a “Jewish quota” in those days. Perhaps there is a conservative one today, de facto.

    Heck, Berkeley has a straight up Asian quota right now! And no one says a word.

    I don’t mind all the non-Western stuff. It is just that the Western Civ business needs to be taught, as well—if for no other reason than to give perspective and knowledge while criticizing Western Civ. Why eliminate it? The truth is the professors would rather teach their passions—speciality rather than service courses. It’s always instructive to look at what courses a given professor teaches.

    But you hit on the real points: money and privilege. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to have tenure and a bigger paycheck. But the system is sure coming up with some doozies. Brandon’s quote above, is sheer projection.

    And I enjoy the John Stuart Mill quote, which Brandon mis-states. What Mill wrote was that while not all conservatives were stupid, most stupid people are conservative. Of course, I wonder what Mill would say meeting and greeting the intelligentsia of America today? But on that topic, John Stuart Mill had another quote that I notice that Brandon wasn’t interested in sharing, correctly or otherwise:

    “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”

    I think of that as I peruse the bumper stickers on my drive to work.

  3. Eric Blair says:

    Completely correct, Cassandra. I don’t see a lot of academic self-criticism from Islamic scholars. Ditto Chinese scholars on the Cultural Revolution’s excesses. Western Civilization’s self loathing seems to be pretty unique to the West.

    Of course, if the academics really believed it, they would give up their flush toilets and iPods. Fat chance of that.

  4. doombuggy says:

    ))There should be no need to actually waste four years and hundreds of hours of professors’ time on an education that adds only 0.1% to a high school senior’s knowledge of the world.((

    Then note that at eight universities, including Yale, Cornell, Princeton, and Duke, the freshman outscored the seniors…this reminds me that alcohol kills brain cells. These kids have apparently been vandalized at fabulous expense.

  5. Brett King says:

    Watching the news tonight here in the central coast the sports caster said that USC would be playing ILLINOISE in the Rose Bowl. He pronounced ILLINOISE as “ill-a-noise”. Wonder what college he graduated from?

  6. Hi there, i am looking for info on online education but sometimes i am left wondering , is there any true value to online education ? .

  7. There is a role for online education in adult education and in technical training. In other words, with people who want to learn. For those seeking certificates, the temptation to cheat would probably be too great.