[baguasquirrel]

This has been discussed before in many other sources. The cause of the bubble is probably the way tuition and financial aid are used by many colleges. Perhaps the most in-depth analysis was by The Atlantic.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200511/financial-aid-leveragi...

If this hypothesis is correct, then it has interesting implications for how a pop in the education bubble might play out. Since a fair portion of college budgets are propped up by moms and pops taking Mortgage Equity Withdrawals to finance their kid's education (who may or may not actually be deserving to go the college of their choice, but probably not) then we can expect (1) the tuition portion of institutions' income to drop precipitously and (2) that there will be fewer sort-of-rich-kids going to elite schools.

This doesn't seem all bad in my opinion. Maybe academia should return to humbler roots. Do the top schools really need Olympic sized swimming pools, or gyms that would require a $100 a month membership in any big city?

[noonespecial]

I think it will pop much differently. There will be enough PhD waiters and Home Depot employees that people will start to question if college was worth it. The recession also seems to be triggering a wave of self employment. That will reduce the need for the all important degree on the resume.

Attendance will just evaporate as people ask "do I need college?" Not in the smug 90's startup way, but in the cold, calculated "great recession" way.

[netsp]

I'm still hoping for some sort of disruption that will change the game.

The line of thinking is along these lines: The core of what elite colleges (or any colleges) is not really valuable. A university course is mostly a syllabus, a textbook, lectures, tutorials, papers & exams. All are based on knowledge that is freely available. You do not need a Professor who spends most of his time on research that doesn't benefit you teaching you.

It wouldn't even be hard to offer the core of what Universities offer at a much lower cost. What is hard to offer is the vast periphery. The clubs & socialisation. The Gyms. The contact with researchers & other talented and/or rich young people. The social norms & leeway associated with Undergraduate life (this might be more important then we think). The prestige. The prospects created by the contacts, the prestige, the social conditioning & whatever else goes in to making a University education other then education.

A potential catalyst could be the growing Internationalisation of Uni education.

[potatolicious]

I just finished my undergrad degree a month ago, and I think I have some insight into this.

By far the most valuable thing I take away from university is not the classes, but rather the experience. As a student you get a lot of leeway to screw up and learn - even interning at large, private corporations. This has helped me in my life (and my career) more immensely than anything else I've ever learned at school (most of which I doubt I will apply in a job, ever).

Secondly, the networking opportunities that you have at a university is ridiculously useful. Short of going to war together I doubt there are many forces that bind people together as tightly as the college experience. I have made many friends, many of whom are incredibly talented and will no doubt go far in life - it's a network that you can't replicate, say, studying online.

Thirdly is the name - prestigious schools, whether justifiably or not, do for some reason make you more employable in a lot of places. I know many a hacker from "lesser" colleges who can't find a job in this economy, while I had multiple offers before my final semester even started.

[netsp]

I suspect that the strongest thing holding all those aspects together is convention. I think the institution is very entrenched in the US. maybe the place for innovation is outside.

In Israel (where I am from), a lot of people do go to war together. So they're sorted for friends. Actually, most don't physically fight, but they still make friends. There is an additional (recent) institution of backpacking/travelling that tackles some of this friends/experiences/growth/leeway territory. University entrance tends to be 20-25 yr olds. So, the whole dynamic is very different. A lot of no frills courses are offered. Cost effectiveness is a big factor ,though naturally the level of Government intervention messes with this and doesn't allow private colleges to compete with research Unis on equal footing.

Another place change might come from are the places in the world now entering the growing middle income per capita range (not sure what that is exactly. But I think around 2-$10k pa) where people care about education, can afford some of it, but can't afford $100k or even 10k. They also are first generation entrants & don't have too formulated an idea of what schools should be.

Basically, what I am saying is that if you took Universities away and then let something else grow in their place, it probably wouldn't be universities.

[bored]

I don't think we need to take universities away, just the unnecessary competition-induced crap that makes them so expensive. The "college experience" we all hear about can be done on a way smaller budget. And like you mention, universities probably aren't the best at it anyways.

[tjmc]

Depends on what you're studying. Subjects like medicine, dentistry and chemistry need extensive lab facilities and highly skilled, often personal tuition. That's going to cost a lot no matter where it's done.

On a broader level you also need to consider the value of networking opportunities. Is the course content of a Harvard MBA really that much better than elsewhere? Of course not. It's the contacts you make while you're there.

[netsp]

Possibly, but this needn't affect those studying history.

I listen to this economist podcast here & there. Recently, they were talking about how strange it is that they need any kind of qualifications to do the thing that they get paid for. They tell undergrads that the demand curve slopes down & the supply curve slopes the other way. That knowledge is freely available and easily accessible. Yet their students bid up the price of the best academics to tell them this.

A better professor's demand curve slopes the same as a crappier one's. You may be right that this does not apply to dentistry.

[timwiseman]

As others have said, the knowledge in most universities is not what you are paying for. I am currently getting my Master's in Mathematics. I am truly learning a great deal, but that is not what I am paying for. All of the information in the classes I am taking is readily available for free or extremely cheap.

From my perspective I am paying for 3 things: 1. A ready made (albiet small) community of other math grad students that can answer my questions when I don't understand some of the freely available information. 2. A highly educated professor that can provide further explanation and advice if my peer group of math grad students can't explain it well enough to me. 3. (arguably most important) A respected institution prepared to certify to prospective employers that I really have gained gained those skills.

The knowledge is free, you can get #1 on your own with a little work and a little luck, but #2 is hard to get without being an actual student and #3 is is very hard to get without the institution.

And before people say you don't need #3, it helps you get interviews if not necessarily jobs. I have been that hiring manager that has to weed through dozens of resumes to determine who I am going to spend my time interviewing. A degree was certainly a good discriminator for who was worth my time. I certainly didn't require it and I interviewed people who had experience but no degree, but they had to have something else on their resume to show me it was worth my time.

I worked for a small company, when dealing with middle management (or worse, HR) at a big company, they really want to be able to cover themselves and show why they hired someone on paper. To many of them being able to justify the decision is more important then actually getting the best person. The degree makes it alot easier for them to do that.

If you plan to start your own company, a degree is meaningless of course, but even Paul Graham says that path should be approached with great caution if you are married with children.

[netsp]

I'm not saying that these are not important or easily achievable outside of Universities. I am saying maybe they could be. IE, maybe someone can come up with a way of creating the networks & whatever else is important without being a university.

[timwiseman]

You are quite correct, BUT at least for the forseeable future a university is the most efficient way to get those things, and especially to get all 3 at once.

I could for instance create a facebook page and start gathering a group of other people interested in math to ask questions. But it would take time to find that was worth the time to actually talk and listen to and then of those the ones that were actually interested in my specific topic. With a class, those are ready made. You rarely find foolish people in upper division math classes at all so I know everyone there is (most likely) worth my time to deal with and we have the class in common so we are all looking at the same broad field at least.

Similarly, we could create certifications for math skills similar to certain technologies, but it would take a long time (if ever) before employers and HR departments in particular gave those the same weight as a normal degree.

Universities are certainly not the only choice, but for the meantime they are the best choice for someone who wants that combination of a ready made, (partially) vetted community of peers along with later certification of the skills gained.

[asciilifeform]

> I'm still hoping for some sort of disruption that will change the game.

The chance of success is basically zero, but you could lobby for the overturn of the Griggs v. Duke Power Co. decision, the famous lawsuit which resulted in U.S. employers being officially prohibited from using IQ tests in hiring:

http://supreme.justia.com/us/401/424/case.html

This is what gave colleges their monopoly as gatekeepers of the intellectual labor market.

[tigerthink]

>You do not need a Professor who spends most of his time on research that doesn't benefit you teaching you.

I don't know if my math professor does research or not. But the guy is a fucking brilliant lecturer.

On the other hand, I'm at a community college :o)

[timwiseman]

I think part of the point of the article in the Chronicle is that the top schools will be fine and do not need cut back. While this only applies to the very top schools, they will still have people willing to pay the tuition and endowments large enough to cover any student they want to admit that cannot cover the tuition themselves.

It is the small and mid grade schools that may need to carefully look at their models.

Personally, I think a bigger question is what will it do to families trying to help their children climb into a higher income bracket if there is a major shake up in the higher education market?

[adamc]

I think the real solution is to stop overvaluing university degrees. Most of the folks coming out of universities don't have any particularly valuable job skills. (I'm thinking of majors in business, or liberal-arts fields, or for that matter most people with a BA/BS in the sciences.)

Will that happen? Not unless getting university grads gets hard.

[potatolicious]

There needs to be a real separation between vocational schools and comprehensive universities. I get the feeling that as a society we have a thing against vocational training - even though some of the most celebrated jobs really belong there instead of at a traditional college (e.g. engineering, accounting, etc).

The problem here is that people are going to university expecting this to lead nicely into a job - it does not, particularly for the liberal arts where the path is even more vague. People expect the fact that they have a degree to mean something to employers, when it in fact does not.

This whole thing would be a lot simpler if we didn't have such a grudge against vocational schools - who by and large do not seem to have trouble placing their graduates into jobs.

[netsp]

I don't think we do really. Just against the name and against the professions that use vocational schools intensively.

The medicine path is very similar to the electrician path. Medical school is vocational school. We have nothing against those.

[timwiseman]

I think you have a very good point. Personally, I got a traditional degree and am working on my Master's, but there are people in my family that learned things like welding instead and they are doing quite well for themselves. Similarly, a fully certified mechanic is in an excellent position. Some people need traditional degrees, but we as a society do need to value significant trades more highly.

[joe_the_user]

Actually, I think that just the opposite should happen. The goal of higher should not be crude "job skills". The value of higher education includes a wide view of the world and broad participation in intellectual life.

This goal should be furthered by private foundations and government. More things should be "priceless".

[anamax]

> Do the top schools really need Olympic sized swimming pools, or gyms that would require a $100 a month membership in any big city?

I'd guess that students are less likely to use their college gym than members are to use their gym. If I'm correct, the per-student cost of a college gym may be in the noise.

[hs]

if this continues, 'college dropout' will be replaced by 'high school graduate' -- simply because s/he takes high ed as cost-saving bootstrap strategy