Almost every week there is a fresh lament about the rising cost of college tuition or how liberal arts graduates can’t find adequate employment. Rather than add my own addition to the genre I thought I’d try a different approach and solve both problems (at least partially).
But first, my inspiration. Andy Whitman’s article for Image, “Starbucks and the Liberal Arts Major”, may not cover new ground, but it is entertaining:
There was a time, as recently as the mid-1970s, when I was earning liberal arts degree number one in creative writing, when the conventional wisdom held that the mere possession of a college degree opened up shining vistas of middle-class respectability and privilege. You might not get rich, but you could buy a tract home in the suburbs and vacation at Myrtle Beach.
Now a college degree—at least a liberal arts college degree—will get you a barista job at Starbucks.
The cost of education has risen astronomically, and the value of that education, at least in terms of potential earning power, is more suspect and dubious than ever.
Question: how many lattes do you have to serve to pay off a $100,000 student loan? Answer: It’s a trick question. You’ll never pay off a $100,000 student loan making $7.00 per hour. A collection agency will repossess your iPhone, MacBook, guitar and Toyota Prius. It would repossess your tattoos if it could. You will end up living in your parents’ basement. I assure you that this is a prospect that frightens children and parents alike.
Nevertheless, his two daughters are both in school and “piling up enormous debt” to get a degree (or two) in the liberal arts—and with his blessing:
I’ll encourage them to be themselves, to learn as much as they can, and to let the chips (which most assuredly cannot be cashed in) fall where they may. What else can they do? These are kids who show a natural affinity for forties fashions and Bulgarian folk music, God help them. The nerd/freak apple lies close to the parental tree. They would view a spreadsheet as a potentially colorful mosaic pattern just waiting to be filled in.
Whitman raises an interesting point. How can parents encourage their children to pursue their passion without burying them in debt?
I have a solution: a homeschooling co-op for college-age liberal arts students.
Here’s how it would work: Instead of taking a part-time job making coffee, newly minted liberal arts M.A./PhD’s would be hired as tutors making the same pay they’d get at their local Starbucks. For example, a lead barista in Washington, D.C. makes on average $8.86 an hour. So a tutor in the D.C. area would charge $8.86 per hour for their services.
Rather than paying tuition at a four-year college (average: $26,273 per year), students interested in getting a liberal arts education would simply pay tutors to teach them what they want to learn. For instance, if a student in the D.C. area wants to take the equivalent of 10 college classes a year (30 credit hours), they would pay the tutors the Starbucks rate ($8.86 per hour) for the equivalent classroom time (480 hours). The out-of-pocket “tuition” for this student would be $4,253—an average savings of $22,020 a year.
The single biggest drawback is that at the end of four years of tutoring the student won’t have a college degree in the liberal arts. But so what? Why do they need the diploma? If the purpose of getting a liberal arts education—as everyone claims—is to teach you how to think critically, then why do you need a diploma? Is it needed to get one of the non-existent jobs that a liberal arts degree will help you land?
If the piece of paper is necessary then the student can supplement their education by getting a degree in a vocational trade or practical subject like business, accounting, or medical assisting. It may take them a bit longer to pursue both tutoring and vo-tech classes, but they were probably going to spend 6-8 years in college and graduate school anyway.
Still, there seems to be something missing, doesn’t there? If a liberal arts degree were really about getting a liberal arts education than this proposal would seem commonsensical. So why doesn’t is seem more appealing?
I believe the reason is that many Americans (at least those of us who would get a liberal arts degree) want to be able to pursue our own peculiar interest, get a piece of paper that testifies to our accomplishments, and to have the job market reward us for our choice. It seems almost unfair that the only work our B.A. in Medieval philosophy qualifies us for involves grinding Arabica beans. Indeed, a liberal arts education seems to be useless in helping us answer one of life’s most important questions: Why can’t we have everything we want in just the way we want it?
July 12th, 2011 | 1:58 pm
Ironically, I read this article while sitting in Starbucks. I’m a recent liberal arts graduate, and I’m currently unemployed. Maybe I should tutor.
July 12th, 2011 | 2:18 pm
It’s an interesting concept.
But I’m not sure that I agree that a liberal arts degree doesn’t help you get a job.
It doesn’t help you get a job in art history or whatever you majored in, unless you have a teaching credential to go with it. But there are a lot of jobs that don’t “need” a college education but do “require” it — think stockbroker trainee or Walmart shift manager — where you’re better off with the degree than without it when you’re trying get *get* the job.
The point is really that there aren’t enough jobs requiring non-specific degrees, for all the people who want to get liberal arts degrees, which is a good thing to point out to your kid who is contemplating piling up the debt. But that’s not quite the same thing as saying the degree itself is not worth *anything.*
July 12th, 2011 | 2:32 pm
This article is written with tongue in cheek, right? Two key questions in life: How can parents encourage their children to follow their passion without saddling them with debt? And why doesn’t the world simply give me everything I want, when and how I want it?
Wrong question for the parents and wrong question for the youngsters. The questions are, how can I raise kids who don’t think they are the center of the universe? And: if I want to be financially responsible while pursuing my passion, how can I become passionate about something that is useful for others, enough that they will pay for it. Failing that, how can I find something which serves others and rewards my efforts, even if it doesn’t feed my passion? And how can I then pursue a passion off the job, through volunteer activities, hobbies, clubs, etc?
In any case, there’s one more question. How can I avoid like the plague getting a liberal arts degree, which not only fails to prepare me for the world of work, but usually teaches just the opposite of clear thinking?
July 12th, 2011 | 3:11 pm
I had the bad luck of graduating with a liberal arts degree in the summer of 2008. I spent the next year-and-a-half applying for dozens (if not hundreds) of jobs, taking classes at the local community college (in order to stay on my father’s health plan), and working any odd job that came my way (low-level accounting, cat-sitting, working for the census, bagging groceries, mopping my friend’s laundromat, and, yes, making lattes at Starbucks). I found that the secret to a “successful” life at that point was to have absolutely no pride, work at whatever came into my hands, and have no expectations that the work I would eventually get would be my “dream job.”
I did, eventually and through the Providence of God, find a full-time job as an administrative assistant at a law firm. It’s definitely not what I always dreamed of doing, but I think Joe is right – my liberal arts degree (from a sane, Christian institution) made me a better person, but part of being a better person is buckling down, doing the work God gives you to do and choosing to be happy anyway. My job affords me the resources I need to find fulfilling, unpaid work as a living historian and thespian on the weekends, and I’ve learned a good bit about duty and hard work – even if I’ll never be paid to write the Next Great American Screenplay.
July 12th, 2011 | 3:34 pm
“But there are a lot of jobs that don’t ‘need’ a college education but do ‘require’ it — think stockbroker trainee or Walmart shift manager — where you’re better off with the degree than without it when you’re trying get *get* the job.”
This is true. Human resouce depts. may not always operate this way, but currently they do. Once you understand that you need a Bachelor’s, the next step is understanding that you don’t need to pay over 6 figures for it.
July 12th, 2011 | 3:49 pm
Do you need to pile up enormous debt to get a degree (in liberal arts or whatever?). No, no a thousand times no.
Community college, working, scouring every available resource for financial aid and living without all of the electronic gadgets and new clothes you want all are ways to get it done. I graduated from undergraduate and seminary without a single college loan. I didn’t go to an Ivy League (or similarly prestigious) school and I worked 25-40 hours a week the entire time (and yes it took me 5 1/2 years to get the B.A. and 4 years to get the M.Div).
My wife and I are putting back money (as much as we can) for college for our 3 boys, but we do not intend to pay for all of their education. We are preparing them to be able to do college level work and will help as much as we can, but the rest is up to them and we will not sign off on them getting loans (at least not while they are under our care).
We need to get over the idea that the college degree is the magic golden ticket to a happy economic life and our sense of entitlement that someone (parents, the government, school financial aid departments, whatever) owes it to us.
July 12th, 2011 | 3:56 pm
Still, there seems to be something missing, doesn’t there? If a liberal arts degree were really about getting a liberal arts education than this proposal would seem commonsensical.
Indeed it would, which means that laments and ancedotes from individuals with liberal arts degrees aside, the facts are you do need a college degree to make a good living. Andy Whitman is coyly missing the individual today with a ‘newly minted’ degree (even one in a not quite money printing field…’creative writing’) should evaluate his degree over the long term, not the short term.
{BTW, why wouldn’t college just cut out the middle man? Why doesn’t Harvard offer a 2 year associates degree inconjunction with Starbucks by letting students hang out drinking coffee as they listen to the barista’s regale them with their philosophical musings in their downtime?}
After all, imagine on Friday you closed on purchasing a small rental unit. On Monday you put an ad up to attract renters….it’s Tuesday and so far no response do you assume all hope is lost and start contemplating burning it to the ground to score insurance money? Of course not. While its possible you’ve been conned into buying a complete lemon of a unit, chances are over time you’ll get a renter and start pulling in income off the asset.
It is very unlikely that the graduate with a ‘liberal arts creative writing’ degree will never be able to do better than $7/hr serving coffee. The stats tell us otherwise. Even your ‘liberal arts’ degree will yield you a premium of $10-$20K over the non-degree holder over about 40 years of your working life. If your life goal is to work your whole life at Starbucks, you can do so with a high school degree. But when the guy at Starbucks overhears some regulars talking about a new ad agency that needs a copywriter, chances are he will get the job with a ‘liberal arts creative writing’ degree rather than the non-degree holder.
July 12th, 2011 | 4:05 pm
“One of the saddest social groups today consists of that 30% that during the 1950s and 1960s struggled to ‘go to college’ and thought they’d one that, only to find their prolehood still unredeemed, and not really intellectually, artistically, and socially, but economically as well.
In Social Standing in America, Coleman and Rainwater found that going to a good college-or in my view a real one-increased one’s income by 52%, while going to a really good one…increased it by an additional 32% over that. But they found that you achieved no income advantage if you graduated from a nonselective college…”
Paul Fussell, Class. Written in 1983.
This is why people pay six figures, because its ultimately a class symbol. Liberal arts honestly is junk in terms of education and economic value. But going through the right school cements you in your place in the class hierarchy.
A lot of people expected this, and are aghast at how bad economic times is asking them to work as proles, or in areas they never planned to. Meanwhile, the top colleges are still sending their upper-middle class into cushy jobs and start ups because they went to Harvard instead of Eastern Connecticut State.
Fussell calls it “prole drift.” We’re seeing a lot of the middle class waking up to it.
July 12th, 2011 | 5:03 pm
I’d love to put this to the test. Let’s take the top 10% of the nation’s high school graduates and not send them to college, and then let’s take the bottom 10% (or some group from the middle; I don’t care) and send them to college.
Is there anyone out there that would bet against the higher earning potential of the group not going to college?
July 12th, 2011 | 5:10 pm
Excellent point, Jon Rowe.
July 12th, 2011 | 9:28 pm
Not get a diploma? You certainly could be issued a diploma and the only difference between that paper and the one issued by the expensive university is that the latter is accredited (and therefore entitled to accept federal student aid).
Unless you need the degree in order to obtain some other distinction such as a professional license its unlikely that anyone would care (or check!) that the diploma was granted by an unaccredited body.
July 13th, 2011 | 4:51 am
I disagree, I’ve seen many people who’ve gone to a local college that offers a night program….invariably many of their students are workers with HS or 2-yr degrees who are getting 2 or 4 year degrees because their employer is paying for it.
But it is already felt that the college is operating a type of ‘diploma mill’ and many admins who secure 4 yr degrees find that its still tough to break out of the mold. An unaccredited body therefore signals ‘mill’ and with the profiliation of online colleges and pseudo-colleges that push themselves during early morning trash-TV programs a distinction is being made.
BTW, Robin Hanson’s thoughts on the matter are pretty good IMO http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/07/investing-in-school-signals.html
July 13th, 2011 | 8:15 am
[...] http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2011/07/12/starbucks-tutors-or-how-i-solve-the-crisis… [...]
July 13th, 2011 | 11:37 am
I literally think Ben and I are the same person. I tried to employ my research skills at a website specializing in freelance work, but only managed to make 20 bucks for about 15 hours of work, so, thats about 10$ a piece for my wife and I. She didn’t want to come spend it at starbucks like I did though.
July 13th, 2011 | 11:50 am
Boonton, usually though that degree is just for credentialling and is worthless for the needs of that business.
It may not be at times; my sister did that route in order to be an RN. but she already had spent 4 years in medical records, and RN’s are unique because of the technical skills needed for the work and the massive shortage of them.
But your average business or industry could teach the skills directly through internship, and these days you have to get an internship just to gain the relevant work experience to be hired. So why all the bother about degrees? Status and class.
I
July 13th, 2011 | 3:37 pm
Or just do what I did, and get two bachelor’s at the same time – one liberal art, another in a job specific, in demand field.
One was my “fun” major – a history degree, the other got me a job, and having two bachelor’s got me noticed more by hiring sorts.
July 13th, 2011 | 6:54 pm
Except not all people can afford another two years of $600+ a credit-hour, nor can they afford the time spent to fufill both. Also, not everyone is a fit for in-demand fields as opposed to trades. If anything, you might as well just get the first, marketable degree, get a job, and spend the extra $40k + on tutoring and books for that.
July 14th, 2011 | 11:24 am
Boonton, usually though that degree is just for credentialling and is worthless for the needs of that business.
The degree is a credential that indicates your skill in *signalling*. To get the degree, you have to master signalling. Yes along the way you’ll learn about whatever your major is but you’ll have to demonstrate the ability to acquire new skill sets, navigate complex political environments, meet the needs of different ‘bosses (aka professors)’ who often have different personality types and agendas. Write memos (aka papers) etc. Yes a person may learn just as much about, say, Ancient History by simply reading on their own and chatting with the History major whose working at Starbucks. But the degree in ancient history indicates that the person has mastered the ability to signal in a complex environment. While there’s little or no actual jobs that require ancient history, there’s plenty of jobs that require the skills needed to get a degree in ancient history.
College, then, would seem to help in the job market for the same reason that military experience does as well. It’s not that many companies have armies of private mercanies that could use someone with military experience to lead….its that successful military experience also signals many of the skills that jobs are looking for.
The ‘fun major’ then is still a pretty smart move by a student.
July 14th, 2011 | 12:55 pm
My assumption about accreditation is like many other professional licensing programs in that it is designed with 10% consumer protection and 90% insider protection. Therefore, under this regime you can pay $40,000 a year to an institution with hundreds of millions of dollars (or even several billion) in assets for 10 classes, taught by some sad sack making $2,500 a class. On the other hand you get to wear a t-shirt with the institutions sports logo in a non-ironic way.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact