House Majority Leader Eric Cantor delivered a speech yesterday at the American Enterprise Institute. There’s much to like in it, but I’m going to focus on what he has to say about higher education, which displays some characteristic Republican tics. However understandable these tics are, they’re, to my mind, regrettable.
Here’s the first:
One of our priorities this year will be to move heaven and earth to fix our education system for the most vulnerable. And when those children graduate from high school, we must expand their choices and college should be a viable option. In 1980, the average cost of college was roughly $8,000 a year. Today, it is over $20,000, and less than 60 percent of the students who enroll in a four-year program graduate within six years. Clearly, something is broken.
According to President Obama’s former jobs council, by 2020 there will be 1.5 million jobs without the college graduates to fill them. While there is a persistent unmet demand of 400,000 to 500,000 job openings in the health care sector alone. Recent reports indicate there are not enough applicants with the skills necessary to fill the jobs in the booming natural gas industry in America.
Suppose colleges provided prospective students with reliable information on the unemployment rate and potential earnings by major. What if parents had access to clear and understandable breakdowns between academic studies and amenities? Armed with this knowledge, families and students could make better decisions about where to go to school, and how to budget their tuition dollars. Students would actually have a better chance of graduating within four years and getting a job.
I get it. Rep. Cantor wants students and their parents to be able to connect the dots between the education for which they are paying big bucks and the opportunites on the other side. Colleges and universities implicitly promise as much. How else could they charge such exorbitant tuition? But providing this information runs the risk of teaching that all that matters about one’s education is the salary one earns on the other end. Many people already think that way. One of the counter-cultural tasks of those of us in the liberal arts is to insist upon the value of cultivating the life of the mind. To be sure, we don’t need resort-like college campuses and legions of administrators to live and share the life of the mind. And, needless to say, we have to live it ourselves before we can complain about the apparent philistinism of Republican lawmakers who seem to care only about graduates’ salaries.
Here’s the second, which has already elicited this snarky response:
There is an appropriate and necessary role for the federal government to ensure funding for basic medical research. Doing all we can to facilitate medical breakthroughs for people like Katie should be a priority. We can and must do better.
This includes cutting unnecessary red tape in order to speed up the availability of life saving drugs and treatments and reprioritizing existing federal research spending. Funds currently spent by the government on social science—including on politics of all things—would be better spent helping find cures to diseases.
I’m of two minds here. There’s an awful lot of research in political science which is of interest to only a few people—the other political scientists who happen also to be tilling that particular garden. I’m the last person to deny that value of knowledge for its own sake, but I wonder whether the federal government should be funding the pursuit of it. Athens rejected Socrates’ request that he receive free meals for the remainder of his life. I won’t quarrel with that decision, despite the fact that Socrates was likely more a benefactor of Athens than at least some of my colleagues are of America.
At the same time, I presume that our sophisticated policy proposals owe something to researchers located in the academy. I don’t expect politicians to figure out how precisely to resolve our entitlement dilemmas in their spare time. So we might actually need some political science research.
There are deeper questions here. If you wish to explore them, I can do no better than to call your attention to James W. Ceaser’s fine book, Liberal Democracy and Political Science.
There’s no love lost between Republicans and the academy, for which plenty of responsibility exists on both sides. My liberal colleagues don’t pay attention to me when I suggest that they might have something to learn from their adversaries. Should I hope for any more from the politicians?
February 6th, 2013 | 12:14 pm
I deeply appreciate the author’s concern for the life of the mind and intellectual pursuits. However, I think it bears remembering that we live in a day and age in which there is an unlimited ability to pursue intellectual curiosity for free or low cost. There are tens of thousands of hours of free lectures available online and an ever-increasing number of free online courses through elite universities. Any book in the world that I care to read can be shipped to my doorstep within a few days. So in 2013, we have to ask what utility a university degree adds to these pursuits for the intellectually curious? It certainly isn’t interaction with a professor; the majority of the members of academia haven’t the time of day for anyone but graduate students.
I have to agree with Mr. Cantor’s perspective here: one goes to college to obtain a credential, either for the job market or for admission to graduate or professional school. Insofar as college degrees are failing to obtain students entry into the job market, they are failing to live up to their purpose in today’s world. Insofar as their cost outweighs their economic benefit, they need to be fixed.
February 6th, 2013 | 12:41 pm
“But providing this information runs the risk of teaching that all that matters about one’s education is the salary one earns on the other end.”
No, no, no, and no. I entirely agree that treating the matter as entirely one of economic cost-benefit analysis is something that needs strong push-back.
But speaking as though making more genuine information available is undesirable because it makes a message harder, is NOT the way to approach the issue. We don’t improve people’s view of the role of education by making sure that people don’t have information that they might use wrongly. We do by making the case about the role of education.
If all you’re saying is there’s a “risk,” fine. There’s a risk in anything. But it sounds like you’re also saying that therefore, advocating that people have this information, might do more harm than good. Nope. We don’t get to use the crutch of people being ill-informed to prop up our case. We have to make the case on its merits.
February 6th, 2013 | 1:04 pm
1. Though everyone is called to self-understanding and virtue, not everyone is called to the life of the mind. It seems at least some people are called to follow NASCAR teams sponsored by “Extenze.”
2. I bet most of the health care and natural gas jobs mentioned in the quotation don’t demand four-year college degrees as prerequisites. They certainly don’t demand exorbitant tuition fees. See Charles Murray’s “Real Education.”
3. Going to college these days has largely been reduced to purchasing “semi-supervised fun [and] the services of an employment agency.” (Andrew Delbanco) John Henry Newman, whom Delbanco quotes favorably, continues to turn in his grave.
4. Almost all my illusions about the life of the mind were shattered when I chanced upon my Yale residential college dean giggling like a pubescent little boy while watching the masturbation scene in the film “There’s Something About Mary.” The man was a Sanskrit scholar, of all things.
February 6th, 2013 | 1:43 pm
I wouldn’t put too much faith in the unfilled positions numbers. A lot of them are of the type, “Seeking secretary with post-graduate degree in English. $30k.”
Ideally, all courses would have independent admissions requirements and prices. More standardized testing and skills evaluation should take the place of expensive degrees.
As for research in social sciences, I benefit a lot from them as does society as a whole. A more efficient and effective government resulting from political science research is no less important than hard science research. I’m not sure there’s a clearly superior way to allocate grants though. Social science research is less resource intensive so maybe a reward system is better suited.
February 6th, 2013 | 2:05 pm
While I am glad I went to school long enough ago so that it was not extremely expensive, tuition costs are not “exorbitant.” One reason that tuition is so high at public universities is that it is not as heavily subsidized by government as it used to be. The student is now paying much more of the actual cost.
Interestingly, although there have been tuition increases over the years in private colleges, they have not been as steep as the increases at public colleges (because there were no state subsidies that have been withdrawn, as in public colleges), and students at private colleges tend to get financial aid that brings their out-of-pocket costs down. For example, more than half of students at Harvard and Yale receive need-based grants which amount to an average discount of slightly over 70% for both schools.
Education is expensive. I think government ought to see to it that everyone with the ability to go to college can do so at an affordable cost, or even free. It’s an investment in the future.
February 6th, 2013 | 2:49 pm
Disclaimer up-front: I’m a college professor, so I can’t look at this disinterestedly.
I don’t expect any politician who does not have a liberal arts education to fully appreciate the intrinsic value of the life of the mind. Politicians should, however, be able to recognize the socially valuable by-products of a liberal arts education. Critical thinking abilities, oral and written communication skills, intellectual curiosity, and creativity are all very marketable skills that are common in the liberally educated, but uncommon elsewhere. We in academia should be able to make a cogent case for the long-term economic benefits of the liberal arts.
Unfortunately, our professional programs and electives-driven core curricula are only a shadow of a real liberal arts education, and it will be increasingly hard to defend the ghost of the liberal arts in the public square. Nevertheless, liberal arts programs still exist, mostly at smaller institutions whose faculty are under less pressure to publish super-specialized research. Real liberal arts programs still graduate people who can think, speak, and write clearly, and even the most cynically materialistic politician should be able to see that.
The catch, though, is that we in academia ought not teach our students to pursue the life of the mind for its economic by-products. If we do that, neither we nor our students will be living the life of the mind at all. As we explain to the politicians and bureaucrats that studying Plato, Shakespeare, Mozart, and Van Gogh really does result in marketable graduates, we must be honest with them, with our students, and above all with ourselves that marketability is of secondary importance.
February 6th, 2013 | 4:01 pm
As an engineer who took some liberal arts courses, I believe that the necessary feedback for a good liberal arts education makes it innately expensive. You don’t get quality interaction or feedback on papers in lectures of 500 people.
I suspect that it is the innate intelligence of top-quality liberal arts graduates, rather than the schooling itself, that provides the critical thinking skills, etc. that you describe.
There are very few jobs for people who can think intelligently about Faust that are not available to people who can think intelligently about something else.
February 6th, 2013 | 4:56 pm
If college is expensive, people must be able to recoup the investment.
If we want people to be able to pursue the life of the mind without focusing on recouping a huge investment, we need to make education cheaper.
Thus, arguably, the enemies of the mind are not Republican philistines. Rather, the enemies of the mind are posh student unions. The new atrium attached to the library. The new stadium. Air-conditioned dorms. Or ANY dorms. Stately, ivy-covered buildings and academic processions. Basically, ANY needless extravagance unrelated to the life of the mind.
I don’t doubt for a moment that a flesh-and-blood campus education is better than an on-line education. But HOW MUCH better? Twice as good? Ten times as good? Because the on-line version may be roughly one tenth the cost. And, as we can observe on this website, you can keep the mind quite lively on-line if you have the inclination.
Of course, colleges don’t pad up the student union just for fun; they know that students respond to that stuff. Student materialism is killing the life of the mind!
So perhaps we need to revive the hippy movement? Make low-budget fashionable again?
But until we can find a cheaper way to provide a college education, it seems unrealistic to expect people to assume all kinds of debt without any focus on how to pay it off. Only the elite and the oblivious can free their minds while sinking their futures.
February 6th, 2013 | 9:50 pm
Good points, nobody.really.
February 7th, 2013 | 4:22 am
According to thecostofliving.com, the average wage in 1980 was $12,513. Today, it’s $33,235. That’s an increase of 265.6%. A 265.6% increase in an $8000 college education amounts to $21,248, considerably more than the $20,000 it now costs. So it would appear that the average increase in the cost of a college education since 1980 is considerably less than the average increase in wages.
February 7th, 2013 | 6:43 am
JB,
These data suggest a somewhat different picture of higher education inflation:
http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Articles/Education_Inflation.asp
February 7th, 2013 | 8:23 am
I’m of the view that there’s education and there’s vocation. Both are important, and not entirely distinct, but they mostly serve different purposes. A person can have an exquisite liberal arts education, and consequently have an incredibly rich mental life, inhabited by such splendid figures as Shakespeare, Dante, Jane Austin, and such challenging ideas as what constitutes legitimate political rule, or Plato’s Ideas, and the philosophical challanges to them. This wonderfully enchanted mental world, however, is no guarantee, that one will be amply rewarded financially. In fact, often a Liberal Arts degree will make one less likely to have a marketable job. And considering this sad state, who can blame someone for not wanting to spend thousands of dollars to learn about forms and theology and who Dante encounters on his trip? Being able to contemplate great ideas presupposes that one has one’s economic castle is in order. After all, Maslow’s hierachy of needs is applicable here: if one doesn’t have food or a place that doesn’t blow with the wind, one could care less about the Liberal Arts.
February 7th, 2013 | 3:31 pm
Joe,
You’re right, those statistics do suggest a different picture. But I’m a bit skeptical (to say the least). The writer claims that (on average?) education now costs $59,800, compared to $10,000 tuition in 1986, which is 2.5 times the inflation rate. But not even the elite private universities charge $59,800 for tuition. That number must include room and board. (E.g., tuition and room/board at Harvard are $38,400 and $14,620, respectively.) So what he’s comparing is the (approximate?) cost of tuition in 1986 to the cost of tuition, room, and board today. And was the cost of tuition at elite private universities really only (approximately) $10,000 in 1986, or was that the average of tuition at all types of universities? Or did he just make up the number? The article’s not very clear on that.
February 10th, 2013 | 12:32 pm
This assertion is goes to the heart of the matter:
“Critical thinking abilities, oral and written communication skills, intellectual curiosity, and creativity are all very marketable skills that are common in the liberally educated, but uncommon elsewhere.”
I’ve taught thousands of students at three distinctly different law schools, and those students graduated from hundreds of different undergraduate institutions. For the most part, their oral communication skills have been good enough, and if anything they’ve been improving slightly in recent years. Their creativity has also been adequate.
Their written communication skills, however, have been declining sharply since at least the late 1990s, and they are now anything but adequate. The same is true of their intellectual curiosity and critical thinking skills, insofar as the latter include deductive, inductive, and analogical reasoning.
My students don’t lack brain wattage: if anything, their apparent raw intellectual acuity has gradually increased over the past decade. But their relevant skills are continuing to decline, regardless of the pedigrees of their undergraduate institutions.
Yes, the average recent graduate of Ivy U. is better prepared than the average recent graduate of Nowhere State, but same-school comparisons of recent graduates to earlier graduates show that the decline is all but universal. And yes, most students do manage to get up to speed before they graduate from law school, but it is distinctly harder for them (and harder on me) every year.
Thus, in my experience, either few holders of undergraduate degrees are “liberally educated,” or the assertion that I quoted above is questionable at best.
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