Higher Education?: How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids—and What We Can Do About It

10 Responses

1. 

   Richard Stoyeck August 16, 2010 at 8:10 pm | Permalink

   Review by Richard Stoyeck for Higher Education?: How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids—and What We Can Do About It
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   You ever have that feeling that something is terribly wrong, you think you got it right, but everybody else is thinking differently? Well that’s the feeling you get when you read this book. You realize on your own that something is terribly wrong with the American educational system and then along comes a book like this, and it spells it out for you that you had it right all the time. It does it in such a way that is so compelling that you find you cannot argue against the central arguments of this book.

   Here are some of the concepts clearly illustrated in this book that blow way what is believed to be commonly accepted thinking:

   * The Ivy League survives on its reputation, not on performance. Top professors are teaching only 3 courses per year, if that. They spend the rest of their time doing so-called research that studies demonstrate, yields very little. If you send your child to a prestigious university on an undergraduate level, if that school has graduate programs, your child gets cheated. For the most part, the child will be taught by TA’s or teaching assistants, more than 50% of whom do not speak English as a native language. What a joke.

   * You pay for professors, you want professors. The child is infinitely better off going to an undergraduate college that caters to the undergraduate mind with small classes and full professors teaching. You do not get this at Harvard, Columbia, or Yale. You do get it at Princeton because Princeton has very little in the way of graduate education.

   * Schools like Pomona in California, Carleton College in Minnesota as well as the smaller colleges in New England such as Colby, Williams, Amherst and others offer far superior undergraduate educations but are still too expensive for what they provide.

   * Most colleges employ adjunct faculty, these are teachers who have full time jobs in the real world, but love to teach, so they get paid 1/6th of what a tenured professor receives, who cares nothing for teaching but everything for research. So the money goes to the research professor, and the fellow actually doing the teaching gets beat. What a system according to the authors. For most schools the adjunct teachers represent 70% of the teaching faculty.

   * They actually did a study of over 3000 research papers written by these tenured professors at a 2007 meeting of the American Sociological Association and objectively found that only a handful of papers truly deserved to be written.

   * The authors found that the best value for the money in America today can be found at schools like Ole Miss, Cooper Union, Berea College, Arizona State, and Western Oregon University.

   If you have an interest in “best practices” as far as higher education is concerned, or if you have a child that is headed for college, you owe it to yourself and the your child to rethink your position as to what the possibilities are. Simply do not allow yourself to be railroaded into traditional thinking about what is best for your child. This book offers new possibilities along non-traditional paths and encourages out of the box thinking on our educational system today. Good luck.

   Richard Stoyeck
   

2. 

   f p August 16, 2010 at 8:15 pm | Permalink

   Review by f p for Higher Education?: How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids—and What We Can Do About It
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   I bought this book in great anticipation that the authors would lay out a convicing case for the uselessness of most of what we poor parents have to pay for in college, and, most importantly propose reforms that could be taken seriously.

   Unfortunately, the book is a little more than a long list of the methods colleges use to spend more and more of our money, while they convince American parents that all of the expense is absolutely necessary for student’s success in life.

   Any one who has a child, grandchild, niece or nephew or even distant neighbor between the ages of 6 months and 35 years of age knows that a collge education is very expensive but who knows if it is worth it?

   Having just mailed my first tuition check to a major IVY, where my child will eat dinners planned by a sous chef, a pastry chef and a “wellness coordinaor” on the campus dinning hall staff, I can tell you most of the tuition money we are forced to spend does not seem to provide much educational benefit.

   Why we put up with this is another question. The authors don’t answer this question, nor do they help a parent look at factors that might influence college choice besides reputation and expense. Some other sources do provide people with better data for these comparisons, such as the recent Forbes article that ranks schools by influential graduates, economic success, and job prospects (although in a very superficial way).

   As much as I want to support the authors bank accounts, hoping that they will continue to do important work along these lines in the near future ( although I doubt it would be soon enough to save me any fraction of the $ 200,000 I will have to spend in the next four years) I my recomendaton of this book is not overly enthusiastic.

3. 

   Emma Jade August 16, 2010 at 8:31 pm | Permalink

   Review by Emma Jade for Higher Education?: How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids—and What We Can Do About It
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   I just finished reading this book today, and I can’t say I got much useful information out of it. I am a mom with a daughter who will be going to college very soon. So, it’s just recently come on my ‘radar’ that there is a huge problem in our colleges today. Not only are costs out of control, but in many cases, the education these kids are getting is next to worthless. Many schools are in it just for the money, and don’t really care if your child learns anything, as long as you keep paying the bill.

   What I am starting to find out is that some of these schools are a lot worse than others, so I have been trying to read as much as I can about how to weed out the bad ones and find the good ones. Although this book discusses in length what is wrong with the system, it doesn’t provide much in the way of advice on how to not fall into the trap.

   One thing I did like was their discussion of the ‘Golden Dozen’ (the twelve schools that ultra-status-conscious parents want to send their children to, and how they are often simply not worth it). Other than that, however, I didn’t find much in this book that was either enlightening or helpful to me.

4. 

   Terry M. Perlin August 16, 2010 at 9:06 pm | Permalink

   Review by Terry M. Perlin for Higher Education?: How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids—and What We Can Do About It
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   A bit of context. I’ve just retired after 40 years of college and university teaching (including years spent at Williams College, a frequent illustration in your book). And for some years, I used Hacker’s TWO NATIONS in a course on ethics and social responsibility.

   So…. to HIGHER EDUCATION. I cannot find a false word or statment in the book. [It's rare for me to agree with much of anything.] Regarding the dumbing down of the curriculum; the careerism of so-called academic stars; the absurdities of the tenure process — this book is on the mark. My gripes center on the often unexamined trend towards interdisciplinary studies. Nothing inherently dubious about looking at problems from many perspectives (e.g., neuroscience), but to expect undergraduates,who haven’t read any Shakespeare, aside from high school assignments of Hamlet and Julius Caesar, to evaluate the concept of “leadership” from, say, the political, psychological, and ethical perspectives. Well, as they say, give me a break.

   The tone of the book — which ranges from acerbic to occasionally cynical, does not disturb me. But I do think it may gloss [ab bit] over those rare but real faculty members whose old-fashioned commitment to rigor remains a vestige. As for dumping the business school, my most recent employer just completed a new B-school building which rivals any Hyatt hotel in its grossly sumptuous features. And once that pile opens, there’s no closing it.

   Though I would not expect Presidents and Deans to grasp the reality captured in this book, one can always hope that such a wise and reflective text will reach a wide audience.

5. 

   Loyd E. Eskildson August 16, 2010 at 9:25 pm | Permalink

   Review by Loyd E. Eskildson for Higher Education?: How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids—and What We Can Do About It
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   U.S. higher education is a $240 billion business, and $250,000 is the going cost for four-years at most top-tier colleges. Even four years at Michigan State’s ‘in-state rate’ can run $100,000. Graduating with a six-figure debt is becoming increasingly common – and not a good way to enter today’s job market. Authors Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus are also upset that over half of this is for vocational training – nursing, resort management, sports management, fashion merchandising, etc. Like medicine, higher education is responsible to no one – yet, both sometimes also offer the world’s best product. ‘Higher Education’ contends that our system of higher education is broken, and does a good job of proving it.

   Over the past 30 years the inflation-adjusted’ cost of higher education has risen 300% for public schools, 250% at their private counterparts, and it isn’t hard to see why. Professors are well-paid for not much teaching. Average pay for a full professor (usually reached in one’s early 40′s) was $109,000 in 2008-09, compared to salaried lawyers ($91,000), chemical engineers ($80,000), and financial analysts ($72,000); their average pay has grown about 50% after inflation in recent years. Yet at eg. Kenyon College in Ohio, professors teach only five courses/year and receive a sabbatical every 7th year. This amounts to an average 381 classroom and office hours/year for $92,000. At Yale, its three courses/year, with a semester off after five semesters – amounting to 213 hours/year for $174,000. On a per-hour basis this comes to $242 at Kenyon and $820 at Yale, plus free tuition for professors’ children, and subsidized rent or mortgage in some instances (eg. Princeton, Stanford). As for other duties, some is taken up in useless committee meetings, preparing for class, grading exams and papers, and research. Hacker and Dreifus, however, also report the story of a student sitting in the back of class and not taking notes – turns out she had her mother’s notes taken years earlier from the same instructor, and the material hadn’t changed. At Yale, grading papers and exams is done by $20,000/year teaching assistants.

   ‘Academic research’ is the reason most often given for low teaching loads. Harvard, for example, gives even non-tenured a year off to complete a promotion-worthy book. The hidden question, however, is how useful are the results? Curing cancer is one thing, says Claudia Dreifus, but “when 3,000 people are writing articles on William Faulkner, that’s not exactly curing cancer.” Twenty years ago “Science” reported only 45% of articles in the 4,500 top scientific journals were cited within the first five years; in a 2009 “Online Information Review” article, Peter Jasco found this had fallen to 40.6% from 2002-06 for the top science and social-science journals. The result – the added useless verbiage makes subsequent researchers’ job more difficult (Bauerlein, Gad-el-Hak, McKelvey, and Trimble – “The Chronicle of Higher Education,” 6/13/2010). Even cited research is often useless – Julious Axelrod, 1970 Nobel-winner in medicine, points out that “99% of the discoveries (read ‘important and useful’) are made by 1% of the scientists.” Then there’s the thousands of university economists who can’t agree on much between themselves except that ‘Smoot-Hawley tariffs prolonged and deepened the Great Depression’ – mathematically impossible since net trade then was less than 1% of GDP. (Nonetheless, the Free Trade myth lives on, and millions of Americans have lost their jobs, benefits, or financial security as a result.)

   In 1975, 43% of undergraduate college teachers were classified as ‘contingents’ – instructors, visiting professors, teaching assistants; now it is 70% – the growth is presumably needed to cover sabbaticals and research duty of tenured staff.

   Overhead growth is another major cost contributor. The authors use Williams College, 2nd oldest in Mass., as an example. Over 70% of its 984 employees are non-teaching – 84 athletic coaches, 73 fund raisers, 20 art museum staff, 42 IT, 244 buildings and grounds and cafeteria workers. Swarthmore has 253 administrators for 1,472 students, and Wilmington (much lower endowment) only 81 for 1,490.

   Dropout rates is a topic that needs more attention from the authors. U.S. Dept. of Education figures report about half never graduate – a major waste of time and money.

   “Higher Education” ends with several recommendations, such as ending tenure, and provides a list of colleges/universities the authors’ like – eg. MIT (treats their teaching assistants well), and Arizona State University (improved scholarship). However, the authors probably were unaware that ASU pays its teaching staff so much that the library is starving for new books, has added innumerable administrative and support staff in recent decades, and has atrocious undergraduate graduation rates (30% – 4 years, 56% – 6 years.

   Bottom-Line: Hacker and Dreifus’ “Higher Education” exposes a scandalous situation that merits attention and action. The government could start by forcing/encouraging major cost reductions, starting with two- and three-year graduation programs, tighter entrance standards, overhead reductions, salary freezes or reductions, publicizing graduation rates and starting salaries/program, etc. as requisites for participating in its student-loan program. True, right-wing ideologues will object, but someone needs to point out that when students default on these high costs, they’re the ones that end up paying, along with you and I.
   

6. 

   Maryellen Tast August 16, 2010 at 10:10 pm | Permalink

   Review by Maryellen Tast for American Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century: Social, Political, and Economic Challenges
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   Book Review
   
   With the huge technological and societal changes that higher education face today, it seemed a natural choice to review American Higher Education in the Twenty-first Century: Social, Political and Economic Challenges. This book was edited by Philip G. Altbach, Robert O. Berdahl, and Patricia J. Gumport. It was copyrighted in 1999 by The Johns Hopkins University Press from Baltimore, MD. Each chapter is authored by a subject matter expert such as Roger Geiger, TR Mc Connell and Ami Zusman to name a few.
   
   Summary of Contents
   
   American Higher Education in the Twenty-first Century. Social, Political and Economic Challenges addresses key issues facing and testing higher education institutions now and in the future. It explores the impact society has on technology which causes a domino effect touching on political and educational challenges. These challenges promise to be stronger than any issues faced in the history of education. This includes many contributors to the educational process including the new breed of student.
   
   “The student role within American higher education and society is a complex and requires a new epistemology, or way of thinking about that role, which enhances our understanding” (Altbach, Berdahl, and Gumport, 1999). The book goes on to note the importance of understanding the roles and relationship between students, educational institutions, and today’s society. Naturally, this ultimately drives the direction and future goals of higher education.
   
   Other entities such as the federal and state governments and business partners will also play a role in determining needs that will drive the direction higher education will take in the future.
   
   These issues, along with a myriad of other areas, promise higher education an interesting and rather demanding and rigorous future.
   
   Organizational Structure
   
   This book was very well organized which supported easy understanding and a solid learning experience. It was broken into four parts, which included:
   
   · Part 1, The Setting: This section discussed background and support information for higher education including a look at the structure, history and key issues facing higher education today.
   
   · Part 2, External Forces: Support partners in higher education are examined in this section. These partners include entities such as the federal government, individual states, legal forces and external business partners.
   
   · Part 3, The Academic Community: Controversial and timely issues are discussed in this section including the challenge of colleges building connects within the communities they support.
   
   · Part 4, Central Issues for the Twenty-first Century: This section discussed some of the hottest topics faced by colleges today including funding, technology, and diversity.
   
   The breakout of these sections clearly helped the reader easily realize some of the most important areas that we need to focus on being associated with higher education now and how society and technology takes us into the future. This is especially important since today’s educational setting challenging the traditional settings and looking to enrich and enhance them. In addition, these sections help us to understand the importance of extending the boundaries of teaching (i.e. from the traditional classroom to new technology settings.)
   
   Personal Reaction and Evaluation
   
   “If a college or university is effectively to define its goals and select or invent the means of attaining them, it must have a high degree of substantive autonomy” (Altbach, Berdahl, and Gumport, 1999). This book raised a number of very important viewpoints and issues that higher education face in the future. In order to successfully meet the needs of society, I believe one of the most important points that the book makes is the vital importance of universities maintaining autonomy. Higher education needs to be able to move forward in offering programs that meet the knowledge gaps and educational demands that a rapidly changing technological society promises to offer in the future. Higher education must be able to turn on a dime in order to support this challenge. In this, as well as other avenues, this book was able to bring across, in my opinion, the “must-dos” for higher education in the future. The authors identify “change” as the most complex “must-do.” However, it is also the most challenging and, according to the authors dependent on society and technology advances.
   
   Conclusion
   
   In summary, American Higher Education in the Twenty-first Century. Social, Political and Economical Challenges is an excellent source for educators in determining the direction to set in the future. It helped me to identify goals that must be achieved and areas that must be recognized as challenges face us now and for coming generations of students.

   References
   
   Altbach, Philip G., Berdahl, Robert O., and Gumport, (1999). American Higher Education in the Twenty-first Century. Social, Political, and Economic Challenges. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
   

7. 

   D. Rapp August 16, 2010 at 10:56 pm | Permalink

   Review by D. Rapp for American Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century: Social, Political, and Economic Challenges
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   The book essentially covers similar topics that were covered in my adult education issues class such as: academic freedom; issues facing higher education in the twenty-first century; the states and federal government and higher education; external factors and their impact; students, colleges and society’s interconnectivity; financing higher education; technology and higher education; graduate education and research; and multiculturalism.
   
   The chapter entitled, “Technology and Higher Education: Opportunities and Challenges for the New Era,” (P. J. Gumport & M. Chun, 1999), offered a cautious, uncertain view of the future of technology in higher education. Certainly, technology has had an impact already in higher education as a “tool” or delivery mechanism. The social organization and nature of teaching and learning as a profession had certainly been affected by changes in technology. One of the most visible changes has been witnessed in virtual higher education. No longer is distance a hindrance in obtaining a college degree.
   
   The authors’ stress that the only prediction that can be confidently made about technology is that is will have an impact on higher education and it will be far-reaching. No single answer is available as many uncontrollable external factors such as societal forces will affect the technological futuristic outcome.
   
   The basic structure of the book was in four parts: “the setting” which covered the dimensions of change in higher education; “external forces” which shape and control higher educational institutions; “the academic community” discusses the profession’s changes and stresses; and “central issues for the twenty-first century.” Each of the four sections of the book contains several chapters which discusses each general topic with different flavors of expertise.
   
   I believe the editors were successful in their attempt to organize the information and chapters in such a way as to delineate key issues affecting American higher education in the twenty-first century. Each chapter provided a clear and concise representation of the topics listed.
   
   This book was an easy read for students who wish to find out more about particular topics without reading a whole book on each individual subject. The editors selected pertinent topics to higher education that could be read quickly to grasp the general concepts. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on technology and the potential implications for education. I’ve already witnessed significant change in this area as what was business education, i.e., typing and shorthand has already evolved into the computer applications area. It will be fascinating to see what’s ahead on the horizon.

8. 

   Gail M. Ruhland August 16, 2010 at 10:56 pm | Permalink

   Review by Gail M. Ruhland for American Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century: Social, Political, and Economic Challenges
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   This product was received in excellent condition very quickly … helps a struggling college person keep within budget!

   THANK YOU!

9. 

   MM-K August 16, 2010 at 11:48 pm | Permalink

   Review by MM-K for American Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century: Social, Political, and Economic Challenges
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   This was a required textbook for a class. Overall, I think the book was well-written. I wish I could say more, but this was an elective class and some of the topics presented were not of interest to me.

10. 

    Anonymous August 17, 2010 at 12:44 am | Permalink

    Review by for American Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century: Social, Political, and Economic Challenges
    Rating:
    I had to read this for a class, and as text books go, this is a good one. Covered all the major topics involved in higher ed. Easy to read.