
The Future of College - ph0rque
http://www.gatesnotes.com/Education/The-Future-of-College-NACUBO-Remarks
======
xiaoma
I don't agree with his reasoning here:

> _" The data we see shows that, unless you’re given the preparation and
> access to higher education, and unless you have a successful completion of
> that higher education, your economic opportunity is greatly, greatly
> reduced. There’s a lot of data recently talking about the premium in
> salaries for people with four-year college degrees."_

The problem is that the observation that people with degrees earn more than
those without doesn't imply that increasing the number of people with degrees
would increase overall prosperity. Degrees are credentials that are used to
sort people. Similarly, while an individual student earning a lot of As is
likely a meaningful signal of their studiousness and understanding of their
subjects, inflating the grades of all students and awarding more As in general
doesn't mean the students have become more studious.

If nearly everyone had a college degree, its effect on their occupational
opportunities would be very similar to that of a high school diploma now.
Unless the focus is on the education itself, instead of schooling, the result
is just credential inflation—something very expensive and wasteful
economically and in terms of peoples lives.

~~~
seanflyon
> Degrees are credentials that are used to sort people.

Degrees are used to sort people, but not arbitrarily. A degree certifies what
you have learned. Giving out more degrees could mean degree inflation or it
could just mean that more people are learning.

Our economy is shifting away from unskilled labor towards skilled labor. You
can get those skills without getting a degree, it's just harder (and cheaper)
to do. I love institutions like the Khan Academy that make it easier to
improve your skills outside of a degree program, but I also love initiatives
that make degree programs more accessible.

~~~
lutusp
> Degrees are used to sort people, but not arbitrarily.

I disagree -- I think the case can be made that the sorting process is largely
automatic and disregards individual traits, This is supported by the number of
very high achievers who are also dropouts, people who didn't understand or
accept that they had already been "sorted".

This certainly isn't meant to suggest that, _on average_ , a degree holder
doesn't do better, has a higher income as a result of attending college. But
as college costs continue to rise (now increasing faster than any other
household expense) the day will come when it no longer makes economic sense.

> Our economy is shifting away from unskilled labor towards skilled labor. You
> can get those skills without getting a degree, it's just harder (and
> cheaper) to do.

It may be harder, but it avoids the trap of being taught things in college
that are already out of date in a fast-moving world.

~~~
seanflyon
As you said, degree holders are more likely to do better. The question is why
and there are 2 obvious answers:

1) People who are already more likely to do well tend to go to college. 2)
Going to college prepares people to do well.

I think both have a significant effect. Certainly in my own experience what I
learned in college has benefited me in the workplace and almost none of what I
learned (graduated in 2008) is out of date. When I look at my most respected
peers, several of them don't have degrees, but those who don't either went to
college and joined the work force before graduating or took more than 4 years
to develop the skills and experience they needed to compete with college
graduates.

I'm not sure what kinds of individual traits you are talking about that are
ignored by the sorting process or how this claim is supported by the few very
high achievers that dropped out of college. I would expect some of the very
high achievers to take the harder path of blazing their own trail.

------
araes
I generally think Bill Gates is a clever man. I also think his heart is
normally in the right place these days. That said, I think he, and most of
education reform seems to often focus on the externalities of education,
rather than the core, the student.

I agree that better data reporting, with focuses on goals and outcomes, much
as has been done in the Aid sector, could help. I also think that having a
better education environment, in the form of good advising for support, and
broader class type / learning options, may help students complete school once
they're there.

However, in a tie-back to the earlier article [1] on the disconnect between
boss / worker expectations, I think we also need a much earlier focus on
individual achievement and learning. On setting goals, and then largely giving
students freedom in how they approach and attack those goals. That is what
college students need to be successful, and that is what the job sector
identifies as the signal of good, high performing workers.

Many of the students that we send to college are not mentally ready to be
successful at college. In fact, many go without any clear idea of why they're
going, besides the advertised 4+ year party, or family saying "go". In many
ways, I don't think that's their fault. Part of it is, for not taking charge
of their lives, but for many, college is one of the first times where you
seriously have to set your own goals. High school teachers took care of it,
parents took care of it. We need to remedy that by providing more, low-risk
opportunities for them to develop those skills while they still can work with
a net.

As a corollary, I also don't think we should make it easier for students who
aren't ready to attend. It does a disservice to them, and due to the way our
current college loan system is set up, it often ends up burying them for the
rest of their lives under non-transferable debt. (often times at the scale of
a low-end house) For those who it didn't, many times we get C to D folks out
the other end, who muddled by, and drift on to something. Maybe the act of
attending enriches them, and ultimately makes them better people, but for a
lot, I feel like higher education has become an expensive trap that we're not
properly preparing them for.

[1]
[http://www.insead.edu/facultyresearch/research/doc.cfm?did=4...](http://www.insead.edu/facultyresearch/research/doc.cfm?did=46698)

~~~
marquis
The british, and maybe other countries, have the concept of a 'Gap year' where
it is acceptable to take a year between high school and college for the
purpose of travel and community service. This can alleviate the problem of
"not being ready".

~~~
superuser2
Cost of attendance rises slightly every year (say 3%). Delaying college means
you come in later in the appreciation cycle; your total cost is substantially
higher.

Gap years are, unfortunately, a privilege for students who are so wealthy that
doesn't matter or so poor that they're on full rides anyway. For a middle
class student, it's just throwing away money.

~~~
dllthomas
_" For a middle class student, it's just throwing away money."_

They _cost_ money, but that's not the same as throwing money away. It depends
on what you're getting in exchange. If the gap year serves its purpose of
helping you figure out what you want to do, the delta in cost is substantially
less than paying a few years of tuition while you figure out the same thing.

------
djb_hackernews
In 1982, in my state, minimum wage was $3.35/hr. Tuition + fees at my states
large research university was $1,562/semester.

In 2001 when I entered as a freshman minimum wage was $6.75 and tuition+fees
was $5,707.

In 2013 minimum wage was $8.00 and tuition was $13,258.

minimum wage is up +200%, education costs up +850%.

That is probably a major reason why a) Not as many young people are getting
degrees b) why not many actually finish their degrees.

My advice: stick to the trades, work in a union for a major utility provider.
At least until the singularity happens.

~~~
totalrobe
Utilities are beginning to see trouble in many places because of the rise of
distributed power. High fixed costs + lower demand = trouble.

~~~
fokov
People keep saying this, but does anyone actually have numbers to back up the
claim that things are going to get really bad?

The reason I ask is due to an NPR segment that aired last week about a Texas
power company. They described the different types of energy they were using as
well as how long it takes to "turn them on". There were order of magnitude
differences between the various power sources. The more efficient the power,
the longer it took to start/act to changes in demand.

If more people are using local solar, then peak hours during a summer day
would help level out usage: more sun = more local energy that will be used for
AC. I would imagine that change would allow these companies to save a lot of
money by not having to use the less efficient power sources to properly adjust
available power. That extra money can then be spend on the infrastructure or
more R&D.

I'm just curious because I keep hearing crap like "solar is going to
completely kill the grid and costs will skyrocket as people leave."

------
simonebrunozzi
I think we still think about College with too much "baggage" in our minds.

I am wondering if there's an even more revolutionary approach - for example,
continuous education, where evaluation/tests are performed continuously.

~~~
cwal37
I took a class which had a short quiz/test at the beginning of each meeting.
It was just a handful of questions that covered the assigned reading for that
date. The reading in question wasn't out of a book, but was always a single
review article, or 2-4 smaller academic papers. Together these quizzes
represented a significant chunk of your grade.

I learned more, and more quickly, in that class than probably any other I've
ever taken. It was mixed between grad/undergrad (I was undergrad at the time),
but because everyone "had" to do the reading for each class everyone was on a
more or less equal footing, and the discussion was fantastic.

~~~
CocaKoala
This works for more than just discussion based classes, as well; one of the
best classes I ever took in college was a CS Theory course; every single day,
the class started off with a quiz on the material we had covered in the
previous class. Immediately after finishing the quiz, we'd go over the answers
in class together.

The end result was that you were constantly getting immediate feedback about
how well you understand the material; if you thought you knew what you were
doing and you were actually totally lost, you found out the very next day and
were presented with an opportunity to ask for clarifications. And since there
were so many quizzes, there was no need for larger tests (because the
professor constantly felt like he had a good handle on how people were
understanding the material) and you never got stressed out about bombing a
quiz or two (because there were thirty other quizzes that would go into
calculating your grade, plus the workshop scores and homework scores).

It really removed the stress of the class and gave me an opportunity to focus
on the material itself, instead of worrying about how I would do on the tests.
Weirdly, when every day was a quiz, it seemed like there were never any
quizzes.

~~~
incision
_> 'The end result was that you were constantly getting immediate feedback
about how well you understand the material...It really removed the stress of
the class and gave me an opportunity to focus on the material itself, instead
of worrying about how I would do on the tests.'_

Interestingly, this is exactly what I like so much about the best MOOCs I've
completed. Assigned exercises typically allow multiple attempts and provide
immediate feedback during and after completion.

This is in stark contrast to my local University experience where everything
is single attempt with the exception of papers where a single draft submission
might be allowed.

Needless to say, I find the former far superior for learning.

------
ilaksh
Seems a good overview from a realistic institutional perspective but somewhat
strangely in my opinion lacking in terms of really progressive details.

Students should progress at their own pace in each subject. They should not be
forced to speed up or slow down in order to synchronize with arbitrary time
periods. The only reason that structure exists is because of constraints that
exist in low-tech teaching environments. In a high tech environment individual
pacing and discussion/collaboration groups organized according to current
level are possible.

Also there is no reason that students should purchase all of their courses in
one lump from an individual university. Instead they should be able to mix and
match virtual courses from different direct providers.

Also, with our current technology we could move to a finer grained system for
describing educational achievement where information about specific courses is
conveyed and even match that with an ontology covering skills and knowledge
areas used in business.

------
nmrm
> I do think, as we look at the for-profit sector, there are a lot of best
> practices there. The support systems they’ve had, the student tracking. The
> way they use capital assets.

This presupposes that these aren't present in the non-for-profit sector, which
in my experience isn't the case.

And if we're going to use outcomes as a measure, it's clear for-profits are
absurdly dysfunctional. Except:

> The way they take a much tougher cohort of students, on average, than most
> institutions.

The "we take on more difficult students" line makes no sense. With failure
rates so high, it's not at all clear that they're doing anything other than
taking on more students, failing those students, and thereby generating
unnecessary debt and pocketing the federal grant money.

More-over, favorable analyses of for-profits almost always compares for-
profits to flagship state schools or private non-profits, ignoring the class
of institutions most similar in terms of prestige and quality -- local and
regional state-run colleges and universities. Which are -- in my experience --
similarly prices and vastly superior in terms of learning community and
outcomes.

> And, so, while there are certain practices that are not good to adopt there,
> seeing the challenges they face and seeing the things the way they have done
> well, bringing that into all of education, will be important.

Yeah, but it's kind of a tautology. "Good practices are good".

Anyways, I'm interested in specific examples. Because I really don't see any
innovation per se in private higher ed. It's all stuff everyone else has been
doing for decades, but with more marketing and unfounded claims to novelty.

> I don’t believe that a measurement system should simply apply to them and
> not apply to the broader universe. And, getting those things right is very,
> very difficult.

Yeah, I'll agree that performance-based funding structures don't make sense in
education generally, and make even less sense in higher ed.

That said, it's kind of a misnomer -- if laws end up looking like what's been
proposed so far, private institutions will always have the option of not
taking federal grant money or subsidized loans.

IF performance measurement takes hold -- which it shouldn't -- I don't
understand why the public should be expected to subsidize a for-profit
industry and not have carte blanc to regulate. If you don't like the
regulations, don't take the subsidy.

~~~
crazy1van
> I don't understand why the public should be expected to subsidize a for-
> profit industry and not have carte blanc to regulate. If you don't like the
> regulations, don't take the subsidy.

I think the last thing any part of the higher education industry -- for-profit
or not -- needs is more subsidies. If we want them to cost less, we need to
take money out of them, not dump more money in.

When I refer to cost, I mean total cost, not just the bill the university
sends the student. The only thing worse than a bigger bill for a student
enrolled at the university is a bigger bill for citizens who choose to not
even attend university.

~~~
nmrm2
> I think the last thing any part of the higher education industry -- for-
> profit or not -- needs is more subsidies.

edit: some revision.

There are two forms of subsidy: direct funding for state systems, and loans.

With respect to subsidies in the form of low-interest loans, the underlying
premise of this position is both faulty and arrogant.

Talk with any student. Odds are, they are acutely aware of how much debt they
are taking on, and what that means for their life in the next 5, 10, 15 years.

The trope about cognitively dissonant art majors is an exception, not the
norm.

More to the point, the position isn't even internally consistent. if the
premise _is_ accurate (again, wrt low-interest loans), then rate hikes on
loans won't have any effect other than increased student debt and larger
profit margins for major banks.

With respect to state funding, all we need to do is look at historical data.

~~~
crazy1van
The purpose of subsidized loans is to redirect debt towards a specific area.
Society determines that people should be given preferential treatment if they
are borrowing for certain purposes and they pass laws to reflect that.
Typically these are things like higher education and homes. When this happens,
it changes the calculus of an individual -- borrowing towards these specific
purposes becomes more appealing because you get more for your money. I'm not
arguing that this is either good or bad.

However, I don't see the logic of both complaining that we spend too much on
something while at the same time advocating more subsidies for those who want
to borrow to buy more of it.

~~~
nmrm
This premise is also faulty; this isn't the calculus of most consumers of
higher education. The calculus is more like "I need a college degree to get
where I want in life. Period."

> I don't see the logic of both complaining that we spend too much on
> something while at the same time advocating more subsidies for those who
> want to borrow to buy more of it.

"we" the government, or "we" the individual consumer? It's possible for the
individual to spend too much money on something precisely because the
government isn't spending enough.

~~~
crazy1van
> "we" the government, or "we" the individual consumer?

I mean the total of all spending. Although I contend that the two really
aren't that different as government spending is just the aggregate of
individual spending on government itself.

> This premise is also faulty

You are suggesting that subsidizing something can make the sum total of all
spending on that thing go _down_? I completely disagree with that notion and I
think this is the root of our disagreement. At least we found the crux of it.

Even if neither side in the debate leaves convinced of the other side's
position, I'm convinced it was worthwhile if the debate ends knowing more
precisely where you disagree.

~~~
nmrm
> Although I contend that the two really aren't that different as government
> spending is just the aggregate of individual spending on government itself.

America has a progressive tax system, so this sort of aggregation argument is
over-simplistic.

> You are suggesting that subsidizing something can make the sum total of all
> spending on that thing go down?

Yes, absolutely. Even operating from your premises, spending more can decrease
costs.

In the case of no/low-interest loans, as long as the cost of defaults doesn't
exceed the amount saved in interest paid to banks, everyone is spending less
money on education.

Combining no/low-interest loans with increased state funding for education
significantly decreases the risk of default.

So the "right answer" to minimizing spending is just a matter of simply
arithmetic:

    
    
        C_f = Cost of state Funding
        
        C_d = Cost of Defaults
    
        B_i = Total money saved on interest payments (let's assume 5% rate with 20k load, probably higher if the entire market is unsubsidized) 
    

Then we want to maximize B_i - C_d + C_f.

Since we have some amount of state funding and some subsidized loans, it's
entirely plausible that increasing C_f could decrease C_d, because the loans
are smaller and therefore risk of default is lower. Furthermore, decreasing
C_d increases B_i since higher-interest unsubsidized loans will meet the new
demand.

Of course, there's a degenerate optimization: you can always just have zero
subsidies. Most first world countries rightly give a shit about educating the
non-independently-wealthy.

But also:

    
    
        * I don't think "minimize cost" is a wise philosophy wrt education. Nations that do this tend to be sucky places to live/work.
        * America has a progressive tax system, so the aggregate reasoning of your first response is at least disingenuous.

~~~
crazy1van
> Then we want to maximize B_i - C_d + C_f.

This completely neglects that prices and demand will change as these values
also change.

~~~
nmrm
No, it doesn't.

I thought this was clear from context, but: these are not constants. They are
functions of many, many variables, many of which are probably shared; and
probably also their dynamics are non-trivial.

For instance, changes to prices could be perfectly captured because all three
variables are functions of price, and each of them probably has at least a
first price derivative. I actually talk about this in terms of the model in my
post, so I'm not sure where you got the idea that the model can't capture
price change.

Also, demand for higher education is fairly inelastic compared to other
variables within fairly coerce regions, so sacrificing fine-grained analysis
of demand in exchange for more important variables isn't the worst exclusion.

------
misterbishop
Notice that the best universities in the country have not and will not adopt
the corporate reform "measurements" Gates proposes. The same is true of
private primary institutions.

Gates spends a lot of time talking about equality, but he's really talking
about doing more with less. The scandal is that neither side of that equation
works. Charter schools have the same or worse outcomes compared to public
schools, despite the benefit of corporate funding.

------
lukasm
"The United States has the highest dropout rate of any developed country for
kids who start a higher-ed program"

that worked out pretty well for him.

~~~
rpedela
Bill Gates is an outlier as are other famous college dropouts.

~~~
scrollaway
The funny thing about college dropouts: It's rare for a college dropout to
become obscenely successful, but conversely it is also not uncommon for
someone obscenely successful to be a college dropout.

Or heck, it's not even that uncommon for successful people as long as we're
not talking about something like lawyers (TV doesn't enter the equation,
Suits.).

I guess what I'm trying to say is, Bill Gates is an outlier in a heck of a lot
more than education. Maybe it's time to consider that "being successful" has
little to do with formal education and more to do with skills learned later in
life. Which implies that being successful at a young age requires those skills
to come earlier (which they are less likely to if you spend most of your time
in college).

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>Maybe it's time to consider that "being successful" has little to do with
formal education and more to do with skills learned later in life.

Maybe it's time to consider that "being successful" currently has little to do
with formal education or with skills, but instead has more to do with family
money.

~~~
lutusp
> Maybe it's time to consider that "being successful" currently has little to
> do with formal education or with skills, but instead has more to do with
> family money.

Consider a list of recent, spectacularly successful entrepeneurs -- Richard
Branson, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk and others. Most of them are not at all reliant
on inherited wealth, often quite the contrary. I think the "family money" idea
doesn't stand up to scrutiny, indeed in my experience those born to wealth
don't accomplish much at all.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Elon Musk: judging by the fact that he went to a traditional English "public
school" (what Americans would call a private school, actually), his family was
well-off. Went to the University of Pennsylvania.

Richard Branson: born the son of a barrister and grandson of a knighted member
of the High Court. Also attended an English public school. Exceptional for
_not_ attending university.

Steve Jobs: son of a mechanic/carpenter ( _finally_ someone blue-collar!)
and... oh no wait, an accountant who worked as a payroll clerk at one of the
first Silicon Valley high-tech companies. Attended an expensive private
college.

Bill Gates: son of lawyers, got Microsoft's first OS contract for MS-DOS
through his mother's connections to the board of IBM. Attended the University
of Washington.

Being merely well-off to start with is _also_ family money.

~~~
rpedela
In the US, universities were far more affordable when Steve Jobs, Bill Gates,
etc were that age. Harvard like other Ivy League schools was probably still
expensive, but many were not. My father (slightly older than them) was able to
pay tuition by working in a factory during the summer. He didn't need any
loans. Unfortunately that isn't possible anymore. There was a time when you
could be blue collar and still get a great education if you were willing to
work hard while not being burdened with massive debt after graduation.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Yes, fine, but my point is: pretending that these men rose to become business
magnates _despite lacking wealth and background_ is completely incorrect. Even
the lowest of them started within the professional upper-middle class (roughly
where you and I probably are), which is already _most of the way up_ the class
scale, in percentile terms.

~~~
lutusp
> Yes, fine, but my point is: pretending that these men rose to become
> business magnates despite lacking wealth and background is completely
> incorrect.

Not so, and certainly not so in the case of Steve Jobs, an orphan. Each of the
stories is of someone who certainly wouldn't have succeeded to the degree they
did without personal qualities that transcended their origins, rather than
family wealth, the original argument. Richard Branson didn't build his present
empire by buying it with his family's money -- he created it out of his wits.
Elon Musk is another story of the same kind -- it's hyperbolic to argue that
he became successful because of inherited wealth as opposed to personal
ingenuity and drive.

> Even the lowest of them started within the professional upper-middle class
> (roughly where you and I probably are), which is already most of the way up
> the class scale, in percentile terms.

But this isn't about class -- it might be about genetics, and it certainly
isn't about family money, the original offered explanation. For these stories,
class and family background are correlations, not causes.

What we're talking about here are stories of exceptional success with no
obvious cause apart from personal drive and ingenuity. They can't be dismissed
as resulting from high birth or privilege -- it would be more consistent with
logic to examine them on their self-evident merits.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
How about: They won the exploding-market lottery by being in the right place
and executing well? Just another bunch of upper-middle-class white boys who
could get into all the right clubs is another part of it.

~~~
lutusp
> Just another bunch of upper-middle-class white boys who could get into all
> the right clubs is another part of it.

It's too facile (and clearly somewhat tempting) to argue that race, or old-boy
networking, played a part. Most of these people (some of whom I have met) are
so driven that the idea of joining a club of rich white guys would seem like
torture. Some will argue that they're all Aspies anyway, thus very unlikely to
be joiners of anything.

> They won the exploding-market lottery by being in the right place and
> executing well?

That makes more sense -- the role of blind chance. When I wrote Apple Writer
for the Apple II in 1979, at the time I didn't fully appreciate the vacuum in
which I was working, and how my program would seem more remarkable than it
was, simply by being the only one.

------
aantix
>In 2013, people with four-year college degrees earned 98

>percent more per hour, on average, than people without

>degrees

Wouldn't a more appropriate comparison be to compare the earnings of those
that could have went to college but opted not to vs those that have completed
college?

~~~
sokoloff
An even more perfect comparison would be between people of precisely the same
intellect, background, and work ethic.

At some point, you have to make comparisons with the high-volume and
reasonably high-fidelity data that you do have rather than wishing for more
perfect data that you'll never have.

~~~
aantix
>At some point, you have to make comparisons with the >high-volume and
reasonably high-fidelity data that you do >have rather than wishing for more
perfect data that you'll >never have.

Certain personality types complete college (fairly disciplined). Are colleges
taking a disproportionate amount of credit for the career success for the
people that would have been more likely to succeed anyways(with or without)
college?

------
ap22213
Funny he doesn't mention inbloom, in which in invested 100-170 Million [0][1]

[0]: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-
sheet/wp/2014/04/...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-
sheet/wp/2014/04/21/100-million-gates-funded-student-data-project-ends-in-
failure/)

[1]: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/03/student-database-
ga...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/03/student-database-gates-
foundation_n_2800684.html)

------
misterbishop
Having wounded public education through corporate reform measures, Gates now
turns his gaze to higher education.

There's so much un-examined ideology in this piece, it's incredible.

RAISE TAXES.

------
danielweber
I can't page down with my keyboard until after I click on the image (which I
was reluctant to do because my mouse cursor changes which suggests it is a
hyperlink that will take me away from the article). Can Gates not afford a web
designer?

