
After Decades of Growth, Colleges Find It’s Survival of the Fittest - cs702
https://www.wsj.com/articles/after-decades-of-growth-colleges-find-its-survival-of-the-fittest-1519209001
======
Pigo
I've been in serious debate with myself over whether to encourage my son to go
to college when it is time. I guess it depends on what field I see him become
interested in. I could provide enough resources for him to learn enough to get
an entry level job, if he chooses tech. But I guess I still have that romantic
notion of him getting a well-rounded education in many subjects that I
couldn't help him with, making friends, and meeting interesting professors. At
least I could help him find a good college. I was the first person in my
family to even graduate high-school, so I was flying blind.

Besides the notion that so many jobs expected it when I was starting out, I'm
not really sure what good it did for me. Put it this way, I couldn't even tell
you where my diploma is. But once a month I still go online and pay for it.

~~~
uberman
You want your child to go to college because:

1) The average run of the mill degree results in twice the earnings and half
the unemployment of those with just high school.

2) The average run of the mill degree results in a $900k lift in lifetime
earnings (for men) over a high school diploma. The lift for women is not quite
that much but that might have something to do with the types of degrees that
each get.

These numbers are averages so if your child completes a stem degree from say
MIT, the lift in lifetime earnings is likely quite a bit more than that.

Want more? Check out :
[https://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm](https://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm)

~~~
wojt_eu
This shows correlation but not causation. Hypothetically: people with certain
background (social class) and traits (IQ) are more likely to go to college,
and they would fare as well or better without college. I'd be very interested
in stats of lifetime earnings difference that was corrected for selection
bias.

~~~
uberman
Would a 1% sample of the US population that included level of education and
earnings do the trick for you?

[https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/...](https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_pums_csv_2016&prodType=document)

It is not going to have variables like "Social status of your parents" or "IQ"
but it does have a rather extensive list of demographic variables to control
for.

Let me know what you uncover.

~~~
the_watcher
Sample size doesn't impact the fact that you shouldn't draw causal conclusions
from merely correlative data.

~~~
uberman
Then perhaps you might want to check out some twins studies:

[http://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/causal_educ_earnings.pd...](http://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/causal_educ_earnings.pdf)

and/or

[http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/19/education/twins-study-
show...](http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/19/education/twins-study-shows-school-
is-sound-investment.html)

I'm going to strongly encourage my kids to go to college.

Frankly if you/anyone is not convinced that higher education leads to
increased earnings then by all means forgo college and keep your kids at home.

My kids will have plenty of competition for jobs from those with higher
degrees from around the world as it is.

~~~
the_watcher
Pointing out that you should not draw causal conclusions from correlative data
does not mean that I would not encourage my kids from going to college. It
means that you should not conclude that going to any college _causes_ better
outcomes. It also doesn't mean that you should conclude that going to college
_does not cause_ better outcomes.

~~~
uberman
I agree. In fact, I pointed out that the data set I referenced was unlikely to
include items like "Parental Social Class" and "IQ" specifically for these
reason.

------
htormey
“”You’re going to see, over the next five years, a real increase in the number
of schools in serious trouble,” Dr. Vedder said. “A degree from a top school
is a still a pretty good signaling device [to employers]. It means you’re
smart and hardworking. But a degree from one of these lower schools doesn’t
mean much of anything.”“

Any discussion about third level education needs to take into account price
and hence ROI.

I’m really surprised that this article doesn’t talk about the high rate at
which US college tuition costs increased from 2008 to present. Especially for
law schools. The closest it gets is the following paragraph:

“But in the past few years, the winds have shifted. The birthrate fell, the
pay advantage for college graduates over high-school graduates declined,
states cut $9 billion in funding to public colleges and student debt soared.”

Tuition in the US has gone up a lot while wages for many jobs have stayed
relatively flat:

“In during the 1980-81 school year, the average college tuition at private
universities was $9,882. By 2014-15, that number exploded to $26,740.

For public universities, the tuition figures went from $2,196 to $8,534”

[https://businessinsider.com/this-chart-shows-college-
tuition...](https://businessinsider.com/this-chart-shows-college-tuition-
growth-since-1980-2016-8)

This is the main reason why colleges are struggling in the US.

------
aomurphy
This has been predicted in higher ed for the past ~2 decades. It's relatively
easy to look at the number of students in the pipeline, and you can see there
were two big peaks in the last half century: baby boomers in the 60s-70s, and
their children in the 90s-2000s. They managed to keep the boom going a little
longer in the late 2000s with increased international enrollment, but it's
over now (peak enrollment was 2010).

the other big trend has been that colleges in the US are disproportionately
concentrated in a broad arc from New England through the Midwest for
historical reasons, but young people in the US are increasingly concentrated
in the South and West. I suspect we'll see a die off of lots of the small
colleges that really only appeal locally throughout those areas. It's going to
be pretty painful, look at what happened with Sweet Briar, which just managed
to stay open (and admittedly suffered from another big trend: the death of
women's colleges).

The best source for all of this (as with most news about how universities are
run in the USA) is the Chronicle of Higher Education.

------
purple-again
More on point with the article, I hate when information is delivered like this
without any context. Less than 20% of schools are failing? Wow thats...I don't
know what that is. Whats the median for failing colleges per...decade? How
long does a college usually take to fail?

------
purple-again
Woah, I was all ready to come back here and discuss the article when I
figured, what the hell lets give the comments section on the WSJ a chance.

Maybe I'm out of touch in my little tech/business cross section of the world,
but where did that overwhelming hate for higher education come from? Nearly
all of those comments are...not making very logical arguments worth discussing
either.

~~~
CalRobert
I have little love for an institution that profits off dreams and naivete and
destroys lives with un-dischargeable debt. But hey, at least the football
coach is rich and the gym is fancy! Also in retrospect I learned almost
nothing useful in college. Loads on my own time, though.

Also, how the hell is college so damn expensive when the people teaching
classes are paid 12 bucks an hour because they're "adjuncts"?? where tf is the
money going?? (see above)

Exception: my local junior college was great, and reasonably priced. If you
want to do uni, go to jc and then to europe.

Oh. Also there's a whole university cargo cult. It made some baby boomers
wealthy so obviously the solution is for EVERYONE to go to college.

~~~
tenpies
> Also, how the hell is college so damn expensive when the people teaching
> classes are paid 12 bucks an hour because they're "adjuncts"?? where tf is
> the money going?? (see above)

A non-trivial portion goes to legal expenses and risk management. It started
with the concept of in loco parentis (in the place of the parent). University
students stopped being adults and became children.

Obama's interpretation of Title IX was also catastrophic for expenses. All of
a sudden you had to set up your own internal pseudo-court system and have an
entire mechanism for handling even the most dubious of accusations. These
things are not free.

This has snowballed into other pseudo-legal aspects and the social justice
movement is just monumentally expensive to deal with. It's not a question of
if a #metoo incident happens on your campus, it's a matter when. What steps
did you take to prevent it? What staff do you have in place to react?

And the worst is that once you've hired these staff they're there forever.
There will never will a point of mission accomplished, perfect equity, or an
environment sufficiently free of even the smallest of nano-harassments for a
university to rid itself of this burden.

Don't get me wrong, there's a country club and sports team aspect to a lot of
university expenses, but the primary purpose of most universities is not
education, research, or anything along those lines - it's to avoid getting
sued into oblivion.

~~~
davidmr
I’m sorry, but without some sort of citation from a reputable source, I just
don’t buy this as a contributing factor at all and call BS.

I spent years as a student and working at a large research University and
let’s be very, very generous and say that there were 30 people detailed to
this “#metoo incident” mitigation and action squad. Of the thousands and
thousands of other nonfaculty staff payroll; of the many millions the library
system pays for journal access alone, let alone special collections and
acquisition; of the cost of running the steam for heating the buildings, the
computing infrastructure; etc., etc. how non-trivial do you expect this Title
IV portion to be?

------
E765
No blocker:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20180221130021/https://www.wsj.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180221130021/https://www.wsj.com/articles/after-
decades-of-growth-colleges-find-its-survival-of-the-fittest-1519209001)

~~~
salmonfamine
Not sure what the HN position is on commenting bots, but can we automate this
process? Someone has to do it every single time a NYT/WSJ/WAPO article gets
posted.

~~~
Yhippa
Agreed, the web links haven't been working for me for a while.

------
brightball
Did not expect to see my Tigers featured when I clicked on the link. Clemson
has been exploding over the past 20 years. It’s a special place.

The former president set a goal to become a top 20 public university. At the
time, Clemson was around 70. I want to say it took close to 9 years but they
finally did it. That mission directed a whole host of changes around the
school to improve.

Some things were university wide like the "communications across the
curriculum" program, that eventually developed into the Pearce Center
([http://pearce.caah.clemson.edu/programs/waccac/](http://pearce.caah.clemson.edu/programs/waccac/)).
That primarily came from businesses telling the school that they were getting
graduates who were technically sound but had difficulty working with non-
technical people.

They embraced the research focus of the university with the Creative Inquiry
program ([https://www.clemson.edu/centers-institutes/watt/creative-
inq...](https://www.clemson.edu/centers-institutes/watt/creative-inquiry/)). I
can't remember the name of the program, but at one point part of the
curriculum was to have cross-major teams assisting with different professor's
research projects on campus. You might have an agriculture professor with a
team consisting of students from psychology, computer engineering, accounting,
architecture, etc.

They developed the Clemson ICAR facility
([http://cuicar.com/](http://cuicar.com/)) in Greenville to capitalize on the
automotive presence there along with undergrad to doctoral programs on
automotive engineering...where the students actually design and build a car
([https://jalopnik.com/this-mini-concept-car-was-developed-
by-...](https://jalopnik.com/this-mini-concept-car-was-developed-by-
engineering-stud-1819506872)).

Also moved the entire MBA program to downtown Greenville to be more accessible
to people working. Clemson is very rural, so that was a challenge.

Exciting times at the school. :-)

It even include going as far as an academic review committee for football
recruits. It blew up around 2007 when the committee told the coaches they
couldn’t recruit a top wide receiver who then turned around and went to
UNC...years later we found out why.

------
avs733
The bottom tier called out in this article are failing, above all else,
because they lack a sense of place and purpose and instead make decisions
marked by insecurity.

I have a whole lot to say on this issue so I'll try and keep it
briefish...context, I'm finishing up my PhD in Engineering Education at a 'top
tier' university. I also have a BS and MS in an engineering discipline.

Several friends in my program, as well as myself, have been applying for
faculty jobs this year. Two of us have experience as technical founders, as
working engineers, have prior experience teaching engineering, and now have
PhDs in how to teach engineering well.

More than one _teaching focused_ university has specifically told us that our
degrees in teaching engineering are DISQUALIFYING to teach engineering at
their schools. They will only take PhDs in that field of engineering. Those
students, because of the nature of modern research universities, are often
explicitly discouraged from developing teaching expertise - it distracts from
the research their advisers need accomplished to get tenure there. So you have
schools that produce future faculty discouraging them from getting the
preparation needed for the majority of faculty jobs, and the schools that do
the majority of teaching not interested in educational expertise.

One department head specifically told me during a phone interview they didn't
see how a degree in how to teach engineering would be relevant to what they
do. That school advertises that it's focused entirely on undergraduate
engineering education, does not have graduate students, and rewards tenure
almost entirely based on teaching performance. I pointed out that I had two
degree in their discipline, worked as an engineer in the field for years, had
already been teaching engineering before I returned to graduate school, and
went back to school specifically to learn how to teach better. Silence. The
last person they hired (who has become a friend/mentee of mine) went straight
through from their BS to MS to PhD in a single engineering discipline. No
teaching experience and no industry experience - but a PhD in the field.

The trend there doesn't just apply to teaching, it applies to research and to
broader visions of what a university can or should be.

Really, summarized, the issues we are seeing are issues of strategy - but that
is a dirty word at universities. The schools have all, teaching as well as
research focused, managed to entirely divorce Schein's three levels of culture
from each other. They have artifacts they use for promotion, tenure, and
measuring the school's activity. Many have ceased to try and argue those
artifacts are linked to the values that they espouse. They simply state they
are linked and then stigmatize anyone who points out otherwise.

At many schools, the faculty pathologically fear losing input on governance
yet are unwilling to contribute to running of the university in a meaningful
way. They complain about perpetually rising tenure standards, but they are the
ones enforcing those standards. Trying to engage in these discussions is a
dirty word because that would require them to confront things outside of their
bubble. Trying to individualize isn't within the capacity of the faculty
because ongoing disciplinary ossification, narrowing, and inlooking. It also
isn't in the capacity of the outside managers they bring in to run the
'business' side - because they don't have the foggiest understanding of how
education works, and get stuck on traditional metrics for business success and
solutions that prevent any real change.

Its easy to blame sports, and they sure don't help, but the culture of the way
universities are run - lacking in any reflection, self-awareness, or broader
world view. It isn't complying with title IX, but thats a convenient
scapegoat. It isn't building nice dorms, that's a symptom not a cause. Each
school looks up the ladder of rankings and then does their damnedest to make
themselves look like the school above them. In an attempt to 'compete' they
all actively commodify themselves.

As an academic I find it sad. As an engineer/entrepreneur I find it
frustrating. As a citizen I find it actively dangerous. In the broadest sense,
these aren't just problems of education, they are problems of a society that
(on the whole) seeks a black and white understanding of the world and seeks an
education system that reproduces what it thinks it wants, rather than what it
could be or might need later.

~~~
urlwolf
Here's a hypothesis... When you have top school's materials online, it makes
no sense to go to a second tier, or n-tier school other than for the
networking. And by definition a 'n-tier' school is not going to be all that
great at providing networking opportunities.

Would you take a machine learning course from an unknown, likely outdated
professor when you could listen to Andrew Ng for free?

What the internet has brought is a 'winner takes all' for education.

~~~
ForHackernews
Counterpoint: Ng's Coursera machine learning course is outdated now, unlikely
to ever be updated, and focuses on applications of old algorithms without
teaching the underlying fundamentals.

~~~
avs733
appeal to theory: The issue with education is rarely the currency of content.
To assert that models education primarily as an information transfer process,
which it isn't...or at least shouldn't be.

------
foodislove
This makes sense. With average enrollment going up at the top, with the market
growth in applicants less than that, eventually the bottom will lose out.
Maybe there is nostalgia for some colleges be it history, alums, or what not.
At the end of the day, students vote with their feet and if a college is not
good enough, then it should go out of business.

------
polskibus
I wonder how much of these circumstances stem from the fact that people do not
want to have children as much as they used to, concentrating on their own
needs? Perhaps it would be in the best interest of colleges to somehow show
people that it is possible to have children and an interesting career?

