<p>A very good overview of the current crisis of American higher education:</p>
<p>[Faulty</a> Towers: The Crisis in Higher Education | The Nation](<a href=“http://www.thenation.com/article/160410/faulty-towers-crisis-higher-education]Faulty”>http://www.thenation.com/article/160410/faulty-towers-crisis-higher-education)</p>
<p>Thanks for the link. Excellent article. Sad, though, as it’s hard to imagine anything reversing the trend that the author describes.</p>
<p>Well put together article. The situation has been such for 40 years that I have been aware of it, so it’s not a new problem. Graduate school demand is not driven by the jobs that it yields though students/families hope for that end. It is more for a place to go, something to do right after college. I dispute the author’s statement that so many of those who end up going for further studies are doing so at the sacrifice of earning huge amounts of money. I have been very much in the community of several highly ranked research universities, and it’s the rare bird that is truly a catch for research in a field. Many of those graduate school bound can’t find a decent paying job. They aren’t giving up much of anything. In fact, the GS options is a life saver for them, a face saving option at very least. So nice to say you are studying for your Doctorate in something, much better than selling sweaters at Casual Corner or working to become an asst manager at a Sonic. Yes, those are often the better alternatives as many kids end up on parents’ sofas with no job. </p>
<p>I know several top students, surprisingly from a variety of schools, not just the most selective, highly ranked who got very good research/teaching/work positions at some major universities. These paid living wages, had benefits and are good jobs in social sciences, humanities as well as in some tech fields. I didn’t know this possibility existed. None of them are pursuing higher ed though they can take courses on a space available basis, but they are NOT grad students in any program at the U. Clearly this is taking away from grad student job opportunities in fields where jobs and funds are already scarce.</p>
<p>Very dear friend’s D has been accepted to a PHD program after two years at this job. Going from $45K a year to barely making it at a top university as a grad student. Wants to do it. Maybe she’ll be one of the lucky ones to get a job in an overrepresentd field, What I don’t get was how a job like hers at that level exists with just a Social Sciences BA? Something just doesn’t add up. </p>
<p>I think the grad programs exist because their is a money train supporting them, and a steady line of passengers to join the programs and they are dirt cheap labor in exchange for that PHD. The degree is what is coveted along with a high faluting thing to be doing for those years getting it, not to mention doing something one enjoys rather than pounding salt to make money.</p>
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<p>Seems like a reasonable explanation for the increase in graduate school enrollment in civil engineering in 2009-2010. Better to spend the industry downturn getting a master’s degree instead of the unemployment line…</p>
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<p>What does this mean for those who can’t get into graduate school? My current plan in case I got rejected from all the schools I applied to was to get some job in software, or maybe become a high school math teacher, but I guess even that’s not possible? This is kind of scary because I always assumed getting into grad school was really hard.</p>
<p>I also suggest reading this book too.
[Amazon.com:</a> Higher Education?: How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids—and What We Can Do About It (9780805087345): Andrew Hacker, Claudia Dreifus: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Higher-Education-Colleges-Wasting-Kids/dp/0805087346]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Higher-Education-Colleges-Wasting-Kids/dp/0805087346)</p>
<p>It is a good article. Much of the article is about the uselessness of getting a PhD in non-technical fields when the number of good teaching jobs at universities is so small.</p>
<p>“From 1991 to 2003, the number of full-time faculty members increased by 18 percent. The number of part-timers increased by 87 percent—to almost half the entire faculty.”</p>
<p>I am the exception to the rule. I just finished a PhD in a social science and got a tenure track job to teach at a good state flagship. There are some things to avoid wasting your twenties in a PhD and not get a job: I have seen prospective graduate students applying to grad programs without looking at their placement records (where and how many of their students get jobs). That should be your FIRST priority when selecting a PhD program, not location and not whether it’s an Ivy, sorry to be blunt. There are many PhD programs in my field that haven’t placed anyone in years! Yet, undergrads keep applying there :-S If you get accepted to such a program, it is worth it to wait a year and reapply.</p>
<p>There are others, but there are some jobs in the Social Sciences but you have to be smart about applying.</p>
<p>I’m still having a hard time understanding what the “crisis” is…as cpt notes, this ain’t news.</p>
<p>Moreover, how is it is different that the law schools that are collecting $200k from gullible liberal arts majors only to spit them out three years later with a <50% chance of obtaining a job that will pay enough to pay off the loans. At least PhD programs can be fully funded.</p>
<p>How is this PhD crisis any different that graduating Russian Lit majors with zero chance of a job after a BA? (Actually, not really fair since Casual Corner is hiring in our neighborhood now, as is McDonald’s).</p>
<p>That to me is a “real” crisis…</p>
<p>The article has quite a lot of information that I have wondered about, but was obviously too lazy to research myself.</p>
<p>This is something I have long suspected:</p>
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<p>Re: Post #9: “I’m still having a hard time understanding what the “crisis” is…as cpt notes, this ain’t news.”</p>
<p>In the bigger picture of things, the crisis is that our system of public higher education is being destroyed. As the article’s author wrote:
"Our system of public higher education is one of the great achievements of American civilization. In its breadth and excellence, it has no peer. It embodies some of our nations highest ideals: democracy, equality, opportunity, self-improvement, useful knowledge and collective public purpose…Public higher education is a bulwark against hereditary privilege and an engine of social mobility. </p>
<p>Now the system is in danger of falling into ruin. Public higher education was essential to creating the mass middle class of the postwar decadesand with it, a new birth of political empowerment and human flourishing. The defunding of public higher education has been essential to its slow destruction. </p>
<p>But it was not only the postwar middle class that public higher education helped create; it was the postwar prosperity altogether. Knowledge, again, is our most important resource. States that balance their budgets on the backs of their public universities are not eating their seed corn; theyre trampling it into the mud."</p>
<p>Maybe some people don’t see that as a crisis, but I see public education as a public good. The current situation, as the author stated, “is not a problem; it is a calamity.”</p>
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<p>"Moreover, how is it is different that the law schools that are collecting $200k from gullible liberal arts majors only to spit them out three years later with a <50% chance of obtaining a job that will pay enough to pay off the loans. At least PhD programs can be fully funded.</p>
<p>How is this PhD crisis any different that graduating Russian Lit majors with zero chance of a job after a BA? (Actually, not really fair since Casual Corner is hiring in our neighborhood now, as is McDonald’s)."</p>
<p>Yes, I agree those things are a problem, for sure.
I assume by “gullable liberal arts majors”, you mean humanities and social science majors. No one should be taking out huge loans for any major, especially in those fields. The problem isn’t limited to your narrowly-defined “liberal arts major”; there are plenty of BS-level science majors who are under-employed and unemployed, too. And, the problem extends to those with PhDs in sciences, as well. As for those stereotypical “Russian Lit majors”, in part, the situations of those persons reflects the current economic situation; the PhD crisis reflects structural changes in academia that occurred over the past 30-40 years.</p>
<p>BTW, the article is about much more than just the glut of PhDs.</p>
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<p>Perhaps, but the first page is nothing but graduate education…indeed, the article doesn’t even switch gears until the bottom of the third page…and even then the author uses the “crisis” in public education to lobby for more tenure track positions…</p>
<p>Perhaps the better “crisis” to address is the inner city HS drop out rate. If not, the author is in fact arguing for an elitist position (spend more education dollars on the already-educated), of which he disdains in the article.</p>
<p>bookmarked</p>
<p>“and even then the author uses the “crisis” in public education to lobby for more tenure track positions…”</p>
<p>Well, I suppose the author does lobby for that. He also lobbies for continued support of social science and humanities, for cutting administrative bloat and excessive extracurricular spending, in favor of continued knowledge production, against the shift from need-based aid vs. merit-based aid, etc.</p>
<p>“Perhaps the better “crisis” to address is the inner city HS drop out rate. If not, the author is in fact arguing for an elitist position (spend more education dollars on the already-educated), of which he disdains in the article.”</p>
<p>I, too, would agree that the inner city HS drop-out rate is a crisis that needs to be addressed. As the author of the article noted:
“There is a large, public debate right now about primary and secondary education. There is a smaller, less public debate about higher education. What I fail to understand is why they arent the same debate.”</p>
<p>The author’s article is about higher education. Just because he wrote an article on higher education instead of elementary and secondary education, it doesn’t mean that he’s arguing for an elitist position. I think it’s clear that he is in favor a a more egalitarian, less social stratified higher education system that promotes greater opportunity and social mobility. Yes, I suppose more tenure track positions involves spending more education dollars on the already-educated, as you put it, but this also works in favor of smaller class sizes, increased college completion rates, etc. Again, the PhD glut is only part of what he writes about.</p>
<p>As I stated earlier, I though the article was well written but there was not new idea in it. I’ve read the exact some stuff too many times.</p>
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<p>cpt, normally I agree with many of your posts, but not this time. </p>
<p>For example,</p>
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<p>Where is data to support the fact that graduation rates are a function of class size (which a well-written article would reference)? Where is the data to show that faculty “accessibility” (whatever that means) is related to grad rates? Ditto, the use of adjuncts and “contingent instructors”?</p>
<p>Yeah, I get where 'budget-ralated" issues affect grad rates, but it ain’t got much to do with tenure track positions, and if it does, where is THAT research? </p>
<p>IMO, grad rate has nearly everything to do with increasing undergrad costs – (due in part to tenure track positions?) – of education and the declining financial aid. Many, many students need to work 20+ hours per week to buy books, pay tuition and help out the family. Thus, they take a minimal load which means that graduating in four years is impossible. </p>
<p>IMO, to improve “social mobility” we nee to fix K12 – where it really matters-- but also address need-based aid. Just think of the impact to higher education ‘budgets’ if more students could graduate out in four years.</p>
<p>And, also, what percentage of high school graduates are going to college these days? Maybe the percentage of college graduates has to do with the number of students? I think the writer is drawing his own unprovable conclusions, which might have something else to say about tenure, though not exactly what he was hoping it would say.</p>
<p>I do believe the administrative bloat has gotten to be extremely expensive at these schools, but I don’t necessarily believe that somebody deserves a tenure track position simply because they got on a PhD track. </p>
<p>Of course these PhD’s want tenure. They want to teach less and have more free time to do research, or take a sabatical (I mean, really? A sabbatical? From what century?) </p>
<p>It’s an appealing life, the old style life of the old professor. Of cousre the old style professor didn’t make nearly the money the old style professor makes today. The whole system is from an old era when few went to college for an “education” and most people went to work. Now, they want to continue the old “education” on the same people who used to “go to work,” and people are willing to pay for training…engineering, med school, accounting, computer science, things that are useful. The post-modern equivalent of the manufacturing job. Most universities are part trade school, part institution of abstract higher learning. The students who go for their trade school education aren’t going to value the humanities teacher to the point of thinking they deserve a tenure track. </p>
<p>Even though nobody wants to admit it, it’s a business, and you have your clientelle. </p>
<p>If you can please your clientelle, you will have a living in any field. But, professors have to earn it like everyone else these days. They aren’t “above” it all, even if they believe their PhD puts them there. It doesn’t. </p>
<p>Starbucks, however, does have benefits.</p>
<p>I agree with bluebayou that the article does offer support for the claim that lower graduation rates are tied to class size, class availability, and faculty accessibility. It’s possible these factors have had an impact, but it seems to me there has been an accompanying increase in tutoring and remedial services, such as writing centers and math tutors in dorms etc., compared to what was available back in the '70’s and '80’s. One would think that fact would have helped to counteract the problem of faculty accessibility.</p>
<p>Frankly, from what I’ve seen around here, students are taking longer to graduate because they are lazy, spoiled, and entitled. They tell their parents “I just need a break,” and take off a year to work part-time and rest. Some of them go on fancy community service or personal enlightenment trips for a year. They work on an organic farm or live on a commune or some such thing. They take lighter course loads–not so they can work, but so they can party and hang at the beach. Some are so busy partying on their parents’ dime, they fail classes and have to retake them. And many arrive at college already behind academically (due to laziness, poor high school educations, or the fact that had this been our generation students of that caliber wouldn’t have even attempted college) and need a year or so of remedial courses before they can start college work.</p>
<p>“Where is data to support the fact that graduation rates are a function of class size (which a well-written article would reference)? Where is the data to show that faculty “accessibility” (whatever that means) is related to grad rates?”</p>
<p>The author of the article summarized many of the current challenges impacting American higher education, which he characterized as a “crisis”. He published it in “The Nation”. He didn’t write a data-based research study for a peer-reviewed journal. </p>
<p>Bluebayou, you mentioned a number of other factors that affect graduate rates. i don’t think the article’s author would disagree with you on the impact of those factors. I, also don’t think he attributed graduation rates solely to use of contingent instructors. </p>
<p>I also don’t thin he would disagree with your comments about fixing K-12 education or need-based aid. He specifically mentioned those things, though he did not make extensive comments about those particular factors.</p>
<p>Poetgrl, where did you read that the author stated that someone deserves a tenure track position just because they “got on a PhD track.” The author never said that. You also don’t understand the purpose of tenure. It was designed to protect academic freedom. The system isn’t without flaws, but academic freedom continues to need protection.</p>
<p>As for your incoherent comments about the old style life of the old style professor, one hardly knows where to begin. Suffice it to say that you have some fairy-tale picture of the life of college professors. After pursuing a PhD for 4-10 years, if a new PhD can get a tenure-track job (not a sure thing), it takes another 6-8 years to come up for tenure, and not everyone will get tenure. In the time before coming up for tenure, the professor needs to keep up with his/her field (often with many out-of-pocket expenses to do so), conduct research and publish, teach, advise, and perform other forms of university and community service. Its not exactly a stress-free occupation. Its also not a 9-5, 40 hour/week job. Not too many jobs have such a long preparation and probationary period. If the new PhD does not find a tenure-track job, he essentially has to piece together a sufficient number of teaching assignments, sometimes at one school, sometimes at several, schools (or a series of short-term postdoc research positions for those in the sciences) in order to scratch out a living. He may not have an office, benefits, time to do any research, etc. In either case, your fantasy image of the academic life is far from the reality.</p>
<p>Granted many students pursuing vocational education wont value the humanities. What has that got to do with tenure?</p>
<p>Even though nobody wants to admit it, it’s a business. Thats part of the problem. Of course, I wouldnt claim that American business sets any standard of competence, ethics, or public interest. Can you?</p>
<p>They aren’t “above” it all, even if they believe their PhD puts them there. It doesn’t.
No one said that it does. If this more stuff that you read into the article, but isnt actually there?</p>
<p>GFG, </p>
<p>Yes, I would agree there are some lazy, spoiled, and entitled students who go to school to party; who fail their classes; and, who are not adequately prepared for college. Weve all seen such students.</p>
<p>I think in the bigger picture of things, the concern is with those hard-working, motivated, and qualified students who cannot afford to attend their public universities, and the middle class families who struggle to send their kids to colleges and who cant qualify for assistance.</p>
<p>Some of them go on fancy community service or personal enlightenment trips for a year. They work on an organic farm or live on a commune or some such thing.
Huh? Where did you come up with this? Its clearly not the reality for those students I mention above.</p>
<p>One reason I say what I do is that many businesses in our state have given up on finding reliable American-born young people to work in seasonal enterprises (Six Flags, resort hotels, shops, and restaurants) and now hire from Eastern Europe and other countries overseas. The area landscapers hire Mexican adults. None of my son’s or daughter’s high school friends worked after their senior year of high school (they wanted to enjoy their last summer of freedom), and these were not all rich kids. The adults at D’s place of employment for the summer after senior year told her they were very surprised she wanted to work, as that was unusual among kids her age. The professor at D’s college for whom she will work this summer, told her she was ambitious. She was confused as to why. He explained that many students her age don’t want to work their first summer after starting college. Kids these days seem to think they “deserve” to take it easy.</p>
<p>Some of my S’s boyhood acquaintances are taking a fifth year to graduate. According to their parents, it was because they hadn’t properly planned their schedule to ensure timely graduation, had unsuccessfully tried to sign up for classes after the deadline, had failed classes, or were generally “having too much fun.” Some of these students were used to mommy and daddy holding their hands, and when the responsibility fell on them to sign up for classes in a proper sequence, some of them simply didn’t. Yes, it’s true they couldn’t get the classes they needed to graduate, but that was not a function of university overcrowding or few tenured faculty, but poor executive function on their part. The hardworking, disciplined kids we know did not seem to have a problem graduating from the state flagship on time. Son also knows a few kids who took a year off in the middle of college to find themselves. The mother of one such student told me I was lucky, because she couldn’t imagine my son doing anything but work hard. Two girls on D’s college team are taking a leave of absence at present to “get their heads together.” </p>
<p>I don’t know if this is happening around the country, but the whole concept of “failure to launch” seems to be indicating some kind of a trend. The economy is not to blame for all of it, I don’t think. Some people just have an over-inflated idea of their worth and what kind of job suits them. A friend’s college senior son had gone on quite a few interviews and doesn’t like any of the jobs. Too many hours, too long of a commute, you name it. Kids are spoiled.</p>