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The Higher Education Bubble
"I was lied to!"
"It's not fair!"
"I can't find a job!"
These are some of the cries emanating from the young, hipster-occupied OccupyWallStreet® crowd who bemoan the lack of high-paying, low-commitment - awesome - jobs available to those who earn Baccalaureates from prestigious universities in subjects like Post-Modern Art History of Feminist Thought, Theory & Realization, with minors in Yoga or Grievance Mongering. Let's be honest. Most of the iPad/iPhone/iFleeResponsibility-using "protesters" seem more like the type of people that sipped fair-trade-organic-hemp-milk-cappuccinos at the café on the NYC-based sitcom Friends, than those suffering under debilitating and deadly poverty.
Beneath the vain and precocious demands of young Americans shouting, "Forgive all student debt NOW! Even though I'm the one who voluntarily took out the loans!" who have grown up during some of the most peaceful and prosperous years that the world and America has ever seen, lay one little morsel of truth. These young people are right to say were lied to. Those promulgating the lies were not private banks, rich people, companies or evil capitalist pigs. On the contrary, the people telling the lies that have left so many young people worried about their futures are the same people that are inciting them to "smash" the system today.
From little kids to undergrads, America's youth were fed a lie that a college degree automatically made them employable, successful, wealthy, beautiful, fit, famous, and fulfilled. They were taught that it didn't matter what degrees they graduated with because having that UNIVERSITY APPROVED stamp on their curriculum vitae's (résumé's are so nineties) was enough to open all the gilded doors, not only to an awesome job, but to adulthood and self-actualization. What these pied pipers neglected to tell young people was that an art degree, coddling, and university imposed self-esteem wasn't worth $200,000 of debt. The "everyone must attend college" crowd promised students the moon while telling them that it wouldn't cost them a penny.
You see, over the years there has been a consistent drum beat by ideologues on the left that everyone must attend college, racking up one, two, three higher degrees, and that all of this must be made available for cheap - or even better, for "free" - to everyone, including those that may not want it. Trade schools and traditional blue-collar jobs were discouraged with the insinuation that those jobs could never actually satisfy anyone and that no one could really want to work in those industries for their entire lives. Due to this incessant push[U1] , the value of a college degree quickly inflated beyond its actual worth, meaning the value of that special piece of paper must come crashing down at some point.
We've seen this same process unfold recently. Shortsighted activists advocating for lofty public policy which is set in place by self-interested politicians and bureaucrats, leading to excessive government interference and a distortion of the market. In other words, the bubble forms, the bubble pops. This is exactly what occurred with the housing market, and we all saw how that turned out.
On top of incredibly stupid decisions being made by politicians, shockingly bad choices are made every day by university administrations across the country. While public policy contributes to the increased cost and the decreased valuation of a college degree, university administrators are spending revenue in unfathomable ways. There appears to be no prioritization of funding as university bureaucracies grow larger every year. They will fire math, science, and engineering professors, necessarily cutting those classes, citing a shortage of funding. At the same time, administrators will increase bureaucratic departments like the infamous "diversity-multicultural" offices. Who do you think is more likely to help one of those college graduates camping out near Wall Street prepare for a job in the real world, a "vice chancellor for equity, diversity, and inclusion," or a math professor?
The higher education bubble may already be in the process of bursting, and the only way to recover quickly and prevent this from happening again is to make major reforms. These reforms, however, must not follow the model of so-called "reforms" implemented in the wake of the housing crisis, i.e. we need less government intervention in these markets, not more. Not only do we need to reform the system and how students pay for college, but we also need to change the culture around higher education and the expectations that everyone must go to college. We need to end the delusional obsession with nonacademic offices that do nothing to prepare future generations of Americans for real life.
If you find yourself occupying somewhere recently, check out the SBS discussion about higher education and pass the link on to your tent-mates. And then you might want to go occupy a seat at a trade school and learn some real skills.
Filed Under : Higher Education