The Faculty Lounges: And Other Reasons Why You Won’t Get The College Education You Pay For
In the first chapters of The Faculty Lounges, we learn that professors get tenure by conforming to established patterns of thought and then colleges pay tenured faculty long after they stop being effective. This is not news and the author explains that tenure in the old (pre-1994) days, when there was a mandatory retirement age of 60 or 65, was rather different from today’s tenure. Riley is a good journalist and digs up the most embarrassing episodes of tenured professors behaving badly, e.g., Northwestern’s Arthur Butz, an EE teacher, venturing into Holocaust denial.
Riley asserts that colleges today are handing out a lot more vocational degrees and professors of “security and protective services” shouldn’t need tenure protection for controversial ideas compared to traditional liberal arts faculty. I’m not sure that this is true. A professor of criminology might opine that the War on Drugs could not be won and should be abandoned, thus attracting the wrath of politicians who continue to appropriate funds to fight the War. By contrast, what would a professor of Ancient Greek be likely to say that would offend today’s powerful elite?
Riley decries the valorization of progress and novelty. She introduces the subject of debasement of standards by noting that Thomas Friedman addressed a group of 4000 university administrators by telling them to ignore “concrete outcomes like grades and test scores”. Teachers should instead try to install passion and curiosity in students because “the job students will hold probably doesn’t even exist today”. How a student was supposed to learn passion from someone who devoted the first half of his adult life to getting lifetime job security is a question Friedman did not address. Nor did Friedman address how a student was supposed to learn curiosity from someone who stayed in the same narrow research area for his or her entire career. Since it isn’t clear what colleges are supposed to teach it is therefore excusable that they don’t bother to measure quality of teaching or outcomes.
The miserable lives of adjunct faculty are covered in this book. It is not clear why a Wall Street Journal alumna has a problem with universities paying minimal dollars to adjuncts and working them like slaves. There is a market for PhD college teachers and presumably the adjuncts are paid a market-clearing wage. Riley does note that students don’t learn as much from these fatigued part-timers and that the rise of the adjuncts corresponded to a big rise in grade inflation. Adjuncts get re-hired based on previous semesters’ student evaluations and the best way to get high marks with students is to give out As.
The book contains a long chapter on unions. It isn’t clear why this is relevant. Colleges are terribly inefficient at helping students learn. Does it really matter whether or not the ineffective teachers are union members or not? Unions seem to be a factor in ensuring mediocrity, but plenty of non-union tenured faculty are mediocre as well.
Riley includes a chapter on politics and the tendency of university teachers to adopt liberal political views in order to fit in with their community. Once again, it is unclear how this is relevant given the terrible job that teachers do. Would you rather pay $50,000 for a bad education from a Republican or a Democrat? Riley cites no evidence that students are looking to their professors for guidance in how to vote. Perhaps the political views of the faculty are not interesting to students.
Riley makes an effort to figure out why costs are so high. She pinpoints the bloat in administration that has occurred at most schools: “As of 2007, private colleges employed one senior administrator for every thirty-five students.” But then she circles back to the faculty as being the main source of the problem, e.g., because professors get to decide when to offer classes at their own convenience rather than at convenient hours for students trying to fit in enough requirements to graduate.
The final chapter is devoted to Olin College of Engineering, perhaps the best undergrad engineering program in the U.S. Professors are on five-year contracts and everyone seems to be happy while the students learn far more than at traditional schools.
Riley doesn’t address the tough questions. Olin and some other schools have shown that they can hugely improve the quality and consistency of undergraduate education. Yet demand for a high priced low quality education delivered by adjuncts and elderly tenured professors remains very strong. Given that there is a more or less free market in higher education, why doesn’t the market self-correct?
Regarding your question on why the chapter on unions is relevant, I’d think that union membership is like a form of tenure, where (among other things good and bad) mediocrity can be protected and entrenched.
Possible answer to your last question: perhaps because the free market theory doesn’t apply to everything (if anything).
“By contrast, what would a professor of Ancient Greek be likely to say that would offend today’s powerful elite?”
– That democracy has hardly ever been tried (e.g. in ancient Athens) and it was utterly disastrous to the Athenians.
– That Athens and Syracuse were both democracies, but that didn’t stop Athens investing every last soldier, sailor, warship and silver coin in a desperate attempt to conquer and enslave it.
– That democracy, when it does persist for more than a few years, is a hoolow shell used as a glove puppet by moneyed and aristocratic interests.
– That people who devote themselves to uncovering the truth, and try to live as virtuously as possible, are liable to be put to death by the will of the people.
– That the Spartans, who are revered by so many nowadays, were very much like the Nazis – only more ruthless.
There’s plenty more, but I thought this would do for starters.
A professor of Ancient Greek might say that a society with an open, established pederasty does not necessarily end up in moral bankruptcy.
Certainly not my view, but just an example of how practically anybody can offend the oh-so-fragile sensibilities of the political elite.
Given that there is a more or less free market in higher education, why doesn’t the market self-correct?
1) It might be self-correcting, but very slowly; see, for example, this article on Western Governor’s University.
2) Few if any public schools are really facing market tests, at least for the time being; in an age of rising tuition, however, they will probably end up encroaching on private school tuition at some point.
3) It’s really expensive to start a university. Fields with high startup costs aren’t as ripe for disruption as others.
4) A lot of people—and by “people” I mean 18-year-olds and their parents—choose universities based on perceived prestige, not ROI, so schools work to optimize perceived prestige. Your argument is, essentially, that people, especially 18-year-olds and their parents, should value something other than what they do.
I think it’s funny how everyone assumes that if something is wrong with education the main reason must be a problem with what students get exposed to in schools. Conservative blame unions or lack of incentives and competition (or in this case tenure) and liberals say we need more spending or some kind of novel approach to education. The reason Asian students are doing so much better is because their parents instead of blaming the school or teacher for bad performance put tremendous pressure on their kids to do better even if this damages their kid’s self-esteem. Americans always want to blame some bad institution for social problems but really in this case we just have a culture that isn’t conducive to education. The good news is that there really isn’t anything to prevent self-motivated students from doing well so our most productive citizens are still likely to get a good education even if their classmates suck.
I think your question “why doesn’t the market self-correct?” is incomplete — it’s missing time. Rewrite as: Why doesn’t the market self-correct now/fast/faster? Possible answers:
1) Education is a complex system with a lot of interdependencies and network effects, which lead to inertia.
2) Information asymmetries slow down the price adjustment / investment processes that lead markets to equilibrium. Many “prestigious” institutions may be living off of their accrued reputation from a different time.
3) Non-market actors (politicians, media, “education” activists) act to stop adjustments or change the conditions in favor of inefficient structures (firms are legally barred from using tests to measure potential employees abilities, so they “outsource” that to universities).
Plus a few hundred more answers; up to and including: the reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.
J
I’ve seen stories reporting that we in the U.S. aren’t training enough engineers, meanwhile there appears to be a proliferation of Communications degrees and so forth (as increasingly many 12-year-olds walk around with smart phones and laptops and may never live a minute out of communicative contact with peers, one may wonder about the need for such training starting at age 18), not to mention many people who appear to get MBAs without developing any particular aptitude… is it cynical of me to wonder if perhaps the market correction isn’t forthcoming because the diploma mills continue to serve their credentialing/signaling function just fine?
Was going to raise the same points many other have in terms of why the market hasn’t self corrected. I feel compelled to respond to Jernej…
The free market theory applies to everything. If you think it doesn’t or isn’t making sense it is because:
1) You aren’t evaluating the market properly
2) You don’t know all the variables
3) Your perception of results differs from other participants in the market.
I think a big reason the market doesn’t self-correct is because the government subsidizes loans for students. If one views having a college degree as essential and can get a loan to fund the tuition, most will do so. Unfortunately, the cost is now so high many will be unable to repay the loan; value for the education dollar at many colleges and universities is highly suspect in my opinion.
The laws of supply and demand aren’t suspended for US colleges and universities. If taxpayer-subsidized loans weren’t available, fewer would attend college (which I don’t believe is necessarily a bad thing but that’s another discussion) and eventually costs would have to come down (at least for institutions without massive endowments).
This may be a very unpopular post on a blog that relishes dumping on “lazy” college faculty, but why do people recite anecdotal evidence and assume that there is a serious deficiency in higher education, so the market in higher education must not be “correct” right now? Phil and most people responding here seem to be of the pro free-market, minimal government interference credo, so I find it curious why they think higher education is unresponsive to market pressures.
The US Census bureau says that in 2007 there were 4,409 degree granting institutions of higher education in the US. A quick Google search shows that sticker-price annual tuitions (not counting financial aid) range from $50,000, so there is a large spread of price points. People are free to vote with their wallets if they feel they aren’t getting their money’s worth at any given institution. By any reasonable definition then, higher education is a competitive and open market.
The simple economic fact that people are willing to pay the tuition means that they value the education and the degree at least as much as what they paid in tuition cost. Whether that value comes via an anticipated increase in lifetime earning potential, expected career advancement, bragging rights, or just plain self-satisfaction in learning something, is not relevant. If you think people are being fooled or misled or are just stupid, then you cannot claim to have any confidence in the free market system at all.
Last year Harvard had 16 bidders (applicants) for each unit of product (a spot in its freshman class) it was willing to sell. As Harvard’s yield rate among those it admits is roughly 70%, we can estimate that 0.7 * 16 = 11 of those bidders were “serious” — meaning that they would buy Harvard’s product if offered to them. Purely economically, having 11 serious bidders for each unit of product available means that Harvard is seriously *undercharging.* If Harvard were a for-profit business, economics would tell it to increase the number of product units offered (diluting quality) and keep raising price until the ratio of bidders to products units came close to one-to-one. As Harvard does not do that, those attending, even those paying full freight, are really getting one helluva bargain.
Harvard is, of course, kind of a special case. However, the same economics hold true for any college or university that draws more serious applicants than it can enroll. Simply put, when demand exceeds supply, these institutions are by definition fulfilling what its customers want of them. In fact, because most such institutions are not for-profit, they give their customers more on average than what the customers pay for (especially if you count in financial aid). Any institution that fails this demand/supply criterion will eventually find itself in financially unviable and either reform or wither away, the same as any business.
Finally, I will point out that US universities continue to draw very large numbers of students from outside the US, particularly from Asia. Foreign students who would recoil at the US high school system will come here for college and graduate school. Obviously, on the world stage, the US university system is doing something very right. All the “reforms” in the books Phil mentions seem designed to reduce US higher education to become extensions of US high schools.
Previous post did not render correctly. Tuitions range from less than $5,000 to over $50,000.
People value college degrees because other people value college degrees. Perhaps this is similar to the natural world where sexual selection is done based on a single characteristic, such as size of antlers? That feature grows beyond any useful size over time…
Most faculty in American colleges and universities work in state universities or community colleges. In other words, they’re government employees. Don’t free market aficianodos typically say that there is no free market in such a situation?
Justin Toner has it exactly right. Prices for higher education (undergraduate, and professional as well) have been driven by demand, not by supply. It would be perfectly possible for most subjects to be taught within 1960s’ university business models. That won’t happen so long as all Americans with a GED are constantly encouraged to take out massive loans they can’t escape through bankruptcy to pay for a service that is far less valuable than any influential party has any incentive to admit.
Mark: Daniel Chai posted an interesting comment on the Becker/Posner blog about the cost of tuition at top-tier colleges, suggesting that they may be priced like (extremely expensive) lottery tickets.
An alternative view: The College as a Philanthropy. My impression is that most teachers (including Philip) regard their educational work as fundamentally philanthropic. They’re trying to spread their knowledge as widely as possible, they’re not hoarding it and doling it out for maximum cash.