Forum on the Costs and Benefits of Attending College

I haven't had time to post much at all since the beginning of the semester, but a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education summarizes responses to various questions about college attendance and tuition from a number of experts on university education and economics.


The article is here.


Many of the scholars interviewed have important things to say about the increasing price tag of attending universities, the effect on the American economy, the comparison of U.S. schools with those in other countries, and the question of whether every high school graduate should really be going to college.

Adjunct Addresses Students

This is a letter published in the campus newspaper of the University of Akron, penned by an adjunct who had to give up her "part-time" (read: adjunct) position at the school after the beginning of the semester in order to take a real full-time job so she could support her family. Her letter points to a number of the major issues affecting adjuncts across the country, and she has given permission to post for the purpose of educating students and other faculty.


Dear Students:


As I told you on Friday, I will not be returning as your instructor this semester. I have taken an "emergency" full-time position at Cuyahoga Community College for the fall semester, effective immediately. I'd like to explain how this situation came to pass, as I believe you should be informed about university policies and conditions that affect your education.


I am (or was!) a part-time instructor at the university. In practice, "part-time" is an odd designation that really does not refer to the number of hours we work or the number of courses we teach; most part-time instructors teach the same number of classes as full-time faculty, but for about 1/3 the pay and without benefits, even though we bear the same responsibility for your education. Part-time instructors usually have to work at multiple campuses simply to approach a living wage; at this university, we are paid what comes out to about $10-12/hour -- for many of us, even less. We are referred to as "part-time" -- I think -- because we are not paid to engage in non-teaching activities like working on faculty committees or doing research in our fields -- even though it is understood that to be the most effective teachers possible, professors need to engage in these activities. So it is a situation that really makes no sense.


You should know that this situation is not unique to this university; it is typical of colleges and universities around the country, and it is recognized as a serious problem that needs to be addressed, though people can't for the life of them seem to figure out how! Nearly 70 percent of all teaching faculty at colleges and universities nationwide are either part-time or full-time but not eligible for tenure (a form of job security earned by professors to ensure that they are not fired for doing research or expressing opinions that administrators or others might not like -- it's a way to protect academic freedom and intellectual inquiry). You should also know that most full-time instructors and tenure-track professors are paid two to three times as much as we are in part because they are unionized; part-time college instructors in Ohio cannot do so because of a strange provision in the law that we are trying to get overturned.


Many studies are showing that this system of academic employment is having a negative effect on teaching and learning conditions; the situation you are facing with my departure is a perfect example of this. I love teaching and would prefer to remain at the University of Akron, teaching all of you! However, I cannot support my family on what they pay me, and so I cannot afford to turn down Tri-C's offer of full-time employment. I have raised this issue publicly and been told that this is simply how the free market does and should operate. However, as a direct result, your semester -- your education -- is being disrupted. Fortunately, you will have an excellent instructor; however, he is at a disadvantage because he did not start the semester with you, and you are at a disadvantage because you will all have to spend valuable time making adjustments.


For the last year, I have been involved in speaking out about this issue, and I am now the president of a national organization dedicated to improving teaching and learning conditions for "contingent faculty," as we are sometimes called, and our students. You can see our web site at www.newfacultymajority.org. On the state level, where we are lobbying to change the law regarding unionization, our site is www.optfa.weebly.com. I have also written an essay on this topic that will soon be appearing in a publication called Inside Higher Education (www.insidehighered.com). (I was hoping to show you how I went through the drafting and revision process!)


As you know, I have three children; it's because I am a parent that I am most concerned about this state of affairs. I could always quit teaching but that wouldn't reform this system -- it has gotten too big and out of control. I don't want my kids to be taking courses from people who are not being given the support that they need and deserve to do their best and not have to leave in the middle of the semester to be able to support their families. Colleges and universities claim that they don't have the money to pay us living wages, but I don't believe that; I believe it is a question of having political will and recognizing that institutions need to invest in the people and activities that are their core reason for existence -- in this case, teaching and learning. Solutions to problems can always be found when people of good will exercise creativity and good judgment in their decision-making.


When I was in college, students demonstrated and pressured our universities to stop doing business with the government of South Africa because it still officially espoused Apartheid -- legally sanctioned racism. Our actions helped to end Apartheid! Many college students today boycott their campus stores and refuse to buy campus apparel that is produced in sweatshops that illegally employ children or otherwise engage in unethical business practices. By those actions, students have actually helped improve the lives of people around the world. I think that students are our only hope in finally ending this system of exploitative employment of college teachers. If you have any interest in learning more about this issue and joining other students who are concerned about it, I know that there are some students trying to form a new student organization dedicated to raising awareness about this problem and, ultimately, to persuading the powers that be to work on solving it. Feel free to contact me at this email address if you'd like to get involved or learn more. I have enjoyed getting to know you all and I truly regret that I will not be able to continue the semester with you. I wish you all the best of luck and encourage you to stay in touch if you would like to. I have explained to your new instructor what we have done and have told him that I will be available to help him and you in whatever way I can to make the transition as smooth as possible.


Take care and keep reading and writing!


All the best,
Maria Maisto

Marketing College Classes: Sex It Up!

This story about attracting more students simply by changing a course's name from something blah ("Victorian Novels") to something a bit more snazzy ("Sex, Lies, and the Cinematograph") isn't really surprising. Part of it stems from the corporatization of the university: if you need more students (customers) to take your course (to buy your product) so that the school does not pull your class from the schedule (so that the company don't take your product off the market), then you need to entice the young ones (the people who have lots of money/the people who have parents with lots of money/the people who are going to be saddled with lots of debt for a really long time). Even I am teaching a course now that I could have just labeled "The Gothic in Literature and Film," but I named it "MONSTERS!" (yes, with the caps and exclamation point).




But I do wonder sometimes if this kind of marketing of classes can get out of hand. I think that posting innovative (but accurate) course descriptions and using fun course titles are fine strategies for filling classroom seats, but when I was asked this past summer to film a short video describing a seminar I would be teaching this fall, I found it slightly odd--it seemed too much like I would be recording one of those old-school video personal ads ("My course is about . . . and I like candlelit dinners, long walks on the beach . . . "). That's not the kind of relationship I want to establish with my students! Even watching some of the videos of other professors confirmed my impression: you could see one or two instructors had dressed up a bit more than normal, and several could not hide a slight sense of embarrassment beneath the veneer of confidence. Not that I'm criticizing or even mocking those teachers who decided to participate, but the context of the videos themselves made me uncomfortable. And since most of the professors were simply reading from cards or had memorized the same course descriptions that were already sent to students in email/text form, I wasn't sure that the videos were not just redundant--or were not just encouraging students to choose their courses according to the "hotness" factor of the instructor (cf. Rate My Professor's creepy little chili peppers).




Speaking of which, I would hope that students do not always correlate the attractiveness of the teacher with the quality of the teaching. I mean, don't get me wrong: many of us can better appreciate being lectured to on the Napoleon's nostrils/adenosine triphosphate's merry travels/the white whale's blow hole if there's a pretty face at the front of the room. But surely learning is not predicated upon the presence of eye candy? If a professor is "hot" yet cannot put together a proper lesson plan, cannot articulate clearly his/her expectations for major assignments, does not clarify the basic concepts of the course, etc., then I sincerely hope that "market forces" don't intervene so that participants in the course nevertheless give him/her more positive evaluations than the instructor who does achieve those goals but may have bad (or no) hair, may not have six-pack abs, or may not resemble Angelina Jolie or that twit Edward from that ridiculous Twilight movie. Students sometimes complain that they are unfairly assessed, but isn't beauty an unfair criterion for evaluation of teaching?




Then again, maybe it's time for plastic surgery . . . *sigh*

Retaliation against Adjunct Whistleblower

This story has been circulating on Inside Higher Ed and several higher ed listservs. Gerald Davey was actually an adjunct professor at Trinity when I was a first-year undergrad so many years ago, and as with many students in relation to contingent faculty, I had no idea he was not a tenure-track or tenured professor. The behavior of SAC administrators is deplorable but, as Davey says, not at all surprising.

Renting Textbooks

This New York Times article discusses a growing business that allows college students to rent their textbooks--science books that can cost over $125 can be rented for half the price. This seems like it could be one solution for the often-overwhelming inflation of book costs.

Adjunct "Humor"

This cartoon pretty much sums up the plight of the adjunct laborer.

Student Debt

Marc Bousquet's recent blog entry provides a sound critique of recent articles that suggest the student debt crisis is not a crisis at all. Given that my own students rightfully complain of enormous loans--in their own names as well as in their parents'--plus accumulating credit card debt in the face of rising tuition and fees (here, for instance, it looks like the cost of attending will be increasing in just a single year from $38,000 to $55,000--how's that for inflation?!), this isn't some small nuisance that can simply be swept under the rug. I highly recommend Jeff Williams' article "Student Debt and the Spirit of Indenture" for additional details and proposed solutions.

Closing College Doors to Needy Students

This New York Times article tells the now more common story of even private liberal arts colleges denying financial aid and sometimes even admissions to students who would normally qualify for merit-based scholarships and grants and replacing them with applicants who can pay the entire tuition, room and board, and fees out of pocket. Some of these latter students may not be as qualified in terms of their academics, community service, and extracurricular activities--thus, the ideas of higher education facilitating the so-called American Dream and academia being a meritocracy continue to decay: college becomes just another privilege of the privileged, an opportunity afforded only to those who have the monetary means to pay for it. As a first-generation college student who attended a private liberal arts university on almost a full ride of scholarships and grants based on both merit and financial need, I find this kind of admissions policy deplorable. It is certainly a consequence of the recession (broken record), but longer-term reforms of higher education and access to it need to be implemented, such as greater government subsidies and tuition caps so that the rising cost of attending a university does not outstrip inflation.

Links

"The Disappearing Tenure-Track Job" by Scott Jaschik


"What Tenure Feels Like" by A. Papatya Bucak


"Community College Teachers Don't Need a Ph.D." by Larry Hobson


"The Case for Working with Your Hands" by Matthew B. Crawford


A new book by John C. Cross and Edie N. Goldenberg entitled Off-Track Profs: Nontenured Teachers in Higher Education is reviewed by Scott Jaschik in Inside Higher Ed.

Consequences of the Utilitarian View of College

"Selling Education, Manufacturing Technocrats, Torturing Souls: The Tyranny of Being Practical"

By William Astore (a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught for six years at the Air Force Academy and now teaches at the Pennsylvania College of Technology)

Excerpt:

What is education for? At so many of today's so-called institutions of higher learning, students are offered a straightforward answer: For a better job, higher salary, more marketable skills, and more impressive credentials. All the more so in today's collapsing job market.
Based on a decidedly non-bohemian life -- 20 years' service in the military and 10 years teaching at the college level -- I'm convinced that American education, even in the worst of times, even recognizing the desperate need of most college students to land jobs, is far too utilitarian, vocational, and narrow. It's simply not enough to prepare students for a job: We need to prepare them for life, while challenging them to think beyond the confines of their often parochial and provincial upbringings. (As a child of the working class from a provincial background, I speak from experience.)


And here's one compelling lesson all of us, students and teachers alike, need to relearn constantly: If you view education in purely instrumental terms as a way to a higher-paying job -- if it's merely a mechanism for mass customization within a marketplace of ephemeral consumer goods -- you've effectively given a free pass to the prevailing machinery of power and those who run it.

Outsourcing College Courses

I work for SMARTHINKING, which is the parent company of StraighterLine, so I have mixed feelings about the issue raised in this article about outsourcing basic college-level courses to private corporations that offer online instruction in subjects like composition, math, etc. In some ways, giving students the opportunity to finish coursework for cheaper prices seems like a plus, especially with the ever-rising costs of university tuition and fees, and as a colleague and friend of teachers who work at StraighterLine, I am not as apt to question the quality of the education received by these students as I normally might--I know that these instructors have graduate degrees in their subject areas, have years of tutoring and teaching experience, and are both trained and evaluated periodically by other experts in these disciplines. But as always, the corporate model raises question marks and eyebrows. And although I of course support giving students whatever resources they need to supplement their educations, such as tutoring (either online or on-campus), I have always had difficulties with the idea of one's primary learning occurring over the Web--I have always thought that classroom face-time between student and teacher as well as individual conferences and office hours are major factors in increasing student mastery of course materials and skills. I suppose, however, that technology (including video conferencing, chat/IM, email) can afford the necessary accommodations of this faculty-pupil interaction.

But this still leaves the question of whether outsourcing college courses to for-profit corporations is a viable option for the future of higher education--one that will not jeopardize the standards of teaching and learning while also giving students the skills and knowledge they need as citizens, (future) workers, and educated human beings.

Recent College Grads Find Unemployment Awaits Them

It seems that graduating from college at this particular moment of the continuing economic crisis is leading recent alumni to welfare. I'm not sure the student who says majoring in economics means he did not learn about the economy is quite correct, and using graduate school as a means of deferring the job search only leads to greater debt and seems like a particularly dangerous route. But I'm guessing the students whose situations are described in this article were certainly not bargaining on having to rely on food stamps or living with family members as they crossed the stage to receive their university diplomas.

Given that colleges are no longer facilitating the American Dream (whatever that means at this point in history), perhaps more students need to consider alternatives to universities once they graduate from high school. Here are some resources that argue the same:

John Stossel, "Don't Go to College, Seriously"

April Narhanian, College Is for Suckers (the book) and College Is for Suckers (the blog)

Wasting Time and Money to "Enhance Learning"

I have nothing against Apple, Inc., believe me. But for a university to require students to purchase an iPhone or iTouch seems to be just another way that institutions of higher education are endorsing and forming partnerships with major corporations in a way that can affect student learning (e.g., Dell furnishing computer labs, Barnes & Noble running the bookstores). But it also suggests another way to bar access to education to those who come from lower-income families: those little items happen to cost a pretty penny, which not everyone who attends a university can necessarily afford after tuition, fees, room and board, textbooks, and basic living expenses. Also, why is the University of Missouri likely spending money and energy to have students install a program/application on such equipment? Also, why is the School of Journalism encouraging students to simply record lectures--making this format of teaching even more passive--rather than facilitating good notetaking habits, such as one might expect a journalist-in-training should learn and practice? I mean, recording an interview is certainly a norm, but recording professors' lectures? This smacks of laziness and gives students the idea that they don't really need to pay attention in class. One also wonders about the notion of academic integrity: what if students were to record and then sell their instructors' lectures to other students or other interested parties? I'm not assuming there's even an audience for this kind of thing, but given that some students have had the gall to keep in order to sell their exams, essays, etc., isn't the lecture-recording issue a problem of intellectual property as well? I would guess the professors at the University of Missouri subscribe to some principle that their students are welcome to record their lectures, but I know of quite a few faculty who might be rather uncomfortable with such an arrangement--for all the reasons I've mentioned and more.

Review of Books on the Financial Crisis and Higher Education

Andrew Delbanco reviews a number of recent books on money, spending, endowments, reforming student aid, socioeconomic class, and the American Dream as they relate to higher education in "The Universities in Trouble."

"Doctoral Downsizing"

Naomi Schaefer Riley's recent article "So You Want to Be a Professor" discusses the oversupply of PhDs, the recent trend of certain graduate programs reducing the incoming classes of doctoral students (bravo!), and the way that overmanufacture of PhDs results in "ruined lives" through the relegation of bright teachers and researchers to adjunct status. Certainly this is a move in the right direction: graduate programs should be downsizing in order to prevent overproduction of degrees that will not lead to productive employment; to accept more students than can be eventually placed in a career is part of the current unethical character of academia. But this is also reiterative: we've known about these issues for a long while now, such as the effect on teaching quality and student learning or the skewing of the purpose of higher education. We also read again about William Bowen, who gets named in most of these articles concerning the miasma that is the academic job market: one almost pities the former Princeton president who predicted twenty years ago that there would eventually be a shortfall of humanities PhDs (big whoops)--almost. So Riley's article may not really say anything new . . . but perhaps with continued publication of articles of a range of venues generating greater awareness, policies can be implemented that will actually start to change the system, hopefully for the better?

Of course, in addition to reading about scaling back graduate departments, one longs to read more about such programs that also support students who do not necessarily plan on staying in academia but would rather like to apply their skills in research and teaching to other careers. These programs would do well to provide jobseeking help directed toward professions beyond just "professing," especially since the number of doctoral students who end up in tenure-stream academic positions continues to dwindle. Of course, this would mean that these departments would need to have access to and welcome professionals who have made the transition out of the ivory tower instead of vilifying those with master's and doctoral degrees who end up following an alternate track, either purposely or not, for "wasting their time" ("their" is an intentionally ambiguous pronoun). Many (most?) graduate departments currently fail to offer jobseeking resources to students leaving academia because the faculty staffing such departments usually have no "real world" experience. But perhaps one way of rectifying the situation of graduate study and the horrendous job market is to, say, encourage more diverse opportunities rather than limiting them even more. And if we were to convert graduate work into an effective conduit to a wider range of nonacademic careers, then perhaps we wouldn't have so much trouble fortifying and defending the walls of academe from the onslaught of outside criticism since the distinction between "inside" and "outside" would be more fluid, the relationship between them more mutually cooperative and collaborative than miscommunicative and adversarial.

MLA Report on Faculty

Education in the Balance: A Report on the Academic Workforce in English:

Significant changes in hiring practices at United States colleges and universities are causing a shift in the well-established balance among different types of faculty appointments. This past week [8-14 December 2008] the MLA released a report on the academic workforce that presents findings of extensive new research by an ad hoc committee of the ADE. The report, Education in the Balance, documents the emergence of a teaching faculty, made up largely of full- and part-time non-tenure-track instructors holding master's degrees, alongside the research faculty, made up of tenured and tenure-track teacher-scholars holding PhDs. Endorsed by the MLA Executive Council, the report includes new recommendations for appropriate staffing mixes in undergraduate sections at Carnegie Doctoral/Research, Master's, and Baccalaureate institutions. While colleges and universities have relied for decades on a faculty mix that has included full-time teachers, long-term part-time teachers, and teaching assistants, the accelerating trend toward covering large segments of the undergraduate curriculum by using non-tenure-track teachers instead of tenured and tenure-track professors is changing the character of the faculty and the educational experience of students.

A Call for Change

"End the University as We Know It": an op-ed piece in the New York Times by Mark C. Taylor, chair of the Religion Department at Columbia. It focuses on changing graduate studies, but there are some points about undergraduate work as well.

Of course, what institution pays adjuncts $5,000 a class? If that were the norm, I think contingent faculty would be a lot more satisfied with their work conditions.

Here is Marc Bousquet's scathing response to the article: he points out that Taylor's analysis is wrong in that oversupply of Ph.D.s is not the problem but rather the corporate university's structure--and that while Taylor calls for eliminating tenure, that system is already crumbling in the sense that 70% of faculty are not tenure-track at all but rather adjuncts, which has resulted in severe exploitation.

The State of the Humanities and Liberal Education

In February, the Modern Language Association (MLA) released a report on the relationship between majoring in English or a foreign language and pursuing a liberal arts education. Some of the statements in the report reaffirm the core values of the humanities while linking them to current issues that affect corporate America, such as globalization and technological progress:

The group concluded that the arts of language and the tools of literacy are key
qualifications for full participation in the social, political, economic, literary, and cultural
life of the twenty-first century. It affirmed the centrality of literature and reading to
undergraduate education. Interpretation, translation, and cross-cultural communication
are essential in today’s world. To meet the demands of technological innovation,
globalized societies, and the explosion of disciplinary knowledge, we recommend four
basic elements in the baccalaureate degree program in English and other languages: a
coherent program of study, collaborative teamwork among faculty members,
interdepartmental cooperative teaching, and the adoption of outcome measurements.

Over half of the report entails figures that chart the declining numbers of students graduating with bachelor's degrees in English or modern languages over the past several decades as well as statistics showing how many students go on to pursue and achieve graduate degrees in MLA fields. The writers of the report also make side comments about the importance of non-tenure-stream faculty in collaborating with tenure-track faculty on developing curriculum at the general education level as well as making sure the disciplines of English and modern languages provide adequate preparation for both the workforce as well as graduate study.

This is just one report of many commissioned by the Teagle Foundation, a philanthropic initiative that focuses on liberal education. On the organization's Web site, several disciplines provided similar assessments and recommendations "On the Relationship between the Disciplines and Undergraduate Liberal Education," including religion, economics, biochemistry and molecular biology, and history. In fact, the Resources section of the Teagle Foundation's site is packed with reports and essays on the state of liberal education in the U.S. that are of interest.

Finally, Chris Hedges' op-ed piece "Higher Education Gone Wrong: Universities Are Turning into Corporate Drone Factories" links the decline of the humanities with the swelling of corporate ranks by undergraduates whose lack of liberal education causes, reinforces, and condones moral nihilism. Unlike some of reports to the Teagle Foundation, then, the valorization of humanities disciplines focuses not so much on the practical, professional training it can provide to those undergraduates who are seeking to enter the workforce upon receiving their diplomas. Rather, the value of the humanities lies in its capacity to inspire and encourage careful critical thinking, questioning, and thus resistance against dangerous structures of power and the amelioration of our nation's current ethical climate--ideas inculcated by such thinkers as Adorno, Kant, and yes, even our beloved Newman.

Adjuncts' Lack of Benefits More Important than Poor Pay?

According to this article on "The Part-Time Satisfaction Gap," a survey of adjunct faculty at community colleges revealed that contract-only instructors were more concerned with a lack of benefits--health insurance/care, retirement--than with their low pay. I know I would be more willing to stay in academia as a non-tenure-track faculty member if I were guaranteed a reasonable health care plan and some sense of saving for a future after employment. However, I'm not sure that many people would be content with $15,000 a year plus benefits unless they were supported by partners who had much greater income--those of us who depend on university employment for, well, survival can't really subsist on that amount alone for very long. This is why so many of us must maintain second (or even third) jobs, which sometimes detracts from certain teaching duties or independent research agendas (more for some than for others). And none of this still takes into account the idea of job security, an issue that has arisen in the workforce far beyond academia but is one of the supposed perks of tenure, for which adjuncts are not eligible.

Of course, there are also some funny lines in the article, like "[t]he bottom line is that part timers are less satisfied with their jobs than are their full-time counterparts." As in, "duh." Sorry, that was a particularly non-academic response. :)

How Should We Appreciate People?

After the Wealth of Nations book of Adam Smith, the main concern of people from any rank or class has been targeted mostly to maintaining their economic well-being and maximize their profit. This has definitely motivated people to work harder and try to be more and more skilled and experienced at a field that will promote their financial state and earn a better living. This approach has had, as other theories and movements, its good aspects and its "evil" aspects. It has definitely raised the wealth of the people who knew about it, but also has impoverished the countries that it is applied in terms of labor and is accused recently of the international poverty. The reason for this: it does not know any moral or spiritual value but is based totally on materialistic concerns and in some way it teaches how to exploit people as much as possible. The way that someone's work and effort is valued is in economic terms the most paid is the one who gives the highest marginal utility or the biggest surplus, or in everyday language the one who makes the highest profit.

This fact is also witnessed in negative ways in the university life, in the way how the attempts of everyone is valued and appreciated. Strange and surprising to everyone the coach of the basketball team is paid much higher than the president of the university. Why would everyone ask? Simply because he brings to the university a higher income than the president does. If this is legal, is it fair that someone who does a job that has nothing to do with the university' primary goal that is education, to have a high salary than the representative of the instituion to the outter world ? And this is the result that brings the immoralistic application of the theory that Adam Smith taught some centuries ago.

When it comes to the teachers it becomes worser. Teachers are the real runners of the university, those who "give life" to the university by offering what is required from it, by being the closest to students who are the primary source of income to the university. Teachers are the ones who work the hardest in the university life, who prepare what the students have come to university and spend their finances on. If a university has good teachers, it also has a good reputation, it also has more "customers"(students), it is also paid more attraction by the business and other fields that bring income, it is greated higher by the education experts. All these accomplishments give the university the opportunity to charge higher tuitions and fees and to attract more sponsors than its concorrents. Students who graduate from such universities have higher GPAs, are more knowledgeable and well-rounded, have a better understanding of life, are more prepared for their future professions, and so serve more to their families and the nation. They are the future sources of income that will run the countrie's activities tomorrow. And all of this is mostly thanks to the work and efforts of the teachers, who work the hardest in class and out of class and are the least paid among the officials. As is stated in "The Exhausting Job of Teaching" article by Shari Wilson, the teaching load is exhausting. A teacher has always to find ways how to explain better to the students, to make students work harder, to have grading policies that are more effective and fair. This definitely requires skills beyond their expertise. They have to apply to the fields of knowledge that solve the issues regarding these topics. This fact is also stated at the " Faculty" article by Nelson and Watt, teachers at the university do not have just to be graduate of "their own" but also to know all the trappings of the specialization of their faculty". The way that brought them to the status of being a teacher at the university is also one of the hardest. They have to finish a terminal degree in their field of knowledge, which generally means a five-year lasting Ph.D. degree after the college degree. There are plenty of workers who have just a college degree or at most a master degree but are much more paid than the teachers. Their jobs may be much easier to perform and require less effort but they are making more profit although there might be a smaller demand, a smaller market, a smaller supply for their field. But the ones who prepare all of these jobs, the architectures of these sources of income, the teachers are paid less and improperly to their efforts. After some years, the students that they are teaching in their classes will earn a better living than they do after years of tireless work and efforts. This is a real paradox to the common sense and conscience.

Faculty Pay Rate

For years it has been astonishing to hear quotes on how much seemingly knowledgeable and well-deserving professors are paid for their services. These are the people responsible for educating the workers of the future, preparing today's young generation to advance into the working world and earn a living so that their children can be educated and prepared in the same way. Teachers put in long hours and work hard, yet at all levels of education appear to be drastically undercompensated for their efforts. There are of course anomalies and professors that do extraordinarily well, and unfortunately these salaries are what is most commonly known about. As said in Robin Wilson's article "College to Pricey? Don't Blame Faculty Pay," "People hear of a few very high salaries because that's very newsworthy," says Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors. "There aren't so many of those well-off professors as people think." Professors are commonly found with a terminal degree in their field of study, which includes prestigious accolades such as Ph.D.s and Master's degrees. Yet despite this high concentration of education and achievement, people with professional degrees in other fields are making much more than teachers. The question is why is there such a disparity in entry level salaries and room for career growth amongst those with professional degrees in education versus those with professional degrees in other fields?

A Failed Meritocracy

Russo’s book exemplifies how our goal to make a meritocracy out of all aspects of society has in many respects failed. Russo describes a situation in which a man (Hank Devereaux) has been elected to very important position in which he decides the fate of many people’s jobs. However, he doesn’t take his role seriously, doing very little to ensure that his colleagues will have jobs in the future. He is truly unqualified for this position, yet his humorous personality combined with other people’s belief that he would be easy on them ensured that he would be elected.

This situation draws parallel with many real world events and is more common today than I wish it were. How could Hank Devereaux acquire such a position while being so unqualified? How could a C student in college become the world’s most powerful man for 8 years? Personality plays too important a role when judging these situations. Do people get carried away with emotion and vote for the nicer or funnier candidate, or are people uninformed that this candidate is in fact unqualified? Either way, our society seems to be quite far away from being a meritocracy.

Are Scholarly Concerns Detached From The "Real World"?

Throughout Straight Man, the novel that we have been reading for our class this past week, the main character has very little contact with his own father. We learn from William Henry Devereaux Jr. that his dad was always very engaged by his studies and that he seemed to have little passion for much else, including his family. The protagonist is very bitter and angry at his father for leaving him and his mom for a series of graduate students, and generally tries to avoid seeing his father when any opportunity to do so arises. Towards the end of the novel, William Henry Devereaux Sr. returns to W.H.D. Jr.'s mother, and she urges her son to forgive his father and to accept his presence. Jr. goes on a walk with his dad, who proceeds to tell him that he has begun to reread the works of Charles Dickens (an author he has castigated for years). He claims to now feel guilty for criticizing the famous British author whose works he realizes contain something of "transcendent" significance. When W.H.D. Jr. asks his father if this is what he feels guilty about, his dad answers "yes" and tries to say something more but is too overcome by grief, sadness, and tears to do so. In the book, W.H.D. Sr. was a very smart man and a renowned scholar, but he obviously was not able to successfully maintain relationships. He could effectively investigate and communicate scholarly subjects and ideas, but he was not even able to tell his own son that he was sorry for deserting him. I wonder if Richard Russo's crafting of William Henry Devereaux Sr. was simply a part of the plot, an explanation of why his son became the way he was, or if it was something more meaningful and suggestive, perhaps a comment on the misguided nature of academia. When reading the novel, I had an idea that the author was trying to show that academic subjects, literature being used as an example here, can be interpreted backwards and forwards by scholars who still never come to any definite conclusions (as demonstrated by Sr.'s change in his opinion of Dickens after many years). However, the world we live in (family, friends, home, etc.) is real, is actually there, and unlike subjects of speculation, actually must be maintained (which Sr. neglects to do). Do you think that Russo was pointing out some kind of flaw in higher education through W.H.D. Sr., perhaps that a great amount of focus is placed on subjects of little importance or relevance to the real world, or was his character simply a part of the plot line? If he was pointing out a flaw, what is it do you think, and is it true?

Universities Preferring Students Who Can Pay in Full

Apropos of Daniel's post (see below) as well as this week's roundtable discussion of money-related issues in higher education, the New York Times reports that as those mysterious endowments are deflating, faculty are being furloughed, and salaries are being trimmed, college admissions staff are accepting more applicants who are "of means" (i.e., candidates who can pay for tuition, fees, and room and board outright without financial aid):

Colleges say they are not backing away from their desire to serve less affluent students; if anything, they say, taking more students who can afford to pay full price or close to it allows them to better afford those who cannot. But they say the inevitable result is that needier students will be shifted down to the less expensive and less prestigious institutions.

I wouldn't want to propose a slippery slope argument, but this strategy seems a dangerous trend to set. The language of "shift[ing] down" students who would rely on full or more financial aid seems euphemistic: we're potentially talking about de-democratizing access to higher education, resulting in lessened diversity in terms of socioeconomic class, race, etc. Furthermore, colleges that have recently committed to reducing student debt by offering more substantial aid packages and/or replacing loans with grants are betraying some defeatist attitudes already:

William D. Adams, the president of Colby College, told students in a letter that the college would continue its new policy of replacing loans with grants this year, but that he could not guarantee that future budgets would be able to afford to do so. Grinnell College in Iowa also intends to meet a promise this year that no student graduates with more than $2,000 a year in loans, but officials say it may be hard to sustain that.

“These are things you’ll have to pry from our hands,” said Seth Allen, Grinnell’s dean of admission and financial aid. “At the same time, you have to be realistic.”

Yet how eerily the term "realistic" sounds like "unfair" or "discriminatory." If this trend expands and continues, wouldn't universities be in danger of regressing, admitting only the wealthy students while denying access to higher education and the opportunity it promises for those who cannot afford it?

Seeking Financial Aid

While in the near future America's colleges are not going to be free and are increasingly becoming more expensive there are financial aid opportunities available for well qualified students. While in the initial years of the Pell Grant it allowed almost all students to go to college for very affordable prices. While colleges are expensive now, there are various external and internal financial aid opportunities that allow well qualified students with financial need to study at even the most expensive institutions of the country. The following universities have a no-loan policy for admited students.

School	No-loan financial aid for families meeting these eligibility requirements:
Amherst College	No max of income
Arizona State University	Arizona residents with family income of up to $25,000 [1]
Bowdoin College	No max of income [2]
Bridgewater State College	Offers unsubsidized or subsidized loans to any student who files the FAFSA.[3]
Brown University	Family income below $100,000 [4]
Caltech	Annual income below $60,000 [5]
Claremont McKenna College	No max of income [6]
Colby College	No max of income; all students [7]
Columbia University	All students eligible for financial aid regardless of family income[8]
Cornell University	Annual income below $75,000
Dartmouth College	Annual income below $75,000 [9]
Davidson College	No max of income
Duke University	Annual income below $40,000[10]
Emory University	Annual income below $50,000
Haverford College	First-year students with financial need. [11]
Harvard University	Annual income below $60,000
Lafayette University	Annual income below $50,000[12]
Lehigh University	Annual income below $50,000[13]
MIT	Annual income below $75,000[14]
University of Maryland, College Park	Maryland resident with 0 EFC. [15]
Michigan State University	Michigan resident with family incomes at or below the federal poverty line. [16]
Northwestern University	Family income lower than approx. $55,000. [17]
North Carolina State University	Income less than 150% of the poverty line. Requires the family to have "limited assets," regardless of state residency. [18]
University of Chicago	Students who demonstrate financial need and whose annual family income totals $75,000 or less.[19]
UNC Chapel Hill	200% of federal poverty line ($24,000 to $37,000)
University of Pennsylvania	Annual income below $100,000 [20]
Pomona College	No max of income [21]
Princeton University	No max of income
Rice University	Annual income below $80,000
Stanford University	Annual income below $45,000
Swarthmore College	Anyone with financial need [22]
Tufts University	Annual income below $40,000[23]
Vanderbilt University	No cap.[24]
Vassar College	Annual income below $60,000.[25]
University of Virginia	200% of federal poverty line ($24,000 to $37,000)
Washington and Lee University	No max of income
Washington University in St. Louis	Annual Income below $60,000[26]
Wellesley College	$60,000[27]
Wesleyan University	$40,000[28]
College of William and Mary	$40,000 (VA residents only)
Williams College	No max of income
Yale University	No max of income

*Taken From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_aid

Some of these universities are the most expensive and most prestigious universities in the country. These universities give grants (and I believe federal work-study opportunities) to allow admitted students under the specified circumstances to have no loans. In addition there are outside scholarships listed in websites like fastweb.com and questbridge.org that further award scholarship money to students. Public universities are subsidized by the state, although the percentage of state funds has dramatically decreased, and further democratize going to university. For some students that do not have the qualifications to gain admission to the colleges mentioned before then it is hard to pay for college. However, there are thousands of resources that may allow students to pay for college, however these students have to be actively looking for information. Scholarships are not just knocking at the door, the student has to find them. Students seeking aid should not limit themselves to the overworked counselor or to staying in a specific region but rather be open to possibilities. Maybe the "perfect fit" college is not affordable but there are still various other schools that provide a quality education. Maybe schools, especially underfunded schools, should provide early information (freshman year) on these scholarships so that students are motivated to work hard and find these opportunities. Today, anyone in the United States with the motivation and the academic abilities (including extracurricular activities) can gain admission to Ivy Leagues and in some cases not even have to pay. The information is out there, one just has to find it.