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You can tell The Economist hates to do it, but even they have come to the awareness that American colleges are providing poor value.
ON THE face of it, American higher education is still in rude health. In worldwide rankings more than half of the top 100 universities, and eight of the top ten, are American. The scientific output of American institutions is unparalleled. They produce most of the world’s Nobel laureates and scientific papers. Moreover college graduates, on average, still earn far more and receive better benefits than those who do not have a degree.
Nonetheless, there is growing anxiety in America about higher education. A degree has always been considered the key to a good job. But rising fees and increasing student debt, combined with shrinking financial and educational returns, are undermining at least the perception that university is a good investment.
Concern springs from a number of things: steep rises in fees, increases in the levels of debt of both students and universities, and the declining quality of graduates. Start with the fees. The cost of university per student has risen by almost five times the rate of inflation since 1983 (see chart 1), making it less affordable and increasing the amount of debt a student must take on. Between 2001 and 2010 the cost of a university education soared from 23% of median annual earnings to 38%; in consequence, debt per student has doubled in the past 15 years. Two-thirds of graduates now take out loans. Those who earned bachelor’s degrees in 2011 graduated with an average of $26,000 in debt, according to the Project on Student Debt, a non-profit group.
More debt means more risk, and graduation is far from certain; the chances of an American student completing a four-year degree within six years stand at only around 57%. This is poor by international standards: Australia and Britain, for instance, both do much better.
At the same time, universities have been spending beyond their means. Many have taken on too much debt and have seen a decline in the health of their balance-sheets. Moreover, the securitisation of student loans led to a rush of unwise private lending. This, at least, has now been curbed by regulation. In 2008 private lenders disbursed $20 billion; last year they shelled out only $6 billion. …
The NY Times covers the same ground, but makes it a life style trend one surfs on the way to becoming a gazillionaire. No chance the folks from the Gray Lady would criticize college administrators since they are all of one class.
… Indeed, ambitious young people who consider dropping out of college a smart option have a different set of role models from those in the 1960s, who were basically stuck with the acid-guru Timothy Leary and his “turn on, tune in, drop out” ramblings. Nowadays, popular culture is portraying dropouts as self-made zillionaires whose decision to spurn the “safe” route (academic conformity) is akin to lighting out for the territories to strike gold.
Bill Gates dropped out of college. So did Michael Dell. So did Mr. Zuckerberg, who made the Forbes billionaires list at 23.
Mr. Zuckerberg’s story is familiar to anyone who has seen the 2010 film “The Social Network,” in which Harvard seems little more than a glorified networking party for him. While the other Phi Beta Kappas are trudging through their Aristophanes, his character is hitting the parties, making contacts and making history. The dropout-mogul-as-rock-star meme will get a further boost with coming Steve Jobs biopics, including “Jobs,” starring Ashton Kutcher, and another one in the works written by Aaron Sorkin, who wrote the screenplay for “The Social Network.”
Such attitudes are trickling down to the small screen, too. In a recent episode of the Fox sitcom “The Mindy Project,” Mindy Kaling’s character, a doctor, grills a teenager about his plans for college. “I’m not going to college,” he tells her. “Why should I load up on debt just to binge drink for four years when I could just create an app that nets me all the money I’ll ever need?” Such tales play well in the eyes of millennials, a generation hailed for their entrepreneurial acumen and financial pragmatism. Why pay money if you can make money?
No wonder the swashbuckling Web subculture is suddenly percolating with whiz-kid programmers thinking like “one and done” college hoopsters, who stick around campus only long enough to showcase their skills (and meet National Basketball Association draft requirements) before bolting for pro riches. Tech-start-ups have their own versions of Carmelo Anthony: folks like Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams of Twitter, and Kevin Rose of Digg. (Meanwhile, David Karp of Tumblr dropped out of high school.)
“Here in Silicon Valley, it’s almost a badge of honor,” said Mick Hagen, 28, who dropped out of Princeton in 2006 and moved to San Francisco, where he started Undrip, a mobile app. He is now recruiting from the undergraduate ranks, he said, which is becoming a trend among other tech companies, too. In his view, dropouts are freethinkers, risk-takers. They have not been tainted by groupthink.
“College puts a lot of constraints, a lot of limitations around what you can and can’t do,” Mr. Hagen said. “Some people, they want to stretch their arms, get out and create more, do more.”
Even the staunchest critics of college concede that a diploma is still necessary for many professions — law and medicine, clearly, and in many cases, for a Fortune 500 executive, too. But that’s the point: how many more lawyers and middle managers do we need? …
In a post from a few days ago, Streetwise Professor commented on the Chinese aircraft carrier and its maiden landing; “a baby step when you consider the complexity of carrier operations, especially at a true operational tempo, with 120 sorties (takeoffs and landing) per 12 hour flight day, sometimes surging to 190 per day. The ballet of the deck is an amazing-and amazingly dangerous-thing. Especially when you start doing it with live ammunition hanging from wings and waiting on deck, and especially especially when you do it day after day and crews become fatigued.” The Daily Press, Pickerhead’s local paper had a story about one incident 43 years ago when things went terribly wrong on the USS Enterprise.
As the Navy prepares to bid farewell to the USS Enterprise, it paused Friday to honor those who lived through one of its darkest days.
On the morning of Jan. 14, 1969, a rocket loaded on an F-4 Phantom jet overheated due to exhaust from a nearby vehicle. The rocket blew up and set off a disastrous fire on the flight deck, spreading to fighter jets loaded with bombs, missiles and thousands of pounds of jet fuel.
Live bombs and burning fuel spread below as explosions tore massive holes in the deck. Before it was over, 28 sailors were killed and 314 were injured, many severely.
Petty Officer Third Class Terry Johnson had just ended a 12-hour overnight shift and was getting ready for sleep when the first explosion sounded.
“I barely got out,” he recalled. “I was on my way out of there, and my compartment blew up and kind of flattened me. I bounced once and kept going.”
As the fire roared, Johnson ran to the other side of the ship – where he was supposed to go – and joined a hose crew.
“There were about three or four people in my compartment when it blew up,” he said.
At a brief morning service on a sun-splashed flight deck, the Navy paid homage to survivors like Johnson and to those sailors who didn’t make it. The names of the dead were read aloud, and the crowd heard an emotional, halting speech from Michael Neville, who was on the flight deck at 8:18 a.m. when the first rocket exploded. …
Which brings us to another Streetwise Professor post – this time on the ubiquitous “sea-going tug” that sails in the wake of Russian Navy sorties.
In any world crisis, it is said that the first question any American President asks is: “Where are the carriers?”
In Russia, it is: “Where are the tugboats?”
The decrepitude of the Russian navy is so pronounced that every deployment is accompanied by a salvage tug, just in case (and the case is quite likely) the sortied combat ships break down at sea. …