ROI: Return on Investment
Do you really want a College Degree?

Piketty goes post-secondary: why a university education is so goddamned expensive

College was a luxury good and should be treated as such. Forget all the bushwah about diversity and lazy professors driving up tuition; price increases in those days became virtually an end in themselves, something colleges did simply to burnish their prestigious brand image. Werth quoted an administrator from Lehigh University who put the new philosophy succinctly: “If it’s going to be a world of haves and have-nots, we sure intend to be among the haves.”

4/20/15 The Slow Death of the University By Terry Eagleton Apr 6 2015

A few years ago, I was being shown around a large, very technologically advanced university in Asia by its proud president. As befitted so eminent a personage, he was flanked by two burly young minders in black suits and shades, who for all I knew were carrying Kalashnikovs under their jackets. Having waxed lyrical about his gleaming new business school and state-of-the-art institute for management studies, the president paused to permit me a few words of fulsome praise. I remarked instead that there seemed to be no critical studies of any kind on his campus. He looked at me bemusedly, as though I had asked him how many Ph.D.’s in pole dancing they awarded each year, and replied rather stiffly “Your comment will be noted.” He then took a small piece of cutting-edge technology out of his pocket, flicked it open and spoke a few curt words of Korean into it, probably “Kill him.” A limousine the length of a cricket pitch then arrived, into which the president was bundled by his minders and swept away. I watched his car disappear from view, wondering when his order for my execution was to be implemented. <snip>

Degrees of Deception By Linton Besser and Peter Cronau  Updated April 20, 2015

"EDUCATION IS NOT AN INDUSTRY" final word from whistleblower academic on #4corners about cheating & standards of some international students

A Four Corners investigation has unearthed alarming new evidence of a decline in academic standards at institutions around the country.  Lecturers and tutors are grappling with a tide of academic misconduct and pressure from faculty managers to pass weak students. Many say commercial imperatives are overtaking academic rigour.  But why is this happening?  As Federal Government funding for universities has declined, Vice-Chancellors have been forced to look elsewhere to fill the void.  And for much of the past two decades, they've been tapping into a booming market - full fee-paying overseas students.  Right now the country's 40 universities are pulling in billions of dollars from students who are desperate for a degree from an Australian university and the possibility of a job and permanent residency.  But to ensure a steady flow of students from overseas, universities have had to ensure their entry requirements are sufficiently low.  This week, reporter Linton Besser also provides alarming evidence of corruption among the network of overseas agents who tout for business on universities' behalf. about university corruption.<snip>

2/3/15 The official unemployment rate, as reported by the U.S. Department of Labor, is extremely misleading. The official unemployment rate, which cruelly overlooks the suffering of the long-term and often permanently unemployed as well as the depressingly underemployed, amounts to a Big Lie.
http://www.gallup.com/opinion/chairman/181469/big-lie-unemployment.aspx
If you, a family member or anyone is unemployed and has subsequently given up on finding a job -- if you are so hopelessly out of work that you've stopped looking over the past four weeks -- the Department of Labor doesn't count you as unemployed. That's right. While you are as unemployed as one can possibly be, and tragically may never find work again, you are not counted in the figure we see relentlessly in the news -- currently 5.6%. Right now, as many as 30 million Americans are either out of work or severely underemployed.

 

September/October 2014 America’s Worst Colleges - 80 schools made the list.

We set out to make a list of the poorest-performing colleges. What we found is that, while good schools are basically all alike, every crappy school is crappy in its own way. The simplest way to define a bad college is as a place that charges students large amounts of money, probably financed by debt they cannot afford, to receive an education so terrible that most students drop out before graduation. Translated in the parlance of federal statistics, that means a high “net price” (tuition minus grants and scholarships), high average student debt, a high “cohort default rate” (a federal measure that tracks the percentage of each college’s freshman class that defaults on their student loans within three years of beginning to repay them), and a low graduation rate.

10/20/14 For-profit colleges get harsh grades by former students Graduates complain of onerous debt, unmet promises about careers

The pitch made by for-profit colleges, a staple of daytime and late-night TV, often features successful alumni from the schools, from Pulitzer Prize-winning photographers to Hollywood animators. Yet the US Department of Education estimated that 72 percent of the for-profit programs at 7,000 schools produced graduates who on average earned less than high school dropouts. Many of those students — veterans, single mothers, teenagers — end up in debt, often without degrees, jobs, or prospects.  The practices of for-profit colleges have come under scrutiny in recent years, prompting federal and state investigations, lawsuits, and enforcement actions. The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau last month sued Corinthian Colleges, alleging that the nation’s largest for-profit chain engaged in predatory lending.
Students at for-profit colleges graduate at about half the rate of students at public and nonprofit four-year colleges and universities, according to the Education Department. The most recent data show that about 34 percent of students at for-profits earned bachelor’s degrees after four years, compared to about 55 percent for public institutions and 65 percent for nonprofit schools.  Bachelor’s degree programs cost about 20 percent more at for-profit schools than flagship public universities, a 2012 US Senate committee report found. Associate’s degree and certificate programs at for-profits cost at least four times more than at community colleges, the report found. Students at for-profit schools default on federal student loans at higher rates, according to the Education Department.  The department later this year will unveil new regulations aimed at preventing alleged abuses in the industry. The Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, the industry trade group, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

 

Compare financial aid and college cost

Financial aid offer

The total amount of grants and loans a student is offered by a college or career school. The school's financial aid staff combines various forms of aid into a “package” to help meet a student’s education costs

Cost of attendance

The total amount it will cost you to go to school per year. Cost of attendance (COA) includes tuition and fees; housing and meals; allowances for books and supplies; and other expenses such as personal expenses, transportation, and dependent care.

 

ACCOUNTABILITY:
WHERE IS THE COLLEGE RATING SYSTEM TO MAKE COLLEGE AFFORDABLE?

Students don’t know what they don’t know.

Parents don’t know what they don’t know.

Citzens don’t know what they don’t know.

The amount of student loan debt owed by Americans surpassed $1 trillion, and that number is growing. It is important that students and their families have uniform, consumer-friendly information about the cost of college up-front so they can shop around, make apples-to-apples comparisons among colleges, and select a school that best meets their needs, in terms of both quality and affordability.

The Understanding the True Cost of College Act would:  

• Require institutions of higher education to use a uniform financial aid award letter;
• Call on the Department of Education to work with colleges, consumer groups, students, and school guidance counselors to develop standard definitions of various financial aid terms for use in the uniform financial aid award letters;
• Establish what information must be included on page one of the uniform financial aid award letters, such as: cost of attendance, grant aid, work study assistance, eligible amounts of federal student loans, and the net amount a student is responsible for paying after subtracting grant aid.  
• Require the Department of Education to establish a process to consumer test the uniform financial aid award letter and use the results from the consumer testing in the final development of the uniform financial aid award letter.

Reducing the student loan default rate. 

The Higher Education Act of 1965 requires colleges to provide entrance and exit counseling to students receiving federal loans, to review such information as the terms of the loan and repayment plans.​

University officials want to  increase retention and graduation rates, thus fostering future alumni contributors and lowering their default rate.

DEFAULT CONVERSION RATES 
Financial literacy has become a key component in the default management plans at many colleges and universities.

Recipients of federal TEACH grants which help reduce student borrowing for teacher education and related disciplines are required to take financial literacy.

Nearly $150 Billion in federal financial aid is given to colleges yearly based on the number of students who enroll, NOT the number who earn a degree. Only 2.5 million federal student loan borrowers are benefiting from repayment plans tied to their income level.

The ratings will compare colleges with similar missions and identify those that do the most to help students from disadvantaged backgrounds, as well as those that are improving their performance.  In the future, the rating system could steer taxpayer dollars toward high-performing institutions.

9/2013 To develop the college rating system, the agency is seeking the best ideas and most creative thinking on some key themes:

• college access, such as the percentage of students receiving Pell Grants
• college affordability, such as average tuition, scholarships, and loan debt; and 
• outcomes, such as students’ graduation and transfer rates, graduate earnings, and advanced degrees of college graduates.

Members of the general public are invited to send their suggestions to collegefeedback@ed.gov. 
(Note: Additional information about the college affordability and value outreach initiative will be posted here.)

9/27/13 Also, to support the ambitious postsecondary agenda, the Department announced the appointment of Jamienne Studley [ Phi Beta Kappa ] as Deputy Under Secretary of Education.  [ Scholar in Residence, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching ] She will serve alongside the agency’s other Deputy Under Secretary, Jeff Appel.

 

I have never let my schooling  interfere with my education. ~ Mark Twain (1835-1910)

College Class of the Great Recession (young adults ages 23-24)  2011 graduates

The cost of college can range from $60,000 for a state university to four times as much at some private colleges. The total student debt in the U.S. now tops credit card debt.

 

So a lot of people are asking: Is college really worth it? 
Remember Cowen’s First Law: There is a literature on everything.

The true cost of private contracts in universities
​Institutions continue to outsource vital services even though workers are being squeezed and quality compromised. Academics have been striking over falling salaries, even as their managers have been awarding themselves ever-higher payouts. The poorest workers are battling for either a living wage or for less miserable terms and conditions. And students from Sussex to Birmingham and Edinburgh have been campaigning against the privatisation of their services and the accompanying clampdown on protest.  At the root of all these disputes is an existential argument: what is a university for? Is the old ideal of a community for critical inquiry to be superseded by what are effectively degree-awarding businesses? Is education a public good, or a means to rack up CV points and deliver housetrained recruits to big employers? These questions aren't novel – but they've become ever more urgent as Vince Cable and David Willetts cut public funding and steer higher education towards the market.​

The Highest-Paid Professors in the U.S.

Tenured law professors make a median $143,509 a year—nearly twice what professors teaching English, history, the arts, and theology make
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-17/the-highest-paid-professors-in-the-u-s-
Tenured law professors pulled in a median salary of $143,509 in 2014, more than professors in any other discipline, according to new survey data. All told, professor salaries rose 2 percent in 2014, edging above the inflation rate and pushing the median pay for tenured professors to $100,087, according to a report released on Monday by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources. The group tracked faculty pay at 303 public institutions and 543 private institutions. Professors teaching business, management, marketing, and related studies were the second-highest-paid of the bunch. They reported making $126,549 before bonuses. Engineering professors were a close third, at $126,653—still far more than the lowest-paid professors, who pulled in about $80,000 teaching theology and religious vocations, the arts, English, and history.

Median Salaries for Higher Ed Administrators Increase by 2.4 Percent  Administrators in Public Institutions Saw Slightly Higher Increases Than Those at Privates  For the second year in a row, senior leaders at public institutions saw a more substantial salary increase than their peers at private institutions. Data from the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR)’s 2014-15 Administrators in Higher Education Salary Survey show a median base salary increase in 2014 of 2.5% for those in senior-level positions at public institutions, compared to a 2.3% increase for those in the same positions at private institutions. These numbers are the same as the previous year. Prior to that, however, privates had outpaced publics for several years in pay increases for this group.  The overall median base salary increase in 2014 for administrators for all institutions combined was 2.4%, the same as last year. These findings reflect the salaries of 55,197 job incumbents in public and private institutions nationwide. Salaries were reported by 1,227 institutions for 191 selected positions, mostly at the director level and above.
http://www.cupahr.org/news/item.aspx?id=12432

 

WHERE ARE THE JOBS?

When you think about education as an investment, you have to think about what the return is going to be.

The diploma.

Getting that sheepskin has its roots from the 12th century. Why? Because until around a hundred years ago, that’s what most of them were made from. Then, paper diplomas began to appear.

After centuries of usage, shouldn't we upgrade this thing now that we're in the 21st century why is this paper?

Don't we need to have something that is updateable, that shoes a  connected record of a person’s skills, expertise, and experience and wipe out that outdateded useless thing called a CV while we are at it.

 

The signaling model of education.

Equipped with a diploma, a job-seeker broadcasts numerous positive attributes to potential employers.

 eCONomists: know what the the signaling model of education is:

Equipped with a diploma, a job-seeker broadcasts numerous positive attributes to potential employers: Conformity, Perseverance, self-governance, competence in at least one area. According to the signaling model, employers reward educational success because of what it shows ("signals") about the student.  Good students tend to be smart, hard-working, and conformist - three crucial traits for almost any job.  When a student excels in school, then, employers correctly infer that he's likely to be a good worker.  What precisely did he study?  What did he learn how to do?  Mere details.  As long as you were a good student, employers surmise that you'll quickly learn what you need to know on the job. Society would be better off if taxpayers saved their money, students spent fewer years in school.

Yet  in March 2013, the radio show Marketplace teamed up with The Chronicle of Higher Education and asked around 700 employers to grade the nation’s colleges and universities on how well they were employing their graduates for the workplace.

53 percent of them said they “had trouble finding recent graduates qualified to fill positions at their company or organization.” 28 percent said colleges did only a “fair job” of producing successful employees. They also said that more than grades, major, or what school a person attended, “employers viewed an internship as the single most important credential for recent grads.” The more employers realize that four-year degrees don’t necessarily guarantee the attributes they value most, the more likely they’ll be to demand a system that does.

look at Uncollege: Hack Your Life

 

Will what you go to college for actually translate into a great job?

Academics / Professors know very little about how the real world works. What they do know a lot about is their sliver of specialized core area of academic knowledge and a huge amount of getting an keeping their job in Academia.

Worst Return
On Investment

 

10 Most, Least Expensive Private Colleges and Universities
Tuition and fees at these private schools range from $1,070 to nearly $50,000 for 2013-2014.

These days, getting that sheepskin from a top-flight university can cost approximately $200,000 in tuition alone. And while many schools have begun to steeply discount their advertised tuitions as they scramble to attract new students in the current market, thousands of graduates continue to emerge from college saddled with six-figure debts. In 2010, the nation’s collective student loan debt exceeded its collective credit card debt for the first time in history.

 

America's Most Overrated Product: Higher Education By Marty Nemko

Forbes The 25 Colleges With The Worst Return On Investment

Salary.com has put together a list of the eight college degrees that deliver the worst return on investment. The list includes not only the broad degree, but also the median salaries for three jobs within the profession.

5 Best Schools for ROI by payscale.com​ and the 5 Worst Schools for ROI

Completion Rates at MOOCs

 

"Credits are the coin of the academic realm," Russell Poulin, deputy director of a Boulder, Colo., higher-education technology cooperative, told the Chronicle of Higher Education. "And if that's where the coins are, these companies are going to drive there."

The Traditional University Lecture Is Dead Are Our Students Learning? 

MOOCs want to prove an entirely online education is not only possible, but also a respectable alternative to traditional classrooms.​

"massive open online courses," MOOCs 
are typically college-style lectures reconfigured for the online student, complete with lecture video (of varying production value), assignments and interactive discussions. Students register with an email and can begin taking classes on a rolling basis. There is no application process, and the thousands of students taking one class can get there in a few clicks. Completion rates at MOOCs, though, are a different story. Instructors, however, have no way of knowing if students completed the course after they finished teaching, or if they dropped out altogether. It's easy to blow off class because there is no direct personal accountability.

DOOC distributed online collaborative course
DOCCs aim to use online technology to enhance in-person teaching while also making the results available to online students. Instead of a single syllabus, or course of instruction, for all students, a DOCC is taught across classrooms at several college campuses simultaneously. Courses will vary depending on the institution, but each will use a common video presentation to set the theme for a given week; that video will also be available online. Online students get a dedicated discussion space for conversation, and professors teaching the DOCC will also hold office hours specifically for online participants.

Why pay thousands of dollars to sit in a stuffy university lecture hall as a professor drones away in front of bored students when you could instead take some of the world's greatest courses online? For free? The aim is to provide instruction similar to what students can get in a traditional college atmosphere, only more cheaply and conveniently.

[W]e fear that two classes of universities will be created: one, well-funded colleges and universities in which privileged students get their own real professor; the other, financially stressed private and public universities in which students watch a bunch of videotaped lectures and interact, if indeed any interaction is available on their home campuses, with a professor that this model of education has turned into a glorified teaching assistant.

Georgia Tech—together with AT&T and Udacity—plans to offer an online master's degree in computer science next year that it will teach exclusively through MOOCs. The cost for the program, which should run three years for most students, is expected to be just under $7,000; a traditional graduate degree would cost three to eight times that. Why pay thousands of dollars to sit in a stuffy university lecture hall as a professor drones away in front of bored students when you could instead take some of the world's greatest courses online? For free? The aim is to provide instruction similar to what students can get in a traditional college atmosphere, only more cheaply and conveniently.

Traditional colleges and universities enrolled almost 20 million people in the 2011-2012 school year. Meanwhile, some of the new online programs—many of them less than two years old—already have over four million people enrolled in its online courses.
Completion rates at MOOCs, though, are a different story. Instructors, however, have no way of knowing if students completed the course after they finished teaching, or if they dropped out altogether. It's easy to blow off class because there is no direct personal accountability.

Follow the Money
State Universities to offer more online courses for credit, versus  the faculty unions and a series of amendments that shifted decision authority over online credits back to university faculty. MOOC Coursera wants to license a PHd's course to other colleges which will lead to state legislatures to cut funding to state universities.