I sympathize with Stanley Fish’s lamentation for the Humanities. The State University of New York at Albany (SUNY-Albany) has dropped French, Russian, Theater, and the Classics. They haven’t dropped them as core curriculum requirements; they’ve dropped them completely. So, you are not going to be able to study Virgil or Thucydides, put on a play by Sophocles, or learn how to converse with Parisians and Muscovites. But that’s what happens when you make college unaffordable.
Students don’t have the luxury of expanding their minds when they have the duty to pay back hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. Debating the fine points of Plato isn’t going to help get that done. Companies want Chinese and Spanish, not sissy European languages. That’s why core curriculums have fewer Humanties requirements, and why some departments are being phased out. No one wants to be forced to pay for something that won’t help them pay their debt back. And the kinds of jobs you can get for knowing your Horace will not pay the bank back its money.
If you want to save the Humanities, figure out a way to make them a reasonable investment. That means tuition needs to go back to the way it was in the 1980’s and early 1990’s. At current tuitions, I’m not sure it makes sense to go to college at all unless you’re going to study scientific disciplines, business, medicine, or law. I can learn French a hell of a lot cheaper than by paying for four years of undergrad tuition that leaves me saddled with two decades worth of debt.
I’m still trying to figure out why tuition has increased so dramatically since I attended the University of Kentucky beginning as a freshman in 1969.
My tuition that year was $140 per semester, which allowed me to take up to 18 credit hours. If that amount was adjusted for inflation using the CPI, today’s cost would be $832.80, or roughly a 495% increase.
However, full time tuition for in-state students at the University of Kentucky for the fall semester of 2010 is $4,305, or 2,975% higher than it was in 1969.
Quite frankly, I’m not the least bit convinced that the quality of education has improved measurably.
and, if you had been facing current tuitions (presumably paid for through loans), how would that have changed what courses you decided to take? If you weren’t required to take British Lit, for example, would you?
I’m not sure that it would have affected me. If I recall correctly, and I could be somewhat mistaken, my prerequisites for earning my undergraduate degree in political science were as follows:
30 hours in my major
18 hours in my minor, which was history
6 hours in Freshman Composition
6 hours in English Literature
6 hours in a foreign language
6 hours in Math
6 hours in Science
42 hours of electives
Of those 42 hours of electives I recall taking 6 hours in Economics, 6 additional hours in math, 6 additional hours in a foreign language, 6 hours of Psychology, 6 hours of World Geography, 6 hours of Communications and 6 hours of Philosophy.
I also took a 3 hour course in Modern World Fiction, and 6 hours in architectural history.
Now, I have no idea what requirements are today, but at the time I felt I had more than an adequate opportunity to pursue a wide variety of interests.
It has nothing to do with the quality of education – it’s increase in univ. costs. health care is/ has been a big one. infrastructure costs
Look at the bloated salaries of college administrators. They make more than the POTUS. They are taking their cue from business. It is income inequality that is ruining the USA.
When I went to college in the Dark Ages, a professor made about 150% of the median wage. Now they make 400% of the median wage. Administrators have gone up even more.
Most of it at the state colleges and universities is driven by cost shifting. At my wife’s university the state used to fund ~80% of the budget. Now they fund ~20%. That other 60% percent has to come from somewhere i.e. private grants or tuition increases and the grants aren’t doing it. The shift from state supported education to state assisted education is killing the colleges and universities.
I heard someone refer to the University of Michigan as “an outstanding privately-funded public university.” Sad.
Higher education is just another area which has been professionalized and commodified. It is all about the money you will make off your degree, and has nothing to do with learning how to handle a broad range of problems in business, citizenship or life. And by the way, I wouldn’t count on technical or scientific degrees leading to a big payday either. We are offshoring that work as quickly as we can. There are still such jobs in the US and they start at fairly high pay, but by and large they stay pretty flat throughout a career, and there is a certain amount of frustration at watching business people who don’t know sh*t about engineering and science make all of the decisions.
Well, I don’t think you can teach yourself advanced science or medicine. And you need accreditation for many jobs. So, there is still a good reason to go to college if you want to practice certain professions. But, if you want to learn about Ovid, you should just take some community college class in Latin and read his stuff in your free time.
Don’t figure on a career in science or engineering unless you are planning to emigrate to India or China.
Try and find a community college class in Latin… the best of them are as narrowly vocational in scope as the worst colleges.
They’ll nod in the direction of the humanities if they have an articulation agreement with the local state universities, but not otherwise.
It’s not their fault, it’s their mandate.
It’s seemed obvious for some time that one of the reasons US bankers and the rest of the useless skimmers are so incredibly incompetent is precisely because they rose to the top repeating silly mantras taught in biz courses. They are the ones making the big bucks, but just as they have no real education, they do no real service. American education today reflects and amplifies those values, which are essentially the rules of thumb used by grifters and sociopaths.
Stripped-down humanities offerings means more 1-2 semester great books survey classes taught by Straussians.
has Stanley Fish ever been right about anything? Seriously, he’s like the this troll at the Times. he should date Ross Douche-hat.
By the time I got to UMass, where i enrolled for the a legendary English department, I learned it had been decimated. My education is nowhere near worth the money I am continuing to pay for it. I don’t advise college for most people: becoming a plumber or an electrician is a much wiser (and in many ways better-paying and sustainable) position.
I seriously regret going to college. the debt has foreclosed so many options for me.
“Companies want Chinese and Spanish, not sissy European languages.”
This sentence hurt my brain a little.
High school German enrollments are half of what they were fifteen years ago.
Russian HS enrollments are down 70%.
French is a little better, but they’re closing out French programs left and right even in Maine, which borders Quebec, and has an enormous Franco heritage.
Smart districts are availing themselves of nearly-free Chinese teachers available from the PRC under various exchange programs. You can catch the wave and save money.
So this is basically an accurate reflection of the HS state of play.
But in the long run, even that’s a dead end.
Anything that’s not STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) in high schools is going to the wall.
And as the HS twig is bent so grows the college tree.
And yet, measured by world standards or by historic standards, US education in Science, Technology, Engineering, Math stinks almost as much as it does in the liberal arts. In a society that places the highest value on voluntary ignorance, why learn anything at all? It might prevent you from becoming governor of Alaska or the next senator from Arizona.
It’s symbolic education, not effective education. It doesn’t have to do anything actual. All it has to do is hammer home a message: Stuff that makes other stuff, or stuff that makes money, is the only stuff that matters.
Two things that should be affordable and accessible for every citizen of a developed nation: access to health care, access to education; no matter if they cannot afford it.
NYU costs $50,000 per year, any university in Germany is basically free. Who do you think is going to have the better workforce in the next generation?
It’s not just the cost that’s preventing our country from reaching its potential, it’s the indirect ways that this cost is affecting other areas of our lives. People talk about being saddled in debt. Well, even those with the ability to take out loans to get an education are still more privileged than many people in this country. Federal loans are simply not enough to go to school anymore, not even public institutions. You need some help from the private sector. Tell that to a kid who grew up in a family that’s not poverty stricken, but just barely middle class. They won’t qualify for Pell Grants, as their family makes too much money, and they won’t qualify for that many other free forms of money. Contrary to popular belief, not that many people get scholarships anymore. I think I read in the NY Times 3 or 4 years ago that only 13% get scholarships, and 89% of parents expect their kids to get them. So what is this kid to do? They can’t sign for a loan without a cosigner, their parent more than likely has a shitty credit score which will disqualify them, and they don’t have any relatives willing to do it. What do they do? What is their option? They can’t go to school, and the cycle of poverty and low-wage earning continues.
I’ve had to put myself through school. I have worked since I was 14, and I worked 3 jobs in one summer for ages 16 and 17 (easily 70-80 hour weeks). I saved up enough money to pay for one year of college in cash (around $13,000…I still needed the little federal loan I was awarded). Since then, though, I’ve accumulated around $45,000 in debt. Due to McDonnell’s savage budget cuts in education, my tuition increased $2,000 per semester this year ($1,000 in tuition and fees, and I lost a $1,000 grant/scholarship that he cut funding from). This is my 5th and final year, and I’ll be graduating with a degree in Aerospace Engineering with minors in Mathematics and Women’s Studies. I’m not worried about a job, money will come. I’m joining the Peace Corps now, but when I get out I’m not worried. The jobs in this field are there, and they’re high paying (second highest paid job, second to petroleum engineers).
Despite the fact that I have accumulated debt, and put myself through school, I am still privileged. I grew up in a middle class area (although my part of town was riddled with gang crime from wannabes who would cry if they spent one minute in Compton, they were still wannabes with weapons and they did use them, resulting in cops constantly circling my house). My mother had the ability to stay home and care about my education and see to it that I made it through with good marks. I wasn’t worried that my dad would lose his job. Hell, I had a dad (even if he wasn’t my biological father). I was surrounded by a good learning environment, with plenty of other students who had a drive to go to college and push me. I had my aunt and grandmother, who cosigned my loans so that I’d have the ability to go to school. Without their signature, I’d be stuck. My mother wouldn’t qualify for a loan, and my step-father refused to cosign for fear that I might default and he’d be stuck with the bill (and his credit score kind of sucks).
However, I know so many people here who are building up debt and wasting money on useless degrees. And I hate using the word useless, because knowledge is not useless, even if it’s seen as impractical. But there’s really no other way to describe it. What are they going to do with a Psychology degree? And I feel terrible saying that, because it makes their purpose of being here meaningless (and it’s not, as college is more than just a piece of paper which will get you a job, it’s a time where you can learn and grow, and find out who you are).
That experience shouldn’t have to cost $50,000 to $500,000 in debt (it costs over $500,000 to become a doctor in this country, and we wonder why doctors want to keep the for-profit system going?).
My nephew contributed huge bucks to get his MD, only to find out that the vast majority of what he needed to know came later, in internship and residency and then on the job. He makes decent money, but will still be paying for many years for schooling that turned out to be the least useful part of his training.
Education in this country is so fucked up it’s hard to see any way out. We are ruled by the ignorant, who then impose their parochialism on curriculum and hiring, and the cycle spirals ever downward. The only real question is, will we ever see, and act on, the reality that America capitalism is as moribund as Soviet communism was a few decades ago?
The post & comments miss an important part of what college should be about. It’s not just a glorified job training program; it’s also, for the traditional post-high school student, about learning (or beginning to learn) how to navigate in the world, and who you are. And any decent college curriculum should provide you not just with what to learn, but how to learn, so that you can continue the process throughout your life.
I changed majors four or five times. (I was also in and out of school several times while I earned enough money to pay my way – that’d be impossible today.) When I started (at 17), I could not possibly have predicted that five years later I’d have a masters in a completely different field, and be fluent in Mandarin besides.
You can’t put a price tag on that sort of experience. Reducing college (and all education, for that matter) to a cost/benefit analysis is a big part of why we have such an illiterate public. Penny wise, pound foolish: the story of American capitalism.
My point is that at these prices you have to do a cost/benefit analysis. Why would anyone want to start out adulthood several hundred grand in the hole? The only reason is an investment in something that will pay off the debt very quickly. And that’s why Humanities are suffering. I’m not calling for people not to study Humanities; I am calling for much, much lower tuition costs.
Understood, and agreed. I guess I wasn’t clear. It’s the gov’t defunding of higher education (and the resulting tuition hikes) I was calling short-sighted. Having informed citizens in a participatory democracy is not something you get by pushing young people, from middle school on, into glorified job training programs.