Putting the Corrupt University System Out of Our Misery

US college students can end up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt at the end of their university experience, with very little to show for it. Even middle and lower tier universities are growing exorbitantly priced, without providing students, parents, or society, value for their financial sacrifice.

In fifty years, if not much sooner, half of the roughly 4,500 colleges and universities now operating in the United States will have ceased to exist. The technology driving this change is already at work, and nothing can stop it. The future looks like this: Access to college-level education will be free for everyone; the residential college campus will become largely obsolete; tens of thousands of professors will lose their jobs; the bachelor’s degree will become increasingly irrelevant; and ten years from now Harvard will enroll ten million students.

... universities that have spent the past few decades spending tens or even hundreds of millions to offer students the Disneyland for Geeks experience are going to find themselves in real trouble. Along with luxury dorms and dining halls, vast athletic facilities, state of the art game rooms, theaters and student centers have come layers of staff and non-teaching administrators, all of which drives up the cost of the college degree without enhancing student learning. The biggest mistake a non-ultra-elite university could make today is to spend lavishly to expand its physical space. Buying large swaths of land and erecting vast new buildings is an investment in the past, not the future.

...The biggest obstacle to the rapid adoption of low-cost, open-source education in America is that many of the stakeholders make a very handsome living off the system as is. In 2009, 36 college presidents made more than $1 million. That’s in the middle of a recession, when most campuses were facing severe budget cuts. This makes them rather conservative when it comes to the politics of higher education, in sharp contrast to their usual leftwing political bias in other areas. Reforming themselves out of business by rushing to provide low- and middle-income students credentials for free via open-source courses must be the last thing on those presidents’ minds.

Nevertheless, competitive online offerings from other schools will eventually force these “non-profit” institutions to embrace the online model, even if the public interest alone won’t. And state governments will put pressure on public institutions to adopt the new open-source model, once politicians become aware of the comparable quality, broad access and low cost it offers. _The End of University as We Know It

Modern universities are memorials to mediocre education, corrupt excess, and academic intolerance. The $1 trillion in student loans which hobble young people at the start of their adult lives is being revealed as a dangerous financial bubble. The university system now occupies a central part of the ongoing US financial misery -- and heaven help the US taxpayer if Obama includes universities in his next round of multi- $trillion bailouts.

The system is corrupt and rotting to the core, and cannot last. It is time to build an affordable, trimmed down replacement system that returns value for money spent. It is time to put the rotten and corrupt university system out of our misery.

Majoring in Hackademics: The UnCollege

College debt across the US has skyrocketed to near $1 trillion, risking a catastrophic financial bubble when it bursts. At the same time, the benefit a student derives from a four year college degree is falling off, year by year.

Minyanville

The diverging trends are taking a toll on students and recent grads. Student loan delinquency rates now exceed those of credit card, mortgage, and all other types of consumer debt. And many indebted grads are being forced to delay buying homes, having children, and saving for retirement.

The situation is causing many experts to warn of a student loan bubble that could burst much like the housing market did in 2008. Howard Dvorkin, author of Credit Hell, told The Fiscal Times last month: “It's hard to predict when the student loan meltdown could occur, but if the bubble explodes, the consequences will be devastating for the economy.” _Minyanville

NYT

The idea that a college diploma is an all-but-mandatory ticket to a successful career is showing fissures. Feeling squeezed by a sagging job market and mounting student debt, a groundswell of university-age heretics are pledging allegiance to new groups like UnCollege, dedicated to “hacking” higher education.

...UnCollege advocates a D.I.Y. approach to higher education and spreads the message through informational “hackademic camps.” “Hacking,” in the group’s parlance, can involve any manner of self-directed learning: travel, volunteer work, organizing collaborative learning groups with friends. Students who want to avoid $200,000 in student-loan debt might consider enrolling in a technology boot camp, where you can learn to write code in 8 to 10 weeks for about $10,000, Mr. Stephens said.

THEY can also nourish their minds from a growing menu of Internet classrooms, including the massive open online courses, or MOOCs, which stream classes from elite universities like Princeton. This guerrilla approach hits home with young people who came of age seeking out valuable content free on Napster and BitTorrent.

Mr. Stephens, a dropout from Hendrix College in Arkansas (he later earned a Thiel Fellowship), started UnCollege less than two years ago, and already its Web site attracts 20,000 unique visitors a month. “I get on scale of 10 to 15 e-mails a day from people who say something along lines of, ‘I thought I was the only one out there who thought about education like this, I don’t feel crazy anymore,’ ” he said.

There are other groups, too, like Enstitute, which offers two-year apprenticeships with entrepreneurs in lieu of college, and Zero Tuition College, an online support network for students looking for alternatives.

The goal is not to foment for a mass exodus from the ivy halls, Mr. Stephens said, but to open people’s minds to a different set of opportunities. _NYT

Children need to be trained in the many arts of making money long before they reach college age. Children schooled in The Dangerous Child Method will acquire the skills to support themselves financially at least three different ways -- and they will know how to manage the money for its best utility as well.

The US government educational system isolates children from a very young age from real world responsibility and avoids teaching them vital real life skills which they will need when they are out on their own. Each stage of education kicks the can down the road a little further, expecting that the next level of education will fill in the gaps. Sadly, parents are complicit in this massive scam of the "educators," and then they wonder why their children move back in with them -- unmarried, unable to find work, without meaningful skills or competencies.

The trend toward general indebted incompetency is one that the government welcomes -- because it gives governments new excuses to expand to new areas of oversight and responsibility, while taking away or restricting more individual responsibility. Time is running out on this misguided culture of psychological neotenates and lifelong incompetents.

Sex for Tuition in the UK: Is University Worth the Price?

Universities are charging more and more for a product that offers less and less benefit to students and graduates. An out of control expansion of university staff -- a bureaucratic bloat -- is forcing young people to use their bodies as trade goods, just to pay college expenses and pay off ruinous college loan debt.

[College coeds] are taking up pole dancing, escort work and prostitution to help fund their studies as the cost of higher education soars.

The work has been fuelled by an expansion of the lap dancing industry as well as increasing opportunities for anonymous sex work through the internet.

In some cases students are thought to be signing up to a website that connects students with businessmen seeking “discreet adventures” and prepared to pay them for varying levels of sexual intimacy.

Young women can reportedly earn up to £15,000 a year through this work to help fund their studies. _Telegraph

The four year recession (and counting) has closed off opportunites across much of the economy, but the sex industry is doing well. Some opportunites are available in this growing industry for young male students, but most of the available work is for young women.

Research by Teela Sanders and Kate Hardy, of the University of Leeds, found that a quarter of lap dancers had a degree whilst a third of the women they interviewed were using the job to fund new forms of training.

Much of the expansion over the decade was to do with the proliferation of lap dancing clubs. But the internet also threw up a new range of opportunities for anonymous sex work. _Independent

Universities have been allowed to expand staff, salaries, and benefits to the point that the cost to students seems rarely considered in planning sessions. It is as if the point of the university is to provide comfortable lifetime salary and benefits to staff, with affordable education being too far down on the list of university purposes to consider.

And when these students graduate, what will they find? A private sector that is so stricken by bureaucratic bloat and mission bloat of governments, that fewer and fewer productive opportunities in the private sector will be available. Fewer opportunity for jobs and for starting lucrative new businesses that create new jobs. All of this due to the explosion of government, government regulations, taxes, prohibitions, mandates, and more to come.

These bloated bureaucracies create a sense of entitlement, dependency, and a loss of competence in everyone and everything they touch. The destructive expansion of both universities and governments ought to be brought under control before such bureaucratic and often parasitic institutions destroy their host societies.

The only other viable alternative is to build a "shadow society" and a "shadow government." A society based upon communities of dangerous (mature, competent, skilled, independent) children.

And while prostitution would be entirely legal in such a society, no one would be forced to choose that occupation unless she truly wanted to. And while university would be available either free of charge, or at competitive rates, individuals would be judged for their competence -- not for the tonnage of letters after their names.

Universities: A New Class of "Robber Barons"

Universities Steal from the Poor and Give to the Sinecured and Connected

MJ Perry

Modern universities are bloated monstrosities, monuments to bureaucratic greed and self-interest, at the expense of lower and lower-middle class students and families.

“I have no idea what these people do,” said Robinson, waving his hand across a row of offices, his voice rising. The 59-year-old professor of biomedical engineering is leading a faculty revolt against bureaucratic bloat at the public university in Indiana. In the past decade, the number of administrative employees jumped 54 percent, almost eight times the growth of tenured and tenure-track faculty.

...Administrative costs on college campuses are soaring, crowding out instruction at a time of skyrocketing tuition and $1 trillion in outstanding student loans... U.S. universities employed more than 230,000 administrators in 2009, up 60 percent from 1993, or 10 times the rate of growth of the tenured faculty, those with permanent positions and job security, according to U.S. Education Department data.

Spending on administration has been rising faster than funds for instruction and research... _Fat Cat University Staff

While the fat cat administrative staff are living very well, more and more members of the lower and lower middle classes are being caught in the debt trap -- sometimes for life. When poor students are forced to drop out of school with high tuition debts, their parents and grandparents can be sued to pay the debt -- which cannot be discharged by bankruptcy. The same thing can also happen when students actually graduate -- but with what are essentially worthless degrees.

It was not always this way. Tuition was once relatively affordable, and not so hard to pay off.

The total cost of my tuition over four years was less than $5,000. Measured another way, the payback period was about nine months’ gross salary at my first job. Viewed as an investment in equipment, getting an MIT education was, as they say, a no-brainer. If tuition costs had risen in line with inflation, that original $1,000 for a year’s tuition would now be $7,972, according to the CPI calculator on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website.

Today the actual tuition is $40,732 (not including room and board), so it’s pretty safe to say that everyday inflation hasn’t been the driving force behind the increase in college tuition. _DallasNews

Universities have grown to be a new class of robber barons, stealing from the poor and giving to the well off sinecured and connected bureaucrat. The degree to which university disbursements have become corrupt payoffs and set-asides is carefully papered over by vested interests. If students, parents, and grandparents had a better understanding of what their lives and finances were being ruined to pay for, the outrage would be difficult to contain.

The first thing that young people and their families need to understand is that not everyone should go to college. In general, only those with IQs of at least 110 points should get a 4 year degree. And for the rigorous degrees, an IQ of at least 115 is probably needed. The popular attempt to push everyone through college -- at all costs -- is a most significant part of this problem.

Even so, there is no reason for most degrees to be so ruinously expensive -- or for most degrees to be so absurdly worthless on the jobs market. But don't expect any good solutions from the US federal government, which is controlled by the Chicago Outfit. The Chicago Outfit is not known for its dedication to giving high value for payments received. The answers will have to come from other directions -- to the extent that the Chicago Outfit allows.

Salman Khan, founder of the free online Khan Academy, thinks that a quality education should be free. He believes that the only cost incurred by graduates should be the cost of certifying the retention and utility of the student's new knowledge and skills.

Online courses aim to change the educational landscape. In the US, more than one state governor has expressed a desire to see his state's university system devise a "$10,000 degree program" -- a no-frills way for students to get a 4 year degree without becoming indebted for life.

The devastation that has been caused by the university : government : financial complex is immense and in many ways, immeasurable. In this arena -- as in the 2007 / 2008 housing bubble and collapse -- the government is a central part of a problem that is causing much ongoing human hardship for its own people.

Fortunately, this is a problem which Dangerous Children do not have to suffer. By the time a Dangerous Child reaches the age of 18, he or she will have the skills to support themselves economically at least three different ways. At that point, they can either take college or leave it -- but if they take it, they will take it on their own terms.

If you have young children or are planning to have some, the gift of a dangerous childhood may be the most valuable gift you can give them. As for yourself: It is never too late to have a dangerous childhood. You may have to improvise a bit, but that will be good for your character. ;-)

"Unschooling" the University

Never Let Schooling Interfere With Your Education

Unschooling is a growing trend among children old enough to attend primary or secondary school. It is a type of homeschooling that is child-directed, taking place both at home and other places where children can learn about the world.

The advantage of this method is that it doesn't require you, the parent, to become someone else, i.e. a professional teacher pouring knowledge into child-vessels on a planned basis. Instead you live and learn together, pursuing questions and interests as they arise and using conventional schooling on an on-demand basis, if at all. This is the way we learn before going to school and the way we learn when we leave school and enter the world of work. _Unschooling: Holt

In the US, with university student dept around $1 trillion, more people want to bring "unschooling" to the university level -- and make it very low cost, sometimes free.

[US] student debt now tops $1 trillion and that a third of college students drop out–with debt and without a degree. Nearly a third of the average 18-to-24-year-old’s income goes toward debt repayment, much of it owing to student loans.

...Yet if [Vivek] Wadhwa is right the student debt problem will take care of itself—at least as it relates to the next generation and those that follow. Online courses will proliferate to such a degree that acquiring knowledge will become totally free. There will still be a cost associated with getting a formal degree. But most universities, he says, “will be in the accreditation business.” They will monitor and sanction coursework; teachers will become mentors and guides, not deliver lectures and administer tests. This model has the potential to dramatically cut the cost of an education and virtually eliminate the need to borrow for one, he says.

...Wadhwa allows that there will always be students able and willing to pay for a traditional college experience and for them it will be a worthwhile investment. But for the vast majority, from a financial standpoint that kind of education makes no sense and is fast becoming unnecessary. He believes the higher education revolution is coming soon and will happen fast—perhaps fast enough to keep the next generation from finishing school with debts they may never be able to pay. _Moneyland.Time

University has become a place for young adults and adolescents to receive a political indoctrination, form bad personal habits, and avoid responsibility while spending "other people's money" for as long into adulthood as possible.

In other words, for a large number of young people, university has become the capstone on an edifice of dysfunctional education and child-raising that leaves the young person incompetent and unfit for taking meaningful responsibility in world growing less friendly to the unskilled by the day.

The problem with "unschooling the university" is that most graduates of primary and secondary public education never learned to be self-directed toward their own education. They and their parents trustingly counted on the government educational system to provide the child's education. And now, here they are, unable to pick up the ball and run with it.

We anticipate that in the future, more and more parents will opt for "The Dangerous Child" approach to child rearing, which is a type of "unschooling" -- although much more dangerous, of course.

The dangerous child learns multiple skills and competencies from an age at which most parents and educators would believe it impossible. But it is not only possible -- it is vital, if the child is to develop his full potential of dangerousness. Dangerous children must achieve high enough skill levels to be able to support themselves financially in at least three different ways by the time they are 18 years old.

Needless to say, the future would look quite different in a world full of dangerous children -- quite unlike the present world full of lifelong adolescents and incompetent psychological neotenates.

And remember, it is never too late to have a dangerous childhood.

Different Rankings of World Universities

Times Higher Education just released its World University Rankings. Compared to other world university rankings such as the QS World University Rankings and the Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities, there are a few surprises.

Here is more on how the Times rankings have changed from year to year.

As we discovered previously, such rankings are critically dependent upon their methodologies. In the Times rankings, for example, two different methodologies were employed, which generated two somewhat different rankings.

Going by their best methodology, the Times ranking places the California Institute of Technology, CIT, at the top. Going by academic reputation alone, the Times places Harvard at the top and CIT at #11. That is a 10 position swing, which is fairly significant at such high levels of rank.

We confronted this issue before, when we discovered that the QS World University Rankings methodology was heavily weighted toward academic reputation. The Shanghai rankings methodology utilises a more balanced methodology, similar to the Times rankings.

These differences in rankings illustrate the importance of statistical methodologies. Methodology is important not only in academic rankings, of course, but also in opinion polls, scientific research studies, marketing research, and any other application where numbers are being manipulated for the purpose of drawing a conclusion about the real world.

Why the US Engine of Economic Prosperity is Grinding to a Halt

...last year, 1 out of 2 bachelor's degree holders under 25 were jobless or unemployed. Since the recession, we've lost millions of high- and mid-wage jobs -- and replaced a handful of those with lower-wage ones. No wonder some young people are giving up entirely -- a 16.8 percent unemployment rate plus soaring student loan debt is more than a little discouraging. Yet old-guard academic leaders are still clinging to the status quo... _Atlantic

US economic growth has been almost flat for the past several years. Economists in governments, academia, think tanks, and non-governmental / inter-governmental agencies have debated the reasons for for economic slowdowns in the US, Europe, and other advanced nations -- without reaching a firm consensus.

But for the US, the reason for economic stagnation seems more than clear: In general, Americans have forgotten how to be innovative entrepreneurs, and rather than facilitating private sector entrepreneurship and innovation, the US government has become the greatest obstacle to private business and markets. Even the schools in the US have largely turned away from teaching entrepreneurial skills, choosing to enact policies of politically correct, collectivist indoctrination instead.

But there are exceptions:

Look no further than institutions like Babson College, consistently ranked #1 for entrepreneurship. Since current president Len Schlesigner signed on -- in the midst of the Great Recession, no less -- Babson's faculty has pioneered its own teaching method, applying entrepreneurial thinking and hands-on learning to every aspect of campus life. Unlike other collegiate leaders, Schlesinger saw the recession as an opportunity to expand. With Babson faculty on board, he ambitiously coordinated stakeholders on and off campus, and formed departmental task forces to review curricula.

Today, every freshman who walks into Babson goes immediately to work with a team to create, develop, launch and manage a new business (and they donate their profits to nonprofits). Students spend just 14 hours a week in class -- the other 154 are spent elsewhere, in special interest housing or working on student-led initiatives. Entrepreneurship is a lifestyle, not a course.

Programs like Babson's are worth emulating not merely because they create the next generation of business owners and freelancers (independent workers are an especially fast-growing category). These programs enable students to think entrepreneurially -- to seize opportunity, take risks and create wealth. Simply put, entrepreneurship education gives young people a toolkit to apply their field of study to the real world.

It also makes them more employable. A recent report from Junior Achievement Innovation Initiative and Gallup found that both employers and employees believe America's workforce must become more entrepreneurial if the U.S. is to remain competitive -- 95 and 96 percent, respectively. Only one in 10 believed entrepreneurship was an innate skill. _Atlantic

Entrepreneurship and innovation need to be taught from the earliest ages, in order to make them second nature. Once, that was true for large cross sections of American youth. It is no longer the case.

Part of The Dangerous Child approach to education, is teaching the child at least three ways of supporting himself economically by the age of 18. Entrepreneurial skills come in handy for just about any occupation, from the sciences & professions all the way to vocational occupations and manual labour jobs. Many people have become millionaires by running janitorial companies, for a mundane example . . . . But the same principle applies from the top to the bottom of occupations.

Many of the world's richest and most powerful people dropped out of high school or college, using knowledge and skills obtained and developed in the real world.

And who can blame them, when so many schools are failing students so badly these days?

Ultimate Resource -- Why innovation is so important

Economic prosperity comes from human energy, human innovation, and the human ability to create networks of exchange and trade.

But according to modern media, academia, and politicians, such practical skills should be secondary to enlightened political leadership -- as personified by Obama, for example.

It is okay for the dull segment of society to hold such beliefs, but if everyone feels that way, the society is on the fast road to third world status. Perhaps that is the intent of the leaders of modern government, media, and academia.

But that is their problem. Our problem is how to generate prosperity in spite of government, popular culture and media, and academia.

QS World Top University Rankings Bad News for China, Russia, Europe

The UK and North America did very well in the 2012 QS World University Rankings. Russia, China, and continental Europe did not do very well, however.

QS World University Rankings methodology

Rankings of world universities reflect on both the past and the future. You would expect nations with a wealthy history of achievement to build universities that rank high on the list. At the same time, you expect nations with highly ranked universities to produce a better class of graduates -- as a whole -- than those nations with universities that rank low on the list -- or fail to rank altogether.

Following are listed the top 20 in the 2012 rankings:

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Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)United States

#1

100

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Founded: 1861

Size: 

M

Research Intensity: 

VH

Focus: 

CO

Age: 

5

Fees Range (USD$)	Domestic	International
Undergraduate	38,000 - 40,000	38,000 - 40,000
Postgraduate	40,000 - 42,000	40,000 - 42,000

Score details

Overall

100

 

AR

100.0

 

ER

100.0

 

CPF

99.3

 

FS

99.9

 

IF

86.4

 

IS

96.5

Visit Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 's profile

University of CambridgeUnited Kingdom

#2

99.8

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Harvard UniversityUnited States

#3

99.2

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UCL (University College London)United Kingdom

#4

98.7

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University of OxfordUnited Kingdom

#5

98.6

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Imperial College LondonUnited Kingdom

#6

98.3

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Yale UniversityUnited States

#7

97.5

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University of ChicagoUnited States

#8

96.3

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Princeton UniversityUnited States

#9

95.4

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California Institute of Technology (Caltech)United States

#10

95.1

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Columbia UniversityUnited States

#11

94.7

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University of PennsylvaniaUnited States

#12

94.5

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ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology)Switzerland

#13

92.8

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Cornell UniversityUnited States

#14

92.1

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Stanford UniversityUnited States

#15

91.7

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Johns Hopkins UniversityUnited States

#16

91.2

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University of MichiganUnited States

#17

91.2

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McGill UniversityCanada

#18

90.4

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University of TorontoCanada

#19

89.6

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Duke UniversityUnited States

#20

89.5

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US universities continue to dominate the list, although four of the top six this year are British. American institutions make up 13 of the top 20 and 31 of the top 100 – the same as last year.

There is only one new entrant to the top 20 – the University of Toronto, at No 19.

Continental Europe performs poorly in the table. France has two entries – ENS Paris and the École Polytechnique, also in Paris – in the top 50, and two Swiss universities make the top 30, but there are no German universities in the top 50. _Guardian

Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea did the best out of the Asian universities, although none of them were able to break into the top 20.

Top 200 ranked universities 2012

Brazil and Mexico barely slid into the top 150 with one university apiece. Saudi Arabia managed to land one university at a rank of 197, representing the Arab and muslim worlds. Sub-Saharan Africa, to the surprise of only a few, failed to place.

These rankings represent both the past and the future. It is best not to place too much weight on them, or too little.

Update 15 Sept 12: The 2012 Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities utilises a somewhat different methodology, and thus provides a somewhat differently ranked list. (h/t Dan Kurt in comments) In this list, UK universities were ranked less highly, while Japan and continental Europe did somewhat better.


Further comment 15 Sept 12:

Reviewing the respective methodologies of the QS World University Rankings and the Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities, it appears that the Shanghai rankings are based more clearly upon objective criteria. The QS rankings are largely based upon academic reputation rankings derived from opinion survey results. The two rankings contain considerable overlap, but also display significant differences.