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A New Value Proposition for Higher Education

Part 1.

There’s been flood of books and articles questioning the “value” of a college or university degree.  After all, costs are high, debt levels are up, and prospects for college graduates are, at best, uncertain.  In this environment alternatives sprout like mushrooms.  Theil fellowships encourage students to drop out and start a business.  Uncollege proposes alternatives for autodidacts who want to hack their way to the equivalent of a college degree.  William Bennett calls for vocational training as a more practical and less elitist route to the middle class. Straighter Line seeks to replace the first two years of college with a transferable online curriculum.

Some of these alternatives seem to be taking hold. While demand for places at the country’s top schools remains strong, a recent NACUBO report notes that many smaller private colleges can’t fill their incoming classes.

Clearly there is a social value of an educated and engaged citizenry.  Colleges and universities prepare leaders that will shape the direction of government, industry and culture.  Educated citizens solve problems that improve people’s lives, participate in public decision making that affect our communities, and promote innovation and change.  We all have a stake in having an educated citizenry.

But the broader social value comes as the result of many individual decisions.  If we want people to continue to seek higher learning, it is critical for college and university leaders to understand how the relationship between students and their institutions are shifting.  They need to put themselves in the students’ shoes–students who understand the importance of college differently than those of us inside the institutions.

 So what does a student “get” from going to college?  College’s market the transformational experience that comes from exposure to passionate scholars asking big questions.  But most students and their families aren’t plunging into decades of debt for the transformational experience, even if that is the real and most noble outcome.  Colleges implicitly or explicitly assert that a student gains skills and abilities, immediate and long term opportunities for employment, and a network of alumni that can provide both social and professional connections.  To the student the value of a college degree is the certification that s/he has obtained these abilities, can perform in socially specified ways, and is entitled to affiliate with others from the same institution.

For centuries the only way to get this certification was to physically come to a college or university.  Knowledge was a precious commodity, abundant only at colleges and universities and scarce everywhere else.  Despite public libraries, learned societies and public lectures, access to information was limited.  Unlike the ubiquitous public elementary school, college was for the few, not the many.  Not everyone had the mind, discipline, or desire that would allow them to succeed in college.  And prestigious colleges built their reputation on limiting access to this precious resource.  We still measure the quality of an academic institution by the number of applicants it rejects. Most Ivy League schools accept less than 10% of their applicants.  Scarcity of access validates the institution and the students who come there in a perverse self-reinforcing cycle.

But scarcity isn’t only a function of prestige.  In public higher education it is often a question of capacity–there just aren’t enough classrooms and labs to hold all of the students who want to come to college.  And while we think of college life reserved for a particular age group, 18 to 24 year olds, of the 17 million students currently enrolled at a college or university, 15 million of them are considered, “non-traditional:” older, working, and often single parents.

Amid the widespread calls for increasing the educational attainment of American citizens there simply isn’t enough room for everyone who wants a college degree.  The actual and perceived value of the degree, combined with the scarcity of access, is one reason why costs are so high.

Check back for part two —  Challenging the traditional frame – from the industrial model to the service model