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How To Reduce College Tuition, Improve The Educational Process
The Advocate
By Herb Denenberg, The Bulletin
Colleges and universities are ridiculously and unreasonably expensive, with tuition, fees, board and room often running $30,000 to $50,000 a year. Most students just want to attend, not pay a fee that makes it seem like their buying the school. So President Barack Obama and the Democrats are going to pour money into them with grants and loans to students and with some tax breaks.
Colleges and universities, as is their custom, will keep raising their tuition and fees to gobble up that infusion, in those endless cycles of more money from the government, for financing which in fact encourages and facilitates higher tuition and fees.
Throwing more money at colleges and universities won’t solve the problem of their inflated cost structure and their inefficient operations. It will probably just help make them more expensive and inefficient. But the Democratic politicians haven’t figured that out, nor have the high-powered intellectuals at places such as Harvard, Cornell and the rest of the Ivy League.
I just read the latest edition of Harvard Magazine (March/April 2009) that features an article on making colleges and universities more affordable and accessible. It is titled “Reopening the Doors to College: The crisis in access to higher education and a strategy for moving beyond elite handouts for the lucky few.” It is by Theda Skopal, a professor and past dean of the College of Arts and Sciences of Harvard, and Suzanne Mettler, professor of American Institutions at Cornell.
Their solution of course is what you would expect from Ivy League intellectuals or Democratic leftists, which are often one and the same: Handouts for the many as well as the few, meaning more money from the federal government. The authors note that the mood about government is shifting as families realize they need help in coping with the cost of higher education.
They should have also noted that the entitlement mentality is spreading like wildfire. This means legislators have to start doling out money. The punch line: “The obvious top priority has to be further boosting outright grants for low- and lower-middle income students.”
The obvious top priority for everything for these Democrats and Ivy League intellectuals is more money from the federal government. Like the Democrats, the authors of this article have all kinds of ideas for tapping into the federal treasury, and I’m sure given more space, they could have gone on forever.
Let me suggest, with all due respect to the Ivy League intellectuals, that we ought to do more than throw money at a system that is too expensive and too inefficient and getting more of that way all of the time. What I found most striking in this attempt of the authors to make colleges and universities more affordable and accessible is that they totally overlooked the most obvious answer: Greater use of one of the greatest tools in information and education ever created — the Internet and the other miraculous new technology of the 21st century.
We’re still in the caveman era when it comes to education. One professor stands in front of 20 students at a scheduled time, and conducts a lecture or discussion session. This is the year 2009, and we’ve seen the information revolution. Do we really need to pay for 4,000 professors to teach political science 101 or any other basic course? Do we really need 4,000 classrooms for those students? And can we afford an educational system that is so slow to achieve the efficiencies and advantages of new technology.
We can get the best professors in the world, and put their lectures on the Internet. We can supplement those lectures with all kinds of features such as periodic exams as the lecture proceeds. These self-tests would enable the student to check to see if they’ve mastered the material.
There can be a FAQ section — frequently asked questions. And there can be e-mail monitoring by professors when students need a question answered. There can be blogging set-ups for comments by students and professors, and all manner of other communication and teaching devices.
The Internet approach has powerful advantages. First, you can take the Internet classes at any time. I’ve seen online courses divided up into 15-minute segments, so it makes it easy to do the work whenever you want to. Another advantage of this system is that you can hear the lecture or class session as many times as you want. This approach also eliminates much of the expense of bricks and mortar classrooms, buildings and the like. It also means that students in every geographic location can have access to higher education. That’s only one of many possibilities, which are indeed endless — as endless as the number of ways to tap into the federal treasury.
Take lawyers in Pennsylvania (and almost all other states) who have to take continuing legal education courses every year. In Pennsylvania, there is a 12-hour requirement. Now they can fulfill those hours by classroom teaching, teleconferencing, or going online. The non-classroom credits are limited to four hours in Pennsylvania. They can also pick-up hours of credit by attending legal conferences and conventions. There’s no reason this approach can’t be employed by colleges and universities.
Doctors also have an array of continuing education courses. They, too, can take courses in classrooms, online or via teleconferencing. They, too, can attend conventions and conferences and pick up credit. My brother, Mike, an orthopedic surgeon, told me he just got back from the convention of orthopedic surgeons attended by 30,000 doctors in Las Vegas. He said at the end of the convention, the sponsors gave each attendee a CD with the entire program on it. I don’t remember getting a CD after attending any course or classroom at some college or university. He also found with online courses, the comments made by those taking the course are among the most valuable feature of the courses.
Doctors can also read articles in medical journals, answer a set of questions, mail them in and if they pass get credit for continuing legal education. In some cases they simply certify they’ve read the articles for credit. This just is another illustration of options that might be employed to make college and university education more varied, more efficient, and more economical.
When I was in the U.S. Army, I used to take courses with the United States Armed Forces Institute (USAFI) as a hobby. You could register for a course. You would get a textbook and a workbook. Then you would take a monitored written exam at your leisure. The credits were accepted by many of the best colleges and universities in the land, such as Johns Hopkins University. You could go as fast or as slow as you wanted, and if you had the time and ability you could literally earn college credits in days. Why make a student spend four or five months and attend classes when he can master the course in a few days or weeks by reading the text and passing an exam?
There should be more opportunity to take the final exam if you felt you knew the required course material, regardless of how much time you had spent reading the text, studying, or doing anything else. With USAFI, if you passed the exam, you got the credit. No one asked or knew how much time you spent with the text or studying.
Part or all of the class work could be broadcast on radio or television. Assignments might consist of listening or watching certain regularly scheduled broadcasts. For example, a political science instructor might require so many hours of a talk show host that focused on politics. C-Span often broadcasts speakers at conferences and conventions on almost every subject that would make perfect material for educational purposes.
I think some of the talk show hosts often have hours of programming better than many if not most college lectures. I’d say Dennis Prager and Michael Medved consistently produce college-level hours of programming. Their broadcasts might fit into many different courses.
I spent endless years in classrooms and most of that time could have been spent much more efficiently on the Internet, if it and the courses were available. I suspect utilizing this new technology would not only dramatically cut the cost of tuition but would also cut the time required to complete a degree. I’d guess that might be by 50 percent or more in many cases.
Students could move at their own speed, rather than what is dictated by one professor trying to bring a classroom full of students forward at the same time. You would eliminate much of the time and expense of going to and from classes, and you would also eliminate the need for expensive room and board at a campus.
And you would eliminate thousands of paychecks for professors, deans, and administrators. Having been involved in university government at a school, which will remain unnamed, I can assure you that too much of the time and effort of the faculty is expended for their own benefit, not of the students.
Having given the two professors who authored the article failing marks for missing the most important information and educational development of our time, I will credit them with making some important points. They do note that if we are to correct our college and university problem we have to correct our K-12 problem. Our failing public schools are producing students who are not capable of college and university work and whose desire for it has been demolished by horrendous educational experiences.
We have to improve K-12 education. We have to stop throwing money at the problem and improve the educational system. That means taking on the teachers’ unions which put the welfare of teachers first and that of students last, if at all. We also have to go to a choice system, so parents can take their children out of failing public schools and send them to private schools. We also have to face the reality of the failing public schools rather than staying in denial, and move aggressively to reform them.
The authors also make an important point in calling for greater attention and support for our 1,045 community colleges. They have been leaders in making college education accessible and in supplying local workforces with people trained in needed skills. They have carried out their mission more efficiently and effectively than many more prestigious institutions.
That’s because they focus on teaching rather than research and because they do not need many of the expensive supporting capabilities that go with a research institution. Also as they focus on teaching, they tend to produce better teaching than many research universities. At the more prestigious colleges and universities there is a heavy emphasis on research, sometimes to the detriment of teaching. If you’re a high-powered researcher and author, you can become a star at many colleges and universities, even if you are a lousy teacher.
As the authors note, if we are to maintain economic viability and power we have to be at the top of the list when it comes to the quality of higher education and the quantity of our students who get it. A 2007 report of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found “the United States has moved from first place for higher-education attainment levels among 55 to 64 year olds to fourth place among 35 to 44 year olds and to 10th place among 25 to 34 year olds. Among that younger age group, we have been overtaken by Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Ireland, Japan, South Korea, Norway and Spain.” That is correctly described as a startling development for the “one-time world leader in access to higher education and a worrisome development in an ever-more-competitive economy.”
I’d add to that it is worrisome for our military power, which is heavily dependent on the science and technology our citizens and our colleges and universities are capable of producing. I’d have one addendum to this discussion also overlooked by the Ivy League intellectuals who authored the article. I think we ought to encourage business and industry to do more education and training work on their own.
A lot of solid work has been abandoned over recent years in the era of cost cutting and personnel-cutting. I can remember when the old Insurance Company of North America had a fabulous education department, loaded with expertise and publications on virtually all aspects of insurance. I used to take advantage of that resource in the 1960s, as a professor of insurance at the Wharton School. But that kind of educational facility has been slowly disappearing.
Perhaps most fundamentally, we have to recognize that education and training are not and should not be the monopoly of colleges and universities. We ought to make education and training as competitive as possible and bestow accreditation on all institutions that can effectively teach. Perhaps with standardized tests for certain courses, every kind of institution could compete to train students to master the material and pass the courses.
I think there are much better ways to get college and university credits and degrees than are now offered. And I think modern technology should make superior and lower cost alternatives readily available.
This column has addressed only the cost and efficiency issues in higher education. There are other more difficult ones that must be addressed. One is the leftist and even radical domination of faculties and their practice of indoctrinating rather than teaching. This is documented in two important books from David Horowitz, The Professors and Indoctrination U. There is also the question of what they should be teaching and whether they have lost their way in failing to teach America’s fundamental values and principles.
See yesterday’s column in The Bulletin by Thomas A. Shakely, “A Challenge of Principle and Purpose in Higher Education.”
Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner, and professor at the Wharton School. He is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of the Sciences. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at advocate@thebulletin.us
Colleges and universities, as is their custom, will keep raising their tuition and fees to gobble up that infusion, in those endless cycles of more money from the government, for financing which in fact encourages and facilitates higher tuition and fees.
Throwing more money at colleges and universities won’t solve the problem of their inflated cost structure and their inefficient operations. It will probably just help make them more expensive and inefficient. But the Democratic politicians haven’t figured that out, nor have the high-powered intellectuals at places such as Harvard, Cornell and the rest of the Ivy League.
I just read the latest edition of Harvard Magazine (March/April 2009) that features an article on making colleges and universities more affordable and accessible. It is titled “Reopening the Doors to College: The crisis in access to higher education and a strategy for moving beyond elite handouts for the lucky few.” It is by Theda Skopal, a professor and past dean of the College of Arts and Sciences of Harvard, and Suzanne Mettler, professor of American Institutions at Cornell.
Their solution of course is what you would expect from Ivy League intellectuals or Democratic leftists, which are often one and the same: Handouts for the many as well as the few, meaning more money from the federal government. The authors note that the mood about government is shifting as families realize they need help in coping with the cost of higher education.
They should have also noted that the entitlement mentality is spreading like wildfire. This means legislators have to start doling out money. The punch line: “The obvious top priority has to be further boosting outright grants for low- and lower-middle income students.”
The obvious top priority for everything for these Democrats and Ivy League intellectuals is more money from the federal government. Like the Democrats, the authors of this article have all kinds of ideas for tapping into the federal treasury, and I’m sure given more space, they could have gone on forever.
Let me suggest, with all due respect to the Ivy League intellectuals, that we ought to do more than throw money at a system that is too expensive and too inefficient and getting more of that way all of the time. What I found most striking in this attempt of the authors to make colleges and universities more affordable and accessible is that they totally overlooked the most obvious answer: Greater use of one of the greatest tools in information and education ever created — the Internet and the other miraculous new technology of the 21st century.
We’re still in the caveman era when it comes to education. One professor stands in front of 20 students at a scheduled time, and conducts a lecture or discussion session. This is the year 2009, and we’ve seen the information revolution. Do we really need to pay for 4,000 professors to teach political science 101 or any other basic course? Do we really need 4,000 classrooms for those students? And can we afford an educational system that is so slow to achieve the efficiencies and advantages of new technology.
We can get the best professors in the world, and put their lectures on the Internet. We can supplement those lectures with all kinds of features such as periodic exams as the lecture proceeds. These self-tests would enable the student to check to see if they’ve mastered the material.
There can be a FAQ section — frequently asked questions. And there can be e-mail monitoring by professors when students need a question answered. There can be blogging set-ups for comments by students and professors, and all manner of other communication and teaching devices.
The Internet approach has powerful advantages. First, you can take the Internet classes at any time. I’ve seen online courses divided up into 15-minute segments, so it makes it easy to do the work whenever you want to. Another advantage of this system is that you can hear the lecture or class session as many times as you want. This approach also eliminates much of the expense of bricks and mortar classrooms, buildings and the like. It also means that students in every geographic location can have access to higher education. That’s only one of many possibilities, which are indeed endless — as endless as the number of ways to tap into the federal treasury.
Take lawyers in Pennsylvania (and almost all other states) who have to take continuing legal education courses every year. In Pennsylvania, there is a 12-hour requirement. Now they can fulfill those hours by classroom teaching, teleconferencing, or going online. The non-classroom credits are limited to four hours in Pennsylvania. They can also pick-up hours of credit by attending legal conferences and conventions. There’s no reason this approach can’t be employed by colleges and universities.
Doctors also have an array of continuing education courses. They, too, can take courses in classrooms, online or via teleconferencing. They, too, can attend conventions and conferences and pick up credit. My brother, Mike, an orthopedic surgeon, told me he just got back from the convention of orthopedic surgeons attended by 30,000 doctors in Las Vegas. He said at the end of the convention, the sponsors gave each attendee a CD with the entire program on it. I don’t remember getting a CD after attending any course or classroom at some college or university. He also found with online courses, the comments made by those taking the course are among the most valuable feature of the courses.
Doctors can also read articles in medical journals, answer a set of questions, mail them in and if they pass get credit for continuing legal education. In some cases they simply certify they’ve read the articles for credit. This just is another illustration of options that might be employed to make college and university education more varied, more efficient, and more economical.
When I was in the U.S. Army, I used to take courses with the United States Armed Forces Institute (USAFI) as a hobby. You could register for a course. You would get a textbook and a workbook. Then you would take a monitored written exam at your leisure. The credits were accepted by many of the best colleges and universities in the land, such as Johns Hopkins University. You could go as fast or as slow as you wanted, and if you had the time and ability you could literally earn college credits in days. Why make a student spend four or five months and attend classes when he can master the course in a few days or weeks by reading the text and passing an exam?
There should be more opportunity to take the final exam if you felt you knew the required course material, regardless of how much time you had spent reading the text, studying, or doing anything else. With USAFI, if you passed the exam, you got the credit. No one asked or knew how much time you spent with the text or studying.
Part or all of the class work could be broadcast on radio or television. Assignments might consist of listening or watching certain regularly scheduled broadcasts. For example, a political science instructor might require so many hours of a talk show host that focused on politics. C-Span often broadcasts speakers at conferences and conventions on almost every subject that would make perfect material for educational purposes.
I think some of the talk show hosts often have hours of programming better than many if not most college lectures. I’d say Dennis Prager and Michael Medved consistently produce college-level hours of programming. Their broadcasts might fit into many different courses.
I spent endless years in classrooms and most of that time could have been spent much more efficiently on the Internet, if it and the courses were available. I suspect utilizing this new technology would not only dramatically cut the cost of tuition but would also cut the time required to complete a degree. I’d guess that might be by 50 percent or more in many cases.
Students could move at their own speed, rather than what is dictated by one professor trying to bring a classroom full of students forward at the same time. You would eliminate much of the time and expense of going to and from classes, and you would also eliminate the need for expensive room and board at a campus.
And you would eliminate thousands of paychecks for professors, deans, and administrators. Having been involved in university government at a school, which will remain unnamed, I can assure you that too much of the time and effort of the faculty is expended for their own benefit, not of the students.
Having given the two professors who authored the article failing marks for missing the most important information and educational development of our time, I will credit them with making some important points. They do note that if we are to correct our college and university problem we have to correct our K-12 problem. Our failing public schools are producing students who are not capable of college and university work and whose desire for it has been demolished by horrendous educational experiences.
We have to improve K-12 education. We have to stop throwing money at the problem and improve the educational system. That means taking on the teachers’ unions which put the welfare of teachers first and that of students last, if at all. We also have to go to a choice system, so parents can take their children out of failing public schools and send them to private schools. We also have to face the reality of the failing public schools rather than staying in denial, and move aggressively to reform them.
The authors also make an important point in calling for greater attention and support for our 1,045 community colleges. They have been leaders in making college education accessible and in supplying local workforces with people trained in needed skills. They have carried out their mission more efficiently and effectively than many more prestigious institutions.
That’s because they focus on teaching rather than research and because they do not need many of the expensive supporting capabilities that go with a research institution. Also as they focus on teaching, they tend to produce better teaching than many research universities. At the more prestigious colleges and universities there is a heavy emphasis on research, sometimes to the detriment of teaching. If you’re a high-powered researcher and author, you can become a star at many colleges and universities, even if you are a lousy teacher.
As the authors note, if we are to maintain economic viability and power we have to be at the top of the list when it comes to the quality of higher education and the quantity of our students who get it. A 2007 report of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found “the United States has moved from first place for higher-education attainment levels among 55 to 64 year olds to fourth place among 35 to 44 year olds and to 10th place among 25 to 34 year olds. Among that younger age group, we have been overtaken by Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Ireland, Japan, South Korea, Norway and Spain.” That is correctly described as a startling development for the “one-time world leader in access to higher education and a worrisome development in an ever-more-competitive economy.”
I’d add to that it is worrisome for our military power, which is heavily dependent on the science and technology our citizens and our colleges and universities are capable of producing. I’d have one addendum to this discussion also overlooked by the Ivy League intellectuals who authored the article. I think we ought to encourage business and industry to do more education and training work on their own.
A lot of solid work has been abandoned over recent years in the era of cost cutting and personnel-cutting. I can remember when the old Insurance Company of North America had a fabulous education department, loaded with expertise and publications on virtually all aspects of insurance. I used to take advantage of that resource in the 1960s, as a professor of insurance at the Wharton School. But that kind of educational facility has been slowly disappearing.
Perhaps most fundamentally, we have to recognize that education and training are not and should not be the monopoly of colleges and universities. We ought to make education and training as competitive as possible and bestow accreditation on all institutions that can effectively teach. Perhaps with standardized tests for certain courses, every kind of institution could compete to train students to master the material and pass the courses.
I think there are much better ways to get college and university credits and degrees than are now offered. And I think modern technology should make superior and lower cost alternatives readily available.
This column has addressed only the cost and efficiency issues in higher education. There are other more difficult ones that must be addressed. One is the leftist and even radical domination of faculties and their practice of indoctrinating rather than teaching. This is documented in two important books from David Horowitz, The Professors and Indoctrination U. There is also the question of what they should be teaching and whether they have lost their way in failing to teach America’s fundamental values and principles.
See yesterday’s column in The Bulletin by Thomas A. Shakely, “A Challenge of Principle and Purpose in Higher Education.”
Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner, and professor at the Wharton School. He is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of the Sciences. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at advocate@thebulletin.us
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