College, Smollege (How to Save $$$$)

I'm trying to find a bright spot here. Over and over and over I ask former students how they employ the wonderful knowledge they accumulated in college, and invariably the answer is "not at all."

These are students for whom $50,000 or more of public and private money was spent, and they are telling me that it was a waste. Can this really be true? Well, perhaps not entirely. There are the intangibles: meeting people, learning some time management, figuring out how to pretend to be grown up. But there are other ways to get those things.

The reason most people give for going to college is that it is the only way to qualify for a decent job. So, it comes down to a piece of paper - the diploma. OK - thought experiment. If you pay $50,000 for a well-equipped Chevy Tahoe, at least you get something very tangible that you can use immediately and continue using for the next five to ten years. When you spend the same money for a college diploma, you have no real guarantee of anything except that you are enabled to seek a job from the small subset of companies that actually hire college graduates right out of college. Perhaps you have co-op'ed, which, in some fields, such as engineering, gives you a much better chance of landing a good job. Many employers tell me (a) they don't hire students who didn't co-op, and (b) they care much more about the co-op supervisor's report than about the student's grades. Hmmm. Bells ringing. How about skipping the "don't care" part and get right to the useful part. There is a term for this - "apprenticeship." It used to be quite popular in all walks of life, and still is the norm in noble and well-paid professions such as plumbing, electrical work, and similar trades. In most professional disciplines, this is practiced as well - medicine, nursing, pharmacy for example. In those arenas, the classes tend to be focused on things one really needs to know to be successful and/or to avoid killing people. This is not a "university education" in the classical sense. It is really a glorified vocational education.

Sadly, the most enthusiastic students in most colleges are the youngest ones. I would love to see seniors who are full of excitement and enthusiasm, ready to harness their hard-earned knowledge; brimming with ideas - sorry to leave the university, but glad to be moving on. Instead, I see mainly burned-out shells of the excited freshman that came in four-ish years ago. They have learned how to take shortcuts, cheat, cut classes, copy homework. They have figured out, in short, how to play the system to get the diploma and the grades with the least amount of work.

I have generally seen little relationship between grade point average and qualities of people I would be inclined to hire if I were running a company or a not-for-profit. Some of the high-GPA students are certainly excellent, but so are quite a few of the low-GPA students. A lot of the high-GPA students I wouldn't want anywhere near my lab, and I don't believe they could produce a practical system if it jumped up and built itself and stood in front of them and said "here I am."

The pickle we are in is a direct result of the GI Bill that Congress enacted (with good intent) to handle the huge inrush of servicemen coming home after WWII ended. The problem was that there were not enough jobs for these returning GI's. Congress' solution was to give them free or greatly reduced cost college tuition so that they could go to college while the economy adjusted. The problem is that the economy did adjust, but not in the intended way. Universities saw the GI Bill as manna from heaven. Their enrollments surged, and the tab was being picked up by the U.S. Government. Accountability and standards naturally declined, and enrollments surged even further. Quickly, the college diploma replaced the high-school diploma as the "must-have" ticket to employment.

That's pretty much where we are now, except that costs have increased so much that families are burdened with heavy debt, as are graduating students, just to earn that precious piece of paper.

As I said, I'm looking for a bright spot. I think I've seen a glimmer of it just around the corner. Online education is starting to get respectable, and more employers are begining to take note. Traditional universities are developing strategies for online delivery that still involves face-to-face meetings with teachers, lab exercises, paper tests, and much of the look and feel of a traditional classroom experience. I have a feeling that market pressure will continue to encourage this. Yes, there is something "special" about going off to college, but if we are honest, it has very little to do with learning. My recommendation (maybe 10 years from now) - get a degree online, and meanwhile, go to a third-world country and help people, join an adventure club, volunteer, read, learn a musical instrument, and fall in love.