Another good article on the Higher Education Bubble

Chris Dunn opens his article Education bubble is close to popping in our faces with:

----------
Fair warning: This article will piss off a lot of you. That was the opening sentence to TechCrunch’s recent article, “Peter Thiel: We’re in a Bubble and It’s Not the Internet. It’s Higher Education.” Earlier this month Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal, told TechCrunch that the housing bubble was replaced by the education bubble. Thiel was in the minority of people who predicted both the dot-com and housing bubbles. Now he and others are warning that most college degrees are not worth the cost.


According to Thiel, a bubble, in this sense, exists when “something is overvalued and intensely believed.” He makes another claim: “To question education is really dangerous ... It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus.” Thiel’s definition is a good one because it accurately describes the frenzy surrounding the dot-com, housing and education bubbles.
----------

Just like the housing bubble, the issue isn't should people buy a house or go to college, but should they waste a ton of money doing so?

Janine and I encourage our children to go to college.  But we also encourage them to be wise in where they go and not incur huge debts.  We don't plan to give them a lot of money so they can attend a high priced school.  If they want to go to Harvard or Stanford, they'll need to work out the financing.

With the current hard economic times I agree with Chris Dunn, the Higher Education Bubble will burst soon.  At some point the number of students applying to go to college will drop to a point which affects many schools.  Once that happens, many colleges will start to scramble trying to chase the shrinking applicants.  The classic law of supply and demand will result in lower prices.  Colleges that cannot survive on lower tuitions may not survive at all.

Hat tip: Instapundit.

Glenn Reynolds on the Higher Education Bubble

I have blogged several times in the past about the problem of rising cost of a college education.

Glenn Reynolds, who blogs at Instapundit, greatly expands on the problem. He gave a speech about the Higher Education Bubble. He has given a lot of thought about this problem. His speech is about 50 minutes and then he does some Q&A.

Glenn Reynolds - The Higher Education Bubble and What Comes Next from Clemson Institute on Vimeo.

Here are some of the highlights:

Several times he says "When something can't go on forever, it won't."

The relative value of a college degree is declining. The average wages of college graduates has actually declined when adjusted for inflation. This means the return for a college education is going down.

Because of several factors, like the current recession, the ability to borrow and finance a college education is going down.

College graduates are entering the job force with more debt, which makes it harder to buy a house.

The single best hedge for avoiding a bubble is to avoid debt.

He sees three general reasons for and individual to college:
1) To be more productive
2) To be able to network
3) To get the "college experience"

The only real benefit to society for a college is the first reason.

At about minute 44 he references Bob Samuels of UCLS as reporting on research that the direct teaching costs for public school is about $1456 per student per year at a public school, and a little over $2500 per student per year at private schools. When the bubble bursts, many schools will have to get rid of the superfluous expenses like three story rock climbing walls and tuition will be much closer to what it really costs for the education.

I loved his observation: "You don't get deferred gratification and self discipline from government subsidies.

I great enjoyed the talk and think it is worth watching.

Update I - 15 Nov 2010. Glenn has a column up: Higher education's bubble is about to burst.

Update II - 20 Nov 2010. Some clarification on the expenses of college.

More on the higher education bubble

Almost five years ago I wrote a post about the exploding cost of higher education.  For decades the cost of going to college has climbed two to three times faster than inflation.  When the cost was relatively low as a fraction of an average yearly salary it made sense to send children to college.  Now that it has become sometimes two to three times how much a parent makes in a year it no longer makes sense for some to go to college. 

Over the years I've written several posts about what Instapundit calls the Higher Education Bubble.  He has even written a book about this problem called appropriately The Higher Education Bubble.

Recently my mother sent a link to the family on University 2.0 — Revolution in Education.  It is a good summary of how online education will help make higher education more affordable.  The post starts with:

----------
Two major announcements in the last month showed online higher education moving decisively beyond for-profit institutions such as the University of Phoenix, Kaplan, Walden, and DeVry.

Some of the U.S.'s most prestigious, established universities are making aggressive inroads into the field of online education. The recent announcements were preceded about a decade ago when University of California Berkeley, Yale, and MIT began to offer free internet access to videos of their courses to the public. Video footage of classes received some acknowledgment for providing excellent knowledge from top universities for free, even though they offered no grade or certification of completion. However, in the last month a new company, Coursera, was launched. Coursera will be partnering with some top universities -- Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, Stanford (the home of the two professors at the helm of the startup), and the University of Michigan (the only non-Private University in this group) -- to provide free online courses.

Then, just last week, Harvard joined MIT in announcing their new joint e-learning platform, edX. Both online learning platforms go far beyond the simplicity of video lectures, and incorporate a variety of interactive learning tools. The entrance of such storied institutions has the potential to radically reshape the landscape of higher education worldwide.

With these universities typically admitting only about one applicant in fifteen -- and with those lucky few staring down a four-year bill of $200,000 or more -- such moves by the two universities raise a number of questions. Since the online courses will be free, what's their strategy?
----------

Online education will be part of the process, maybe the main influence, which makes higher education more affordable and pops the higher education bubble.

Popping the Higher Education Bubble?

I've written in the past that because for decades the cost of higher education continues to sky rocket twice as fast as inflation, that we may be reaching a point where it doesn't make cents to go to college. Last year I predicted that there would be a revolution in higher education.

Batman at Yeah Right sees similar fundamental changes, but for different reasons. In Popping the Higher Ed Bubble:

"Yesterday, Instapundit linked to an interesting article here about "the next market bubble" being higher education, where government subsidies (obstensibly, to improve access to higher education) have had the unintended (but certainly foreseeable) consequence of inflating the costs of college: "Over the last 10 years, after adjusting for inflation, tuition is up 48% at public schools and 24% at private schools."
There are several important parallels with the recent housing bubble; policy goals of extending participation (in higher education, in home ownership) led to people with serious credit risks borrowing a lot to pay a lot for something that, it turns out, isn't worth what they paid. (Instapundit also linked to a comment by Dean Esmay explaining his regret about ever bothering to pursue a college degree.)
This bubble, like all bubbles, will have its tragic stories, so I don't want to cheer this on. But if there's a silver lining, it's that it may make people rethink the value of those four years that polite society assumes you need."

It may happen sooner, or it may happen in a decade or two, but at some point higher education will have to adjust dramatically, or cease to exist as we know it.

I wonder if there will be a higher education homeschooling movement?

(Hat tip: Instapundit)


---------
Technorati tags: homeschooling, homeschool, home school, home education, parenting, children, public school, public education, education

Column on Higher Education Bubble

We have long blogged about how the cost of college and university education can not continue to climb twice as fast as inflation.  Instapundit calls this the Higher Education bubble. 

The decision to go on for higher education is not considered isolated from the rest of life.  It is a decision based on trade offs.  If it cost a dollar more people could justify the value of four more years.  If it cost a million dollars far fewer people would be willing to make the sacrifice.

Bubbles tend to burst over some event.  Often one that shows the emperor has no cloths or draws back the curtain to reveal a man pushing dials and buttons.

In What is a college education really worth? Naomi Schaefer Riley wonders:

----------
Did Peter Thiel pop the bubble? That was the question on the minds of parents, taxpayers and higher education leaders late last month when the co-founder of PayPalannounced that he was offering $100,000 to young people who would stay out of college for two years and work instead on scientific and technological innovations. Thiel, who has called college “the default activity,” told USA Today that “the pernicious side effect of the education bubble is assuming education [guarantees] absolute good, even with steep student fees.”
----------

Good column.  Some good thoughts.

Hat tip: Spunky Homeschool

More on the Higher Education Bubble

Earlier this week I blogged about Glenn Reynolds' recent speech on the Higher Education Bubble.

I agree with Glenn that the current trend of the cost for higher education climbing two and three times faster than inflation can not continue. It isn't clear to me when this will crash down, but it has to stop at some point.

Glenn recent wrote a column on this: Higher education's bubble is about to burst. It is a good summary of the main points in his talk. I encourage you to read his column. If you want more information about the Higher Education Bubble, you could then check out my post and then his speech.

Big problem in higher education: Too many administrators

One of the complaints against public schools is so much of the money goes to administrators, staff and even janitors, while a small fraction reaches the teachers.  I remember reading awhile back that government schools have something like one person out side of the classroom for every two teachers.  By way of comparison many private schools are much leaner and have one person in the office for every ten to fifteen teachers.

But it looks like higher education is worse.  Hard to imagine!

Malcolm Harris has an article about Bad Education.  He starts by comparing the current higher education bubble with the recent housing bubble:

----------
The Project On Student Debt estimates that the average college senior in 2009 graduated with $24,000 in outstanding loans. Last August, student loans surpassed credit cards as the nation’s single largest source of debt, edging ever closer to $1 trillion. Yet for all the moralizing about American consumer debt by both parties, no one dares call higher education a bad investment. The nearly axiomatic good of a university degree in American society has allowed a higher education bubble to expand to the point of bursting.


Since 1978, the price of tuition at US colleges has increased over 900 percent, 650 points above inflation. To put that number in perspective, housing prices, the bubble that nearly burst the US economy, then the global one, increased only fifty points above the Consumer Price Index during those years. But while college applicants’ faith in the value of higher education has only increased, employers’ has declined. According to Richard Rothstein at The Economic Policy Institute, wages for college-educated workers outside of the inflated finance industry have stagnated or diminished.
----------

then here is the killer:

----------
If current trends continue, the Department of Education estimates that by 2014 there will be more administrators than instructors at American four-year nonprofit colleges.
----------

Wow!


Hat tip: Newsalert

Clarification on the expenses of college

Last week I summarized a talk by Glenn Reynolds on the High Education Bubble. Someone sent me an email asking about this line in my summary:

"At about minute 44 he references Bob Samuels of UCLS as reporting on research that the direct teaching costs for public school is about $1456 per student per year at a public school, and a little over $2500 per student per year at private schools."

The question was raised that maybe I had made a typo. Maybe I had meant "$14,560 per student per year at a public school and a little over $25,000 per student per year at a private school."

No, I captured exactly what Glenn was saying.

The point Glenn was making is that for the classroom education experience, seating in the chair, listening to the teacher, and all of that core basic education, the cost per student is around $1500 to $2500 per year. Factored into this are the costs for the building, the salaries to the teachers who really teach, and so on.

This is part of what the bubble is all about. There are many areas where higher education organizations choose to spend money that have little benefit to most students. For example universities have super expensive sports programs that provide little benefit to most students, and these programs lose tons of money. So factored into the tuition is a large chunk of money that goes to the sports programs. Each student is subsidizing the sports programs with highly inflated tuition. Another area is many universities take a large fraction of tuition and "invest" it into research, which may be good for the university, but again does little for most students.

This is an important part of the higher education bubble. The real cost of the true benefit to the student is the $2500 a year for the education they receive. Most of the rest of the tuition they are charged is of questionable benefit. Glenn suggests that more and more students and parents will step back and re-examine the value of over inflated tuition. At some point we'll hit a tipping point. Then the bubble will pop and we'll have some kind of readjustment.

When will the education bubble burst?

I have have blogged in the past about the problem of rising cost of a college education. Instapundit calls this an Education Bubble.

Now main stream media is picking up on this problem. Forbes has an article about Universities On The Brink:

----------

Higher education in America, historically the envy of the world, is rapidly growing out of reach. For the past quarter-century, the cost of higher education has grown 440%, according to the National Center for Public Policy and Education, nearly four times the rate of inflation and double the rate of health care cost increases. The cost increases have occurred at both public and private colleges.

Like many situations too good to be true--like the dot-com boom, the Enron bubble, the housing boom or the health care cost explosion--the ever-increasing cost of university education is not sustainable.

----------

Good article to read.

(Hat tip: Instapundit, naturally)

Good article on the Higher Education Bubble

Nathan Harden writes about The End of the University as We Know It.  It is a great article.

He starts off with this prediction:

----------
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.
----------

I found this paragraph fascinating:

----------
One of the biggest barriers to the mainstreaming of online education is the common assumption that students don’t learn as well with computer-based instruction as they do with in-person instruction. There’s nothing like the personal touch of being in a classroom with an actual professor, says the conventional wisdom, and that’s true to some extent. Clearly, online education can’t be superior in all respects to the in-person experience. Nor is there any point pretending that information is the same as knowledge, and that access to information is the same as the teaching function instrumental to turning the former into the latter. But researchers at Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learning Initiative, who’ve been experimenting with computer-based learning for years, have found that when machine-guided learning is combined with traditional classroom instruction, students can learn material in half the time. Researchers at Ithaka S+R studied two groups of students—one group that received all instruction in person, and another group that received a mixture of traditional and computer-based instruction. The two groups did equally well on tests, but those who received the computer instruction were able to learn the same amount of material in 25 percent less time.
----------

Think about it.  Not only can online education be cheaper, it can be faster!

This was also interesting to learn:

----------
It’s worth noting that while the four-year residential experience is what many of us picture when we think of “college”, the residential college experience has already become an experience only a minority of the nation’s students enjoy. Adult returning students now make up a large mass of those attending university. Non-traditional students make up 40 percent of all college students.
----------

I hadn't realized that higher education wasn't delivering much of an education for many students:

----------
In their research for their book Academically Adrift, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa found that 45 percent of the students they surveyed said they had no significant gains in knowledge after two years of college. Consider the possibility that, for the average student, traditional in-classroom university education has proven so ineffective that an online setting could scarcely be worse.
----------


The article is long, but well worth reading.

Interview: Beverly K. Eakman - author

Below is an interview with Beverly K. Eakman done via email. I think the first time I read anything by Beverly was when I came across her columns at NewsWithViews.com. I've noticed a number of people mention her in the same breath as John Taylor Gatto or John Holt. After doing this interview I can see why, she is an articulate critic of public schools.

I hope you enjoy the interview.

-------------------

Brief bio:

Beverly Eakman taught in public schools for nine years, starting in 1968. She was a Science Editor and Writer at NASA. At NASA she wrote a technical piece, "David, the Bubble Baby," which was picked up by popular press and turned into a movie starring John Travolta. Beverly has worked as a chief speech writer at a number of national and governmental organizations, including the National Council for Better Education. She has written several books, including Cloning of the American Mind: Eradicating Morality Through Education . For more information about Beverly, check out her web site: BEV EAKMAN.

-------------------

Q & A’s for Homeschool Interview Responses
© 2006 Beverly K. Eakman


PERSONAL QUESTIONS

Tell us about yourself. Where did you grow up? What was your childhood like?

I grew up in Washington, D.C.—one of the few natives of the Nation’s Capital. I had a lot to live up to as the daughter of two exceptionally gifted parents. My mother was a renowned musician, drop-dead gorgeous, with an IQ off-the-scale. My father was a child prodigy who toured the world at the tender age of 5, classically skilled with the violin—which is how I wound up born in Washington, D.C. By 1945, he was concert master of the National Symphony Orchestra. My maternal grandfather was so brilliant in engineering and language that he was sent behind enemy lines for both the U.S. and Britain to do intelligence-gathering during World War II under the cover of civil engineering. He wasn’t aware of his gift for languages until the government discovered that he could master practically any language, nuances and all—German, French, Farsi—it didn’t matter.

By contrast, if the term “hyperactive” had been in vogue during my youth in the 1950s, I’d have found my niche. But … I was born too soon. Too soon to be labeled with a code out of the nice little bible of psychiatric “diseases”—the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the DSM), too soon for my misbehavior to earn a free pass as “a chemical imbalance in the brain.”

Happily, I had the luxury of maturing, altering my conduct, and even changing my opinions—the old-fashioned way. I didn’t have to worry about somebody accessing a computer file 20 years or so down the road and trudging up some label like Attention-Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder or Oppositional Defiant Disorder. I didn’t have to consider the possibility that I might be rejected by a coveted university, or worse, lose out on a career choice, based on a coded label I’d acquired for one of these “disorders” in the 4th grade.

Like the irrepressible cartoon character, Calvin, I fantasized glorious deeds and made myself the hero. The worst of the lot, I suppose, was “The Medical School.” The polio scare was all over the news in those days and a vaccine, hopefully, was on the way. And I had one of those Playskool doctor’s kits. Remember those?

Well, I replaced the make-believe plastic syringe needles—which looked rather puny, I thought—with Mother’s hatpins and threatened to inoculate the 3rd-graders with a mixture of Vicks Vaporub and salt water, until some spoilsport called my mother.

Then there was the classmate who handed me a pair of scissors and dared me to cut a slit in her dress. Well, you can imagine who got in trouble for that one! Stupid me, I fell for it. Now, if we’d just had school psychiatrists, they would have told Mother that I “failed to pick up on social cues”—a marker associated with mild autistic behavior—and I’d have been “home free.”

Unfortunately, I inherited none of my parents’ talents, not even an ear for music, much less the prerequisite coordination. When knee-socks were in style, mine could be found down around my ankles. I was the kid who spent hours dressing up to go somewhere, only to discover a strand of spinach lodged between my front teeth half-way through the evening.

Today, I would be a sure bet for Special Education. But my mother, fortunately, got into a conversation with a neighbor who was the principal of a public high school in 1949. He asked her where she was going to send me to school, and she replied that she hadn’t thought much about it, as I was only 3 at the time. He advised her to send me to a private school if she could, because the public schools, he said, were “becoming chaotic, uncontrollable and substandard.” He proved to be more correct than he knew.

Because my father was of foreign extraction (a naturalized US citizen from Argentina), she selected an international K-12 academy, Maret School, in downtown D.C. It was modeled on the old Swiss and French systems back when an international baccalaureate (IB) meant something. Today, an IB is wholly different. But back then, diplomats’ kids who went to Maret knew they were returning to somewhere in Europe and had to pass the thing. They only got three shots at it. The ones who didn’t make the grade would discover their options were limited to vocational school.

The foreign kids at Maret had no pictures at all in their textbooks, although we American students did have a few. Even so, we never knew whether our class would be in English or French (the international languages at the time). Our teachers were strict disciplinarians whom we called “mademoiselles” and “monsieurs.” Many of them had escaped to this country one step ahead of the Nazis, the Stasi, or worse. They valued the American heritage and way of life, while still retaining elements of their (and our) Western cultural heritage, which they passed along to us kids.

Unfortunately, the early 1960s brought a flood of former public school pupils into the private schools. That changed the values and character of private schools like Maret into a more liberal and lax (Americanized?) direction. The academics were still there, but the New Ethics and pop culture slowly made their way in.

What interests did you have?

I loved to write, especially poetry, from early on. I appreciated music and ballet, even though I wasn’t particularly good at either. Sports like ice skating and basketball were of interest, but I wasn’t good at these, either. I was more a spectator than a participant. I loved animals, especially dogs. I was interested in reading about medical breakthroughs, cryptography in World War II, archeology and geology and astronomy. An interest in politics, social issues, education and philosophy came much later.

CAREER QUESTIONS

You have had a wide and varied career. Why did you make the jump from a teacher to being a writer at NASA?

I was really a “natural” for the teaching profession. As a child, I was one of those quirky, pain-in-the-derrière kids who drive their elders nuts. But in 1974 I found myself disenchanted with the California classrooms and changed professions to technical writer. When we moved to Houston, I found an opening with a contractor for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. My husband was with the space program, and I had always been interested in subjects associated with that.

It was, in many ways, a dream job. I got to transcribe air-to-ground tapes for the Apollo and Apollo-Soyuz missions. I got to study courses I was really interested in and could talk to my husband about—crash courses in lunar geology, space medicine, chemistry, astronomy, astrophysics…. Later, as editor-in-chief of NASA’s newspaper, I got to do such things as cover Lunar Science conferences, write a research-policy tome on the potential of geosynchronous orbiting satellites as one solution to the world’s energy problems. I penned some of the first stories on Landsat—the now-well-known satellite-based earth-imagery satellite program. And then there was the proverbial human interest feature—“David, the Bubble Baby”—which changed my life.

In 1979, I was surprised with an offer of a teaching position in Houston’s Clear Lake district—home to many astronauts’ kids. This occurred shortly after the publication of my human interest piece, “David, the Bubble Boy”—the article that was turned into a film starring John Travolta. I was offered the debate team, creative writing and honors classes—all of which sounded a lot friendlier toward academics than what I’d endured in California. But I was wrong, and again left the profession in disgust.

In 1984, my husband’s company opened a branch in my old stomping ground, Washington, D.C. Suddenly more interested in public policy and social issues than I used to be, I decided to pursue an opportunity as a speechwriter. I was surprised again when I was tapped for speechwriter to the Chief Justice of the United States, the late Warren E. Burger, when he stepped down from the Court to head the Bicentennial Commission on the U.S. Constitution, and then again when I was hired away from the Commission to become speechwriter for the head of Voice of America.

But for some reason, the lure of education’s woes continued to beckon—this time from a public policy and political perspective. Clearly, all the things I predicted when I actually taught were now were being delivered in spades to the American people. Academics were in big trouble, as were the kids themselves.

How could something as straightforward as teaching a child to read go so wrong? When did schooling turn chaotic? Why were teachers spending so much time on surveys and social adjustment? Why was it that the more we made schools colorful and entertaining, the more the kids hated them? When did class discussions morph into political correctness? And how did juvenile misbehavior turn violent and criminal on such a massive scale?

Such questions eventually would overtake my real vocation. Like a dog with a bone, I couldn’t let it go. I penned three books, followed by countless articles, speaking engagements, talk shows, and interviews. All this forced me to return, mentally, to my college years, when I was first preparing for a career as a schoolteacher. Reconsidering some four years of teacher training and nine years actually teaching, I realized that our role hadn’t been the transmission of "basics," or literacy, or proficiency at anything, but rather the promotion of "mental health." Accountability, I learned, meant satisfying government mandates and bureaucrats, not answering to parents.

This, in turn, made me take a second look at my own grammar school years in Maret School. Suddenly, I understood that something massive was transpiring globally, that the schools were being used to institutionalize a political agenda.

How did your technical piece, "David, the Bubble Baby," gain national notice? Were you consulted on The Boy in the Plastic Bubble ? Did you meet John Travolta?

The “David, the Bubble Baby” feature was a fluke that proves the old adage about “life is what happens while you’re making other plans.” It was just one of many human interest features I had to do for NASA’s newspaper, which came out every two weeks. I decided one issue I’d do a piece on the NASA engineers who constructed a prototype space suit for an immune-deficient-born child—a sterile environment in which the boy could play and be more or less in contact with his family and other children.

I should mention here that Immune-Deficiency Syndrome (IDS) is not the same as Auto-Immune-Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) that is caused by the HIV virus. IDS is a very rare, but not unknown, condition, like being born without the capacity to feel pain. Most such children never survive infancy. But someone got a brainstorm that if the boy could just be kept alive long enough to reach adolescence, maybe a bone-marrow transplant would enable him them to recover on his own. Unfortunately, the bone-marrow transplant (at age 12, from his sister) failed, and the boy died.

Since that time, I have since become friends with Kelly Preston, John Travolta’s wife—a really lovely person, totally unassuming and genuine—as she speaks out with me, and others, against the psychologizing and drugging of America’s youth. Kelly and her husband didn’t want such methods applied to their own kids, and they recognized that the youngsters of actors and actresses are disproportionately targeted for psychobabble and prescription psychiatric drugs in the schools. They were outraged.

“David, the Bubble Baby,” however, had nothing to do with psychology, only with IDS and with the youngsters of NASA employees who tested out the suit. I did not have input into the actual film version of my story that starred John Travolta, nor have I actually met him. The story, of course, became the property of NASA, even though my name was on the byline. But it did earn me journalistic credentials and no doubt led to other offers of employment.

What did you do as writer-editor at the United States Department of Justice?

I wrote speeches for one of the program directors, then training manuals for the civil rights investigators. I answered and catalogued letters from the public, wrote up legal findings from attorneys’ notes—a hodge-podge of things. More importantly, I learned how to craft legal language, about how the criminal justice system works, and about how the government-grant and -solicitation processes. I learned how lawyers determine whether a prospective case was worth pursuing—i.e., has legal merit, or “standing.” I parsed this knowledge into complaints from parents about their schools.

The first time I remember hearing of you was when I came across some of your columns at NewsWithViews. I noticed you haven't written for several months. Have you stopped? Or are you just distracted?

All those years I spent researching my books and penning hard-cover pieces and columns—working weekends, evenings and holidays, and looking longingly out the window at my husband lounging on the chaise—I thought: “There will be other years for me to do that.” Well, I got to the point where I was overwhelmed, and I didn’t see any progress being made by conservatives on social, cultural or educational fronts. I got burned out. In re-organizing the various piles of research materials that had accrued—I try to do this every January—I experienced an epiphany, of sorts. It started, I think, with the passage of the New Freedom Initiative, a euphemistic phrase to describe a plan to do computerized, psychological profiles on every person in the nation, beginning with schoolchildren, a process which I exposed in my 1991 book, Educating for the New World Order. I looked around at all the clippings and research materials on the floor and realized that year after year, we were saying the same things, making the same complaints about the media, the schools, and so on. Worse, every new graduating class (both high school and college) was less able and less motivated than the last to read, to do comparative research, or to insist on the constitutional ideals that made us a great nation. Every new generation of parents is less able to transmit values to their youngsters and have adopted the feminist outlook of shoring up their own careers, egos, and so forth. Children have become virtual “trophies.” The population has bought into an entitlement mentality.
So, I basically stopped writing last February. I summed up my angst in a January 2006 column, Lost.

What are your plans for the future?

I am taking a long break from most things political and considering doing a novel based on my mother’s life—which was colorful, to say the least. It will be a research nightmare if I go through with it, requiring all my time, so I need to stop and smell the roses while I can.

PUBLIC EDUCATION QUESTIONS

Public education has greatly declined over the last fifty years, on many different levels, for example academics, safety, and the efforts to influence what children think. Do you see any bright lights in public education?

Between 1968-1975, standardized tests started looking more like opinion surveys than cognitive measures. Teachers like me were told essentially not to teach — not to put red marks on pupils' papers, not to say anything that could even be construed as a negative comment about a youngster's work, clothing, or speech.

Fewer and fewer prospective teachers pursue an academic major. They major in education, which translates to psychology—or, more specifically, social work. Even those few who do specialize in an academic subject, typically wind up "facilitating" some other area once they hit the classroom. A history teacher might teach science; a music teacher might cover math.

No, I see no “bright lights.” In comparative scores between nations, the U.S. continues its downward trend. As I am writing this, it is predicted that we will not have a skilled or educated enough work force in 20 years to remain competitive.

Over the years you have raised a number of concerns about public schools. When did you first start becoming concerned about public schools? And what were your initial issues?

The seeds of concerns about public schools were planted during my years as an education major in college. I realized my role was not to transmit basics, or literacy, or proficiency at anything, but to promote "mental health." Texas Tech University, where I decided to go, was out in the sticks: Hicksville USA—the last place in the world one would expect to find an essentially Marxist approach to teacher education. Most of my classmates were from tiny, backwoods towns, and yet they were eating up what their education professors were pitching. Of course, the professors were appealing in part to students’ budding urge to flee the nest and become their “own person,” just like professors did on other campuses around the nation that were actually rioting and demonstrating. At least there was none of that at Tech.

The majority of our course work consisted of what we called “ed psych”: education psychology, child psychology, adolescent psychology, and so on. I thought it strange that nobody really cared whether we had a grasp of any particular subject area.

My introduction to the new thinking first came in 1966 when this “psych” professor walked in, drew several concentric circles on the chalkboard, and announced: “The first thing you kids need to know is that there’s no such thing as common sense.” He tapped the Bull’s Eye. “That’s Ego,” he said. “That’s what’s important. These other circles represent things like religion, and family, home, and so on. All of that is peripheral. Ego is the center of the universe.”

Once in the classroom, I realized courses like logic, philosophy, rhetoric and chronological history, which once helped students get a handle on modern issues, had disappeared—both in high schools and at the college-graduate level. Nothing incorporated concepts about self-reliance, property rights, limited government (especially in the context of regulatory power), or the role of religion in society. In high schools, courses like physics, chemistry, calculus, and physiology started being reserved for those with very high IQ scores, who were then skimmed off the top for better things, or else they were rounded up to "mentor" slower students.

Then as a young teacher in California, I attended workshops by behavioral experts like William Glasser, who explained how children needed to be told their every accomplishment was wonderful, even when it wasn't. Other psychologists claimed the traditional approach to teaching and raising children was "creating a thousand neurotics for every one that psychiatrists can hope to help with psychotherapy."

Childrearing advice mirrored what was going on in the schools. Parents’ magazines of the mid-1960s suddenly were filled with articles by child “experts” advising moms and pops to lay off the discipline and give children their “space.” Remember that? Don’t snoop around in your youngster’s bedroom and closet. A child has a right to privacy, and so on.

This sort of thing had a predictable effect—youngsters totally out of control. Parents soon tired of being around their children, too, and by 1978, day care was big business. But when the fire hit the fan in the 1990s at Littleton, CO; then Springfield, OR; Paducah, KY; and Santee, CA, it was the parents who got blamed for not doing all those things the “experts” had lobbied against for some 35 years. By obliterating the lines between right and wrong and advising kids to “discover their own value system,” schools suddenly were awash in disciplinary problems never previously experienced, not even in the bad old days when pupils had to stoke the fire to heat up the classroom.

Yet, child “experts” today stick tenaciously to their misguided vision, calling the resulting atrocities “mental health issues” instead of moral issues.

Do you see any bright lights in public education?

What surprises me, I guess, is that public schools haven’t already imploded. I mean, what does it take? Of course, a huge number of caring parents have fled public schools and there are some great resources for them now that often are better, or at least as good, as options that expensive private schools offer.

Private schools have become more expensive because the demand for them has increased along with the bureaucracy and red tape required to launch one. Then there is the issue of vouchers, which again introduces federal dollars (and strings) into the equation. But now something remarkable is happening: Homeschooling parents, along with a few exclusive private schools and learning (tutorial) centers, are taking advantage of real scientific breakthroughs in learning. They’ve ditched the trendy, faddish stuff. For example the Bridgeway Academy Project—an online curriculum provider launched by Robert Salzman—offers a full K-12 curriculum, both CD- and paper-based. It’s accredited in all 50 states. The key is that Mr. Salzman took the trouble to determine exactly how a particular student processes information in the brain and then comes up with a method to teach the child.

I’ve been preaching for years that education problems could be solved in 15 years by thoroughly revamping teacher education in colleges and universities based on what we really know about learning. If we scuttle the psychobabble and the mush, and craft real diagnostic tests for entering schoolchildren, then rework the way we pair students with teachers, we could change the whole dynamic of schooling.

Excepting actual brain injuries and real diseases that cause retardation, only nine things can “go wrong,” as it were, in learning: spatial and abstract reasoning, visual identification, visual and auditory memory, perceptual speed, mental stamina, hand-eye coordination and thought-expression synchronization. Most people are weak in at least one of these areas.

These elements are not learning “styles”; they are make-or-break fundamentals. We’re approaching diagnostic testing as a mental illness, and that is completely wrong. Young pupils need to be paired with the teacher trained to handle a child’s weakest element, not his strongest. For example, if a student already excels at auditory memory, it’s a mistake to put him in an environment where the lessons hinge on oral presentation. He’s already good at that.

Education majors are not specializing in spatial reasoning or auditory memory or perceptual speed, etc., except in training programs aimed at tutors working in high-priced learning centers, places where wealthier parents send their floundering offspring. These folks know all about the make-or-break fundamentals because the first priority at a learning center is to establish a substructure of learning. Otherwise, the tutoring will fail and parents will not continue to pay for these centers.

So, yes, there is a way out. But the public school surely will not take it. The question is why our nation’s leaders are not taking advantage of what we already know about learning. I think part of it is political—the teachers’ unions, which are basically Marxist and have no interest in an educated populace. Another part is greed—politicians know that ignorant pupils become sitting-duck adults—easy marks for demagoguery, and perhaps votes. A third reason is that schooling has become intertwined with pop culture. “Everyone” sends a child to school—don’t they? And all of the hullabaloo like popularity, cliques, football and fluff that goes along with public schooling. Meanwhile we have school shootings, rapes, gangs and politically inspired curriculum—all part and parcel of today’s institutions.

In Cloning of the American Mind you focus on how the federal government is using public education to manipulate attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. The book was written in 1998. Has the federal government backed off since then, or is there more involvement in manipulating beliefs?

Since 1991, I have been chronicling how schools spend an inordinate amount of time pretending to “socialize” young people. In reality, they are trying to ensure a mass mentality toward socialism, not self-reliance—all of it covered in euphemisms about “mental health.” Here is a list of the New Ethics (a.k.a. “New Morality”) being transmitted in most schools today—via curriculum, questionnaires/surveys and even so-called academic tests:

· There is no right or wrong, only conditioned responses.
· The collective good is more important than the individual.
· Consensus is more important than principle.
· Flexibility is more important than accomplishment.
· Nothing is permanent except change.
· All ethics are situational.
· There are no perpetrators, only victims.

Parents today are not as shocked by the kinds of surveys and questions their kids are getting because they grew up in the world of Oprah and Geraldo and Rikki Lake and are accustomed to it. What none of the nation’s leaders who buy into this malarkey have stopped to consider is that what is politically correct today can change tomorrow. A national emergency like a massive earthquake, or traumatic event like 9/11 could send years of carefully advanced strategies for political correctness sprawling.

So now that youngsters are blowing away their classmates and teachers, the federal government comes along with this “New Freedom Initiative” (a.k.a. Universal Mental Health Screening Program), with incentives in every state to create state laws duplicating the federal initiative. Federal entities are able to “sell” such draconian programs because children are committing crimes unheard of in the 1940s and 50s, and parents increasingly are worried.

Today’s undereducated population hasn’t stopped to think that an allegation of mental illness is a conversation-stopper, a slippery slope filled with unintended consequences. Today the Gay Lobby, tomorrow the Skinheads. What kind of administration, in 20 years, will be determining who is “at risk” and who needs psychiatric “medication”? Don’t like it? Tough. A profiling mechanism is now in place, and the government is bragging about what it is doing instead of trying to hide it, as was the case pre-1998.

Meanwhile, schools continue to demonstrate more concern with psychological probing and “behavior modification” (“re-education”) efforts than anything else. Thus course “work” like conflict resolution, anti-bullying curricula, anxiety-and anger-management. Kids have class discussions with virtually no encouragement to find facts to support their views. They certainly are not advised to investigate all sides of an issue, especially any the teachers’ union might disagree with.

Statistics show that parents today mostly give up trying to transmit any values by the time their children reach the fourth grade because they see it is a losing proposition. Public schools don’t support traditional values; teachers have an anti-parent mentality; kids often leave school traumatized, drugged, ignorant, or all of the above.

What should parents do to fix public schools? What can parents do to protect their children from being brainwashed?

I think the public school is a lost cause at this point because it is so institutionalized and politicized. The only way parents can vote now is with their feet. Given the response to causes like immigration, I don’t see hundreds of thousands of parents descending upon Capitol Hill to protest the public school environment.

As for how to protect children from being brainwashed by the schools, that is a tall order, too. First and foremost, parents have to teach their children what kinds of topics are private. Kids pick up magazines like Seventeen and find all kinds of intimate survey questions, which they view as fun. They fill them out and mail them in. They have no idea what constitutes a “private” subject.

Topics like sexual positions and homosexuality are in a students’ face 24/7 from every conceivable entity, including the school. Special Education is billed as “remediation,” but in reality it is a peer-pressure-cooker with no remedial help in anything. So that leaves parents with the prospect of examining their children’s textbooks with a fine-tooth comb, doing lots of family things together (which schools discourage by heaping on the extracurricular activities), and generally undoing every single day the damage inflicted by 8 hours of public schooling. They might as well homeschool if they are going to do that.

HOMESCHOOLING QUESTIONS

You are very supportive of homeschooling. Do you have any concerns about homeschooling? What do you see as some of its strengths?

I am hopeful about homeschooling, providing parents are committed. But these same parents need to understand that the Powers That Be have ensured that if kids expect to get into the kinds of college that will lead to roles of leadership and influence they will have to at least appear to accept the New Ethics. These homeschooled youngsters will be faced with test questions and even oral, face-to-face interviews geared to sniff out any leanings toward traditional ethics or morality. They may find themselves with a nice letter that states, in effect, “Gee, your SAT scores and activities are very impressive and you seem so well-spoken and sociable. But the consensus of our staff is that you will be happier at another university or college.”

There is no way a student or a parent can argue with a letter like that.

This should not be surprising. A lady by the name of J.D. Hoye, a Clinton Administration appointee to the National School-to-Work office (Nov. 1994, and mentioned in my book, Cloning of the American Mind) gave an interview to Northwest Policy newsletter, in which she was asked how government would get certain values (under the rubric of “thinking skills”) out of kids who did NOT go to “state schools”—i.e., public schools. Hoye responded: “Most of these kids we’ve got through other agencies: …adult and family services, teen parent programs, corrections programs, and alternative learning [and recreational] programs…”

The primary strength of homeschooling is that no one is in a better position than the parent to know their children’s academic strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes, and to capitalize on those strengths while remediating the weaknesses. No one is in a better position that the parent to address the child’s character. Parents are in the best position to monitor their children’s friendships and recreation. Moreover, no one will care more than a parent, and no one, save the child himself, has a greater stake in the outcome.

Yes, homeschooling may mean that one or both parents have to give up some career goals for themselves, as well as TV time and vacations. But the alternative is a child with all kinds of emotional and social problems, expensive medications that don’t work and, in short, greater outlays than the whole homeschooling effort would have cost in the first place.

----------

Technorati tags: homeschooling, homeschool, home school, home education, education, Beverly K. Eakman, Beverly Eakman, public school, public education, David, the Bubble Baby, Bubble Boy, John Travolta, NewsWithViews

Interview with Glenn Reynolds on the Higher Education Bubble

I frequently checkout Instapundit, by Glenn Reynolds.  One of the topics he writes about is the high cost of higher education.  The cost of going to college has risen twice as fast as inflation for decades.

Glenn just released a book on this topic: The Higher Education Bubble. 

I enjoyed this interview of Glenn on the topic:



This was posted at PJ Media.

College tuition has been climbing three times as fast as inflation - Wow!

For years I've heard that over many decades college tuition has been climbing twice as fast as inflation. This means that in real dollars, dollars adjusted for inflation, it will cost a lot more to send my children to college, than it cost me to go to college. I was able to work summer jobs and pay my own tuition. My children will probably not be able to self fund their college education. We're hoping that our children will be able to get enough scholarships and grants that what is left is something they can handle.

It looks like the truth is worse, Mark Perry reports that for the last couple decades college tuition has been climbing three times as fast as inflation:

"Actually, tuition has been been increasing annually (7.88%) at more than three times the rate of inflation (2.37%) since 1978, see chart above. The article points out that "unlike the housing bubble, in which foreclosure and bankruptcy allowed people to have a fresh start, the college tuition bubble will haunt young people for life unless bankruptcy laws change" (since student loans are not dischargeable in bankruptcy)."

For those of you who like graphs, and don't mind really seeing bad news, check out his post 8 Reasons College Tuition Is Next Bubble to Burst.

(Hat tip: Instapundit)


I wrote last year:

"I have blogged in the past about the problem of rising cost of a college education. In a nut shell the cost of college education has climbed twice as fast as inflation for decades. It has gotten to the point that a college education is not an economic benefit for many."

I think things will have to change. This trend can not continue. At some point people will stop going to collge, or more likely, figure out a cheaper way to get the equivalent of a college education.


----------
Technorati tags: college, tuition, education

Cool Bill Whittle video on Glenn Reynolds' book "The Higher Education Bubble"

I enjoyed this video by Bill Whittle:




I have been meanding to buy Glenn Reynolds' book The Higher Education Bubble.  This is giving me more motivation.

Glenn Reynolds: The Ever Inflating Higher Education Bubble

Glenn Reynolds talks about The Ever Inflating Higher Education Bubble. 

The education bubble

The Class The Loans Fell On reports that the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School MBA graduating class is graduating with over $100 million in debt.

Can you say education bubble?

The article starts with:

----------
Dubbed “The Class The Dollars Fell On” by Fortune magazine, the 1949 graduates of the Harvard Business School were undoubtedly the most celebrated group of MBAs in history. Though the 700 or so members of the class graduated with modest expectations, more than a third would become CEOs and well over half would end up as multi-millionaires.


As author Laurence Shames would write in The Big Time, one of two books that documented the group’s unprecedented success, “the class would become emblematic of the mysterious potency of the MBA degree back when it was still exotic, a rare golden ticket to action.”


Fast forward to this year’s incoming class at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. The 845 students who start their first classes on Sept. 7 are among their generation’s best and brightest. Unlike the men of 1949—there were no women–the Wharton group is as diverse as any in history: A record 45 percent are women and 36 percent hail from outside the U.S. To come to the Philadelphia campus, they left some of the most prestigious organizations in the world where they already were on the fast track to success. Some 36 students founded or co-founded businesses.


But there’s one other very big difference between this year’s incoming Wharton class and the most renowned: debt and lots of it. Largely funded by the GI Bill, few members of Harvard’s class graduated with any debt. If the Class of 1949 had been the most wildly successful of all the MBA classes ever, it can be said with certainty that Wharton’s Class of 2013 will be the most heavily in hock.
----------

Interview with Glenn Reynolds on the Higher Education Bubble

A Bubble in Higher Education starts with:

----------
There was a time in our nation’s history when college was reserved for a privileged and well-heeled few. And today many worry that those days may be returning, given the spiraling cost of tuition.

According to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, average U.S. college tuition and fees rose by an astonishing 439 percent between 1982 and 2007 — more than four times as much as the inflation rate for that period (106 percent), and about three times the increase in median family income (147 percent).
----------

Bruce Wright then goes on to interview Glenn Reynolds aka Instapundit.

Teaching to the test

This news article from Virginia is a prime example of teaching to the test.


Schools show why Johnny couldn't add

BY CATHY GRIMES

January 10, 2007

VIRGINIA MATH SCORES -- Hampton Roads school district officials and teachers think they now have the answer to a question that they've grappled with since August: Why did so many sixth- and seventh-graders fail the state's math tests in 2006, when they had done well on fifth-grade tests only a year or two before?

The answer? Teachers prepared students for one test, but students ended up taking something very different - a test with unfamiliar vocabulary, different concepts and more multistep problems than anything they had seen to date.

"All year, we taught the kids, thinking the sixth- and seventh-grade tests would look like the eighth-grade test, but they didn't," York County school Superintendent Steven Staples said.

I can understand there being some confusion when students see unfamiliar terms. But, the test scores were dramatically different from the previous year.

The results shocked educators and state officials. According to a state analysis released this month, seven of 10 sixth-graders correctly answered 20 items on the 50-question test that they took.Results were worse on the seventh-grade test. Seven of 10 students correctly answered only eight of 50 problems.

If the students understood the math concepts and not just how to get the right answer on a particular test, changes in the test format would not dramatically lower the test result. Answering only 8 problems out of 50 correctly demonstrates that students don’t understand how to use basic math concepts.

This correlates with the findings of a resent literacy study.

NEW STUDY OF THE LITERACY OF COLLEGE STUDENTS:

Twenty percent of U.S. college students completing 4-year degrees – and 30 percent of students earning 2-year degrees – have only basic quantitative literacy skills, meaning they are unable to estimate if their car has enough gasoline to get to the next gas station or calculate the total cost of ordering office supplies, according to a new national survey by the American Institutes for Research (AIR). The study was funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

So, students are being taught how to fill in the right bubble on the right test, but they can’t use math concepts on a different test or in their every day life.

What is the purpose of an education? If we only measure the success or failure of a public, private or homeschool education by test results, we won't really know if the process has been successful.

I'm not against testing entirely. It is one of many ways of evaluating student progress. It is also a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. Even if students score high on a specific standardized test, it doesn't mean they will being able to balance their check book.

Analysis of the Virginia test results revealed some interesting things.

Pyle said part of the problem was a change in the way that students were tested. Previously, students took a cumulative test, measuring what they had learned since sixth grade. Now students take 50-question tests at each grade.

"We're testing more deeply into the content" of each grade, he said.

With the previous cumulative style test, students could have a limited grasp on the math skills taught that year and still test well. In other words, on the previous test, very few questions were on grade level. Most of the questions checked more basic math skills taught in the previous years. On the current test, all questions are on grade level. Thus, it is a much harder test and more accurately measure the mastery of that academic year’s material.

I love this last quote from the article.

Pyle said the 2006 scores were part of "a period of adjustment" as teachers and students got used to the new tests.

Translation: Give us time to figure out how to teach to this test.

Here's an idea: Why don't they focus on teaching students math concepts instead of how to fill in the right bubble on a new test. I realize this is easier said than done. However, as long as the focus is scoring well on a particular test, than the focus is NOT on learning to master specific concepts and skills. If students master the concepts, they will score well regardless of the test format and they will be able to use math concepts in every day life.

--------------------------
Related Tags: standardized testing, teaching to the test, Virginia math scores, public education, private education, homeschooling, testing, Department of Education

Another reason to love homeschooling: Avoiding the culture of poverty

One of the greatest barriers to education is the culture of poverty. Much of the debate in education policy comes down to how to educate children who don’t come to school ready to learn and whose parents don’t value education. Inordinate amount of resources are misdirected in a vain attempt to entice disinterested students.

In a recent conversation with a public school teacher, Janine got a glimpse of just how wide the educational divide can be and how frustrating it is for teachers who fight this battle.

In a nearby school, children in a particular family were always late for school. Someone in the school asked a few questions and found out that the family did not have a refrigerator. As a result, the parents’ rush to get breakfast for themselves before going to work made the children late for school.

Once the lack of a refrigerator was known, the school took up a collection and purchased a modest refrigerator for the family. This solved the problem. For the next few weeks the children were on time. Then one week the children didn’t show up at all. Finally the children returned to school, but from that time on were habitually tardy again.

Again someone in the school did a little investigation and found out what had happened. (You might want to be sitting down for this.) The parents had sold the refrigerator and used the money to take the children to Disneyland. As one teacher succinctly put it, “This is the culture of poverty.” If the parents value entertainment more than the health and education of the children, what could the school do that would make any difference. And more than that, these unmotivated students are draining away resources that could have been used to educate children whose families actually value education. And thus we see the awful dilemma facing the public school system.

In the end, it won’t matter if the child can color in the right bubble on a standardize test if he values his entertainment about all else. As foster parents, we see that pattern often. Parents who blow chance after chance, lose job after job, ruin relationship after relationship because they never learned to discipline themselves. Unfortunately, that is not something even the best school can teach. It takes a parent to model it, day after day, especially in early childhood.

We’re glad that we are able to teach our children to have some self discipline, to delay gratification, and to have reasonable priorities.

SNL gives us the cause of the Higher Education Bubble

Now you know why higher education costs so much:



Hat tip: Instapundit