Peter Thiel Is Wrong About Higher Education (It’s Worse Than A Bubble)

One of the "great successes" of Indiana education lately (scare quotes to denote its Potemkin aspect) is the satellite campus in the city in which I live of a certain state university, which has recently been augmented with a new satellite campus of, um, another certain land-grant university. (Hi, Mr. Google, nothing to see here.)

Party of the first part itself has never been much to write home about (and that alone would back up the grandparent), but party of the second part in particular is shamelessly exploiting the lack of a viable local economy by selling degrees with the promise of "careers". The people in that program are utterly disinterested in learning anything at all that someone here at HNN would consider an "education" (after all, they just want jobs; they don't care how, and if someone will sell them a job, they're happy to pony up the money, but they don't see why they should go through the rigamarole of learning math and stuff) - and they will be graduating with a degree in engineering from said Indiana land-grant university which is rather well known for its engineering program. (That is, the commodity they're selling is - for now - worth it.)

I don't want to get too much more specific or even identify my source of information, but let me assure you that - even though I don't consider this universal in American education - I do consider it probably rather typical, because if Indiana is doing something, I know damn well we didn't originate it.

The people going through this program know nothing about math or engineering. Nothing. You probably think that's hyperbole. Let me assure you that it is not hyperbole; they know so little math that you would honestly not be able to accept that a member of H. sapiens is capable of knowing so little math. They're simply paying for the piece of paper that they're told will get them a job, and nothing more. If too many in a class fail, ways are found to make sure that those students still get their credits. The paramount goal is to sell degrees, no matter what, and to present the facade of dynamic growth.

I want to stress at this juncture that this is not the DeVrie Institute or some other commercial educational organization - these are well-known, fairly well-respected, state universities. They're not Harvard, but the engineering school in particular is a good one, especially in aerospace. The degrees they are selling are good names. But they're selling them, cash on the barrelhead. I remember perfectly well when a new president was hired at Party of the First Part University with the motto of running the school like a business, and this is the result.

Now, I'll grant you none of this is data, it's anecdotal, from an anonymous source, and hopefully not too easy to Google, and I've omitted worse allegations that I believe to be true - I live here, after all, and know these people, and I can't prove any of it. But it's all too real. If you want to deny it, fine; that's certainly your right. But OP is far more on target than you seem to be comfortable with.

In some cases, agreed. However, in other cases, it seems to do just the opposite: it seems to introduce new or enhance pre-existing biases and philosophies. From my perspective, it appears to happen most often with the so-called "soft" sciences, and most especially in things like literature and gender/race and non-mainstream sexual studies. There's very much a cult-like aspect to some academic fields, making them have more of the characteristics of a religion than of science.

The challenge is that many people bring exactly this consumerist attitude to tuition, which then ruins the signalling capacity of the price. "If it's expensive, it must be good." That pushes up demand for enrollment and increases the selectivity and reputation of the university in US News, etc. The university therefore has an incentive to keep tuition high. Unfortunately, then students and parents think, "I'm paying so much for this degree, I should (get A's/not flunk out/...)" [1] Professors who grade rigorously are evaluated harshly; since most instructors aren't tenured, there's no incentive for them to make classes challenging. Then many employers use the earned degree as a crude signal of diligence, since what was actually learned is likely irrelevant to the job at hand.

Finally, most families send only a handful of children to college, and there's a significant lag between when graduates and the evaluation of the "success" of the degree. There's no way tuition can accurately price the variation in outcomes with all these inefficiencies.

[1] http://rateyourstudents.blogspot.com/