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Joined: Feb 2010
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I don't care what luxury cars cost, because I don't have to buy them. It is infuriating when something you believe your children may need is priced as a luxury good and heavily subsidized by your taxes. How to Raise a University’s Profile: Pricing and Packagingby Kevin Carey New York Times February 6, 2015 Colleges and universities rarely, if ever, gather and publish information about how much undergraduates learn during their academic careers.
Colleges may be afraid of what they would find. A recent study from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that, on average, American college graduates score well below college graduates from most other industrialized countries in mathematics. In literacy (“understanding, evaluating, using and engaging with written text”), scores are just average. This comes on the heels of Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s “Academically Adrift,” a study that found “limited or no learning” among many college students.
Instead of focusing on undergraduate learning, numerous colleges have been engaged in the kind of building spree I saw at George Washington. Recreation centers with world-class workout facilities and lazy rivers rise out of construction pits even as students and parents are handed staggeringly large tuition bills. Colleges compete to hire famous professors even as undergraduates wander through academic programs that often lack rigor or coherence. Campuses vie to become the next Harvard — or at least the next George Washington — while ignoring the growing cost and suspect quality of undergraduate education.
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Mr. Trachtenberg, however, understood something crucial about the modern university. It had come to inhabit a market for luxury goods. People don’t buy Gucci bags merely for their beauty and functionality. They buy them because other people will know they can afford the price of purchase. The great virtue of a luxury good, from the manufacturer’s standpoint, isn’t just that people will pay extra money for the feeling associated with a name brand. It’s that the high price is, in and of itself, a crucial part of what people are buying.
Mr. Trachtenberg convinced people that George Washington was worth a lot more money by charging a lot more money. Unlike most college presidents, he was surprisingly candid about his strategy. College is like vodka, he liked to explain. Vodka is by definition a flavorless beverage. It all tastes the same. But people will spend $30 for a bottle of Absolut because of the brand. A Timex watch costs $20, a Rolex $10,000. They both tell the same time.
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The cult of the professional manager. To be honest though until recently I thought american college was just the last years of high school plus maybe the first year of university (a bit like a 6th form college). But that is because it looks like high school in movies and you can't study the things we associate with university - medicine, law etc.
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Joined: Feb 2010
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The cult of the professional manager. To be honest though until recently I thought american college was just the last years of high school plus maybe the first year of university (a bit like a 6th form college). But that is because it looks like high school in movies and you can't study the things we associate with university - medicine, law etc. In the U.S., if you finish 1st grade at 7, and college at 7+11+4 = 22, you finish medical school at 22+4 = 26 and law school at 22+3 = 25 if you go straight through. At what age can you finish medical and law school in other countries if you start school at the usual age and go straight through?
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Joined: Mar 2013
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The cult of the professional manager. To be honest though until recently I thought american college was just the last years of high school plus maybe the first year of university (a bit like a 6th form college). But that is because it looks like high school in movies and you can't study the things we associate with university - medicine, law etc. It's very confusing since people use the term college/university somewhat interchangeably in the U.S. The term college in the US can mean a few different things. And when I first saw the UK term for college I was a bit confused in return. BTW as I'm sure you know most movies don't really show what life on a U.S. university campus is like very realistically. There are a few different definitions of college here in the U.S. 1) An institution is refereed to as a university if it gives out graduate degree's of any sort Masters, PhD's, Law degree. This can be in addition to getting BA's or without. A College typically only gives out Associates (AA - 2 yr) or Bachelors (BA, BS, BFA) degree's. 2) A college might be a "part" of a university often designated by the type of degree but not always. For example a university having a college of Art, college of science, college of liberal arts. 3) And then the even more generic term where 'college' is just used as where a student goes after H.S. to study. The term I want my kids to go to 'college' usually just refers sending a student to any form of higher education. There are different types of colleges that aren't part of universities. Community colleges that mostly give AA & technical degree's. Although that is changing and some give out BA's. These typically don't have dorms. And the professors don't typically need PhD's in their field. Many have programs so one can transfer to a '4 year' institution after completing a course of study. In contrast are small liberal arts colleges that are small private institutions that usually only give BA degrees. These colleges are small usually less than 2K students, usually expect 4 years living in a dorm.
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Joined: Apr 2013
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Thank you for sharing this article. While other threads have discussed college as a Veblen good, this article may have a specific goal. I went on the university’s website to look for some kind of data or study indicating how much students... were actually learning. There was none. This is not unusual, it turns out. Colleges and universities rarely, if ever, gather and publish information about how much undergraduates learn during their academic careers. Some may say this sounds like a push for standardized testing, and for narrowing the scope of studies. A recent study from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that, on average, American college graduates score well below college graduates from most other industrialized countries in mathematics. In literacy (“understanding, evaluating, using and engaging with written text”), scores are just average. The linked page for the OEC study shows "In partnership with PEARSON Foundation". Other threads discuss the relationship between Pearson, standardized testing, and common core. Do we want common core type of standards, uniformity, and testing to take over the colleges and universities? Instead of focusing on undergraduate learning, numerous colleges have been engaged in the kind of building spree I saw at George Washington. Recreation centers with world-class workout facilities and lazy rivers rise out of construction pits... In the above quote from the article, the author's positioning of these sentences seems to imply a water park at GWU? (There is not.) The above statements are offset by the following facts also shared, but not prominently, within the article. (These facts provide appropriate context to understand that the building spree was not capricious, but in support of offering additional educational programs): The university was an inexpensive commuter school when Stephen Joel Trachtenberg became president in 1988. By the time he was finished, two decades later, it had been transformed into a nationally recognized research university, with expanded facilities and five new schools specializing in public health, public policy, political management, media and public affairs and professional studies.
U.S. News & World Report now ranks the university at No. 54 nationwide, just outside the “first tier.”
It was no secret where the money had come from to pay for it all: the students and their families. Under Mr. Trachtenberg’s leadership, tuition grew until George Washington was, for a time, the most expensive university in America. In related current events, accreditation of post-secondary institutions is being discussed until Feb 28, 2015, as is the NACIQI's desire to control that process. (PDF documents here (2015) and here (2012).) This could have far-ranging effects on U.S. colleges and universities going forward. If NACIQI, currently an advisory committee, gains singular power over the process of accreditation and access to Title IV funding, checks-and-balances could be removed (bringing to mind the adage Power corrupts; Absolute power corrupts absolutely.)
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Joined: Nov 2013
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In partial response to Bostoninan's question about studying Medicine and law in other countries......it's complicated in Australia.
Here you can start school at 5 and finish year 1 age 6. It is not uncommon to start University at 17 particularly in certain states like Queensland. Red shirting has made starting University at 18 more common.
Law is available as an undergraduate degree. It is a combined degree, with a choice of Arts, Science, engineering, criminology, computer science etc. It takes 5 years minimum, and can take 6 or 7. That means finishing a law degree potentially at 22 although there is usually a six month post grad requirement at what is called the College of Law also. Make it 23.
Medicine is more complex. It can be done as an undergraduate degree with one university offering a five year course or there is a more traditional six year course. It can also be done as a post graduate. Most undergraduate Arts and Science degrees are three years with an option for a fourth Honours year for some. university courses are more immediately specialized here.
So as an undergraduate it is possible to finish age 22 (17+5) but more common to be 23 or 24. As a graduate the straight path takes a minimum of 7 years so 24 or 25. Then there is a year of internship which is compulsary General training in a paid position. After that one to three years as a resident which is a non training role while trying to get onto a specialist training program which is generally five years but can be much longer. A specialist who goes straight through a graduate program having left school at 18 will be 32 at a minimum at the end of the process.
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I read the article, and was struck that GWU is now considered a national research university. I too remember it as a commuter school as the article stated it once was.
It's well known that all private schools that aspire to national stature have roughly the same sticker price. And given that GWU is making efforts to rise in the rankings (for whatever that is worth), it certainly seems a better value than say Bennington, a middling liberal arts school that I remember only because it had the highest sticker price in the country when I was applying to college many years ago. Even today, Bennington and GWU have about the same tuition, but Bennington's acceptance rate is 65% to GWU's 34%.
GWU can try to charge whatever it wants, but the only people that will pay that much are students from wealthy families that don't have any better choices.
They mention BU as the model for GWU in that story. As a Boston area resident, I think that a talented student can learn just as much at BU as they could at MIT for example, but that MIT's main value is a richer intellectual environment and better career opportunities. There are several kids from our high school each year that turn down full scholarships from BU each year and instead go to an Ivy, MIT, or a Carnegie-Mellon. So truly talented students won't pay anything near the sticker price, and may end up paying nothing for a fine education if they so choose.
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They mention BU as the model for GWU in that story. As a Boston area resident, I think that a talented student can learn just as much at BU as they could at MIT for example, but that MIT's main value is a richer intellectual environment and better career opportunities. There are several kids from our high school each year that turn down full scholarships from BU each year and instead go to an Ivy, MIT, or a Carnegie-Mellon. So truly talented students won't pay anything near the sticker price, and may end up paying nothing for a fine education if they so choose. If you were comparing BU to Harvard I might agree with you. But BU does not compare to MIT. MIT is a technical school and it's teaching style is different from most universities out there. You can not get out of BU what you can at MIT. The money to attend MIT goes to excellent and open ended research labs. Not so much to fancy rec centers. Have you ever taken a tour of MIT? My kids & I got an inside view of MIT when we were tour colleges with my daughter a few years back. It was a fun tour, my DD wasn't even remotely considering MIT, but I personally know people who work there and I wanted my DS to see it. The labs and facilities at MIT are just so inspiring and would make any of our STEM kids. P.S. My DD goes to a private university that is about 1/2 the cost of the top schools. It's only a bit more expensive than many of my state schools. And what my DD gets for it is small class sizes and personal attention. She doesn't get some of the extra's this article talks about like fancy rec centers or a cohesive campus or the reputation. But its a good fit for her.
Last edited by bluemagic; 02/08/15 10:14 PM.
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bluemagic,
I attended MIT for graduate school and received an excellent education. I agree with you that the research labs are exceptional and should have mentioned it.
But my point was different. I attended a midwest state school for undergrad that has roughly the same reputation as BU. I was part of the honors program and received an excellent education there as well. While the average school IQ was lower, my honors classmates were just as sharp as those at MIT (they all ended up at Stanford, Columbia, MIT, etc. for graduate school). I also found a great undergraduate research opportunity (only a few to choose from as opposed to hundreds). Career opportunities were notably different which is what I really noticed after attending MIT.
However, here is another key difference: My state school cost was less than zero. After considering all the scholarships I received, I even had beer money for the weekends. If I had gone to an expensive private school for undergrad, it would have completely drained my parents finances.
A clarification: I just saw that BU's Trustee scholarships cover full tuition, but not board. So it could be effectively free for a Boston area resident that lives at home, but those staying on campus would have to pay boarding fees. That is still an incredible educational value.
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MIT subsidises all undergrads. It costs them about $70,000 to educate them, the full sticker price is $45,000. They can do this because they have an enormous endowment. I don't know about funding of grad students. They also get around the poor high school prep while maintaining their own high standards by not grading subjects in the first semester, and not recording failed subjects in the second. Freshman grading is designed to ease the transition from high school by giving students time to adjust to factors like increased workloads and variations in academic preparation. A, B, and C grades are used during the second semester so that freshmen can begin the progression to regular A-F grading in the sophomore year. The cult of the professional manager. To be honest though until recently I thought american college was just the last years of high school plus maybe the first year of university (a bit like a 6th form college). But that is because it looks like high school in movies and you can't study the things we associate with university - medicine, law etc. It sort of is. Things studied in first year are high school level elsewhere, but then they have a huge number of non-relevant general education subjects which fill at least a year's schedule, if not more. Which leaves two years to fit in what takes three years in other countries. A master's degree can potentially be only one year in the US. As far as I can tell the reluctance to teach professional degrees at undergrad level is just cultural. They could compact the general ed stuff (I know of at least one excellent liberal arts school which does not teach composition separately, but as part of every subject). PhDs take forever because students are expected to work in the supervisor's lab instead of hiring people for that purpose. They also have quite a lot of coursework at the PhD level, which supports the assumption that undergrad work is not as advanced as elsewhere. There is also a massive range in quality of the education at US universities, which AFAIK doesn't occur elsewhere. Bluemagic, your college/university distinction isn't true in my experience. Colleges are also PhD granting institutions.
Last edited by Tallulah; 02/09/15 08:09 AM.
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