More money!

A friend of mine on facebook was angry about cuts in state funding to the University of Wisconsin. I posted this in response. For some people, more money is the only answer; accountability for how that money is being spent and what it is buying never enters into it. More, more more! is the only thing they think about:

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A lot of people have lost faith that their money is being spent wisely by public universities.

Much has been written in recent years about the bloat in administration in colleges and universities. What used to be done by committees of faculty, now is being done by full time administrators. There are lots of new administrators, deans, coordinators, all with staff, but with little educational value. From 1993 to 2007 the number of administrators at UW-Madison went up 32% (on a per-student basis), while the number of instruction and research employees went up only 5%--this in a period when enrollment went up about 4% and tuition literally doubled ( http://www.immagic.com/.../GENERAL/GLDWTRUS/G100817G.pdf ).

In addition, ridiculous amenities, things like University of North Florida's lazy river, make a lot of news, and make people wonder about how good all those administrators are at spending the money they are getting.

At the same time, the student loan scam is finally beginning to bite. Taking out massive loans to study things that won't help you get a job and *pay* for your loans is finally being recognized as a bad idea. (Yes, education for education's sake is a lovely thought, but not if it means going into tens of thousands of dollars of inescapable debt to do it.) More and more press is being given to the people paying off loans all of their lives, preventing them from getting married, buying houses, and having kids. People are beginning the long process of reevaluation of just what all the loan money, tuition money, and tax money is buying.

I'd add in the problem of part-time instructors who are brought in on a contract basis to do much of the teaching. They get hired or not hired based substantially on student evaluations--which means the easiest graders usually win out. A tough teacher who doesn't give all A's gets booted. Fun for the individual students who get to spend more time waiting in line at the keg or at the tricked-out rec center, but in the long run bad for the universities whose whole reason for being is to actually educate--not give out A's. Studies showing college and university students are paying much more, while studying substantially less don't help either. The value of the education students are getting is under more and more scrutiny.

Public universities preference for out-of-state and international students, who pay more in tuition, is also pissing off the tax-paying public in many states. Here in Cal., the UC system had to come out publicly this year and say that the number of in-state students would be held constant--because more and more parents who pay taxes for 18 years are pissed that their kids can't get in.

If public universities want increased dollars, then they need to think about how they can restore the faith of the people of their states--the people who elect the representatives who vote on things like giving them more money.

I'd suggest that they start by streamlining the administration, and refocusing tightly on providing useful education.

Maybe...stop treating men like predators - Updated with 2013

(This post updated with 2013 numbers--also from the Census. - 3/21/2015)

Via Meadia

Colleges are facing a problem they haven’t faced in nearly a decade: declining enrollment. New Census Bureau data reports that college enrollment dropped by about a half-million last year for the first time since 2006. Some of this may simply be a result of students who went to school in the late 2000s to avoid the recession finally graduating.

But college administrators are clearly worried that this may be the sign of a long-term trend. A recent survey of industry leaders found that over one-third are now concerned that they won’t be able to keep enrollments steady with tuition prices where they are now...

Mead didn't run the numbers, I did. The entire decline in enrollment can be attributed--almost perfectly--by the change in the number of men and women attending college.

Male enrollment 2011 = 9,123,000
Male enrollment 2012 = 8,602,000
Change = -521,000 / -5.7%

Female enrollment 2011 = 11,256,000
Female enrollment 2012 = 11,327,000
Change = +71,000 / +0.6%

Since overall college enrollment declined by 449,000; all but 1,000 of it can be attributed to the decline in men's enrollment.

(links for data from this page: http://www.census.gov/newsroom... )

A decline of over 5% of male enrollment should set off alarm bells, and would if the genders were reversed. The stories of schools treating men like predators abound, with men treated as guilty and needing to prove their innocence instead of the other way around. Perhaps men are getting the message that college is enemy territory and not for them.

Colleges should wake up and not turn away this cohort with their discriminatory anti-male policies.

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Update:

Some changes once 2013 is added. The men held fairly steady, but the women tanked. They went from 11.3 million to 10.9 million from 2012-2013:

Male enrollment 2011 = 9,123,000
Male enrollment 2012 = 8,602,000
Male enrollment 2013 = 8,536,000
Change 2011-2012 = -521,000 / -5.7%
Change 2012-2013 = -66,000 / -0.8%
Change 2011-2013 = -587,000 / -6.4%

Female enrollment 2011 = 11,256,000
Female enrollment 2012 = 11,327,000
Female enrollment 2013 = 10,931,000
Change 2011-2012 = +71,000 / +0.6%
Change 2012-2013 = -396,000 / -3.4%
Change 2011-2013 = -325,000/ -2.9%

Difference between men and women, 2013:  2,395,000 more women than men, or 28% more women.

The need for phonics...in college?

This is a story about British education, but I think it is a sad commentary on a lot of today's education in the US as well:

The report also found that many pupils were being held back by a failure to use phonics – the back-to-basics method of teaching pupils to read by breaking words down into individual sounds.

It said there were “few instances of systematic phonics teaching” in secondary schools or colleges, even though it was proved to help pupils struggling the most.

If a young adult--which is what college students are--needs help from phonics instruction, I would postulate that that individual has no business being in college in the first place*!

* People with learning difficulties such as dyslexia excepted.

Boy troubles are international (repost)

(Reposted from February 1, 2010)

One point that Richard Whitmire over on "Why Boys Fail" (which recently moved to Education Week's website) always brings up, is that the "boy troubles" are actually an international phenomenon. Other countries have actually tried to address the problem, but the US ignores it.

Today, Phyllis Chesler posted four photographs from Cairo University, showing the graduating classes for 1959, 1978, 1995, and 2004. She posted them to show that in the 50's not one woman was wearing a hijab, in the 1978 photo one or two women are, but by the 2004 photo, all but one or two are.

I looked at something else in the pictures: the ratio of men to women. Here are the photos, with circles around the male and female heads (Click on photos to enlarge):

1959--> Men=68 (65%), Women: 36 (35%):


1978--> Men=39 (34%), Women: 74 (66%):


1995--> Men: 36 (35%), Women: 81 (78%):


2004--> Men: 19 (17%), Women: 91 (83%):


Most of the shift seemed to be over by 1978, with women reversing their percentage in 20 years. Since then, they've held on and increased their advantage: up to 83% in 2004.

Update: Got a link to this from Richard Whitmire. Thanks!

Boy troubles are international

One point that Richard Whitmire over on "Why Boys Fail" (which recently moved to Education Week's website) always brings up, is that the "boy troubles" are actually an international phenomenon. Other countries have actually tried to address the problem, but the US ignores it.

Today, Phyllis Chesler posted four photographs from Cairo University, showing the graduating classes for 1959, 1978, 1995, and 2004. She posted them to show that in the 50's not one woman was wearing a hijab, in the 1978 photo one or two women are, but by the 2004 photo, all but one or two are.

I looked at something else in the pictures: the ratio of men to women. Here are the photos, with circles around the male and female heads (Click on photos to enlarge):

1959--> Men=68 (65%), Women: 36 (35%):


1978--> Men=39 (34%), Women: 74 (66%):


1995--> Men: 36 (35%), Women: 81 (78%):


2004--> Men: 19 (17%), Women: 91 (83%):


Most of the shift seemed to be over by 1978, with women reversing their percentage in 20 years. Since then, they've held on and increased their advantage: up to 83% in 2004.

Update: Got a link to this from Richard Whitmire. Thanks!

The end is nigh

I've mentioned before (and here) that I believe the next big bubble to burst--and one completely deserving of that bust--is college education.

Here's another article which gets to the heart of the reason why this one is ripe for poppin':

[ By Abraham H. Miller is an emeritus professor of political science and a former head of the Intelligence Studies Section of the International Studies Association ] Here are some hard facts most colleges will never tell you and most parents could not tolerate hearing. The general requirements of the first two years at most colleges are what high school should have been. That is what junior should have learned had he not been busy getting high, getting drunk, and being socially promoted.

Better high schools frequently use the same textbooks for the mandatory requirements that are used in the first two years of college. If a high school draws from the upper end of the socioeconomic scale, the courses will be more demanding than the first two years of most colleges.

[...] My neighbor’s daughter was valedictorian of her class at an elite, private high school. She enrolled in engineering only to find that there were lots of valedictorians. School was demanding. At the computer center in the middle of the night, she could find her classmates designing programs or doing homework.

In contrast, a hundred yards away on the liberal arts campus, a valedictorian would have been as rare as a student who didn’t download a term paper from the Internet. Here most students were seeking majors that put no premium on analytical skills or cumulative knowledge. The equivalent of writing computer programs as a hobby would have been reading a good newspaper or journal of opinion. But few of these students read anything, including the class assignments.

The author's recommendation: If your kid is studying something real, like math, science or engineering, don't worry. If they're studying fluff, send your kids to community college for the first two years, then, if they get through that, transfer to a 4-year. That saves money, and makes sure that the kids who will never graduate anyway don't spend 4 years and $100,000 partying.

And, if that doesn't work out, here's more good advice from the author: buy the kid a franchise with the money you would have spent on college. Set them up in business and a career. It is far more cost-effective and a better learning experience than anything they could get in college.

My bottom line: college isn't worth the money anymore. All it is a 4 years of partying with a little social networking thrown in, and thrown up upon.

Cross posted at Saltzafrazz.

2nd bubble under pressure

I figure the next bubble to burst will be college education. How many parents want to pay for 6 years of partying, or pay to see their kid come out the other side as the next great scholar of gay-minority-womens' studies.

There are signs around here of trouble in the education markets. The acceptance letters went out this past weekend for private high schools in Los Angeles, and surprisingly, I've heard no stories of kids missing out on their first choice. In previous years, only the well-connected or well-heeled got into some of the toniest schools. This year, they're taking everybody.

Why? Well, from talking to fellow grade school parents over the weekend, economic pressures must be hitting these schools hard. We know of several families that are trying to move into areas with acceptable public systems, so they don't have to pay as much for their kids' education, or so they can save their money for high school and college. If that carries over the entire market around here--remember the entertainment industry has been hit hard for years--that means that a lot of spaces are opening up at all these schools, applications are probably down, and acceptance letters are going out in abundance, because schools are worried a lot of families will look at the price tag and the economy and decide it isn't worth it.

My guess is that the exact same thing is going on at the national level with colleges. Only there, they are likely being hit very hard by the tanking of the stock market. All of those education savings accounts are worth about half of what they were a few months ago. Where families might have figured that they had enough to get their kids through a 4-year school, they are now looking at only enough for 2 years. Sorry kid, no private school for you--you're going to State U!

In addition, how many people would choose this moment to take out student loans?

Watch for it in the next few months, as students get their letters and have to make their decisions. Public/cheaper schools are going to be swamped. Private schools will be very worried.

(Cross posted on Saltzafrazz.)

Missing men (III)

Reading through the comments at Mark Perry's blog and elsewhere, the question of the breakdown of degrees by subject area and gender came up. So, I charted it by subject, using this data from the D.ofEd and is for 2005-06.

Click on the images to see full size.

Bachelors:


Masters:


PhDs:

Missing men (II)

One of my favorite blogs--mostly because Mark Perry manages to find the data I try to search for and can never quite find--has a couple graphs on the missing men in higher education. It is stark and long-term scary:







His data source is the Department of Education.

Missing men

I noticed this article on "Inside Higher Ed":

Why More Colleges Want Jewish Students

And it struck me that it was likely tied into the dearth of men on campus. The article states 90% of Jewish families send their kids to college. My guess is that that is true for both boys and girls.

So, is recruiting more Jewish students a way of recruiting more male students, and perhaps more-successful male students? Ones more likely to actually get a degree?

I'd be interested in male graduation statistics broken down by religion. Do more male Jewish students complete college than their non-Jewish peers? If so, this could be one way colleges are addressing the missing-male problem.