As Hough points out, there's something rotten in Denmark. Most easily recognizable is the treacherous "adjunct faculty position." Instead of long-term tenure-track stability dependent on successful scholarly publishing, promising young scholars are herded into ballooning class sizes, monotonous "required" courses that teach no skills and "entry level" courses that convey no new knowledge and often don't strain the student beyond a high school education level. Students are cheated out of an education that can expand their skill and knowledge base, while McProfs are last-hired, first-fired mercenary teachers living a shell of an existence teaching whatever will keep them from being sacked--not the best environment for new investigative research.
This race-to-mediocrity extends all the way through the university system: Greg Winter points out in his article "Jacuzzi U" that universities are spending billions of taxpayer dollars specifically NOT on education, but on resources like hot tubs, climbing walls, and endless resort-style amenities that turn college life into a theme park. This is not merely because college administrators are reptilian space-aliens bent on enslaving humankind (that's for another article), but because the business model of the university system has approximated the housing business model pre-2008: the bigger, the better. More stuff supposedly equals more students, which brings in more money, which allows for more stuff, which brings in more students... et cetera, ad nauseam. So where does it end?
From tiny private colleges like Reed to massive universities like Stanford, colleges are increasingly unable to support the students that they have, admit new students who are strapped for cash, and justify the cost-benefit of their supposed skills-training. Meanwhile, online "universities" like the University of Phoenix have become degree-factories admitting anyone regardless of ability (both in teaching and student positions) and graduating almost no one, boasting some of the lowest graduation scores in the country. The blood is most definitely in the water, and the sharks are looming.
Yet all this hassle and pain has been and most likely will continue to be blamed on students (who are just trying to get ahead) and administrators (who just want to make a quick buck), while the real culprits continue to "inspire" us to fritter away any savings we or our parents have gathered together as a bulwark against any unforeseen disasters or debts we might incur. The real culprits are quite simply our teachers, our professors, our parents, and our government officials, all of whom insist that a college education is absolutely essential to success in our lives.
Was this true of our grandfathers' or fathers' generation? Most students I've met as a teacher are first-generation collegiates, so obviously not. In fact, many students from my own former university were double-dipping, spending their Hope scholarship and Daddy's money together, living in palatial apartment complexes and shopping at Wal-Mart, eating Ramen noodles and driving around town in Escalades. "Slumming," it was called, as if it were a fashion trend and not an insult to people who can't afford any better.
In fact, I'd wager that just within my own family, mine will probably be the poorest generation thus far. My grandfathers on both sides were barely high-school educated, but all died wealthy enough to leave substantial inheritances that have afforded me and mine a comfortable life with or without steady work. My parents both attended college, but neither became successful from their degrees; both achieved success not by studying about it but by earning it through daily work and autodidacticism (a GRE word that's both useful and unnecessary--a twofer!). Thanks to their investments and achievements, my brother and I have been able to make it into our early thirties, both college educated single men, and yet neither of us own a business. I have a semi-marketable skill (teaching), but my brother's long-sought degree in political science is about as useful in today's job market as the napkins he knows how to fold expertly. In fact, my brother's finally seeing sense--working towards restaurant management, he might end up carrying my dead academic weight later on in life.
Thus, not having had to obtain a job, I've been essentially paying for the privilege of sitting in drafty rooms and reading long hours--things I could have done for free, on my own time. I like to imagine that I've been interning with successful companies in the hopes of becoming a long-term employee (tenured professor), but that's a fantasy. The reality at many universities is that every year after the mid-nineties tenure-track positions have decreased, even though faculty (including graduate students) hires have been increasing. It's quite devilish, actually--the universities are simply waiting for old tenured faculty to retire, then simply not hiring new tenures to the position, instead opting for an adjunct scab to fill the gap at a quarter of the pay with no benefits or job security.
The system is simply broken: 300 or even 500-person schoolrooms teaching standardized crap that imparts no useful skills... students are graduating at record numbers with degrees in such useless fields as Interior Design, Popular Culture, and the great liberal-arts bastions, History and Social Sciences. What we have as a nation forgotten is that nobody NEEDED a degree for any of these things a hundred years ago--people learned their trades by doing them. For example, if you wanted to be a mason, you apprenticed yourself to a master mason and would work for him like a dog until you became a journeyman with some marketable skill; you would then have to work your way into the good graces of a masonry firm until you achieved enough skill to be a master in your own right, at which point you could hang out your own business shingle and get little apprentice-slaves for yourself and continue the cycle ad infinitum (another latin phrase you'll never need, but which always looks good to employers).
Business has not changed in its capitalistic structure for over 100 years, even though our elites have become too sensitive for hard labor and earnest trade. That's why immigrants are coming to this country and getting richer, faster than us. It's not because they have a desire to debase themselves; they simply don't find work to be debasing. I say let schools be for scholars, and let business be done by businessmen. Car repairmen need liberal-arts degrees like fish need bicycles! Perhaps, when education is no longer required by the government nor desired by the nagging majority, it will become fashionable again to learn on one's own, and be recognized by one's own skills and achievements instead of one's uncanny ability to bore whole parties to death with impromptu lectures on Proust.
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