The Higher Ed Bubble | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Some of the Democrats in the General Assembly have already begun The Whine about the "devastating cuts" Republicans are making to the UNC system. That's foolishness. They should, in fact, be much more substantial.

    It is foolishness because the cuts are miniscule compared to the waste in the UNC system. All one has to do to see that is to ask any professor, particularly those with tenure, how many hours a week they teach. Or, all one has to do is look at the increase in the number of EPA positions that do not teach a full load compared to that number even ten years ago. The fact of the matter is that the increase in the university spending has come from "less teaching and more administering."

    The second thing causing the skyrocketing cost of a college education is simply supply and demand. There are too many students seeking a college degree. That demand drives up prices. And what a growing number of students are doing is not only taking out loans to pay for those increasing costs, but they are living--sometimes rather well--on those loans. Many of them will not be able to get a job to pay off those loans once they graduate. Some suggest we are headed for a "Student Loan Bubble" burst worse than the Housing Bubble burst from subprime lending. The same fundamentals are present in the student loan industry.

    George Will, writing in the venerable Washington Post says:

   Many parents and the children they send to college are paying rapidly rising prices for something of declining quality. This is because "quality" is not synonymous with "value."

    Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, believes that college has become, for many, merely a "status marker," signaling membership in the educated caste, and a place to meet spouses of similar status -- "associative mating." Since 1961, the time students spend reading, writing and otherwise studying has fallen from 24 hours a week to about 15 -- enough for a degree often desired only as an expensive signifier of rudimentary qualities (e.g., the ability to follow instructions). Employers value this signifier as an alternative to aptitude tests when evaluating potential employees because such tests can provoke lawsuits by having a "disparate impact" on this or that racial or ethnic group.

    In his "The Higher Education Bubble," Reynolds writes that this bubble exists for the same reasons the housing bubble did. The government decided that too few people owned homes/went to college, so government money was poured into subsidized and sometimes subprime mortgages/student loans, with the predictable result that housing prices/college tuitions soared and many borrowers went bust. Tuitions and fees have risen more than 440 percent in 30 years as schools happily raised prices -- and lowered standards -- to siphon up federal money. A recent Wall Street Journal headline: "Student Debt Rises by 8% as College Tuitions Climb."

   Click here to read the rest of the story and follow the links in the WaPo article.

    If the General Assembly were serious about cutting the cost of higher education in this state they would cut out the first two years of undergraduate study in the university system and shift those programs (and funds) to the community college system and let the community college system take over that job. It not only does that job better, but it does it with less expense. But of course, the beer distributors would fight it tooth and nail. As would a number of parents of college freshmen and sophomores.

    Delma Blinson writes the "Teacher's Desk" column for our friend in the local publishing business: The Beaufort Observer. His concentration is in the area of his expertise - the education of our youth. He is a former teacher, principal, superintendent and university professor.