A university president makes a case against cowardice

The political and ideological divide speaks for itself, but on behalf of the common folk universities have been failing their core mission - to provide the people with a quality education. The inversion and disconnect between the cost of tuition and economic outcomes is stunning. Too many kids who don't know better are pressured into pursuing higher education and taking on massive debt, only to graduate without any job prospects or reasonable hopes of paying off their loans. The salt in the wounds is that universities are flush with cash, yet its spent on anything and everything except for the welfare of the students.

It feels to me like part of the disconnect is that education and job training isn't necessarily the same thing. For many majors improving economic outcomes is not the core mission.

> The salt in the wounds is that universities are flush with cash, yet its spent on anything and everything except for the welfare of the students.

Maybe the elites. State schools and small colleges are not flush with cash and many have been shuttered or severely downsized recently. Though they could still spend their limited funds better.

Its an implicit promise, and we can already see the pendulum swinging back in the form of lower enrollment as more people catch on.

Recent events alone do not fully represent the affairs of the past 2+ decades. Community, state, ivy, all levels were gorging themselves on federal funding and endowments. I have no comment on the current admin, but blatantly inefficient use of funds is an understatement.

Have they been failing at their core missions, though? You say there has been an inversion/disconnect between cost of tuition and economic outcomes, but looking at the data doesn't back that. At least, I have yet to see anything that supports an inversion. Diminished returns maybe. Certainly a good case to not take out loans to get into school if you don't have a reasonable chance of graduation.

But that is true of everything we do loans for, nowadays. The amount of consumer debt that people contort themselves into justifying is insane. If you want to use that as evidence that grade schools are failing in education, I can largely agree with you.

What does "gorging themselves on endowments" even mean? If they did that, they wouldn't be very endowed in quick order.

> but on behalf of the common folk universities have been failing their core mission - to provide the people with a quality education.

I see this a lot and it’s a concerningly reductive argument. Say what you want about a lot of colleges but when you talk about that mission you are talking about public colleges. Most have far lower endowments and most are very reasonably priced or free for instate students.

Georgia and California are great examples of this. The support for these institutions that used to come from states has gone down enormously while the cost of goods has gone up.

As a result it is not unreasonable to me for them to charge out of state and international students much much more. Georgia shouldn’t be subsidizing the college degrees of Alabamans, nor California of Arizonans.

All that to say the economics here are far more variable than people give much thought to and it’s easy to point at headline grabbing numbers that don’t reflect reality.

Schools rent the ones pressuring kids…their parents and society is.

Their core mission is to provide society with a endless surplus of food and energy from air

> Its an implicit promise

It's an inferred promise, not an implicit promise. Lots of schools do try to make it an explicit, qualified promise (e.g. "80% of grads work in their field!"), and even more are shifting towards becoming what are effectively vocational schools, but this was never the intended purpose of a liberal arts education.

Charitably, they may mean "the proceeds from their endowments" (or maybe "engorging their endowments", if that's even a proper use of the word), but I think that's a weak point. Proportionally very, very few institutions have significant endowments.

Spending massive amounts of money on sports is something state schools are very much into.

They will shutter academic departments but continue to pay a football coach more than the University president.

Not all schools do this but it is part of the conversation, sports spending has grown out of control along with everything else.

No such thing as a free lunch! Universities exist for the benefit of society, not the other way around.

Tuition is skyrocketing and wages are stagnant. I'm not making a hard claim about inversion of ROI, but I don't need to. What's the reason for college becoming so expensive?

You claim it is inverted. That is a hard claim, full stop. One that is, notably, not supported by any figures.

I can largely agree that it, similar to other things, has become too expensive. I cannot agree that it is not worth it for folks that can do it.

You're both wrong. I'm saying they're engorged AND well endowed. Many consider this a strong point.

You know it's kind of rude to dismiss someone when they clarify and then stuff words in their mouth?

Totally inverted? Of course not. But there is a very real portion of individuals for whom debts exceed earnings and it is very much in the data. But if you want to ignore reality to win on semantics go right ahead.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-relationship-between-...

I'm not dismissing, I'm pointing out that you made a hard claim, even if you didn't intend it.

Again, I can agree if you are claiming it is of diminishing benefits. I'll go further and agree that there have been predatory practices to get people to take out loans they shouldn't take out. This is directly addressed by your source. Which, notably, still supports that people have higher incomes after graduation.

What I cannot at all agree with is it being "inverted." Nor can I agree that they are failing to educate people. By the stats I have seen, this just isn't the case.