Thinking About Our Education System

There's an interesting article in the NYT today about the rising costs of colleges. However, thinking more deeply, its clear that schools are getting increasingly competitive. Admittance rates are falling drastically which means higher required GPAs and SATs. This, of course, means more time requirements from both parents and students. This in conjunction with the fact that schools are so expensive now! So that begs the question, is it worth it? Is Stanford really better than it was 10 years ago? Admittance rates are half of what it was. Tuition certainly was lower. But are the classes any better?

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Raising Questions About Why College Is So Costly

By Jack Kadden

An opinion article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution earlier this week raises interesting questions about why going to college is so expensive, and points an accusing finger at professors and their research work.

The article, titled “The ugly secret why tuition costs a fortune,” is by John Zmirak, who is editor-in-chief of “Choosing the Right College” and Collegeguide.org. (A similar article by Mr. Zmirak ran in The San Francisco Examiner last week.)

Mr. Zmirak opens by pointing out: “Tuition, room and board at Sarah Lawrence College just hit $53,166 per year. That’s like buying a C-Class Mercedes every year … except you never get the car.”

He goes on to cite a study by an Emory University professor, Mark Bauerlein, done for the American Enterprise Institute, that Mr. Zmirak says “explores the open, ugly secret that most professors are paid based not on the quality (or even quantity) of their teaching, but rather on the volume of scholarly articles and books they can produce.”

Indeed, prestigious professors frequently have little interaction with students at all, lecturing to hundreds at a time, consigning discussions and grading to graduate students. Meanwhile, the research these professors are turning out is increasingly obscure and often politicized. If they’re dealing with well-studied writers, they must pursue ever more oddball interpretations of the works in order to produce something original. Here’s Bauerlein again, explaining why: In the year 2007, literary scholars and critics published 85 studies of the life and writings of William Faulkner. Nearly all of them appeared in U.S. publications, and the total included 11 books and eight dissertations. The previous year saw 78 entries on Faulkner, and the one before that 80 of them.

Mr. Zmirak notes that few professors are interested in teaching composition or survey courses because they are not helpful in publishing articles or gaining tenure, and he closes with these thoughts:

That’s why it’s essential, when making the ever more costly choices required in education, to carefully scope out each college. Call the admissions office and inquire about the student/teacher ratio and the percentage of classes taught by graduate students.

Is there a core curriculum of solid classes in Western culture, American history and great works of literature? Ask a professor how highly teaching (versus research) is valued in tenure decisions. After all, the teaching is what you’re paying for. Leave the tab for all that research to those 300 people who actually buy the books.

The Choice would welcome your thoughts on Mr. Zmirak’s thesis. Please use the comment box below.