‘there has been a severe contraction in the quality of higher education’

In writing about the higher education bubble, Jerry Bowyer had this observation.

Furthermore, there has been a severe contraction in the quality of higher education in America. Did we really think we could open the floodgates and not affect the quality of graduates? Can you turn college into the new high school, and not get high school-like results?  Grade inflation will only keep the problem concealed for so long before the general public becomes aware that outside of a few highly challenging programs and majors, the quality of American higher education is plummeting. Graduates are mastering fewer facts, can’t think critically about the facts they have mastered, and can’t express whatever ideas they have mastered in clear, cogent, grammatically correct sentences. Employers already know this.

Professor Mark Perry thinks most college professors would agree with Bowyer.  As others have, Perry compares the housing bubble to the higher education bubble.

Similarity between ‘good renters’ and ‘good high school graduates’

It seems clear now that because of dual political obsessions, we have “oversold” both homeownership and college education to the American people, by artificially lowering the costs through government intervention and subsidies.  As economic theory tells us, if you subsidize something you get more of it, and that’s what happened with both homeownerhip and college education – but we got too much of it, and that has led to twin bubbles.  Just like government policies turned “good renters into bad homeowners,” it’s now apparent that government policies have turned “good high school graduates, many of whom should have pursued tw0-year degrees or other forms of career training, into unemployable college graduates with excessive levels of student loan debt that can’t be discharged.”  Perhaps economics textbooks in the future can illustrate the concept of “government failure” with these two examples of government-induced, unsustainable bubbles?

Just as too many unqualified home buyers took on mortgages in the run-up to the housing bubble, maybe too many unprepared high school graduates are enrolling in college.

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Related:  Typical undergrad ‘could not write a paper or solve an algebra problem’

High school graduation goals do not include getting students ready for college

Sadly, I was not surprised to learn that our local high school does not include “college or career ready” as part of its goals for graduates.

The district has adopted graduation goals. A graduate of the Eastchester Schools will be:

• A respectful individual
• A life-long learner
• An effective communicator
• A complex thinker and problem solver
• A competent and responsible user of technology

Words have consequences.

At our local school only 59% of high school graduates are  “college or career ready” *.  This at an annual  cost of about $23,389 per pupil.

I prefer the Obama administration’s articulation of goals – much more specific, concrete, and measurable.

The goal for America’s educational system is clear: Every student should graduate from high school ready for college or a career.

Different school, similar problem
At a nearby school district, some parents are advocating that college preparation has to be front and center as goals, instead of  other squishy priorities like global awareness, global responsibility, and 21st century skills.

* UPDATE:  I changed “college ready” to “college or career ready” to accurately reflect what was measured.  In other words, 59% were not prepared for “post-secondary” success as determined by New York’s Aspirational Performance Measure (APM).

Again, STEM college majors are too darn hard for kids these days

Students are choosing the easy college majors.

… Although the number of college graduates increased about 29% between 2001 and 2009, the number graduating with engineering degrees only increased 19%, according to the most recent statistics from the U.S. Dept. of Education. The number with computer and information-sciences degrees decreased 14%. Since students typically set their majors during their sophomore year, the first class that chose their major in the midst of the recession graduated this year.

This student switched majors when she found an engineering lab project too darn hard.

To avoid getting an “incomplete” for the course, Ms. Zhou withdrew before the lab ended. Since switching majors she has earned almost straight A’s instead of the B’s and C’s she took home in engineering.

The issues:

• … introductory courses are often difficult and abstract…
• … high schools didn’t prepare them for the level of rigor in the introductory courses…
• … Science classes may also require more time … math and science—though not engineering—students study on average about three hours more per week than their non-science-major counterparts.

Overall, only 45% of 2011 U.S. high-school graduates who took the ACT test were prepared for college-level math and only 30% of ACT-tested high-school graduates were ready for college-level science, according to a 2011 report by ACT Inc.

One solution is to make STEM classes easier more accessible.

Educators have tried to tackle the attrition problem with new programs that they say make engineering more accessible. In 2003, Georgia Institute of Technology split its introductory computer-science class into three separate courses. One was geared toward computer science majors, another to engineering majors, and a third to liberal arts, architecture and management majors. The liberal arts course cut down on computer-science theory in favor of practical tasks like using programming to manipulate photographs, says computer science professor Mark Guzdial. Since the switch, about 85% of students pass, he says.

I don’t understand how this information supports the point that STEM-related jobs don’t pay enough:

That may partly be because the jobs don’t pay enough to attract or retain top graduates. Science, technology, engineering and math majors who stay in a related profession had average annual earnings of $78,550 in 2009, but those who decided to go into managerial and professional positions made more than $102,000, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.

What is the difference between a science grad who works in a “related profession” vs. one who is in a “professional position”?  In almost any line of work, managers and professionals earn more than other workers.

Related:  College students find that STEM majors are too darn hard

College students find that STEM majors are too darn hard

College STEM students transfer to other majors at twice the attrition rate of all other majors combined.  This is a problem, according to this New York Times article.

 “We’re losing an alarming proportion of our nation’s science talent once the students get to college,” says Mitchell J. Chang, an education professor at U.C.L.A. who has studied the matter.

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Some possible reasons

Poor preparation in grades 6 through 12 (and I’d also add K-5)  for the rigors of STEM courses.  Could it be that the extreme focus on “engagement” at the expense of actual learning in our public schools is a factor?

But, it turns out, middle and high school students are having most of the fun, building their erector sets and dropping eggs into water to test the first law of motion. The excitement quickly fades as students brush up against the reality of what David E. Goldberg, an emeritus engineering professor, calls “the math-science death march.” Freshmen in college wade through a blizzard of calculus, physics and chemistry in lecture halls with hundreds of other students. And then many wash out.

Related to poor preparation, students are unwilling to work hard.

Some students still lack math preparation or aren’t willing to work hard enough.

Lack of fun projects in lower level college STEM classes is another issue.

Other deterrents are the tough freshman classes, typically followed by two years of fairly abstract courses leading to a senior research or design project. “It’s dry and hard to get through, so if you can create an oasis in there, it would be a good thing,” says Dr. Goldberg, who retired last year as an engineering professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is now an education consultant.

And then there’s grade inflation in non-STEM majors.

The latest research also suggests that there could be more subtle problems at work, like the proliferation of grade inflation in the humanities and social sciences, which provides another incentive for students to leave STEM majors. It is no surprise that grades are lower in math and science, where the answers are clear-cut and there are no bonus points for flair. Professors also say they are strict because science and engineering courses build on one another, and a student who fails to absorb the key lessons in one class will flounder in the next.

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While all these factors play a role, I suspect the heart of the  problem is that students are simply poorly prepared for the academic rigors of STEM majors and have failed to develop good study habits while breezing through the American public school system.  I’ve seen this up close.

By contrast, students in China and India focus relentlessly on math and science from an early age.

“We’re in a worldwide competition, and we’ve got to retain as many of our students as we can,” Dean Kirkpatrick says. “But we’re not doing kids a favor if we’re not teaching them good life and study skills.”

This  general theme seems to dominate the more than 1,000 comments accompanying this article.  Here’s one of my favorites.

I have been teaching introductory college physics for fifteen years now. My observation is that for the most part students come to college excited about pursuing a science career, brimming with illusions and/or misconceptions about what that really entails, and as soon as they find out that it is not all about gazing at stars or looking through a microscope, that it is a lot of hard work and (ugh) algebra (the horror !) is involved, they run like the wind. Simple as that.

In my opinion, it is all about how they are brought up in High School. The seem to think that if something is difficult, someone should “make it easy” for them, that anything that they do not like (such as calculus) must surely be disposable and therefore should be simply removed from curriculum and never imposed on them again, that all it takes is the desire to do well. And it is very hard to change them by the time they get to college.

I know, I sound like an old fart.

Speaking as an authentic old fart, I would agree.

UPDATE:  Again, STEM college majors are too darn hard for kids these days