17 ms·

After Decades of Growth, Colleges Find It’s Survival of the Fittest

82 points by cs702 9y ago

HACKHACKERS 9y ago
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HACKHACKERS 9y ago
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purple-again 9y ago
Woah, I was all ready to come back here and discuss the article when I figured, what the hell lets give the comments section on the WSJ a chance. Maybe I'm out of touch in my little tech/business cross section of the world, but where did that overwhelming hate for higher education come from? Nearly all of those comments are...not making very logical arguments worth discussing either.
- CalRobert 9y ago
  I have little love for an institution that profits off dreams and naivete and destroys lives with un-dischargeable debt. But hey, at least the football coach is rich and the gym is fancy! Also in retrospect I learned almost nothing useful in college. Loads on my own time, though. Also, how the hell is college so damn expensive when the people teaching classes are paid 12 bucks an hour because they're "adjuncts"?? where tf is the money going?? (see above) Exception: my local junior college was great, and reasonably priced. If you want to do uni, go to jc and then to europe. Oh. Also there's a whole university cargo cult. It made some baby boomers wealthy so obviously the solution is for EVERYONE to go to college.
  - nickthemagicman 9y ago
    I feel like you have a bit of an extreme take by saying 'profiting off dreams and naivete'. Uni is excellent for people for so many reasons. The price has gotten out of hand thats for sure. College and education are wonderful things. We just have to make sure it's within reach for everyone
    - amorphid 9y ago
      A crushing amount of student loan debt stinks, and so does a low quality degree that teaches little if actual substance. These are not wonderful things.
      - nerdponx 9y ago
        Not every degree is low quality. I and most of my school friends benefited immeasurably from college education.
        notyourday 9y ago
        Universities make a boatload more money peddling basket weaving degrees in social sciences, psychology, athlete nutrition, literature of forgotten tribes of Egypt, history of hair weaving vs. engineering because the prices charged are nearly the same while the outlay needed to "train" a person for b.s. degree is smaller. This means that universities are incentivized to peddle b.s. degrees.
purple-again 9y ago
More on point with the article, I hate when information is delivered like this without any context. Less than 20% of schools are failing? Wow thats...I don't know what that is. Whats the median for failing colleges per...decade? How long does a college usually take to fail?
E765 9y ago
No blocker: https://web.archive.org/web/20180221130021/https://www.wsj.com/articles/after-decades-of-growth-colleges-find-its-survival-of-the-fittest-1519209001 https://web.archive.org/web/20180221130021/https://www.wsj.c...
- salmonfamine 9y ago
  Not sure what the HN position is on commenting bots, but can we automate this process? Someone has to do it every single time a NYT/WSJ/WAPO article gets posted.
  - Yhippa 9y ago
    Agreed, the web links haven't been working for me for a while.
Pigo 9y ago
I've been in serious debate with myself over whether to encourage my son to go to college when it is time. I guess it depends on what field I see him become interested in. I could provide enough resources for him to learn enough to get an entry level job, if he chooses tech. But I guess I still have that romantic notion of him getting a well-rounded education in many subjects that I couldn't help him with, making friends, and meeting interesting professors. At least I could help him find a good college. I was the first person in my family to even graduate high-school, so I was flying blind. Besides the notion that so many jobs expected it when I was starting out, I'm not really sure what good it did for me. Put it this way, I couldn't even tell you where my diploma is. But once a month I still go online and pay for it.
- hashkb 9y ago
  Your son could have that at a state school for probably free (depending on the state, and with good grades), and work in a restaurant three or four nights a week to offset some other costs.
  - lettergram 9y ago
    Ugh - depends what state school. My wife and I both went to University of Illinois (we are from Illinois). I worked 10 - 20 hours per week, and got some smaller grants, my wife got larger grants.. We still both have more debt than I care to admit... It's literally 20% of our overall monthly expenses. I found the connections personally invaluable and worth it. My wife is just starting her PhD at U of I, so we both agree it was worth it, but just barely.
    - wenc 9y ago
      I live in Illinois. I just looked up in-state tuition for UIUC = $17k/year. That is not cheap, but it's a lot less than many lower-ranking private schools. Loyola charges $21k. Roosevelt charges $26k. UIUC is a great state school, one of the best in the country. I'd say you got a good deal. But yes, definitely not close to free.
  - epistasis 9y ago
polskibus 9y ago
I wonder how much of these circumstances stem from the fact that people do not want to have children as much as they used to, concentrating on their own needs? Perhaps it would be in the best interest of colleges to somehow show people that it is possible to have children and an interesting career?
avs733 9y ago
The bottom tier called out in this article are failing, above all else, because they lack a sense of place and purpose and instead make decisions marked by insecurity. I have a whole lot to say on this issue so I'll try and keep it briefish...context, I'm finishing up my PhD in Engineering Education at a 'top tier' university. I also have a BS and MS in an engineering discipline. Several friends in my program, as well as myself, have been applying for faculty jobs this year. Two of us have experience as technical founders, as working engineers, have prior experience teaching engineering, and now have PhDs in how to teach engineering well. More than one teaching focused university has specifically told us that our degrees in teaching engineering are DISQUALIFYING to teach engineering at their schools. They will only take PhDs in that field of engineering. Those students, because of the nature of modern research universities, are often explicitly discouraged from developing teaching expertise - it distracts from the research their advisers need accomplished to get tenure there. So you have schools that produce future faculty discouraging them from getting the preparation needed for the majority of faculty jobs, and the schools that do the majority of teaching not interested in educational expertise. One department head specifically told me during a phone interview they didn't see how a degree in how to teach engineering would be relevant to what they do. That school advertises that it's focused entirely on undergraduate engineering education, does not have graduate students, and rewards tenure almost entirely based on teaching performance. I pointed out that I had two degree in their discipline, worked as an engineer in the field for years, had already been teaching engineering before I returned to graduate school, and went back to school specifically to learn how to teach better. Silence. The last person they hired (who has become a friend/mentee of mine) went straight through from their BS to MS to PhD in a single engineering discipline. No teaching experience and no industry experience - but a PhD in the field. The trend there doesn't just apply to teaching, it applies to research and to broader visions of what a university can or should be. Really, summarized, the issues we are seeing are issues of strategy - but that is a dirty word at universities. The schools have all, teaching as well as research focused, managed to entirely divorce Schein's three levels of culture from each other. They have artifacts they use for promotion, tenure, and measuring the school's activity. Many have ceased to try and argue those artifacts are linked to the values that they espouse. They simply state they are linked and then stigmatize anyone who points out otherwise. At many schools, the faculty pathologically fear losing input on governance yet are unwilling to contribute to running of the university in a meaningful way. They complain about perpetually rising tenure standards, but they are the ones enforcing those standards. Trying to engage in these discussions is a dirty word because that would require them to confront things outside of their bubble. Trying to individualize isn't within the capacity of the faculty because ongoing disciplinary ossification, narrowing, and inlooking. It also isn't in the capacity of the outside managers they bring in to run the 'business' side - because they don't have the foggiest understanding of how education works, and get stuck on traditional metrics for business success and solutions that prevent any real change. Its easy to blame sports, and they sure don't help, but the culture of the way universities are run - lacking in any reflection, self-awareness, or broader world view. It isn't complying with title IX, but thats a convenient scapegoat. It isn't building nice dorms, that's a symptom not a cause. Each school looks up the ladder of rankings and then does their damnedest to make themselves look like the school above them. In an attempt to 'compete' they all actively commodify themselves. As an academic I find it sad. As an engineer/entrepreneur I find it frustrating. As a citizen I find it actively dangerous. In the broadest sense, these aren't just problems of education, they are problems of a society that (on the whole) seeks a black and white understanding of the world and seeks an education system that reproduces what it thinks it wants, rather than what it could be or might need later.
brightball 9y ago
Did not expect to see my Tigers featured when I clicked on the link. Clemson has been exploding over the past 20 years. It’s a special place. The former president set a goal to become a top 20 public university. At the time, Clemson was around 70. I want to say it took close to 9 years but they finally did it. That mission directed a whole host of changes around the school to improve. Some things were university wide like the "communications across the curriculum" program, that eventually developed into the Pearce Center (http://pearce.caah.clemson.edu/programs/waccac/ http://pearce.caah.clemson.edu/programs/waccac/). That primarily came from businesses telling the school that they were getting graduates who were technically sound but had difficulty working with non-technical people. They embraced the research focus of the university with the Creative Inquiry program (https://www.clemson.edu/centers-institutes/watt/creative-inquiry/ https://www.clemson.edu/centers-institutes/watt/creative-inq...). I can't remember the name of the program, but at one point part of the curriculum was to have cross-major teams assisting with different professor's research projects on campus. You might have an agriculture professor with a team consisting of students from psychology, computer engineering, accounting, architecture, etc. They developed the Clemson ICAR facility (http://cuicar.com/ http://cuicar.com/) in Greenville to capitalize on the automotive presence there along with undergrad to doctoral programs on automotive engineering...where the students actually design and build a car (https://jalopnik.com/this-mini-concept-car-was-developed-by-engineering-stud-1819506872 https://jalopnik.com/this-mini-concept-car-was-developed-by-...). Also moved the entire MBA program to downtown Greenville to be more accessible to people working. Clemson is very rural, so that was a challenge. Exciting times at the school. :-) It even include going as far as an academic review committee for football recruits. It blew up around 2007 when the committee told the coaches they couldn’t recruit a top wide receiver who then turned around and went to UNC...years later we found out why.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
foodislove 9y ago
This makes sense. With average enrollment going up at the top, with the market growth in applicants less than that, eventually the bottom will lose out. Maybe there is nostalgia for some colleges be it history, alums, or what not. At the end of the day, students vote with their feet and if a college is not good enough, then it should go out of business.
htormey 9y ago
“”You’re going to see, over the next five years, a real increase in the number of schools in serious trouble,” Dr. Vedder said. “A degree from a top school is a still a pretty good signaling device [to employers]. It means you’re smart and hardworking. But a degree from one of these lower schools doesn’t mean much of anything.”“ Any discussion about third level education needs to take into account price and hence ROI. I’m really surprised that this article doesn’t talk about the high rate at which US college tuition costs increased from 2008 to present. Especially for law schools. The closest it gets is the following paragraph: “But in the past few years, the winds have shifted. The birthrate fell, the pay advantage for college graduates over high-school graduates declined, states cut $9 billion in funding to public colleges and student debt soared.” Tuition in the US has gone up a lot while wages for many jobs have stayed relatively flat: “In during the 1980-81 school year, the average college tuition at private universities was $9,882. By 2014-15, that number exploded to $26,740. For public universities, the tuition figures went from $2,196 to $8,534” https://businessinsider.com/this-chart-shows-college-tuition-growth-since-1980-2016-8 https://businessinsider.com/this-chart-shows-college-tuition... This is the main reason why colleges are struggling in the US.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
aomurphy 9y ago
This has been predicted in higher ed for the past ~2 decades. It's relatively easy to look at the number of students in the pipeline, and you can see there were two big peaks in the last half century: baby boomers in the 60s-70s, and their children in the 90s-2000s. They managed to keep the boom going a little longer in the late 2000s with increased international enrollment, but it's over now (peak enrollment was 2010). the other big trend has been that colleges in the US are disproportionately concentrated in a broad arc from New England through the Midwest for historical reasons, but young people in the US are increasingly concentrated in the South and West. I suspect we'll see a die off of lots of the small colleges that really only appeal locally throughout those areas. It's going to be pretty painful, look at what happened with Sweet Briar, which just managed to stay open (and admittedly suffered from another big trend: the death of women's colleges). The best source for all of this (as with most news about how universities are run in the USA) is the Chronicle of Higher Education.

82 points by cs702 9y ago

Are you face with delay and unnecessary excuses and error on your job. THEN CONTACT= SPIDERHACKERS95@GMAIL.COM Worry no more for we are the best in any hacking job. What do you want from hacking service. We can render it with swift response and no delay on your job 100% guarantee. Our service list is outline as follows 1. University grades changing 2. WhatsApp Hack 3. Bank accounts hack 4. Twitters hack 5. Email accounts hack 6. Website crashed hack 7. Server crashed hack 8. Sales of Spyware and Keylogger software 9. Retrieval of lost file/documents 10. Erase criminal records hack 11. Databases hack 12. Sales of Dumps cards of all kinds 13. Untraceable IP 14. Individual Computers Hack 15. Money Transfer 16. Crediting CONTACT them: SPIDERHACKERS95@GMAIL.COM contact them you will be glad you did.

HACKHACKERS 9y ago

purple-again 9y ago

Woah, I was all ready to come back here and discuss the article when I figured, what the hell lets give the comments section on the WSJ a chance. Maybe I'm out of touch in my little tech/business cross section of the world, but where did that overwhelming hate for higher education come from? Nearly all of those comments are...not making very logical arguments worth discussing either.

CalRobert 9y ago
I have little love for an institution that profits off dreams and naivete and destroys lives with un-dischargeable debt. But hey, at least the football coach is rich and the gym is fancy! Also in retrospect I learned almost nothing useful in college. Loads on my own time, though. Also, how the hell is college so damn expensive when the people teaching classes are paid 12 bucks an hour because they're "adjuncts"?? where tf is the money going?? (see above) Exception: my local junior college was great, and reasonably priced. If you want to do uni, go to jc and then to europe. Oh. Also there's a whole university cargo cult. It made some baby boomers wealthy so obviously the solution is for EVERYONE to go to college.
- nickthemagicman 9y ago
  I feel like you have a bit of an extreme take by saying 'profiting off dreams and naivete'. Uni is excellent for people for so many reasons. The price has gotten out of hand thats for sure. College and education are wonderful things. We just have to make sure it's within reach for everyone
  - amorphid 9y ago
    A crushing amount of student loan debt stinks, and so does a low quality degree that teaches little if actual substance. These are not wonderful things.
    - nerdponx 9y ago
      Not every degree is low quality. I and most of my school friends benefited immeasurably from college education.
      - notyourday 9y ago
        Universities make a boatload more money peddling basket weaving degrees in social sciences, psychology, athlete nutrition, literature of forgotten tribes of Egypt, history of hair weaving vs. engineering because the prices charged are nearly the same while the outlay needed to "train" a person for b.s. degree is smaller. This means that universities are incentivized to peddle b.s. degrees.

purple-again 9y ago

More on point with the article, I hate when information is delivered like this without any context. Less than 20% of schools are failing? Wow thats...I don't know what that is. Whats the median for failing colleges per...decade? How long does a college usually take to fail?

E765 9y ago

No blocker: https://web.archive.org/web/20180221130021/https://www.wsj.com/articles/after-decades-of-growth-colleges-find-its-survival-of-the-fittest-1519209001 https://web.archive.org/web/20180221130021/https://www.wsj.c...

salmonfamine 9y ago
Not sure what the HN position is on commenting bots, but can we automate this process? Someone has to do it every single time a NYT/WSJ/WAPO article gets posted.
- Yhippa 9y ago
  Agreed, the web links haven't been working for me for a while.

Pigo 9y ago

I've been in serious debate with myself over whether to encourage my son to go to college when it is time. I guess it depends on what field I see him become interested in. I could provide enough resources for him to learn enough to get an entry level job, if he chooses tech. But I guess I still have that romantic notion of him getting a well-rounded education in many subjects that I couldn't help him with, making friends, and meeting interesting professors. At least I could help him find a good college. I was the first person in my family to even graduate high-school, so I was flying blind. Besides the notion that so many jobs expected it when I was starting out, I'm not really sure what good it did for me. Put it this way, I couldn't even tell you where my diploma is. But once a month I still go online and pay for it.

hashkb 9y ago
Your son could have that at a state school for probably free (depending on the state, and with good grades), and work in a restaurant three or four nights a week to offset some other costs.
- lettergram 9y ago
  Ugh - depends what state school. My wife and I both went to University of Illinois (we are from Illinois). I worked 10 - 20 hours per week, and got some smaller grants, my wife got larger grants.. We still both have more debt than I care to admit... It's literally 20% of our overall monthly expenses. I found the connections personally invaluable and worth it. My wife is just starting her PhD at U of I, so we both agree it was worth it, but just barely.
  - wenc 9y ago
    I live in Illinois. I just looked up in-state tuition for UIUC = $17k/year. That is not cheap, but it's a lot less than many lower-ranking private schools. Loyola charges $21k. Roosevelt charges $26k. UIUC is a great state school, one of the best in the country. I'd say you got a good deal. But yes, definitely not close to free.
- epistasis 9y ago

polskibus 9y ago

I wonder how much of these circumstances stem from the fact that people do not want to have children as much as they used to, concentrating on their own needs? Perhaps it would be in the best interest of colleges to somehow show people that it is possible to have children and an interesting career?

avs733 9y ago

The bottom tier called out in this article are failing, above all else, because they lack a sense of place and purpose and instead make decisions marked by insecurity. I have a whole lot to say on this issue so I'll try and keep it briefish...context, I'm finishing up my PhD in Engineering Education at a 'top tier' university. I also have a BS and MS in an engineering discipline. Several friends in my program, as well as myself, have been applying for faculty jobs this year. Two of us have experience as technical founders, as working engineers, have prior experience teaching engineering, and now have PhDs in how to teach engineering well. More than one teaching focused university has specifically told us that our degrees in teaching engineering are DISQUALIFYING to teach engineering at their schools. They will only take PhDs in that field of engineering. Those students, because of the nature of modern research universities, are often explicitly discouraged from developing teaching expertise - it distracts from the research their advisers need accomplished to get tenure there. So you have schools that produce future faculty discouraging them from getting the preparation needed for the majority of faculty jobs, and the schools that do the majority of teaching not interested in educational expertise. One department head specifically told me during a phone interview they didn't see how a degree in how to teach engineering would be relevant to what they do. That school advertises that it's focused entirely on undergraduate engineering education, does not have graduate students, and rewards tenure almost entirely based on teaching performance. I pointed out that I had two degree in their discipline, worked as an engineer in the field for years, had already been teaching engineering before I returned to graduate school, and went back to school specifically to learn how to teach better. Silence. The last person they hired (who has become a friend/mentee of mine) went straight through from their BS to MS to PhD in a single engineering discipline. No teaching experience and no industry experience - but a PhD in the field. The trend there doesn't just apply to teaching, it applies to research and to broader visions of what a university can or should be. Really, summarized, the issues we are seeing are issues of strategy - but that is a dirty word at universities. The schools have all, teaching as well as research focused, managed to entirely divorce Schein's three levels of culture from each other. They have artifacts they use for promotion, tenure, and measuring the school's activity. Many have ceased to try and argue those artifacts are linked to the values that they espouse. They simply state they are linked and then stigmatize anyone who points out otherwise. At many schools, the faculty pathologically fear losing input on governance yet are unwilling to contribute to running of the university in a meaningful way. They complain about perpetually rising tenure standards, but they are the ones enforcing those standards. Trying to engage in these discussions is a dirty word because that would require them to confront things outside of their bubble. Trying to individualize isn't within the capacity of the faculty because ongoing disciplinary ossification, narrowing, and inlooking. It also isn't in the capacity of the outside managers they bring in to run the 'business' side - because they don't have the foggiest understanding of how education works, and get stuck on traditional metrics for business success and solutions that prevent any real change. Its easy to blame sports, and they sure don't help, but the culture of the way universities are run - lacking in any reflection, self-awareness, or broader world view. It isn't complying with title IX, but thats a convenient scapegoat. It isn't building nice dorms, that's a symptom not a cause. Each school looks up the ladder of rankings and then does their damnedest to make themselves look like the school above them. In an attempt to 'compete' they all actively commodify themselves. As an academic I find it sad. As an engineer/entrepreneur I find it frustrating. As a citizen I find it actively dangerous. In the broadest sense, these aren't just problems of education, they are problems of a society that (on the whole) seeks a black and white understanding of the world and seeks an education system that reproduces what it thinks it wants, rather than what it could be or might need later.

brightball 9y ago

Did not expect to see my Tigers featured when I clicked on the link. Clemson has been exploding over the past 20 years. It’s a special place. The former president set a goal to become a top 20 public university. At the time, Clemson was around 70. I want to say it took close to 9 years but they finally did it. That mission directed a whole host of changes around the school to improve. Some things were university wide like the "communications across the curriculum" program, that eventually developed into the Pearce Center (http://pearce.caah.clemson.edu/programs/waccac/ http://pearce.caah.clemson.edu/programs/waccac/). That primarily came from businesses telling the school that they were getting graduates who were technically sound but had difficulty working with non-technical people. They embraced the research focus of the university with the Creative Inquiry program (https://www.clemson.edu/centers-institutes/watt/creative-inquiry/ https://www.clemson.edu/centers-institutes/watt/creative-inq...). I can't remember the name of the program, but at one point part of the curriculum was to have cross-major teams assisting with different professor's research projects on campus. You might have an agriculture professor with a team consisting of students from psychology, computer engineering, accounting, architecture, etc. They developed the Clemson ICAR facility (http://cuicar.com/ http://cuicar.com/) in Greenville to capitalize on the automotive presence there along with undergrad to doctoral programs on automotive engineering...where the students actually design and build a car (https://jalopnik.com/this-mini-concept-car-was-developed-by-engineering-stud-1819506872 https://jalopnik.com/this-mini-concept-car-was-developed-by-...). Also moved the entire MBA program to downtown Greenville to be more accessible to people working. Clemson is very rural, so that was a challenge. Exciting times at the school. :-) It even include going as far as an academic review committee for football recruits. It blew up around 2007 when the committee told the coaches they couldn’t recruit a top wide receiver who then turned around and went to UNC...years later we found out why.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

foodislove 9y ago

This makes sense. With average enrollment going up at the top, with the market growth in applicants less than that, eventually the bottom will lose out. Maybe there is nostalgia for some colleges be it history, alums, or what not. At the end of the day, students vote with their feet and if a college is not good enough, then it should go out of business.

htormey 9y ago

“”You’re going to see, over the next five years, a real increase in the number of schools in serious trouble,” Dr. Vedder said. “A degree from a top school is a still a pretty good signaling device [to employers]. It means you’re smart and hardworking. But a degree from one of these lower schools doesn’t mean much of anything.”“ Any discussion about third level education needs to take into account price and hence ROI. I’m really surprised that this article doesn’t talk about the high rate at which US college tuition costs increased from 2008 to present. Especially for law schools. The closest it gets is the following paragraph: “But in the past few years, the winds have shifted. The birthrate fell, the pay advantage for college graduates over high-school graduates declined, states cut $9 billion in funding to public colleges and student debt soared.” Tuition in the US has gone up a lot while wages for many jobs have stayed relatively flat: “In during the 1980-81 school year, the average college tuition at private universities was $9,882. By 2014-15, that number exploded to $26,740. For public universities, the tuition figures went from $2,196 to $8,534” https://businessinsider.com/this-chart-shows-college-tuition-growth-since-1980-2016-8 https://businessinsider.com/this-chart-shows-college-tuition... This is the main reason why colleges are struggling in the US.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

aomurphy 9y ago

This has been predicted in higher ed for the past ~2 decades. It's relatively easy to look at the number of students in the pipeline, and you can see there were two big peaks in the last half century: baby boomers in the 60s-70s, and their children in the 90s-2000s. They managed to keep the boom going a little longer in the late 2000s with increased international enrollment, but it's over now (peak enrollment was 2010). the other big trend has been that colleges in the US are disproportionately concentrated in a broad arc from New England through the Midwest for historical reasons, but young people in the US are increasingly concentrated in the South and West. I suspect we'll see a die off of lots of the small colleges that really only appeal locally throughout those areas. It's going to be pretty painful, look at what happened with Sweet Briar, which just managed to stay open (and admittedly suffered from another big trend: the death of women's colleges). The best source for all of this (as with most news about how universities are run in the USA) is the Chronicle of Higher Education.