This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure for more information.
My good blogging buddy, Matt, over at Optimize Your Life, penned a very intriguing post last week. The name of the post was, Politics and the Things We Can Control, and the gist of the post can be boiled down to one pithy sentence: Government matters and personal finance bloggers shouldn’t be completely disengaged from the political fray.
In one sense, I completely agree with Matt. In fact, way back in October of 2015, I penned a post showing that for many families, the most expensive item in their household budget is the cost of government. The family I highlighted in this post spent a third of its household income on government through property and income taxes. And we, as personal finance bloggers, are supposed to ignore this elephant in the room? Call me nuts, but that strikes me as a kind of professional malpractice.
But in another sense, I think Matt is opening a huge can of worms. People turn to personal finance blogs because they’re looking for actionable ways to fix their finances right now. They’re not looking for political advice. They know that fixing the government is a project, and they would rather invest their time and energy in fixing themselves than in tilting at windmills.
So what’s a personal finance blogger to do? Just stick to finances? Ignore the government, regardless of how detrimental it has become to the average citizen’s quest for financial independence?
Damn this personal finance blogging is hard!
Well, after much rumination on the topic, I’m siding with Matt. Yes, it’s perfectly okay for personal finance bloggers to be goo-goos too—but ONLY as long as they broach the topic infrequently (i.e., once every month or so), and ONLY as long as they present their ideas in a courteous and considerate manner (i.e., with “malice toward none”). It’s one thing to say, “Here’s an idea that might make things better.” It’s quite another thing to say, “Here’s an idea to make things better, and anyone who disagrees is a racist fascist moron.”
Okay, in deference to Matt, I’ve decided to devote the second Wednesday of every month to political stuff. Here, then, is my first installment of Second Wednesday of the Month Politics.
WARNING: This post is 100% political flapdoodle. If you don’t want to be subjected to my twisted political musings, please leave this page now. I won’t be offended; we part friends. If on the other hand you do want to hear my twisted political musings, that’s totally groovy. And if you care to comment about my political musings, that’s even better than groovy—that’s wavy gravy, man. But if you do comment, please keep it constructive and within the bounds of good taste. I already know I’m a butthead.
I have a master’s degree in public administration. And to get this vaunted piece of paper that’s now sitting in a cardboard tube somewhere in my garage, I took a lot of classes and explored a bevy of majors. And what do I remember from this cavalcade of instruction?
Well, I remember the definition of a dinosaur.
An archosaurian diapsid reptile with a perforated acetabulum.
I also remember a quote from Justice Louis Brandeis (culled, I believe, from William Zinsser’s classic guide to writing nonfiction, On Writing Well).
“There is no great writing, only great rewriting.”
And I remember a strongly held adage from E.S. Savas, one of my professors in grad school.
“The first and best Department of Health, Education, and Welfare is the family.”
But beyond that, I don’t remember much. Oh, sure, I have a vague recollection of some additional tidbits. But if someone asked me to explain Piaget’s formal operations stage, define a gerund, or find the derivative of (x² – 2x) (x – 2), I’d be completely lost.
Suppose, however, I did remember the bulk of my college education. Would that knowledge have helped me in my professional career?
Hell no!
I studied sociology, journalism, and public administration in college. And I can safely say that nothing from these studies would have made me a better dead-animal fetcher, a better asphalt shoveler, or a better database programmer. Everything I learned to advance my career I learned on the job or on my own by buying books. In fact, if I didn’t teach myself the fundamentals of C#, SQL, and relational databases, I’d still be fetching dead animals and shoveling asphalt.
And my experience with college is hardly atypical. Here’s a breakdown of what my three college housemates and my two best friends from childhood have done with their degrees.
| Name | Relationship | Degree | Major | Career After College |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Andy | College Housemate | Bachelor's | Marketing | Sold computers and then got a marketing job at The New York Times. |
| Dan | Childhood Friend | Associate's | Nursing | Salesman for various medical supply companies. |
| Joe | College Housemate | Bachelor's | English | Salesman on Wall Street. |
| Kevin | Childhood Friend | Bachelor's | Business | Began his career as a clerk for Bear Sterns but quit after a year. He joined the New York City Fire Department and is currently a battalion chief. |
| Mark | College Housemate | Bachelor's | Sports Journalism | Worked briefly as a producer for a Detroit news station. Once he was downsized, he became a mortgage salesman. He is currently selling mortgages for Bank of America. |
Only one of my buds has had a career that remotely follows what he studied in college (Andy). Now granted, this 20% hit rate is probably low for the total population of college graduates. But it’s probably not off by much. There are, after all, a lot of cab drivers, bartenders, and baristas out there with bachelors’ degrees.
Now a question. Giving the ephemeral quality of so many degrees awarded today, does it really make sense to saddle millions of young Americans with debilitating student-loan debt for instruction that 1) will be largely forgotten, and 2) will grow increasingly irrelevant to their jobs as the years go by? Can’t we come up with a better way for people to show a potential employer that they’re bright and that they have some gumption? Can’t we come up with a better credential?
The Groovy Solution
Problem: The cost of college. Too many Americans have degrees of questionable value; too many Americans have debilitating student-loan debt; and too many Americans have been priced out of the market for acquiring advanced skills.
Goal: A credential that’s just as good as a bachelor’s degree but is far cheaper. This will allow more Americans, especially young Americans, to learn worthwhile skills while incurring little or no student-loan debt. It will also mean lower higher education costs for the taxpayers.
Solution: Unbundle the bachelor’s degree, sue employers, and put colleges on the hook when people default on their student loans. Here’s how these proposals would look in practice.
1. Unbundle the bachelor’s degree and allow students to just purchase the trade school part of higher education.
When it comes to the bachelor’s degree, there are basically three components: the trade school part, the finishing school part, and the extracurricular part. Here’s a brief description of each.
Trade school part. This is the meat and potatoes of a bachelor’s degree. It’s the core knowledge of your chosen field, the 15-20 classes that pertain to your major.
Finishing school part. This is what your college believes a thoughtful person should think and know. Think Econ 101. Think Psych 101. Think Geology of the Dinosaurs. And to make sure you leave its hallowed halls properly molded, the typical college requires you to take 20-25 classes outside your chosen major.
Extracurricular part. This is all that stuff that doesn’t pertain to the 40 classes you need to take for your bachelor’s degree. Think clubs, climbing walls, frat parties, spring break, protests, and football games—it’s what people commonly refer to as the college experience.
The position taken here is that the finishing school part and the extracurricular part of a bachelor’s degree are largely superfluous. This doesn’t mean they don’t have value or they aren’t fun. It just means they add little or nothing to the hard skills students are trying to acquire for the labor market. And at the price of a college credit today, it’s hard to see how they’re worth it.
Suppose then that Congress passes the following law.
Any college or university that receives federal money, whether in the form of student loans, Pell grants, or research grants, must unbundle the bachelor’s degree and give students the option of just purchasing the trade school part of a bachelor’s degree. Students who opted for just the trade school part of a bachelor’s degree would be awarded an express degree. An express degree shall have the same standing as a bachelor’s degree when it comes to applying for graduate school.
Now, to show you how an express degree would work, I looked up the trade-school part of a BS in computer science from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Here it is.
| Core Requirements | Additional Requirements |
|---|---|
| COMP 455 | COMP 401 |
| COMP 550 | COMP 410 |
| MATH 547 or MATH 577 | COMP 411 |
| STOR 435 | MATH 231 |
| Five additional COMP courses numbered 426 or higher | MATH 232 |
| MATH 233 | |
| COMP 283 or MATH 381 | |
| PHYS 116 or PHYS 118 | |
| A second science course from BIOL 101, BIOL 202, BIOL 205, CHEM 101, CHEM 102, GEOL 101, ASTR 101, PHYS 117, PHYS 119, PHYS 351, or PHYS 352 |
The trade school part of this BS in computer science amounts to 18 classes. Let’s now compare the cost of an express degree versus a bachelor’s degree.
Express Degree
| Total Credits (18 x 3) | 54 |
| Classes Per Semester | 5 |
| Total Semesters | 3.6 |
| Total Cost of Tuition | $12,043.13 |
Bachelor’s Degree
| Total Credits (40 x 3) | 120 |
| Classes Per Semester | 5 |
| Total Semesters | 8 |
| Total Cost of Tuition and Fees | $33,343.68 |
By opting out of the finishing school part and extracurricular part of a bachelor’s degree, a student could easily reduce the cost of his or her college education by 60%.
But what if employers still required a bachelor’s degree as a condition for employment? Wouldn’t that severely compromise the value of an express degree? Yes, it would. And to counter this very likely scenario, I offer part two of my Groovy Solution.
2. Sue employers who use the bachelor’s degree as a screening device.
Many employers today use the bachelor’s degree as a screening device. If you don’t have one, you’re not getting an interview.
Now, I understand why employers do this. It’s a crude but cost-effective way to separate the bright and energetic candidates from the dull and lazy ones. But is it ethical? And should it be legal?
Consider the following. A young man goes to MIT and takes 12 computer courses before he drops out for financial reasons. He gets an A in each of these courses. The guy’s a programming beast; he can write Naive Bayes Classification algorithms in his sleep. And you mean to tell me that some HR department will deem him unqualified for a programming position just because he doesn’t have a bachelor’s degree?
I can see screening by education. There’s no reason why an employer can’t require a candidate to have a certain number of industry-specific courses from an accredited college. But to say that someone with an express degree in, say, English is unqualified to be an editor for an online magazine is ridiculous.
So the second part of my plan to dramatically lower the cost of higher education, and to ensure that the express degree has equal standing in the labor market with the bachelor’s degree, is to team up with the ACLU and sue the crap out of employers who use the bachelor’s degree as a screening device.
And there is precedent for this suit. In 1971, the Supreme Court ruled in Griggs v Duke Power that Duke Power, an electric company in North and South Carolina, couldn’t use a high school diploma as a requirement for its higher paying jobs. The court ruled that a high school diploma had no “demonstrable relationship to the successful performance of the jobs for which it was used.” In other words, as a screening device, the high school diploma was too imprecise. Many people who lacked a high school diploma were more than capable of excelling at the jobs requiring a high school diploma.
Hello, ACLU! I’m not a constitutional lawyer, but the parallels between Griggs v Duke Power and the common employer practice today of degree-based discrimination seems uncanny.
3. Make colleges reimburse the federal government for the amount of money defaulted on when a student can’t pay his or her student loans due to bankruptcy.
I just don’t understand how a college in good conscience could allow one of its students to rack up $40K in student loans for a sociology degree, especially knowing that this said student won’t be allowed to discharge that debt in bankruptcy. Heck, we expect bartenders to cut off drunks. But college presidents and trustees get a pass? They have no moral obligation to fret over what their business model is doing to the long term financial health of their students?
This nonsense has to stop. And it will with the third part of my Groovy Solution. Congress should 1) amend the bankruptcy laws so student loan debt can be discharged, and 2) make colleges reimburse the federal government for any student load debt that is discharged in bankruptcy. In other words, colleges should have some skin in the game when it comes to student loans. Maybe then they’ll think twice about admitting students who aren’t prepared for rigorous instruction. Maybe then they’ll reconsider the amenities arms race they’ve been locked in for the past several decades. Maybe then they’ll realize that they primarily exist, not to graduate people with fancy pieces of paper and debilitating student loan debt, but to graduate people with real skills and enough labor market clout to crush whatever student loan debt they might have incurred.
Final Thoughts
Something’s seriously wrong on campus today. A football coach making $9 million a year. Adjunct professors on food stamps. A weekly bacchanal that starts on Thursday night and ends sometime on Sunday. And then there’s the prevailing orthodoxy. Too many colleges are weak on limited government, weak on due process, and weak on freedom of speech. Too many colleges are also weak when it comes to having a single standard for all (i.e., equality of treatment). And if you don’t believe me, just answer the following questions. Which professor in academia today is more likely to be accused of committing a microaggression? A professor who comes into class wearing a Che Guevera t-shirt, or a professor who comes into class wearing a MAGA t-shirt? And who in academia today is more likely to be asked to check his or her privilege? The white student who grew up in a single-parent household and had an SAT score above the school’s mean, or the black student who grew up in a two-parent household and had an SAT score 200 points below the school’s mean?
But, hey, just because I loathe much about college and the bachelor’s degree doesn’t mean that you do. And that’s the beauty of my proposed express degree. Those who want only the trade school part of college can just go for an express degree; those who want the full monty but can’t afford it can just go for an express degree as well; and those who want the full monty and can afford it can go for the vaunted bachelor’s degree. Everybody wins.
Okay, groovy freedomists, that’s all I got. What say you? Is my express degree a worthwhile credential? If you had a choice between an express degree and a bachelor’s degree, what would you choose? And, finally, would my Groovy Solution, if implemented, dramatically lower the cost of a college education for both students and taxpayers without sacrificing quality? Let me know what you think when you get a chance. Peace.
I think you nailed it. Honestly, when it comes down to it, people are people. That said, by and large, people are also quite predictable in the sense that they tend to do EXACTLY what they want to do. In other words, if an individual would like to become well rounded, they will. If an individual wants to learn how to write better, they will. If they wanna do anything that allows them to be a more contributing part of society, then they will; a college degree is merely the only modern cloak for “rounding” individuals (so is the military as a side note).
I think we give humans far less credit than we should in regard to their capabilities to learn. I also believe we give some humans far too much credit in the ambition department. Let’s face it, some people aren’t ever going to be ambitious enough to contribute on a notable level; it may be a little crude, but I think if we step back and look at people as rather predictable creatures, then history can tell us all a lot about behaviors.
Your espress degree system, I believe, is fantastical – it’s the best way for individuals to get some discipline and skills to quickly place in the job market – to realize that, hey, wait… they are adults.
There is a newer university that is which is doing this, and it’s here: https://www.missionu.com/about
In closing, I don’t believe that college is as much of the answer to creating good people as we give it credit. Let’s start at the household far before a child gets to any university; that’s where we need a bit more well rounding.
Holy crap, Tim! This is one of the most profound comments I have ever read. Sorry it took me so long to respond. Things have been crazy busy in Groovyland lately. I’ll never forget the opening lines from Bruce Springsteen’s No Surrender.
Well, we busted out of class
Had to get away from those fools
We learned more from a three minute record
Than we ever learned in school
Like you said, Tim, “if an individual wants to learn how to write,” he or she will. And now with the internet, this is more true than ever. Heck, I learned more about personal finance from three blogs than I ever learned in school. Thanks for stopping by, my friend. And thanks for the link. You really made my day.
I think the express degree is a great idea. I don’t make donations to my alma mater for several reasons: tuition has gone up 66% in the 9 years since I graduated, they pour money into athletics where our football literally has had a losing record every season since 1985ish, & they have built lots of new “recreation” buildings like a new Olympic-size swimming pool & awesome lacrosse field to attract prospective athletes.
I’m 9 years out of undergraduate this year and majored in Political Science because I simply needed a 4-year degree to get a job I wanted. It cost me $50 grand.
As others have said, STEM type degrees may require the entire 4-year period, but, the whole professional world is a boondoggle.
Once you graduate, you have to deal with licensing, etc. that can be just as expensive as the college degree & (in my opinion) has turned into job security for the already employed to suppress competition.
Too much to say in one comment, but, I love your insight into politics while still being non-partisan!
Thank you, Josh. I really appreciate your comments. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who sees the waste and nonsense built into the bachelor’s degree. I too refuse to donate to my alma maters. And I will continue to withhold my charity as long as higher education is hostile to freedom, hostile to diversity of thought, and hostile to the financial well-being of students, parents, and taxpayers.
Actually, they have your express degree…it’s called an associate’s, though it’s rarely put on the same terms as a bachelor’s. Maybe it should be.
But I also think that there are some merits to making sure your students can write coherently, speak in public, and understand a balance sheet and income statement no matter what field they go into. Unfortunately, those aren’t always the academic requirements students have to fulfill. (the writing they usually get, but the rest?)
I do think schools should have some “skin in the game” when it comes to defaulted loans. If the school is going to charge thousands of dollars, then that degree better be worth more than the paper it’s printed on. And if holding the schools partially accountable for the defaults helps keep those degrees valuable, good.
LOL! I love it, Emily. How could I forget the redheaded stepchild of education–community college. I just looked up the degree requirements for database development at Central Piedmont Community College and I was pleasantly surprised. It consisted of 22 classes and 16 of them were about computers and databases. My only problem with associate degrees is that they lack rigor. And this isn’t a put down. I just don’t know how taxing the curriculum can be when the only requirement for enrollment appears to be a high school diploma. So, yes, if community colleges had much tougher entry requirements, and we had some schools vying to be the Harvard of community colleges, then my express degree would be rather redundant.
I am not a fan at all of the express degree idea coupled with suing employers for using the bachelor’s cut-off. I enjoy free market forces, which are circumvented there in a big way by that idea!
Rather, reduce the cost of a bachelor’s degree. The best way to do that is remarkably simple in theory, but tough to put into practice without an incredibly unfair 3-4 year rough patch: Remove easy access to free student loan money from government that comes with the promise of easy pay-off methods (which actually covertly increase your payoff costs and are in no way a favor).
Inject free money into any system and you’ve devalued that money compared to that product. Colleges begin doing more garbage to compete with the others for all the free money floating out there, like building fancy new buildings to house multiple gyms on one block.
This is the biggest problem, and it will not be solved by having express degrees or by forcing employers to accept alternative education as a credential.
“Whatever you subsidize you get more of.”
Leave it to you my friend to cut through all the nonsense and get to the heart of the problem. Government has been throwing oodles of money at post-secondary schooling for decades, and that’s what we’re getting. A lot of people with more years of schooling and very little real education to show for it. What a scam! So you are absolutely right. Ending student loans would stop all this nonsense in its track. Absent student loans, there’s no way colleges could charge students $500 a credit to hear some adjunct prattle on about some subject that is marginally connected to the real world. Absent student loans, there’s no way colleges could get away with making students take 20-25 classes that have nothing to do with their majors. But here’s the thing. How do you get rid of student loans in a society that has been marinated in socialism and taught to believe that education is a right? My express degree is a way to break through that cultural roadblock. Thanks for stopping by, TV. As usual, you made some very salient points and counter-arguments. Bravo, my friend.
100%
That’s the grade I give your comment.
This isn’t the first post you have written about colleges. And every time I read one I just wanna punch myself in the face for even going. Was without a doubt the worst decision I’ve ever made.
Gah! Where’s a time machine when you need one?
You and me both, WAPH. I came to the conclusion a long time ago that my degrees were a huge waste of time and money. My friend who bought a bread route soon after graduating high school was making about $150K annually by the time I left Buffalo University (1984). I did a lot of seasonal and part time work before I got my first full time job in 1986. My salary was $17K. Yep, acquiring those tremendous critical thinking skills really paid off.
“Colleges should have some skin in the game.” AMEN! They rape and pillage and go on their way raping and pillaging some more with no reprimands or consequences. I wish I could say we are encouraging all four of our kids to get a degree. We are not. The budding elementary ed teacher and the budding neurosurgeon have their eyes set toward college; the budding artist/animator and budding children’s book author do not, and honestly, I’m quite relieved for them. As for the other two, we are working fervently on plans for them to graduate debt free. In fact we were just perusing medical school costs today for the 11-year-old who wants to be a surgeon. Why, instead of being proud and puffed up, do I feel a little bit sorry for them that they have to attend college?
If college students really wanted to fight the power, instead of occupying the president’s office whenever someone on campus committed a social faux pas, they would un-occupy all the meaningless classes they are forced to take in order to get their degrees. I’ll never forget one class I took at Buffalo University. It was called Mass Media and Social Roles, and I kid you not, a large part of classroom time was devoted to talking about female orgasms. Yeah, college certainly made me well-rounded. There’s no way I’d be able to function today if I hadn’t gotten the Marxist take on female orgasms when I was 18-years-old. Thanks for stopping by, Laurie. I really appreciate it.
P.S. I don’t think your kids will have any problems when it comes to higher education. First, the current business model is unsustainable, and the internet will surely disrupt it in due time. Moreover, you’re well aware that college is a scam, and you won’t let the college-industrial complex take advantage of your kids. Would that more Americans had your critical thinking skills.
That both surprises me and doesn’t surprise me, LOL, Who is supervising these useless professors?? You paid big money for that class!
Haha! Fortunately I took Mass Media and Social Roles back in 1980. It cost less than $100. I took a lot of beauties back then to fulfill the well-roundedness requirements of a bachelor’s degree. One in particular was called Great Mysteries of the Earth. It dealt, I kid you not, with Bigfoot, the Bermuda Triangle, Stonehenge, and astrology. Yep, American higher education at its best.
Ah, yes, Mr. Groovy, but would you be the great thinker you are today without the likes of these classes? I mean, if you had only taken SQL & Programming classes???
I love that you don’t just criticize the status quo. You also propose a solution. I think I’m going to enjoy the 2nd Wednesday posts.
Great point, Donna. Man cannot live by SQL and programming classes alone. To be fully human we definitely need exposure to the great thinkers and dreamers of the world. In fact, the point you made is already part of a future post I’m working on. The plot thickens. And thank you for noticing that I offer a solution. I get so frustrated when I read an article on or watch something about income inequality. Everyone’s great a pointing out the problem, but no one offers a solution beyond more welfare from the government. Aaarrrggghhh! It’s so frustrating. Thank you for stopping by, Donna. I really appreciate your thoughts.
P.S. I’m not trying to be obnoxious, but are you married to a doctor?
I’m not sure about your proposals but the true cost in education these days is the extra curricular, not the other things. Decouple that and the costs would drop considerably. Every major college competes on amenities. As such their athletic rec centers are nicer then what I get for 100 dollars a month at the Y. Free cable, yeah most dorms have that. New buildings… Same deal. They spend their endowments on these things instead of on funding the actual education. We need to decouple the cost of the degree to the value it brings and start schools competing on that type of value to cost instead of just amenities to costs. I’m not sure how you do that. I don’t necessarily agree with the finishing school proposal though. The twenty percent application of a chosen major indicates those other skills may have been of value when not expected. The world benefits from rounded individuals, one just wishes basic finance was one of those rounding classes. Why not strictly express? Easy, even within your core you are unlikely to use those skills in your job. It’s a proof of ability to learn and at best a foundation. So even express doesn’t really qualify you.
Haha! You are so right, FTF. A big reason why college is so expensive is because of the resort-like amenities and the minor-league sport programs. How did I ever learn anything when I went to Buffalo University? My dorm room was made of cinder blocks, the cafeteria served marginally palatable slop, and we didn’t have a division one football program. I just read in Ric Edelman’s latest book, The Truth About Your Future, that the Clemson University football players have their own miniature golf course, volleyball courts, laser tag arena, movie theater, bowling lanes, and barbershop. To say things are getting a little out of hand on the extracurricular front is a huge understatement. Meh. Thanks for stopping by, FTF. I really appreciate your insights.
Great post.
I earned my BS degree in expressway program at Misericordia University in Dallas, Pa.
Classes were one night per week and 5 weeks long. It was intense, but allowed me to work in the day and attend college in the evening.
The Expressway program cost around $240 per credit while the traditional classes cost over $500.
I love it! Just looked up expressway degrees at Misericordia University. This is what we need more of. Colleges starting to think outside the box. And hopefully someday soon a worthwhile credential that is cheaper and less time-consuming than the age-old bachelor’s degree will appear. Thanks for sharing, Dave, and alerting me to Misericordia U. I really appreciate it.
Love it! Cut out the fluff, and let’s get to work! Just think of the level of excitement too for the student know that they get the opportunity to tackle their core classes right away, and if you find the career choice isn’t for you, it gives you greater flexibility to study something else if required.
I’d like to see a sliding scale for degrees, based on number of job and ROI. If you pursuing a sociology degree why are you paying the same as someone pursuing a computer science degree. We know if the real world these careers will never make the same, why in the world do the degrees cost the same?!
Great suggestion about the sliding scale. I never considered that, but it makes sense. Some majors are definitely more resource intensive than others. So why shouldn’t the cost per credit reflect that? And here’s another thing colleges should be compelled to do. Why should students pay the same for a class taught by an adjunct as opposed to a full professor? After all, an adjunct is paid a pittance of what a full professor is paid. Shouldn’t students therefore get a tuition break? Meh. There is much wrong with the college-industrial complex. Thanks for stopping by, Brian. Great contribution as always.
I think if you have a passion for certain fields (engineering or sciences) and you intend to pursue them, then you would definitely need a degree. The degree would give you the basic fundamentals. So I think the college part is important, but only for people who intends to pursue a career in a very SPECIALIZED field!
However I think the majority of people would definitely benefit from an express degree! Everyone knows that what you learn in school is totally different from what to expect when you start working. The degree is just to let you meet the “requirements” for the job.
It’s just frustrating the way things work. Carrying a lot of debt, studying all sorts of subjects because you need to be “well rounded” and finally going into your first job and having to learn everything from the start.
Really a lot of pointless stuff in between, the express option would definitely work wonders.
This is what kills me about a bachelor’s degree. Imagine the following scenario. A guy gets laid off from his factory job and he’s in his mid-40s. All he has is a high school diploma. He wants to go to college and up his skill set; he wants to become a network engineer. And the college-industrial complex says fine. We’ll give you a credential, but in order to get that credential, you have to take 20-25 classes that have nothing to do with computers and networking. Talk about a cruel joke. The college-industrial complex says it cares about the little guy, but its business model says otherwise. Thanks for stopping by, T. I really appreciate your contribution.
Very interesting points you make here – I don’t see anything wrong with your plans but do see some resistance on #3.
Having been in college not too long ago, I remember a lot of the petty crap that happened. Yes, it was a “good” experience and “got me a job”, but if I was to go back to 18 years old, I don’t think I would go to college.
The cost is so high these days!
I really like your thoughts on an “express degree”. How do you think a Master’s degree would work? Could you go into a Master’s without taking the fluff?
Hey, Erik. Yeah, #3 definitely needs to be worked on. Perhaps a sliding scale would be appropriate. The closer a bankrupted graduate is from his or her graduation date, the greater the percentage the college is on the hook for. And if a graduate defaults on his or student loan after 20 years after his or her graduation date, the college isn’t subject to a clawback. Something needs to be done to give colleges an incentive to reduce costs. Right now, no such incentives exist. As far as an express degree being the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree? That will be entirely on Congress and the states. If they make such an equivalence dependent on accepting public money, colleges will fold like cheap cameras. If they don’t, colleges will never voluntarily offer such a short cut and make it an acceptable requirement for graduate school. Sigh. Short of government coercion, the express will never happen.
First, thanks for the shoutout. I like the idea of a once a month deep dive on policy. It’s a cool concept and you are always a safe bet to have creative, out-of-the-box ideas to pitch.
On Part 1, I agree with your pitch, but disagree with the premise. I do think that there is value in the full bachelor’s degree. Yes, the hard skills that are relevant to your career would all be found in the express degree, but there are also soft skills that people learn in college that are important. You learn people skills, you learn about yourself, you learn about different subjects that interest you.
That said, I agree that you should be able to bypass that portion if you choose to do so. I think that we should be making trade schools and degrees more of an option for people and your express degree plan would go a long way towards doing that. You get the “brand name” stamp on your trade degree, rather than having to go to a no-name trade school which can feel unappealing, both to students and employers.
Part 2 would be tough. Griggs barred the screening test because it was used as a roundabout way to keep minorities from getting high-paying and powerful positions. To apply that here you would have to start by showing that barring express degree holders would discriminate against minorities.
That said, Part 2 may not end up being necessary. If I have an express mathematics degree from MIT, employers may not care that I didn’t take the supplemental classes required for a Bachelor’s degree. Like I said above, adding the name brand may be enough to overcome the resistance to trade school degrees.
I don’t know where I stand on Part 3. I think I would want to see some studies on potential unintended consequences by some economists before signing off.
I agree completely that the current set up does not work. Colleges keep raising their prices and there is no backlash. The fact that a college degree feels like a necessity in modern society and the wide availability of loans means that demand does not drop off when the prices shoot up in the way that a free market generally does. Because of this, there is no incentive for colleges not to keep driving their prices up.
At the same time, putting them on the hook for the success of their students seems like it could have some serious unintended consequences. My first thought is that this would give an incentive to high borrowers to declare bankruptcy right out of college to clear the slate and start fresh and just deal with bad credit for the beginning of their career. This risk would in turn incentivize colleges to reject students that would have high loan balances. This would in turn make it harder for low-income students to get a degree of any kind.
Maybe there are different provisions that can be put in place to protect against these things, but I’d want an in-depth study from some smart folks before deciding one way or another on that part.
Thanks for a really thoughtful post. I’m excited for this series!
Hey, Matt. Thank you for your very thoughtful response. And I do agree that there’s value in the finishing school aspect of a bachelor’s degree. But at what cost? Take the book, Thinking Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman. It’s a great freakin’ book. And I’m sure I would have gotten more out of it if I went to college and took a behavorial economics class based on it. But what if that class cost a $1,000 to take? Would that class add $990 to the value I derived from reading the book on my own (the Kindle version is $9.99)? I don’t think so. And that’s the problem. College has become so expensive, it makes much more sense to go the DIY route when it comes to cultivating a thoughtful understanding of the world.
I wanna be wavy gravy, man.
Great post! I recall hearing a podcast a while back about a kid who recreated an MIT degree, for free, using free online courses that replicated the MIT curriculumn.
He was bombed with job offers from all of the “Biggies” (Google was one). We need more creative thinking, and there’s no one better than The Groovies to break the ice!! Well done.
Or, as those groovy people say…wavy gravy!
Wouldn’t it be great if businesses got together and crafted a 10 or 12 industry-specific class curriculum from local colleges that would substitute for a bachelor’s degree? If a DIY degree is good enough for Google, it should be good enough for most employers. Thanks for stopping by, my wavy gravy friend.