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Higher education has two main problems. One, it’s too expensive, and, two, it wastes too much of a student’s time. Here’s how I would fix both of those problems.
Making Higher Education Less Costly
Do college amenities really need to include a climbing wall and a lazy river? Do colleges really need to run de facto minor leagues for the NBA and NFL? Do colleges really need to have three times more administrators than professors?
A good chunk of the cost of college has nothing to do with education. Less than 40 percent of the typical college budget is earmarked for the classroom. College today is more about providing students with sophisticated debauchery and midwit adults with cushy jobs than it is about providing students with economically valuable knowledge.
And the only way to get rid of this frivolity and exploitation is to put those responsible for it at risk financially. And this can be accomplished with two simple tweaks to the law.
- Make college debt dischargeable in bankruptcy.
- Mandate that every student loan going forward, whether public or private, must have a cosigner, and that cosigner can only be the college providing the education.
As soon as the above tweaks became the law of the land, no college in its right mind would continue to embrace the current higher-ed business model. Any college that continued to charge the intellectually pedestrian a hundred thousand dollars for a pedestrian degree would quickly be out of business.
Making Higher Education More Considerate of a Student’s Time
I looked up the degree requirements of a computer science degree at UNC Chapel Hill, the flagship school in the North Carolina system. Only 17 of the 40 courses required for a bachelor’s degree pertained to computers.
Why is UNC making its computer majors take 40 courses when they only need 17 courses to ready themselves for an entry-level programmer’s job?
Colleges only make students take twice as many courses as necessary because college has devolved into a giant freaking scam. College today is infinitely more about massaging the egos and feathering the bank accounts of presidents, deans, provosts, coaches, and professors than it is about readying students for the “challenges of today.” And the only way to end this giant freaking scam is to turn off the federal spigot.
- No college awarding an associate’s degree shall be eligible for student loans or federal aid and grants if its associate’s degree requires more than 10 courses.
- No college awarding a bachelor’s degree shall be eligible for student loans or federal aid and grants if its bachelor’s degree requires more than 20 courses.
- No college awarding a master’s degree shall be eligible for student loans or federal aid and grants if its master’s degree requires more than 10 courses.
- For the purposes of the above eligibility requirements, a college course, at all levels, shall consist of three to five hours of instruction per week, and shall run for 15 to 20 weeks.
Okay, groovy freedomist, that’s all I got. Let me know what you think when you get a chance. Peace.
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