Today, It’s a Hugely Expensive and Demonstrably Provable Failure
The idea that education in America is bad and/or broken is not new. More than 100 years ago, theorists were criticizing the system for abandoning the classical emphasis on reason, rhetoric, and character in favor of catering to the exploding demand for unskilled, semi-skilled, and clerically skilled workers as a result of the Industrial Revolution.
This may have been good for the temporary needs of the economy, these critics argued, but it was making the population as a whole less educated in the ideas that matter (i.e., the great ideas of the past) and more comfortable with the mostly thoughtless and mind-numbingly repetitive jobs that would be dominant in the first half of the 20th century.
And while this was going on with traditionalist, conservative critics, a separate criticism was being developed in Europe by what are called “post-modern” thinkers – mostly from Europe – who were arguing against the traditional notions of objective truth and even science in favor of relativism, intersectionality, intertextuality, gender theory, critical race theory, and the idea that all perspectives, and indeed all cultures, are equal in terms of their value. All truth, they believe, is merely the preferred perspectives of those in power.
By the time I was attending high school and college (in the late 1960s and early 1970s), the worst of these “revolutionary” ideas had resulted in a widespread conviction that the purpose of education was no longer to produce graduates useful to the greater economy, but to produce graduates who could “think creatively” and “come to their own conclusions” about truth and falsity, beauty and ugliness, good and bad.
That was certainly my experience, and it was an education that I felt was good for me. I had developed three or four skills that I now believe were essential to the success I had after college. First and foremost, I had become pretty good at critical analysis. I could look at a big, complex problem, identify its parts, and then figure out a way to solve it. I had also learned the art of rhetoric – how to research and assemble a persuasive argument (a skill that I’d go on to use profitably on a nearly daily basis for the next 50 years). And finally, I had learned – from several of the teachers I befriended – the importance of loyalty and gratitude, and how necessary those characteristics are for moving up in a competitive world.
But when I got into the investment newsletter business in the mid-1980s, I was surprised to discover that some of the best thinkers in that industry – including many economists and highly successful investment analysts – didn’t share my positive view of US education. In particular, I remember listening to bestselling author Doug Casey denounce American education and predict that it would likely get much worse in the future.
He was right. By every perspective I can think of, US college education is worse today than it was when I was a student. With a few exceptions, colleges are producing graduates who have very strong views on social and political issues, but little to no ability to articulate them.
In the 1950s, many of the good colleges still had Latin or Greek requirements. Today, almost every one of them is introducing remedial English and language arts classes for incoming freshmen who did not learn the basics in high school.
In the 1950s, the normal high school graduate could parse a sentence. Today’s average college English major would be hard-pressed to identify a gerund or participle.
But it’s actually worse than that.
Take a look at this.
And this.
I’ve seen so many videos like these in the past six months that I’m fully convinced that what you see here – the amazing level of ignorance of basic facts among college students – is the rule, not the exception.
And from the perspective of the investment made – tens of thousands of dollars times four years – the value of a college degree is diminishing fast. According to Labor Department statistics, college costs have risen 188% since 1998, while real hourly wages for grads have increased by only 26%.
In this video, Shane Hummus, who got himself a doctorate degree, identifies seven college majors – very popular majors – that lead to careers that, from an economic and job-satisfaction perspective, are not worth the money they cost to acquire.
But from at least one point of view – dollars in vs. dollars out – a college degree is still a decent investment. The median bachelor’s degree offers a net ROI of approximately $306,000. The median annual return on investment (internal rate of return) for a college degree is about 12.5%, outperforming the historical returns of traditional stock and bond investments.
All of which brings me to the two “Worth Reading” recommendations I have for you today – two ways to approach America’s higher education problem.
