Daniel Drezner warns against some of the standard nostrums.
When politicians and pundits argue in favor of reallocating resources from one college major to another, they’re trying to say that they can pick disciplinary winners and losers better than universities, foundations or the students themselves.
My instinct is that he is correct that the various tweaks proposed are not going to make a big difference. My thoughts:
1. Reduce federal involvement in higher education. This is probably hopeless, given that higher education is one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington. I think that both aid to higher education (including student loans and grants) as well as regulations are largely used to protect incumbents. That makes cutting back on aid and regulations both politically difficult and better for the general public.
2. Encourage alternatives to college degrees as credentials. For example, Congress could require every Federal government agency to provide an avenue by which people could obtain positions based on demonstrated competence rather than the basis of educational credentials. Similarly, the process of approving government grants should be de-credentialized.
For No. 2, you mean Congress should force the agencies to actually follow current law and OPM regulations. By law, the agencies are not suppose to require an specific degree or education but rather rate on the basis of required skills for the position. Naturally, they migrate toward using class credits and also, giving higher GS level to those with higher credentials regardless of actual exhibited skill.
I don’t think you can fix government-hiring credentialism without confronting the “disparate impact” problem. The Carter administration agreed to abolish the Federal Civil Service exam (“PACE” at that time) 30-odd years ago specifically because it was thoroughly validated to predict job performance and sadly produced stiff racial disparate impact. It was clear to all concerned that the test could not be “fixed.” No replacement could predict job performance without incidentally revealing (real but impolitic) racial disparities. Federal agencies were told to make up their own hiring standards without central direction. Most chose to use educational credentials, relying on affirmative action in schools to minimize racial disparity in credentials (nearly all added a good dose of nepotism and cronyism, but those are issues which human nature guarantees will always pop up, and can only be minimized by a tough, centrally-controlled civil-service examination scheme!). A few agencies with genuinely IQ-sensitive missions came up with their own tests. One was the FAA which combined a tough test and specially-approved educational/experiential (military air traffic control) filters to screen candidates for air-traffic controller jobs. The Obama administration, however, did not like the disparate impact of FAA’s standards, so it threw them out in favor of what seems to be (the FAA refuses to reveal any “validation” details) a combination of a lottery and a test that applies racial preferences to compensate for fact that fewer preferred minorities even enter the lottery. In this case fear for their own jet-setting lives has provoked even other Federal politicians to question the racial fanaticism of the Obama administration.
The Federal government also sues State and local governments that use valid tests (e.g., to select firefighter candidates) for disparate-impact discrimination, persuading many such agencies to use educational credentials instead– that (a) outsources racial preferences, and pleases politicians who get stroked by the (new commanding heights, as you point out) educational establishment.
So long as racial preferences are politically required and educational credentials provide a convenient way to launder them, credentialism will remain attractive– especially to managers who are proud of their own credentials and naturally (and I really mean this), naturally think that what was good for them must be good for everyone else.
@Horspool, that sounds horrific. As someone with no say in anything this is all quite depressing. I probably should stop reading about things I have no ability to influence.
Kling’s suggestions of reducing federal control of education and promoting alternative paths to credentials are quite noble and enlightened, but I’m pessimistic about their prospects.
The answer seems to be at the state level. Given the number of states under total Republican control, this is possible.
1: Declare that yes, higher education is racially biased and that the protesters are right.
2: Because of 1, Make it illegal for state agencies to require or give a bonus to degrees, and require a certain percentages of new hires lack a college degree.
3: When the education-industrial complex protests, call them racists.
Many people have independently suggested that if universities were required to act a debt-sureties (say, for any defaults in a system with more lenient allowance for bankruptcy discharge) then the impact on the entire landscape would be radical and dramatic despite the seeming innocuousness of the policy.
It’s odd that progressives so often express paternalistic concern for the possibility of people making bad decisions because of biases, incomplete information about consequences, and manipulations of sophisticated counterparties, but they almost never worry that 18 year olds might be making ruinously expensive mistakes in choosing indulgent majors.
Yes. Shouldn’t it be the responsibility of those allegedly educating the unknowing to steer them in the right direction rather than down the primrose path?
We are told – by lots of academics – that lenders are supposed to keep ‘skin the game’ to prevent them from making ‘predatory loans’ and then offloading the risks to, eventually, the government.
Making universities keep some skin in the game would produce major improvements for the same reasons.
But what do you want to bet those same academics would fight it tooth and nail?
It should be easy to make them look foolish for fighting that kind of progress, but conservatives are relatively bad at that kind of issue marketing.
How would it play when universities became more selective in their admissions (again)? See Harspool’s comment. Would it bring up disparate impact issues?
Would that go against ‘free college for all’ mantra?
I wonder what would happen to degree programs that do not lead to well-playing jobs. Do they go away (making admissions even more selective) or does the price of those move toward the benefit they provide (which is probably on-par with adult community education programs, which I doubt covers the overhead of normal university)?
(Sorry, I posted the above fragment by mistake.)
There is lilttle information about the value that colleges add to the potential of their students. There are some studies in progress.
I think that very selective and costly colleges have become a status good. People believe that the more it costs, the better is the education.
The highly selective entrance requirements of famous colleges argue against much value added. They select the most intelligent and motivated students, then claim that later success is due to the college. That is convenient, but illogical. Those students would be expected to do well in life regardless of the college they attend.
Colleges are doing a real experiment about educational value by giving a preference to admitting minority students. The theory is that these students deserve the same opportunities as their better-off classmates, to counter the discrimination they experienced in their earlier education.
The result of those preferences seems to be “mismatch”. Those who are admitted despite lower test scores often feel overwhelmed in class and do not advance with or catch up to their peers. It seems that the best plan for a student is to attend a college which accepts most students with similar educational backgrounds and test scores. A student will learn the most in a group which matches his ability.
There is no proof in all of this that the content of what colleges teach is making a difference, other than in preparation courses for medicine, law, and engineering. A high-testing student might learn as much in four years of reading and apprenticeship as in a formal and expensive college. The colleges have spent no effort to find out, naturally.
“There is no proof in all of this that the content of what colleges teach is making a difference, other than in preparation courses for medicine, law, and engineering.”
I wouldn’t even be confident in that caveat. As a chemical engineer, I spent almost a year studying distillation columns. I’ve never even seen one (I exaggerate a little) and will never work on one the rest of my life. Yet people like hiring chemical engineers because they are systems thinkers. But I was born a systems thinker. I’m not even sure they helped it by filling my brain with useless information or by pigeon-holing me as a chemical engineer when I’m really “systems thinker.”
Medicine, maybe, because of facts and procedures (moreso the work load and the character qualities), but I can just as easily believe you’d pick those up on the job- and we are admitting as much by the much-need pathway to quasi doctorhood offered to nurse practitioners (not to mention that they do most of the actual work anyway) . Law, maybe. But only because so much of law is dumb stuff made up by people who then you have to prove you can pretend to believe dumb stuff made up by people. More likely there are just “legal thinkers.”
To collin on December 6, 2015 at 6:46:
You properly question what happened in 1970-1980 to end the corporate practice to hire from high school and offer basic training. Griggs is what happened.
Education is not going to be reformed. College is already captured by administrators who don’t hesitate to charge elite prices for a certificate which cannot be verified as worth anything educationally, but is now a socially required signal.
http://www.greaterexpectations.org/report/2c.html
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[There is] A dearth of meaningful assessment. By and large, colleges are unable to say with any certainty whether students have learned what the professors are teaching. This is particularly true of abilities like critical thinking that develop across the confines of individual courses. The absence of explicit descriptions of the desired outcome hampers assessment. So, too, do the independent treatment of individual courses and faculty unfamiliarity with meaningful assessment methods.
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Colleges oppose any effort to measure the effectiveness and utility of what they teach.
http://centerforcollegeaffordability.org/2014/04/15/how-not-to-criticize-college-rankings/
“Colleges resist transparency, especially for information about graduate earnings, and Payscale uses self-reported data. That’s problematic, but more useful than anything legally available at this point until higher education institutions provide the information. ”
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The Supreme Court decision in Griggs v. Duke Power Company (12/1970) must be reversed. It is unreasonable to stop companies (or even individuals) from testing the knowledge and aptitude of their prospective hires.
http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-dead-end-of-disparate-impact
The most awful licensing restriction in the US is the de facto licensing of colleges and universities to test for general aptitude, reasoning, and knowledge. Businesses are prohibited from using such testing for prospective employees. The legal restrictions on such testing are so onerous and vague that businesses usually require that applicants for office and managerial work have a college degree to substitute for an intelligence test.
College is an expensive IQ test
http://easyopinions.blogspot.com/2008/07/college-is-expensive-iq-test.html
The law says that a company cannot give an employment test unless the test has been shown to be non-discriminatory in effect and directly related to the job being filled, that it doesn’t screen out people of color at a different rate than people of pallor.
So, employers don’t create their own tests or use standardized tests. Companies rely heavily on college degrees to give them some little information about the quality of candidates. Interviewers talk randomly about whatever they want, using personal judgment to decide if the candidate is “a good match”. This is supposed to be less discriminatory than giving a test.
Let producers run their businesses. Let some bigots damage themselves by excluding the best people because of different colors or nationalities. Free the other employers to teach, test, apprentice, and even bill for training, to open up both education and the labor market to innovation and the desire to maximize production.
The problem for the college is not that the schools are not effective but it is the schools cost so much compared to 20, 30, 40 or 50 years ago. (Remember US colleges are a net export not import for the US so it must be competitive.) So doesn’t that change two questions here:
1) How do you get more college supply for more students?
2) How do you get companies to hire more high school grads and train more employees? I believe this “Branch Rickey” approach was more common before 1970 – 1980 so why did it end? Using the Book Of Arnold, there is nothing stopping employers in doing this approach and it appears labor buyers are avoiding such strategies. (Also MLB has cut back the number of Minor Leagues as well is moving closer to the NFL college model.) Doesn’t The Book Of Arnold state that labors buyers like the college credential system?
To collin by Andrew_M_Garland on December 8, 2015 at 2:32 am:
Good question about what happened in 1970. See above for my answer.