sea change

With college enrollment down 2 million students since 2011, we may be witnessing a shift in higher education in America. Why could this be?

The price tag is one factor. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average public university costs nearly $25,000 per year ($10k less if you live at home), and private schools charge more than twice that. Although state spending on public colleges and universities has recently seen an increase, it’s still almost $9 billion less than in 2008. The average student loan debt is around $30,000. Even a teenager who’s never lived on their own can recognize that starting out their career $30,000 in the hole probably isn’t the best investment.

Especially since bachelor’s degrees don’t guarantee jobs the way they used to. Unless you’re in a handful of specialized fields, you gotta shell out even more money for a master’s. Gone are the days of getting out of school, getting a job, and working your way up through your company; these days, careers are fluid. Skilled trades and the service industry are can be more lucrative, require less of a financial investment, and actually let workers use their bodies, rather than forcing them into a cubicle (or one of those dreadful “open offices”) under fluorescent lighting for 40 years.

But back to the sea change in higher education…

Even with tuition rates as high as they’ve been in American history, less enrollment means less revenue, which means colleges have to make budget cuts. Student programs are among the first to go, which makes the school less attractive to prospective students, further hurting enrollment. The next area to make budget cuts in institutions of higher learning? You guessed it, instructors’ salaries! As of 2017, four-year colleges devoted less than a third of their revenue to instruction. On the bright side, some reports say private schools spend 48% of tuition revenue on financial aid. On the not-so-bright side, this also includes athletic scholarships, which doesn’t exactly do much to help poor African students. 

In 1969, nearly 80% of college faculty was tenure or tenure track. But as of 2018, that number dropped to less than 30%. These days, adjuncts step in to fill the gap — a bargain for universities, costing an average of $79,000 less per year than a tenured professor. (And at the schools where Friday was applying, closer to $179,000 less.) Adjuncts make a measly $25,000 per year. That’s a shade over minimum wage. That’s, if you’ll remember from earlier in this rant, $5,000 less than the average student loan debt.

They should become administrators instead. Between 1998 and 2003, salaries for university administrators and bureaucrats have increased by 50%. And the median salary for the president of a college is $276,727.

Maybe the current generation is finally waking up to this scam. Your teachers and parents expect you to know what you want to do with your life at age 16. They promise you a future, but they’re actually just chaining you to a system. 

But in Malawi, a bachelor’s degree still means something. And one from America? It’s a golden ticket. It opens doors to high-paying jobs with nonprofits, NGOs, media, possibly even the government (although boy oh boy is the government in Malawi corrupt).

What if you educated a student who grew up in the village, who had real ties to that place, friends and neighbors and family? Who had a deep understanding of how the village works, and how it could work better? What if you gave them a hand, pulled them up to a level of society where their ideas were validated and they had access to a powerful array of resources?

Change. Change might happen.