New York Times columnist David Brooks gets things right on several higher education issues, including the one above, in a “conversation” with fellow columnist Gail Collins.
The good:
Brooks: “The people who enjoy the benefits of higher education should pay the costs of the system. The benefits are huge and we shouldn’t try to transfer the costs onto people who don’t have degrees.”
Brooks: “I have a tingling sensation that tells me we are on the cusp of a revolution in higher ed. I have an inkling that low cost alternatives are about to become available in truly epic-shifting ways.”
Brooks: “In other words, I am beginning to think this talk of online learning is real, at least in some quarters of higher ed. The big lecture courses are distance learning anyway, so students might as well sit in their dorm rooms and take an online course from an academic superstar rather than some local adjunct. That would cut costs enormously.”
Collins: “I also suspect they [colleges] encourage high schoolers to feel like they have to search the continent for the perfect college experience, whatever the price, rather than a just-fine, halfway-reasonable school that offers the same basic programs. And that quality-of-life obsession has encouraged the schools to compete for students with expensive new dorms, new gyms, student unions that resemble the one at Hogwarts etc., etc.”
As Brooks and Collins note, colleges have spent too much money on luxury and not enough on education. Similarly, they prioritize administration over instruction when salaries are concerned. If online education and virtual classrooms ever really take off–and I suspect they will–it will be because public universities have dug their own graves, while demanding gilded shovels.
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