The Pandemic Is Going to Shake Up Higher Education

Paying more than $50,000 to have your kid take classes from home via Zoom or Google Hangouts seems like a pretty bad deal.

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Here’s a thought experiment for you. Would you rather have a Princeton education, or do without the education but get the Princeton diploma?

Economist Bryan Caplan posed this question a couple of years ago in his provocative book, The Case Against Education. It’s a tougher question to answer than you might think. As Caplan put it, if you’re stranded on a deserted island, a diploma from a survival training course isn’t as valuable as the actual survival training. But in the labor market you wouldn’t see it the same way.

For job seekers, the diploma is probably more valuable than the education. Economists call this the “sheepskin effect.” (Traditionally, diplomas were printed on sheepskin.) To get hired by a big company, you need to get into the pipeline of people getting an interview, and it’s difficult to even get an interview if you don’t have a diploma from the right school. 

Screening the applicant pool to find graduates from the best schools doesn’t guarantee you’ll get the best workers, but it’s a useful shortcut for employers. It saves time and minimizes the chances you’ll get truly unqualified applicants. And, not to be discounted, it gives the HR people an excuse if a hire doesn’t work out. “Hey, he came from MIT. I assumed he could do the work!”

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  1. Avatar photo
    Jacob Alexander

    While in principle I agree with Jonah's premise, I'm not entirely convinced yet that this educational evolution is starting to happen. I was on the faculty at an elite women's college for many years (left in 2019) and still have close ties to the institution and the administration. I've seen no evidence of a change in enrollment and acceptance data thus far. Indeed, this year's data showed quite the opposite - record numbers of applicants (and concomitant rejections lowering the acceptance rate, which every college secretly loves) and acceptances. I suspect part of the admissions thinking is with visas in flux a glut of students should be admitted insofar as is possible to hedge against a lot of foreign full payers being denied access to the institution (and its coffers). I wonder if this is what Jonah is talking about when he notes that elite schools will be 'fine'? If so, then perhaps I'm mistaken. I'll be interested to see national data across all levels of schools before I start believing there is a serious national move away from traditional colleges and their price tags.

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  2. Connor Donaldson

    As someone who attended a private liberal-arts college that prides itself on the residential experience (I believe the technical term was "work hard, play hard"), it is hard to imagine a future without those sorts of institutions. Many of my close friends and even my brother got their jobs (mostly in high finance in NYC or consulting in DC) through alumni who pushed their resume to the top of the pile. When I see someone in a bar or out for a run wearing W&L gear, I almost always stop and say hello because of the shared experience. I imagine that will continue, to a degree. However, i've long said the education system in America is broken, particularly around medicine. Undergrad is virtually pointless to the study of medicine. My local state school, UMKC, has a 6-year direct to MD program where students spend 3 years in the classroom and 3 years in rotations. They produce doctors faster than the traditional route, at a lower cost, with more in-hospital experience. Why isn't that replicated everywhere?

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    Judy

    My grandfather told me you only need a college degree if you work for someone else.

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    Keith

    Last year I finished my Bachelor's degree in Cybersecurity and Information Assurance from Western Governor's University, and ended up with 12 IT certifications. WGU is fully accredited (I have the federal loans to prove it), and completely online. It's competency-based education, no set times for classes. You watch the videos, read the material, do the quizzes, contact your class mentor if you need assistance with the material, then take your final. In about half my IT classes, the final exam WAS the IT certification exam.

    Under competency-based learning, you take the final exam as soon as you believe you know the material. If you already know it, then schedule your exam the 2nd day after you start the course and move on to the next one.

    I got this Bachelor's degree for about $13,000.

    I got an interview for my first cybersecurity job 3 months before I graduated. And less than a year after that, I left that job to take ANOTHER job for about $10k/year more.

    Granted, this model wouldn't work for every field of study. But I really believe that the issues noted in the article might the catalyst to a sea change.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Phil Barton

      Keith, congrats on your success! Our son is about to also finish his Bachelors in Cybersecurity and Networking at WGU. The education model is a great fit for a technical professional degree. It’s success will help inspire the change that’s so greatly needed in higher ed. Good luck to you!

      Jonah, you nailed it!

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    Mark Hunter

    I'm a university professor at a regional state school. American higher education has been in need of a fundamental shakeup for quite a time. Most people who pursue a university degree don't need a campus experience and really don't care about it. Of those individuals, some are looking for an education and some are looking for a credential – and then there is an overlap between those two. Neither category requires the boutique experience of UG fraternity life. If you want the mountain top experience of an Ivy or a prestigious liberal arts college, then take a Covid gap year, and then go be at that campus. Otherwise, the undergraduate degree is as received at a distance as it is in person... for 90% of the programs.

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  7. Andrew Murphy

    I graduated from LSU Shreveport in 1979. It cost less than my high school (Jesuit High School) to attend. It was a commuter school back then. There were no dormitories or apartments on campus. I had what I consider to be a good if not great education. BS in science. I was accepted to dental school, graduated in 1983, and still practice dentistry today. Funny thing is, l rarely use any of the facts I learned: organic chemistry, calculus, English literature, etc,. What a college education means to me, is that a person is teachable and will work hard to achieve his/her goals and will submit to authority. I hope there is serious reform to all levels of education, but I am not holding my breath.

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    DougCLE

    Yes, I've been living off the prestige of my Cleveland State degree for 25 years. I actually just attended a lovely soiree at the home of one of my former classmates, to celebrate the addition he's putting on his downtown home. Apparently someone threw out a perfectly good refrigerator box and he thinks with a little duct tape he can turn it into a master bedroom.

    I would say that the contacts and social capital thing only matters for a few specific majors at a certain type of university. For the rest of us, college was a training ground where we learned our trade. That's not going to become less valuable just because it's online.

    I think where colleges could take a hit - and where they deserve to take a hit - is in all the "extras" (the weight rooms, the cereal/salad bars, the wood-paneled walls) that colleges use to entice new students, but add nothing to their education.

    Whatever the source, it's pretty obvious we're looking at what happens when too much money is available for too little product, causing prices to skyrocket. But since the education is more-or-less the same at most colleges, and you can't exactly build up a 350-year cachet overnight, colleges advertise those little extras to make themselves stand out.

    Unfortunately, students come to expect that, so that these days offering something besides "an education" is almost a requirement. But as I said, it doesn't add anything to the value of the product. So while I don't want schools to fold, I would love to see this obsession with campus extras take a big hit, because kids just don't spend much time on the campus anymore. I think that will drive down the prices and drive up the value, and make all of us happier.

    (P.S. - If they could do this before September, 2021, I would be especially grateful.)

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    Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

    Disclosure, I'm a University of Dayton B-School professor

    Right now is a great time NOT to take a gap year, unless you were an early admit at an Ivy. Here's why.
    Forget snakes on a plane, think seats on a plane. Most colleges require you to live on campus (and if you're going to a commuter school, you're not the target market for this). They have a fixed number of students they can admit in any given year. At UDayton, that number is probably 2,200, but we only like to admit 2,000. UD is building enrollment models, where one case is 1,500 arriving this fall. That means about 500 are taking a gap year. So they apply next year, along with all the kids who will normally apply. We are still space limited on taking 2,200 (maybe 2,300 at the most). That means 200-300 kids who we would normally admit won't get in. There are no more seats on the plane.

    You know what else that means? If our experience is the norm, some non-Ivy elite schools who normally wouldn't sniff at you will look at their empty dorms and say, "better than nothing". Apply and who knows? You might get accepted.

    Again, if you are a 34 ACT and better than 4.3 on a 4.0 scale (don't get me started), you're gonna be okay. Maybe not an Ivy, but still an elite school. But the kids who are 24-28 ACT, maybe a 3.5-3.7 GPA, that gap year might cost you not only a chance at an elite, but a diminished chance at your fallback schools.

    If your plan is a school that admits 80% and it has had shortfalls already, no worries, even with a gap year there will be room for you. For those attending a more select school, not so much.

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    Bill Nelson

    HR people don't hire technical people, and don't hire many people. The people doing the work do the interviews and make the recommendations/decisions. And the "good schools" are those which have produced employees which have panned out. In my field (aerospace) we hire a lot of Emory Riddle grads for some areas, hire from some of the big schools (Purdue) but have had good luck from a small school in South Dakota. Our results from Arizona State are quite mixed.
    There have been some good advances in engineering education, but the education industry as a whole has been slow to adapt. It ultimately comes down to jobs, right?

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