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College on the cheap
Students at the University of Birmingham take part in their degree congregations as they graduate on July 14, 2011 in Birmingham, England.
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TESS VIGELAND: The price of a college degree just keeps on rising at about double the rate of inflation. Student loans now outpace credit card debt,and the value of a degree is the subject of a national debate.
Marketplace has been looking into various efforts to bring down those costs. Today we go to Texas, where Republican Governor Rick Perry has challenged education officials to create a $10,000 bachelor's degree. I'm not talking $10,000 a year. Ten thousand dollars total for tuition, books, and fees -- everything.
From our Education Desk at WYPR in Baltimore, Amy Scott reports.
Amy Scott: The last time you could get a bachelor's degree for less than $10,000 at say University of Texas at San Antonio was more than 20 years ago. Today, it costs almost four times that: Roughly $39,000 over four years for tuition, fees and books.
Raymond Paredes is commissioner of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. He says for a lot of Texans, that's too much.
Raymond Paredes: Over 50 percent of the students in Texas K-12 schools are classified as being poor. We have to make sure those students have the opportunity to go to college and get a degree.
The Board plans to meet with university provosts and community college officials over the next several months to take on Gov. Perry's $10,000 challenge.
Some ideas on the table? Have students take most classes online. Or do two years of community college, then finish at a university. Schools could offer a stripped-down degree with fewer electives. Or, Paredes says, let students earn credits faster.
PAREDES: If they work very hard and they can complete a course in six or seven weeks instead of 15, we can accelerate time to degree.
Chris Covo took the traditional path to a college degree. I met him at a Starbucks in Austin recently. He had just finished at Texas State University San Marcos.
CHRIS COVO: I was eligible for every grant in the book, every loan. As much assistance as you can get. Still came out with $30,000 in debt. Pretty scary.
Covo is among those pushing to make college more affordable, as part of a group of young conservatives called America's Next Impact. He says he got his money's worth in school. He was student body president. He's now in grad school in London. But he says students who can't afford to take on so much debt need a cheaper option.
COVO: Are those students going to be getting the experience I got as student body president, student regent, sitting in office hours with my teachers speaking with them for hours about Socrates? Doubtful. That doesn't mean they're not going to get what they need to be successful in a career of their choice.
But will they get what they need? Many educators think the whole Socrates thing is exactly what makes college so valuable. They doubt it's even possible to offer a high quality degree for just a quarter of what it is now.
PETER FLAWN: In the final analysis you get what you pay for. If you pay $10,000 for a degree, that's what it's worth.
Peter Flawn is president emeritus of the University of Texas flagship at Austin. He's part of a group that formed to fight Rick Perry's higher ed agenda.
At the same time the state has gutted funding for universities, Perry wants them to be more productive -- churning out more degrees for less money. Flawn agrees something has to be done to make college more affordable.
FLAWN: But without sacrificing the quality, because a cheap degree is a cheap degree, and the people who hire college graduates know the difference.
Universities also know the difference. They stand to lose out on tuition if low-price degrees take hold. A few community colleges in the state have come close to the $10,000 mark with a Bachelor of Applied Technology degree.
Beth Hagan is with the Community College Baccalaureate Association. She says community colleges, known for two-year associate's degrees, are offering more career-focused bachelor's degrees in fields like nursing and energy management. She says employers love them.
BETH HAGAN: Because they're applied degrees. They're not about history or English or some of the traditional liberal arts subjects. They're about workforce-related programs.
Hagan doubts that a traditional research university -- with all that goes on on campus -- could offer that same experience for as little as $10,000. But for students looking for a credential to get a job, she says there is an alternative.
In Austin, I'm Amy Scott for Marketplace.
We at Americans for Prosperity support transparency and realize greater efficiencies could be realized in higher education. Tuition and fees students pay are simply the tip of the iceberg. Taxpayers foot much of the costs of public higher education. We support the challenge Gov. Perry has set forth. Texas is not the only state where higher education reform is an issue. College costs have spiraled out of control and university faculty and administrators are extremely resistant to any meaningful reform. Universities have access to multi-million dollar PR machines that organize alumni to argue that providing an endless supply of other people's money at the complete discretionary disposal of university administrators is the surest way to prosperity. It is not.
Everyone talks about the COST of an education but NOBODY has published a breakdown of HOW the colleges and universities SPEND all this money. A college that has a freshmen class of 1000 students, 800 sophomores 700 juniors and 600 seniors and charges $20,000 per semester is bringing in $62,000,000 per year! Why don't you do one of two things. Assign one of your staff writers to produce an itemized expense report for a "typical" university or commission me to do it. I will go to URI, Salve Regina and Brown Universities in Rhode Island and write you a report. I just graduated from a masters program at Salve. I was paying about $1200 per 3 credit graduate class. Classes that had less than 8 students enrolled are usually cancelled. I do not thing the instructor is being paid 25% of the $9600 they get per cass. Okay they have to heat and upkeep the buildings and buy electricity but where does the rest of the money go?
If students were allowed to work off their education as service staff - maintenance, food services, security, administrative support etc. what would be the cost to operate the school?
If nobody ever looks at the cause of the problem, no one will ever see a solution.
Academia is not historically noted for it's
practicality
Pete Bradley
I have 2 kids in high school now and they seem to have more options for advanced classes that did not exist back in the '80s. Some schools have the International Baccalaureate while others have the STEM Academy. My kids are in a school that offers a third choice ... AP (Advance Placement). The AP Coursework is good for college credits and I believe the other programs are similar in that they provide benefits for the students that apply themselves to complete these programs. It is somewhat disappointing that every school is different in the programs chosen but I think the key is that we need to encourage the school boards to incorporate these programs into all of the high schools and put the incentive out there to enter college with their freshman credits transferring from their high school transcript. There will be students that don't take advantage of the advanced programs in high-school and they will still pay for all 4 (or 5) years for the college experience but earning college credits in high school would seem to be a great option for the people that want to apply themselves and work for it. If this option reduces the cost of a college degree by 25%, it would truly bring it into the reach of more students so that they will have less debt hanging over their heads when they graduate.
Many of the benefits of higher education - Socrates included -are wasted on most 18-22 year old minds today. Make applied education affordable for them at that age, let them start their working lives debt-free, and then later in life those who are hungering for higher knowledge can do so through pursuing a degree or taking advantage of the many "lifelong learning" opportunities. At that point they'll have enough life under their belts to truly appreciate what they're learning.
I know: I earned my MA in African American Studies at the age of 47 after 25 years after I earned my BA.
It seems the Governor's approach is a bit off. His challenge seeks a radical change in cost, apparently for the same product/service - if it's goal is a Baccalaureate degree. In the interview, it was noted that Community Colleges are getting close, and Ms. Hagan said Because they're applied degrees. "They're not about history or English or some of the traditional liberal arts subjects. They're about workforce-related programs." That is really what a Technology Degree is, or an perhaps an Associates Degree, but NOT a Bachelor's degree. A Bachelor's degree specifically requires (traditionally) a full and diverse education in both the technology of the major and the Liberal Arts which form a well rounded education. Please don't call it a Baccalaureate degree. BTW, I would bet that any University which does pump out a $10,000 Bach. of Science will have it's reputation falling fast.
What is needed is a greater number of vocational schools, not a watered down university curriculum. Many students who appear in university classrooms today not only do not have an interest in learning material at the university level, but, in many cases, do not have the capacity for learning this material. These same type of students 50 years ago would not even consider a university education. They would, in many cases, opt for a job in manufacturing or similar type work. These types of jobs are now hard to come by in this country. However there are many service jobs available that do not require a university education. A 2-year vocational school education is probably sufficient training for this type of work. The university should remain a place to pursue ``higher learning'', not a place to extort funds from our country's citizens. When is this nonsense going to stop?
The 2+2 approach (2 years at community college + 2 years at university) is a win-win solution in keeping higher education affordable. Here's a link to a blog I came upon that talks about this 2+2 approach even as a way of making US higher education attractive to international students.http://academicexchange.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/22-bringing-the-value-b...
