Dream Factories

Why Universities Won't Solve the Youth Jobs Crisis

Ken S. Coates, Bill Morrison

• Publisher: TAP Books
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781459733794
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Educational Policy

Two professors look at the mystique around universities and the consequences of "credentialism." For decades, we have promoted the idea that a university degree is a passport to future career success. Ken Coates and Bill Morrison argue that the over-promotion of higher education and university degrees is actually undermining the lives of young people, saddling them with enormous debts, and costing governments huge amounts of money. As the young flock to universities in ever-increasing numbers, fewer of them than ever find the elusive "good jobs" that they are pursuing. In fact, many of those jobs no longer exist. We are in the midst of a youth employment crisis that is global in proportion, and we are facing serious misunderstandings about the unfolding career prospects for young adults entering a world of rapid technological change. Ken Coates and Bill Morrison explore the impacts of universities turning out graduates with the wrong skills, and the consequences of vanishing job opportunities.

1

The Dream Factories

The world’s universities and colleges are in turmoil. In a little over a generation, they have been transformed from training grounds for professionals, the curious, the gifted, and the wealthy into expensive extensions of high schools, designed to educate a broad range of people and prepare them for stable middle-class opportunities. The transformation has its roots in the post–World War II era, starting in the USA with opportunities for returned servicemen, then growing there and elsewhere during the 1950s and 1960s with the “space race” and the search for sustained economic growth.

The dream of universities as the guaranteed road to prosperity—an idea that grew first and fastest in North America—delivered on what it promised, at least at the beginning. An expanding professional and scientific economy produced many opportunities for young adults, who found that a college degree provided a reliable and useful ticket to the middle class. The convergence between post-secondary studies and employment opportunities, while not ideal, was nonetheless impressive and, for those intellectually and financially able to consider college, rewarding. But the result has been an institutional sea-change. Universities, once “ivory towers,” have increasingly become Dream Factories, educational institutions dependent for their revenues and thus their existence on selling their product—their dream—to an ever-wider audience.

The Growth of Mass Education

The roots of the current situation go back about a hundred years. In 1900, college education was restricted to a tiny minority of the population, and even a high school education was not common: in the United States in about 1900, fewer than 5 percent of the population graduated from high schools, which often had entrance examinations and charged fees. After World War I, governments in the industrial world, especially in the United States, accepted the premise that economic prosperity required an educated and well-trained workforce. All over the industrialized world, governments invested in a massive expansion of elementary and secondary school education. Countries moved quickly toward universal schooling, ensuring that young boys and girls had the rudiments of writing, arithmetic, and basic civics. This happened at different times in different countries: in the UK, for example, it did not occur until after World War II. Many children moved from classroom to the industrial workforce, even in their early teens, but societies declared mass education to be an essential prerequisite for a modern economy. From a standing start in the mid-nineteenth century, public elementary education expanded rapidly to become virtually commonplace, at least in the world’s wealthier countries.

In the 1960s and after, as the complexity of the modern world increased, societies doubled down on the educational commitment. Publicly funded, universally accessible high school education came into vogue worldwide, as it had already done in the United States. Governments that had invested massively in elementary school classrooms and teachers now raced to build high schools to accommodate the millions of teenagers seeking a high school education. The systems varied, with Germany leading the way in incorporating industrial and skills training in the advanced school system, and countries like the USA, the UK, and Japan focusing more on general education. But the expansion of the high school system was remarkable, with millions of children who, in previous generations, would have entered the workforce in their early teens, continuing their studies at an advanced level. By the 1970s, high school participation had become as commonplace as going to elementary school had been two generations earlier. By the 1990s, in countries like the USA, Canada, the UK, Japan, South Korea, and across Scandinavia, university became the new preoccupation, with governments opening up millions of spaces for young people anxious to join the expanding professional class. Mass education had more than arrived; it had leapt up the age ladder into the early twenties.

The resulting global university system is an incredible mishmash, with public and private institutions of widely differing quality, and now, particularly in the United States, for-profit schools as well. The University of Phoenix is the flag-bearer for this quintessential contemporary private-sector institutional model. It is listed on NASDAQ, has produced many millions of dollars of profit for its shareholders, provides student-centric education, without spending money on such things as academic graduate programs or faculty research. Courses are offered where and when students want to take them, not according to faculty biorhythms and preferences. It is also now the largest university in the United States, with close to four hundred thousand students. The University of Phoenix’s parent organization—the Apollo group—is one of a substantial number of for-profit educational deliverers, including the American InterContinental University, Capella University, and Walden University, several of which have expanded operations internationally.

Not all for-profit institutions have operated ethically, particularly in the USA. The University of Phoenix has run into substantial difficulties, closing many physical campuses, facing legal challenges, and seeing its stock price plummet. Several private universities figured out how to capitalize on the generous Pell Grants, a program expanded by President Obama to ensure that any student who could spell “university” got to go. Unscrupulous recruiters convinced students to sign up for expensive for-profit education, without telling them that they had to pay back any money borrowed under the system. The for-profit movement has expanded internationally, with new institutions springing up from Malaysia (Multimedia University) to Grenada (St. George’s University) and Spain (Universidad Europea de Madrid), as well as elsewhere. With governments rushing to meet demand in most countries, it is not clear how much further the for-profit movement will spread at present.

New technologies have accelerated the growth even more. Massive online and distant-education universities, with student populations counted in the hundreds of thousands, offer hundreds of degrees to off-campus learners. If participation and enrolment are proper markers of success, students love them. The largest institutions, located in India, Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey, have over a million students. Many of these universities have tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of enrollees, all studying online and most working toward a university degree. Not a great deal is known about the quality and career impact of these institutions. Suffice it to say that digital technology is allowing governments to deliver advanced learning to literally millions of students who would not otherwise be able to attend a standard university. If a student from Pakistan presented a degree from Anadolu University in Turkey, how many employers would know that this institution, with over one million students, served only twenty-two thousand students on-site and educated the rest at a distance? Would it matter? Academics debate and study the quality of the online learning experience and have yet to reach an absolute consensus about the utility of this type of education. For governments unable to cover the costs of regular universities, and for students unable to participate in standard education processes, distance learning is a godsend.

While college conversions, distance education, and private universities all played a role in the growth of the post-secondary system, one of the greatest contributors to university expansion came from institutions already in place. From the 1960s onward, existing universities the world over built new facilities to house the influx of students who swarmed onto campuses and to provide research space for the faculty hired to teach them. (Politicians like new campus buildings almost as much as they celebrate expansion in student numbers.) Money was forthcoming for the laboratories, libraries, classrooms, residences, and other facilities deemed essential for the modern research-intensive university. The results were often spectacular. Moscow State University, operating since the eighteenth century, has grown to an amazing complex of over a thousand buildings covering some one million square metres, more than 40 percent larger than the Pentagon, the world’s largest office building. In many instances—the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia being one of the latest examples—governments and donors have produced eye-popping architectural masterpieces to grace university campuses. In the vast majority of the cases, however, the buildings had the aesthetic of a nineteenth-century prison or an early twentieth-century factory. Only rarely has design overcome financial considerations, resulting in a network of institutions that lack the intellectual impact of the stunning artistry of the facilities at the University of Leuven, the cold rigour of Cambridge, the majesty of Duke, or the dignity of college campuses like Swarthmore, Middlebury, and Dartmouth.

Declining Standards

These places differ profoundly in history, design, and ambiance, but they are all Dream Factories, institutions devoted to a simple concept: guaranteeing a successful life to those who pay to attend them. Their promotional materials, full of photographs of happy students studying with classmates and enjoying the bucolic campus life, promise great careers and a golden ticket to the middle class. They are the quintessential institution of the twenty-first-century knowledge economy, tackling the challenges of the high-tech, globalized economy and the realities of an international workforce in rapid transition.

It took close to a century for high school graduation to become almost universal in first-world countries. Regular schooling did not suit all students equally, particularly those who were inclined toward the skilled trades. Governments generally did not fund high schools equally, resulting in substantial educational gaps among poor, rural, and minority populations. Equally, the rapid expansion of the post–World War II industrial economy, which drew heavily on low-skilled and semi-skilled labour in the factories and construction trades, meant that it was still possible, in the 1950s and 1960s, for young people, particularly men, to make a good living without a high school education. Many left high school without graduating, often following their fathers’ paths to plants, mines, or construction sites. The gathering strength of unions, combined with an abundance of low-skill/high-wage work, ensured that these jobs paid well and carried generous benefits. As a result, high school graduation rates did not rise as rapidly as early high school attendance.

The situation became more complicated by the early twenty-first century, as a pattern of “social passes,” particularly in the United States and Canada, produced a steadily increasing number of high school graduates who got through school without learning much of anything. Consider these depressing facts. Among American high school graduates, only 40 percent have age-appropriate reading skills and only 25 percent have appropriate mathematical skills.[1] The situation in Canada is not much better. The high school completion rate has increased in recent years for a number of reasons, one of them being massive government encouragement to stay in school; another presumably being a lowering of standards for graduation. The percentage of young adults (age twenty-five to thirty-four) who have “attained at least upper secondary education” is, according to the OECD, fairly even across Western industrialized countries, with Canada, at 92 percent, having one of the highest completion rates. In comparison, the percentage of Americans who graduate stands at 89. In both Turkey and Mexico it is 46 percent.[2]

Japan and Germany have higher and more standardized academic accomplishments, as do South Korea, Finland, Singapore, and Taiwan. In China, a country that has made massive investments in high school education over the past thirty years, educational fraud and manipulation of transcripts is so widespread as to make it difficult to assess educational achievement. Many Chinese proudly carry high school diplomas that provide no assurance that they have the abilities and learning that have, since World War II, been associated with a high school degree. But, of course, the same is true in the United States.

College and university education is now replicating the high school experience. A new focus on higher education has occurred as job opportunities for high school dropouts have declined and opportunities for high school graduates have shrunk in the face of the collapsing power of trade unions and the disappearance of traditional low-skill/high-wage work. Naturally and inexorably, governments, parents, and young people have begun to focus on post-secondary education.

The inflation in education has been steady. Before 1920, most students stopped their studies after elementary school. Before the 1960s, they stopped after high school. In the last third of the twentieth century, in a fit of educational optimism that gripped much of the world, attention shifted to community colleges, colleges, and universities, with the latter representing the gold standard for those who felt that they had the skills, determination, and ability to prosper. A quick look at the same industrial nations illustrates the degree to which college and university preparation swept the wealthiest countries.

As with the high school systems after World War II, the colleges and universities took in many more students than they graduated. The percentage of those not finishing increased over time, primarily because the standards of the advanced educational institutions proved to be less flexible than the high schools’. This is an important point. Governments rejoice that 90 percent of the population has at least a high school education, but we may ask this question: How much of an achievement is it to earn a qualification that nine-tenths of the population also earns? High school graduation is almost universal in a country such as Canada and even more so in Scandinavia, South Korea, Singapore, and Japan. Largely because of public, government, and parental pressure, high schools have lowered educational standards to ensure more students graduate—literate and numerate or, in the case of all too many, not. For the time being (with variations between institutions), colleges and universities have maintained higher academic standards and resisted the pressure—also from the public, governments, parents, and students—to pass those who fail to meet clear and objective standards of academic achievement.

Higher Education Generates Mixed Reviews

Not surprisingly, universities generate mixed reviews. Some people, like President Obama, believe that universities are central to personal success and national prosperity. Enthusiasm is particularly strong among organizations of university presidents and teachers. Andrew Hacker, a well-known American “public intellectual” and emeritus professor of political science at Queen’s College, New York, baldly states that “everyone has the capacity to succeed at college and benefit from what it has to offer.” “All young people,” he says, and he puts the word in italics, have “knowledge-thirsty minds that can be awakened and encouraged to examine the world they inhabit.”[3] Others are more skeptical and are beginning to question the contribution that those currently being urged to get a degree will make to economic, social, and cultural success. Angela Merkel, solid where Obama wanders into the fantasy world of Garrison Keller’s Lake Wobegone (where everyone is above average), demonstrates the uncertainty and caution of a thoughtful leader:

We have committed a lot of resources to increasing interest in mathematical, engineering and scientific training courses, and will continue to do so. We have too few students, rather than too many, in these subjects. If we wish to maintain prosperity and living standards in our countries, it thus behooves us to encourage the enjoyment of science education. Taking a degree in the natural and engineering sciences is considered to be rather precarious. In terms of career prospects, experience has repeatedly shown that whilst the take-up of people trained in these professions is very good during economically buoyant periods, during a recession these people will experience considerable difficulties in finding a job. This is why it is also the job of business and education institutions to ensure there is a permanent shoring up, so to speak, of career prospects for graduates from the mathematics and natural science disciplines. Scientific knowledge has a very short sell-by-date, which is why we cannot afford to have gaps in the provision of qualified scientists.[4]

A smaller number are increasingly skeptical about university education. Few are as blunt as Simon Dolan, United Kingdom multi-millionaire high school dropout and author of How to Make Millions Without a Degree: And How to Get By Even If You Have One:[5] “I feel University only prepares students for a very specific set of circumstances. I’m not sure if it robs them of life skills, but it certainly delays the point at which they attain those life skills. By life skills, I mean work skills, be that in an office or in a factory or whatever—the key is that work skills can only be learned through real work. These are skills that you don’t learn from a book; you learn them by getting out there and doing them.” Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, has gone a step further, offering to pay young people $100,000 to not attend university for two years and instead to pursue their business ideas. As Thiel, who believes that universities are oversold and headed for a crash, told TechCrunch in 2011, “A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed. Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus.”

The more young people who go, or who ponder going, to college, the louder the debate grows. On one side, people claim that those with university degrees make more money in their lifetimes than those without them (true as an average, but not for individuals, and each would-be student is an individual). The case is forcefully put, with charts, by Mark Gongloff in The Huffington Post.[6] The contrary case is made by two scholars in a paper published by the Brookings Institution,[7] an argument that we will explore in a later chapter.

The debate about the value of a university education is carried on worldwide. In Vietnam, Pham Chi Lan, the former president of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, is a dynamo, with an energy and verve that belies her seventy-plus years. Her keynote address to the hundred or so academics and government officials gathered in a posh Hanoi hotel to discuss the Asian innovation environment contradicted all the stereotypes of an officially Communist state. Vietnam, she said, was taking on the world. The country had what it took to succeed: the prodigious work ethic of the people married with foreign investment, government support, and Vietnamese ingenuity.

She flashed charts and tables about competitive pricing, low labour costs, and urban developments, the like of which few countries outside China have attempted, as well as a regulatory environment that was becoming more capitalist by the month. She spoke about the application of new scientific and technological discoveries to Vietnamese agriculture and fisheries and described the country’s efforts to attract high-technology businesses. She wowed the audience, as much by her confidence and determination as by the clearly promotional tour of Vietnam’s new economy. People were impressed.

During the question period, a visiting scholar asked about something she had not covered in the speech: the role of university research and university graduates in Vietnam’s innovation efforts. It was a standard question, likely to draw a standard answer. The audience knew that national innovation systems draw on the powerful combination of the academy, government, and business to prepare a country for global competitiveness and prosperity. They also knew that the Vietnamese government was investing heavily in research and post-secondary education. A science city under development within a dozen miles of the conference hotel had attracted a $1 billion in investment and would, if finished as planned, host over a million people in a new economic powerhouse. The once-isolationist government had even permitted foreign institutions, led by Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University, to set up operations in both Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. The audience relaxed, ready for the latest morale-boosting tribute to the modern university. They were in for a shock.

To the surprise of the...