Anthony Grafton from the NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS of November 24 provides a useful and concise review of 8 books on the problems of higher education.
Our Universities: Why They are Failing
However, he fails to zero in on the key Austrian explanation for the failure of higher education. Can you guess what that is?
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Grafton seems to pretty much spend 2.5 pages to throw his hands into the air. He knows that kids are in college with no clear purpose (ie, they are there and don’t know why). But Grafton never really settles on why that is happening. He even acknowledges the increasing unpayability of student debt, the uselessness of the education, and the increasing worthlessness of the degrees – but at the end says “Perhaps it’s not a crisis” and suggests a journalism project at the end. Ok, Tony.
I’ve read many articles much like this one. They tend to 1.) Assume the equal educability of virtually all students, and for that reason 2.) leave government public schooling blameless for dumping out bewildered kids. And most importantly, 3.) totally miss the fact that if it were not for federally backed student loans, banks would have to take financial risk on students without credit, and not everybody under the sun would be going to school unless they want to pony up some cash themselves, or could prove the academic inclination that might make them a good loan risk.
I’d say that Jim put that together perfectly well.
Yes he did.
The author also brings up three groups at American colleges who are a positive force not a negative one on the entire system. The groups are athletes, alumni children and students with cash. If it wasn’t for these groups the system would be charging significantly higher prices, be much worse run and the student populations would be much more indebted.
Athletes especially the ones in major college sports with large audiences actually make money for their schools. What a great deal, they bring in the dough and it goes to facilities. Otherwise these same facilities upkeep would come from tuition, i.e. Federally Guaranteed Student Loans.
And the other two groups are also critical for paying their ability to refuse payment. Alumni donate lots of cash to their colleges if they enjoyed their experiences there. It is in the interest of the colleges to keep these donations coming. Telling someone their kid is too stupid to go to your school is not a very good way to keep up the donation numbers. These folks also regulate prices by telling the administrations via alumni relations that prices are too high and these folks are sending their kids to other places. The last group, the ones with money, are clearly the most important as they use that money in their decisions to attend. This goes a very long way towards keeping tuition prices down.
Mark Thornton is too polite to notice another issue:
Grafton overlooked the Austrian perspective despite:
* having a good education.
* having access to abundant resources and information.
* reading and analysing a lot of books and articles.
Grafton seems to share a common belief of the educated and non-educated: Civilisation is based on “enlightened” government intervention. He and others are going to waste more time and resources on making the impossible possible.
The Biggest Fraud has been done to the students of the world. Universities have charged unreasonable fees, in exchange of irrelevant education which is not practicable and mislead to poverty and slavery. This students are given loans in a name of Bursaries with huge interest payable for almost the rest of student working life. This is rediculious, madness which will bring the future of this kids into disaster. My take is still that the loan with no interest is still the best. Interest is like a linch which sticks on the host suck the blood and fruits of the host untill the host collapse. People wake up all Home loans,car loans, personal loans and educational loans including bursaries with interest are going to distroy you and converted you into a debt slave.
These univertities work in conjuction with book publishers and stores which seels texb books up to Thousands espeacally in African Poor countries where a textbook ranges from R450.00 to R1500.00 hence 50 % of countries population earns around R330.00 (109 dollars) per month. This is grazy. Most of this kids dont even pass their examination, hence majority of this graduates are unproductive and cannot even find jobs. This is an Educational Scam by universities. Best are the days when a father teaches his kid capentry as well as how to build. Home education is relatively free, simple to transfere and ensure practicable productive families.
Regards
Stephen Rambau
Regards
I was going to answer but…
you wouldn’t actually read a reply anyway
not me
Could it be because the survival of the professoriate (tenure and government money) does not depend on them making a profit for what they say or teach in the classroom?
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