I've long written, for example, in an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, that higher education is America's most overrated product. I've also pointed to growing support for that contention in major media outlets. The most recent occurred today in a BBC editorial denigrating no less than Harvard Business School.
It is ironic that the more prestigious a college, the worse the instruction is likely to be. That's because colleges gain most of their prestige from their professors' research productivity, which is inversely correlated with the ability and desire to teach. Also, compared with low-prestige colleges, prestigious universities spend a higher proportion of their budgets on research.
Designer-label colleges can get away with charging so much and providing so little because students are brand-name driven in choosing a college, knowing that, with a designer-label diploma, employers will hire them, whether or not they learned anything at college.
Interestingly, the BBC invited Harvard Business School to respond to the scathing segment--Harvard declined to.
Designer-label colleges can get away with charging so much and providing so little because students are brand-name driven in choosing a college, knowing that, with a designer-label diploma, employers will hire them, whether or not they learned anything at college.
ReplyDeleteAren't you undercutting your own argument here? Yes, Harvard may cost 10 times as much as Generic State U, but nobody's saying that Harvard students learn 10 times as much as GSU students.
So what accounts for the difference? I say it's increased opportunity. If going to a brand-name college increases your chances of landing a well-paying job, that may well be a rational decision with a benefit above and beyond what you actually learn.
Whether employers should value prestige degrees more highly is open to debate, but, rightly or wrongly, people generally value a Harvard degree more highly than one from Generic State U, and it's far from stupid to take that into account when choosing a school.
I don't really blame students who choose designer-label schools. I blame the designer-label schools for offering such low-quality educations for such top-drawer prices, especially given that their students are our nation's best and brightest, those with the greatest potential to cure cancer, invent the next Google, etc.
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