Making Colleges Accountable: College Scorecard Version 2.0

I continue to try to make the case for requiring college to post a substantive report card on themselves as a condition of receiving federal financial aid. Today, I make that point in the San Francisco Chronicle's Sunday Magazine, Insight.

The article also includes seven questions you should ask a college or graduate admission person before agreeing to attend.

The College Report Card--picked as one of "100 Great Ideas for Higher Education"

I am honored that the National Association of Scholars chose to include, in its 100 Great Ideas for Higher Education, my proposal that all colleges be required to, on its homepage, post a substantive report card on itself, what I call the College Report Card.

It is far more more helpful than, for example, the College Scorecard President Obama announced in his State of the Union address.

I describe the College Report Card in the  Washington Post, and in The Atlantic, the latter which was republished on Stanford's blog on higher education reform.

Not only would a College Report Card enable prospective students to more wisely and easily select a college, that transparency would exert real pressure on colleges to finally treat students as the treasure they are rather than a mere "cost center."

Today, 'four-year" colleges behave as irresponsibly as the researchers who ran the The Tuskegee Experiments. Every year, colleges recruit hundreds of thousands of weak students without disclosing to them that 3/4 such students don''t graduate even if given 8 years, meanwhile having accrued a fortune in debt, little learning, a non-stop assault to their self-esteem, no more employability than they could have had straight out of high school and, critically, the opportunity cost: They could have likely learned far more and become far more employable had they pursued an apprenticeship, the millitary, working at the elbow of an entrepreneur, or taken a short career-prep program at a community college.

It is time to stop giving higher education a free pass. We require every tire, every packaged food, every drug, to provide substantive consumer information. We should require no less of colleges.

Which Colleges or Graduate Schools Should You Apply To?

This time of year, many people are choosing the colleges and graduate schools to apply to.

You'll likely create a wiser list if you ask an admissions person the questions among these that are relevant to your situation:

• For a student with my grades and test scores, what's the average freshman-to-senior growth in reading  writing, etc? (If you're told that the institution doesn't collect that data, it suggests they don't care enough about student growth to do so.)

• What percentage of freshmen with my grades, test scores, and planned major, graduate within four years? Five years?  If it's a graduate program, what is the average, not the expected, time it takes to complete the degree?

• My family makes $X a year and has, not counting their home, has $Y in assets. My GPA is Z and my SAT/GRE etc is Q.  Approximately, how much am I likely to end up paying in cash and how much loan will I be expected to take? And what will my package look like in years 2-4? Year 5 and beyond?

• In your institution's most recent accreditation review, did it receive a full ten-year term? What did the accreditation's visiting team report cite as your institution's greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses? 

• Would you email me a copy of the results of the most recent student or alumni satisfaction survey?

• What percentage of graduates in my planned major are professionally employed within a year of graduation?

My Plan for Closing the Achievement Gap (revised)

No domestic issue has drawn more attention or money than attempting to close the socioeconomic and racial achievement gap.

Now, despite a half century and countless innovations from Head Start to Stop Drop, from integration to self-segregated Afrocentric schools, from affirmative action college admission to disparate impact lawsuits on CEO selection, the achievement gap remains as wide as ever.

Even Head Start, which politicians for decades, trumpeted as our best hope, has recently been determined, in the definitive evaluation of 40 years of Head Start conducted by the U.S. Office of Education, to have no enduring positive effects.

So it would be hubristic of me to assert that I know how to close the achievement gap but, of course, we should keep trying. So if I were to bet my money, these are the interventions I'd bet on:

1. Reduce teen pregnancy. It's well established that children of teenage parents are at greater risk of school and life failure. So junior and senior high schools, especially those with high teen pregnancy rates, should implement data-driven teen-pregnancy prevention programs. The research does not support abstinence-only programs and so political pressures to restrict such programs to abstinence-only should be resisted.

Sex education should include what I call a Choose Your Parent Well component. You can't choose your parents but you certainly can be wise or less wise in choosing the parent of your children. The decision of whom to be the father/mother of your children may be your life's most important. Especially among at-risk teens, there's a tendency to fall in love with a person more on how "cool" he is than how intelligent and motivated he is. But is that the person whose genes you'd like your child to have? Is that the person you want to parent your child?

To ensure that girls have the child with the father they want, when they're ready, birth control, including long-term reversible implantable Jadelle, should be made available free, on demand, at all high schools.

Creators of programming aimed at teens (sitcoms, news, movies, video games, music videos, record labels) should be encouraged to create more content that would compellingly display the Choose Your Parent Well message as well as the non-romantic outcomes of teen pregnancy.

2. Provide parenting education early. To increase the chances that from Day One, parents have the tools to be good parents, full effort should be expended to ensure that high-quality parenting education is highly accessible, especially to pregnant teens in low-income locales. The best parenting education involves interactive video of critical incidents in parenting--for example, what to do if your baby won't stop crying? What to do to ensure your child develops good language skills? Ethics? What if your child won't do her homework? What if you think your child is taking drugs? Is sexually active?

True innovation in delivery systems is required. For example, high school websites and others heavily visited by at-risk teens, for example, mtv.com, should be encouraged to post the aforementioned parenting training course.

To ensure its availability to people without computers, the community center in low-income housing projects should have a computer installed that includes the parenting education program as well as other interactive-video programs, for example, on teen pregnancy prevention and on preventing and curing substance abuse. In hospitals, especially those serving at-risk communities, the TV in each new-mom's patient's room should have a TV offering the aforementioned parenting training.

To receive welfare benefits such as TANF funds, teen or perhaps all parents should be required to successfully complete the online or an in-person parenting education course, much as we require aspiring drivers to complete a driver's education course.

3. Improve teacher training. Absurdly, pre-K to grade 12 teachers are trained primarily by theory-oriented academics who have never taught in a pre-K to grade-12 classroom, let alone been master teachers there. That must change. The primary instructors of teachers in-training should be master K-12 teachers, including those who have produced excellent results in teaching low-achieving students.

Teachers of classes in low-achieving schools may well need to be masters at motivation, using a skill set beyond that which is taught in most teacher education programs. So, for example, the increasingly required multicultural education course should include master-teacher-taught lessons on the art of classroom management, including strategies particularly likely to be effective in working with low-achieving, minimally motivated kids.

Training should not end upon the teacher's obtaining a license to teach. Teachers experiencing the frustrations common in working in low-achieving schools should be able to phone or email a hotline staffed by teachers who have successfully taught in those schools.

4. Flexibly group classes. If I were slow at learning and choosing between a class filled with other slow learners and a class with many hotshots, I'd certainly choose the former. Yet largely because minorities were overrepresented in the slow-learner classes, students, below high school, are usually assigned to classes at random. That causes all students to suffer: It's nearly impossible for a teacher to meet the needs of a class with so wide-ranging needs. We must stop all policies that are created merely to look good racially. Pedagogy must trump politics.

Classes shouldn't be rigidly tracked but what's needed are what I call flex classes. In them, at least for academic subjects, students are grouped by ability and achievement but in which students, especially those of color, are monitored closely to ensure they're not in a too low- (or too high-) level class.

5. Dispel the belief that working hard is "acting white." Berkeley researcher John Ogbu is one of many to report that many black students believe that being studious is "acting white," and therefore unacceptable. "Cool" blacks, both peers and adults, who are studious, must convince students and their parents that studying hard is equally important for students of all races.

6. Encourage an internal locus of control. Of course, what happens to us is not totally under our control. We are greatly affected by the family and community into which we are born. We are affected by the nature of the political and economic system we live under. There is racism. There is reverse racism. There is luck.

Yet successful people believe they can control enough of their life to greatly increase their chances of success. Academics call that internal locus of control. Alas, students from low-income families are more likely to believe that external factors such as luck, God, and their race are key to determining their success.

Moving poor people's locus of control inward is no easy task. Many political leaders, educators, and TV pundits gain popularity by telling their audiences that their failings are largely beyond their control: the capitalist system, the legacy of slavery, institutional racism, etc.

While those may be partially responsible, our mind molders--parents, schools, colleges, church, and media--would be wise to encourage all of us to base our self-esteem, our sense of self-efficacy, on what we ourselves do. The accomplishments of famous people should not be a particular source of pride. Our own efforts, accomplishments, ethics, and kindness should be the primary bases for assessing our self-worth.

7. Chronically disruptive students must be placed in special classes. If a student, despite the teacher's best efforts with help from the principal, continues to disrupt classmates' opportunity to learn, that child must be moved to a special class taught by someone with special skills in working with such kids. Even if that child does no better in that special class, s/he won't be depriving the other 29 students of their right to an education.

8. Begin career exploration in grade 6. Finding an exciting yet realistic career can be motivating to many students. And it reduces the problem of many high school and college graduates having no idea what career they want to pursue.

9. Give students a choice: college-prep or career-prep curriculum. Increasingly, in the name of high standards, high schoolers, even those who read on a sixth grade level and who have far more ability in working with their hands, are being forced to take a college-prep curriculum.

Imagine that you, like millions of parents, have a child who is entering high school but is reading on just a sixth-grade level. Would you want him forced to take a curriculum that required him to derive geometric theorems, balance chemical equations, and write essays on the intricacies of Shakespeare? He'll almost certainly do terribly. Not surprisingly, mandating a one-size-fits-all curriculum causes many to drop out of high school.

Worse, the child won't have had an opportunity to build the basic survival skills reading, writing, critical thinking and math he'll desperate need and doesn't yet have. He could better learn those in a direct-to-career path, for example a health-care or entrepreneurship academy within the high school. But as with ability-grouped classes, for fear of appearing racist, direct-to-career high school paths have largely been eliminated. Indeed one of President Obama's top domestic priorities is "Some college for all."

Today, many colleges are open-admission even to the grossly underprepared. Alas, if a student is one of the 200,000 per year entering so-called 4-year colleges from the bottom 40% of their high school class, their chances of graduating are only 24%, even if given 8 1/2 years! And if they do defy the odds and graduate, it will likely be with a low grade-point average in an easy major such as sociology from a minimally selective college. That will impress few employers at a time when the U.S. has the highest percentage of college graduates in its history at the same time as employers are eliminating as many professional-level positions as possible, through automation, offshoring, or converting jobs to part-time and temp positions. Such graduates are likely to join the ranks of the countless people with a bachelor's degree unable to find better employment than they could have found with just a high school diploma. Meanwhile they have incurred large student debt, boredom, and ongoing assault to self-esteem from being forced to study academic material for which they were unprepared.

I'd rather see the aforementioned child improve his reading, writing, thinking, and mathematical reasoning in high school courses that would prepare him to be an entrepreneur, robotics tech, helicopter pilot, or chef.

A high-quality, not dumping-ground, direct-to-career option should be instituted in high schools, especially those schools serving many students whose academic achievement is below grade-level.

It's ironic that the leaders who most claim to celebrate diversity are the most likely to insist on no diversity in the high school curriculum: they want everyone to take a college-preparatory curriculum to "keep students' options open." Ironically, one-size-fits-all education eliminates excellent options.

10. Require a course in life skills. Before requiring at-risk kids, indeed all kids, to learn quadratic equations, the halide series of chemical elements, and the use of the doppelganger, students should be required to pass a course in life skills: for example, budgeting, interpersonal communication, and the aforementioned sex education and parenting education. To not do so is to be guilty of the very elitism that many educators and politicians decry.

11. Institute a debate (forensics) program in all high schools, including those with low achievement scores. Some evidence and a lot of common sense suggests that a debate program could yield significant benefit.

12. Require colleges to provide full disclosure to prospective students. In their attempt to woo students, especially students of color, colleges and high school counselors, as in the Tuskegee Experiments, often hide the information students need to use to decide whether to enroll:

• The projected four- and five-year full cost of attendance, including cash financial aid, broken down by family income and assets.
• Freshman-to-senior average growth in critical thinking, writing, and quantitative reasoning, broken down by high school record.
• The results of the college's most recent student satisfaction survey
• Four-, five-, and six-year graduation rates, broken down by high school record.
• The accreditation team's most recent report on the college.
• The percentage of graduates professionally employed, including average salary, disaggregated by high school record and by major.

13. Head Start Genes. Our intelligence and impulse control are, like most characteristics, likely affected by both our genes and our environment. Yet the government and biotech companies have--for fear of political repercussions--been reluctant to fund research that would identify which gene clusters are responsible for those characteristics. Government should encourage such research so prospective parents could have the option of having their eggs and sperm tested to ensure their baby will be born with genes for good intelligence and impulse control so s/he doesn't start out life with a strike or two against them. We already do this on a crude basis: In in-vitro fertilization, the physician chooses only eggs and sperm that appear normal and robust. If all of a prospective mother's and father's genes are for low intelligence or impulse control, the parents should have the option of having the defective genes in their egg and sperm replaced with normal ones, what I call Head Start genes.

To ensure that the poor has access to this procedure, it would, like other medical procedures, be covered under MediCal and other health programs for the poor. In addition, as with, for example, AIDS education, special outreach would be made in low-income communities to ensure that its residents are aware of the Head Start genes option.

Because low-income people areat the short end of the achievement gap, they would likely benefit far more from Head Start genes than would high achievers.

14. Try bold pilot studies. In addition to implementing the previous ideas, there's need to pilot test new ideas. Examples:

• For those unable to hold a private-sector job, government should create jobs. A job may be, in addition to a source of income, the most potent teacher, healer, and crime and drug abuse preventer.
• Pair high school kids with retired small business owners. Have them start a simple business
• Pair at-risk kids with nursing home residents or hard-to-adopt animal-shelter dogs and cats who otherwise would be euthanized. I've seen hard-bitten teens grow loving when involved with a non-threatening person or animal.
• Have kids plant vegetable and fruit gardens, cook and eat what they've grown and sell the rest. They'd learn science, cooking, nutrition, and how to run a business. In addition, they might join me in awe of the miracle of growth.
• Create peer mentor pairs: for example, at-risk sixth graders with at-risk first graders. There's no better way to learn than to teach.
• Provide free genetic counseling to at-risk prospective parents. That may help them make more fully informed and thus wiser choices.
  

My hope is that this more thorough (may I say brave) exploration of how to address the achievement gap might encourage a more full-dimensioned discussion than the nation has heretofore had. I believe that without such a discussion, we'll still be wringing our hands about the achievement gap a century from now.

Reinventions: My best ideas on jobs, education, health care, and campaign reform

I hope to write a book, Reinventions, consisting of my ideas for reinventing 30 of society's linchpins.

My agent suggested I first write an article presenting a few of my best ideas. I've done so and thought you might enjoy seeing the article. HERE is the link.

An Emotional Plea for Colleges to be Honest with Prospective Students: The College Report Card

I seem to have gotten nowhere with a rational approach, so here is a more emotional appeal for you to demand that colleges replace their deceptive marketing practices with a College Report Card. It wouldn't seem that this would be so important but it would dramatically improve the lives of literally millions of people and help America slow its descent into being a third-world country.

Below the video, I provide a transcript of it.

Transcript of the video

An Emotional Plea for Colleges to be Honest with Prospective Students

by Marty Nemko

Among my saddest moments as a career counselor is when I hear a story like this, “I wasn’t a good student in high school but I wanted to prove that I could get a college diploma --I’d be the first one in my family to do it. But it’s been five years and $80,000 and I still have 45 units to go.”

I have a hard time telling such people the killer statistic: According to the U.S. Department of Education, despite colleges having dumbed-down classes to accommodate to the weak students, among college freshmen who graduated in the bottom 40 percent of their high school class, more than three of four won’t earn a diploma, even if given 8 1/2 years! Yet colleges admit and take the money from hundreds of thousands of such students each year!

Even worse, most of those college dropouts leave college having learned little of value. And I urge you, before you trust me on this, see the frightening results of the definitive national study, Academically Adrift--Google it,) a mountain of debt, and devastated self-esteem from all their unsuccessful struggles at college.

Perhaps worst of all, the aforementioned people too rarely end up with a career that requires a college degree. So it’s not surprising that when you hop into a cab or walk into a restaurant, you’re likely to meet workers who spent years and their family’s life savings, mortgaged their family's future, on college only to end up with a job they could have done as a high school dropout.

Colleges trumpet the statistic that, over their lifetimes, college graduates earn more than non-graduates, but that’s terribly misleading:

• For one, you could lock the college-bound in a closet for four years and they’d earn more than the pool of non-college-bound--They’re brighter, they're more motivated; they have better family connections.
• What also makes that million-dollar statistic misleading is that statistic is retrospective. Yes, in past, when a far lower percentage of high school students went to college, college grads had a big advantage in the job market. But today, when colleges admit nearly any student who breathes, that advantage is far smaller. Now we have an oversupply of college graduates at the same time as employers are automating as many jobs as possible, offshoring as many jobs as possible, turning as many jobs as possible to part-time or temp jobs, to beat the enormous cost of hiring U.S. workers.
• At the same time, the cost of college increases well beyond the cost of inflation and the average-time-to degree increases. The calculus is particularly bad for students with a less-than-stellar record in high school.

There is a desperate need for government to mandate a College Report Card, so prospective students and their families could see--for students with their high school records--their likelihood of graduating, the average amount of learning such students accrue, and the likelihood they'll be professionally employed if they defy the odds and graduate.

Public outcry is the only way we can get colleges to change and for the government to mandate that colleges prominent post on their website an externally audited report card on themselves. So please forward this video to your contacts, especially to college-bound students and to their families, and to any legislators you know.

For much more on the need for a college report card, see my blog: http://martynemko.blogspot.com.

What Every College-Bound Student & Parent Must Know...And Probably Don't

This animated discussion between a parent and college counselor reveals what parents of college-bound students must know and probably don't. An enhanced transcript appears below the video.

FOR YOUR CHILD, FOR ALL OUR CHILDREN
by Marty Nemko

B: My son will be applying to college soon. I'm scared.

M: Scared?

B: First, I'm scared about the cost. It was really hard even to find the sticker price on the colleges' websites and when I did, I nearly had a heart attack.

M: I don't mean to scare you more, but the amount most colleges post omits thousands of dollars that the average student ends up spending each year?

B: The college's admission counselor...

M: You mean salesperson.

B: Don't be cynical.

M: Many college admissions people, including the campus tour guides receive sales training. They are salespeople. For example, how often will they suggest that your child attend some other college?

B: Anyway, the admissions counselor told me not to worry, that most people don't pay the sticker price.

M: Sounds like a rug dealer.

B: He said there's financial aid.

M: Did you ask him for an estimate of what the college would cost you, given your income and assets and your child's academic record?

B: That's a good idea. I will.

M: Be sure to ask for an estimate for the total cost for at least four years.

B: Why?

M: Because some colleges use the drug dealer scam: They give you a big discount in Year One to get you hooked and then jack up the price each year after.

B: That's disgusting. I'm also scared because I read an op-ed on cnn.com called "College is a Waste of Time."

M: That's just the tip of the iceberg. This year alone, there were similar articles in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The Atlantic. And prestigious book publishers like Knopf have published books with titles like Crisis on Campus, The Five Year Party, No Sucker Left Behind: Avoiding the great college rip-off, University Inc: the corporate corruption of higher education, Academically Adrift: limited learning on college campuses, and Higher Education? How colleges are wasting our money and failing our kids.

B. And I keep hearing how even if you graduate...

M. And nationwide, more than half don't, even if they take six years!

B. You're kidding?

M. I wish I were. Dept. of Education statistics. The Education Dept. also reports that if your child graduated in the bottom 40% of his high school class, his chances of graduating from a so-called four-year college is only 1 in 4 even if he takes 8 1/2 years!

B: All that tuition. All that time.

M: All that assault to their self-esteem.

B: But even if they drop out, they will have learned a lot, right?

M: Wrong. According to the aforementioned book Academically Adrift, published by University of Chicago Press, which summarizes extensive nationwide research, of those who defy the odds and graduate, 36% grow insignificantly in reading, writing, critical thinking!

B: No! But even if you don't learn a lot in college, these days, with this terrible job market, you need the degree, the piece of paper.

M: Awfully expensive piece of paper. Sticker price for even just four years at a brand-name private college, even if you don't count all expenses, is over $200,000 per child! And that doesn't count if it takes the student five or six years.

B: But the colleges are always saying that college graduates, over their lifetime, earn a million dollars more.

M: You've heard the expression, you can lie with statistics. Well universities are pros at it.

B: What do you mean?

M: The lifetime that colleges report is in the past. Today, we have an oversupply of college graduates at the same time as employers are hiring fewer college graduates: they're offshoring and automating as much as possible. And when they hire, they use temps and part-timers as much as possible.

B: But college grads still get better jobs. Right?

M: On average yes, but according to the U.S. Department of Labor, of college graduates under 25, 44% are working at jobs that don't require a college degree or aren't working at all. Also, remember that the pool of college graduates are brighter, more motivated, and have better family connections than the pool of those who didn't attend college. You could have locked them in a closet for four years and they'd have earned lots more money than the pool of students who didn't go to college, which today is just a small percentage, the bottom of the academic barrel. And those college-caliber students wouldn't be locked in a closet: because they are brighter, more motivated, and have better family connections, they'd get launchpad jobs where they could learn on the job and get paid for it rather than pay all that tuition and be taught all the irrelevancies they teach in college: stochastic processes, the causes of the Peloponnesian Wars, the intricacies of Shakespeare.

B: Yeah, I remember Father Guido Sarducci saying he's thinking of starting a college where a degree would only cost $100 and would take only one hour: He'd only teach what students still remembered after they finished college.

M: Good comedy indeed contains grains of truth.

B: Are you telling me my kid shouldn't go to college?

M: I'm saying you should not assume college is the right choice. For many people, an apprenticeship, the military, a short-term career-preparation program at a community college, or on the-job training, for example, at the elbow of an ethical and successful entrepreneur, can be a wiser choice.

B: But my kid has good grades and test scores, he loves learning, and is eager to go to college.

M: Then he probably should go, but please pick wisely.

B: How do you do that?

M: First pick say ten colleges that enroll many students with grades and test scores similar to your child's and that are well-located.

B: Then what?

M: This is critical. Please do it. To narrow your list, ask each college these things: Given my family's income and assets and my son's high school record, what am I likely to pay in cash and take on in loan over the four years my child is there? What would I pay in year 5 and beyond?

B: What if they don't tell you?

M: That's a sign the college is more expensive than you think or that the college doesn't care enough about students to provide even that basic information: the true cost of attendance.

B: I guess that makes sense.

M: Here's the next thing to ask: What's the average amount of growth that your college's graduates with a high school record similar to my son's make in reading, critical thinking, etc?

B: Do they have that information?

M: Many colleges do, and if they don't care enough to monitor student growth, that's another sign you don't want your child there.

B: What else should I ask?

M: For students with high school records like my son's, what's the 4- and 5-year graduation rate? Also, ask for the results of a student satisfaction survey, the summary of the accreditation visiting team report, and the percent of graduates in your son's intended major who are professionally employed within a year of graduation.

B: That information would seem so helpful to prospective students. I wish all colleges would post it on their website.

M: They don't want to because, per all those articles and books I cited, the results would embarrass them. That's why I'm trying to get Congress to pass a law that would require it.

B: That would sure put pressure on colleges to improve. That would not only provide better education, it would help America remain competitive in a global economy in which India and China are taking so many of our jobs.

M: That's why I'd love it if more parents would demand answers to those questions: Tell or I won't apply!

B: That's a great idea! I'll tell each college: Tell or I won't apply! Hey, if I want a written copy of those questions...

M: I call it the College Report Card.

B: If I want a copy of the College Report Card, where can I find it?

M: The College Report Card is free on my blog, which can be reached from my site: www.martynemko.com.

The College Report Card: An Animated Fairy Tale

I continue to experiment with ways to get my College Report Card idea to go viral. This time, it's an animation.

I'm convinced that, while simple, government requiring all colleges to post an externally audited report card on themselves is, arguably, the most potent yet practical way yet proposed to get colleges to dramatically improve the quality of higher education.

And of course, if all colleges posted a College Report Card, it would help prospective students to more wisely choose a college or graduate or to decide that a non-school option may be wiser.

I created this animation using a website, Xtranormal.com, that makes it remarkably easy to convert your text into animation. I did it in 20 minutes. I don't find that the animation adds sufficiently to the text but I thought it was worth sharing with you. A transcript of this 3-minute animation appears below.

TRANSCRIPT

There once was a young man, and he was admitted to a college. And he liked the college. He sang the song he had so often heard: "American higher education is a national treasure."

But decades passed and the man learned that his college had changed. The buildings were now fancier but instead of college costing what nearly anyone could afford, now everyone except rich people has to take out big loans. Really big loans.

And now, the college admits many weak students along with the good ones so the classes have to be dumbed-down. And so students learn much less. Despite the dumbing-down, most of the college's students, really most, 55%, dropped out. Even many who graduate, deeply in debt, can find only a job they could have done without college. And most dispiriting to the man, most of the students learn little--the tests show that half of them read, wrote, and reasoned no better than when they began college. The man didn't believe it at first but after reading the authoritative nationwide study: Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, he had to accept that it was true.

And the man was sad. He thought and he thought. What could make colleges better? Finally, he had an idea: He asked, "If the government requires each tire to have a "report card" molded into it, if government requires all packaged food to have a "report card" on the package, why doesn't government require all colleges to have a report card posted on its website: how much students learn in reading, writing, thinking, broken down by students' high school record? What percent graduate in four years? After deducting cash financial aid, how much four or five years costs? What percentage of graduates have professional jobs within a year of graduation, broken down by major--sociology majors aren't going to be as employable as computer science majors.

Having all colleges post a College Report Card would help students choose a good college. More important, it would embarrass the colleges into improving their poor quality of education: Instead of hiring professors based mainly on how many research dollars they can bring in, they'd hire professors because they were great at educating and inspiring students. Instead of spending on fat administrations and fancy buildings and shrubs, they'd spend on providing mentors and coaches to students.

And so the man went to Congress to try to get a law passed requiring colleges to prominently post a report card on themselves, with companies like Price Waterhouse coming in to audit them to avoid cheating. But that scared the colleges, so their very powerful lobby squashed the man--or at least his idea.

And so now, everyone continues to sing: "American higher education is a national treasure." And everyone is living happily ever after. But not really.

The College Report Card: Making Colleges More Transparent and Accountable (3-min. version)

Here's a three-minute version of my video arguing that perhaps the most potent thing that could be done to improve the quality of college education and, in turn, improve society, is for the federal government to require all colleges to post on their website an externally audited report card on themselves.

Below the video is a transcript of it as well as links to a longer version of this video, other writings on the College Report Card, including an actual proposed Report Card, and a version of a College Report Card that would be invaluable for students and families to use in choosing a college.

* * * * *

Here is the transcript:

There has finally been a spate of books and articles in major publications asserting that higher education adds remarkably little value for all the time, money, and opportunity cost.

Colleges have been extremely resistant to change but I've come up with an approach that is remarkably simple yet would be remarkably potent: requiring all colleges to post a College Report Card on themselves on their website. The College Report Card would be externally audited to avoid cheating.

A College Report Card would include such items as:

• how much freshman-to-senior growth occurs in reading, writing, critical thinking, mathematical reasoning, etc.,
• the graduation rate in 4, 5, and six years, broken down by students' high school records.
• employability: what percentage of graduates are professional employed within a year of graduation, broken down by major.
• a student satisfaction survey-It's of course valuable to hear what the customer says.
• A summary of the accreditation team's visiting report.
• (Note: I neglected to include one key item: the true cost of attendance for four, five, and six years broken down by family income and assets.)

Of course, a College Report Card would help students choose a college, which is critical because it's one of the largest and most important purchases people ever make.

But also, importantly, a College Report Card would--because the students, the public, and legislators would see how much or how little value the college provides--would finally put real pressure on colleges to compete, to improve, rather than allocate so much of their resources to fat administrations and to research, so much of which they know apriori will be of little value.

I'm doing my best to promulgate the idea of requiring all colleges to post a substantive College Report Card. I think that would do great good not only for students and for higher education, but for the nation as a whole because while education is far from the magic pill we wish it would be, educating our best and brightest, most of whom go to college, could go a long way to helping us survive if not thrive in our ever more challenging global economy.

* * * *

HERE is a link to a longer (14-minute) version of this video.

HERE is a link to a four-page proposal for a College Report Card, which includes a sample Report Card.

HERE is a link to a College Report Card that students and families might use to help pick a college

The College Report Card: Making Colleges More Transparent and Accountable

Here is a video--with lots of visuals with supporting data and photos--in which I make the case for colleges to be required to prominently post on its website an externally audited report card on itself.

Such a College Report Card would help students choose a college more wisely. Even more important, it would pressure colleges to finally add sufficient value for the enormous time and money that a college or graduate degree demands.

Below the video is a transcript of it as well as links to my other recent writings about The College Report Card, including a version for students and parents to use in selecting a college.

It's very difficult to choose a college wisely.

And it's not surprising. We require tires to have "report card" grades molded into their sidewalls. We require packaged foods to prominently list their calories, fat, even vitamins and minerals. Yet, colleges, one of our most important and expensive purchases are required to prominently post nothing on their websites.

So colleges just hire marketing firms to manipulate students into choosing their college based on such things as deceptive pictures, for example, pointing out the prettiest part of campus. It will not point out, for example, that the weather is bone-chilling miserable half the year or that the campus crime rate is terrible. At Tulane, despite all the pretty pictures on the website, there were three rapes, 30 burglaries, 193 cases of larceny--in just one school year.

Or the pretty pictures somehow don't include, for example, a picture of the mice and rats in Georgetown dorms, which I first heard about decades ago and recently in College Prowler, which posts student reviews said, "Often you will find rats. There are lots of rats."

The colleges post photos on their websites of small, personalized classes taught by an inspired professor and deeply engaged students, even on campuses where most of a student's time is spent in large lectures, or with boring professors.

Colleges post pictures of an engaged student peering into a test tube, which implies that many undergraduates are intimately involved in important research, when in fact only a small percentage are and even if they are, it's usually of little or no benefit to their development let alone their career.

Of course, nearly all college websites include a shot of happy graduates. But few colleges reveal the fact that most students don't graduate even if they take six years. Most students!

And in the coup de gras, the colleges post pictures that suggest that a degree from their school is the key to a great job. In fact, almost half of students are not working or with jobs that don't require a college degree.

Colleges love to trumpet the grossly misleading statistic that college graduates earn a million dollars more over their lifetime. Why misleading? It would take a long time to fully explain, but I'll just quickly say here that that data looks backward not forward--today we have an oversupply of college students. Second, the pool of college graduates is very different in ability, motivation and connections than the pool of non-graduates, so you could have locked the graduates in a closet for four years and they'd have earned more money. And indeed, they wouldn't be locked in a closet, they'd be learning on the job, making connections. Don't fall for deceptive statistics marketed by colleges and repeated in the media.

More basic, on most colleges' sites, it's hard to even find out the total cost of four years: assuming you graduate in four years. (I showed U.S.C.'s financial aid page.) No cost listing. Where's the sticker price?! Note their again deceiving with statistics: "60% of students at USC receive some type of financial assistance." How much? Where, based on your family's income and assets is an estimate of how much financial aid you'll get--not loan, the cash aid! Not just in year one, where they may give you a bigger discount to get you in the door, like the drug dealer who gives you the first dose of crack free or cheap to get you hooked and then jacks up the price.

And indeed, graduates and dropouts alike are terribly weighed down in student debt at the same time as the glut of college graduates has resulted in nearly half of them unemployed or doing jobs they could have done with a mere high school diploma.

It's particularly important to report the true cost of a college education with report after report showing how little value students actually get from higher education. Here, I include shots of articles excoriating higher education in New York magazine, the LA Times, New York Times, CNN.com, the Wall Street Journal, and books: Crisis on Campus (Knopf), The Five-Year Party, No Sucker Left Behind, University Inc, Higher Education?: How colleges are wasting our money and failing our kids.

Among the most scathing books is Academically Adrift, the 2011 authoritative report from the University of Chicago that found that nationwide, students grow frighteningly little even if they defy the odds and graduate: 45% grew not at all in the first two years. 36% not at all from freshman to senior!

Again, may I remind you how many even of the graduates are unemployed and countless more underemployed? Nearly half!

It's time for government to mandate that each college issue an externally audited Report Card on itself. It should include:

• The full projected four-year cost of attendance (subtracting cash financial aid), disaggregated by family income and assets.
• Freshman-to-senior growth in reading, critical thinking, etc., disaggregated by student’s high school record.
• 4- and 6-year graduation rates, disaggregated by student’s high school record.
• The results of a student satisfaction survey
• The summary of the accreditation visiting team report.
• The % of graduates who are professionally employed within one year of graduation, broken down by major.

Of course, such a College Report Card would empower students to choose their college wisely or even to decide that, for that person, a wiser choice would be a short program at a community college for example in robotics repair or cheffing, the military, or on-the-job training, for example, at the elbow of a journeyman electrician or an ethical and successful small business owner.

Bringing transparency to how much value-added a college provides for all the time, money, and opportunity cost would bring another important benefit: It would pressure colleges that add too little value for all that time and money, which according to the research, is MOST colleges, to improve. (Currently, colleges experience no such pressure.

Mandating a College Report Card would help colleges become the national treasure they claim they are, help our students to get an education that will make them more thoughtful human beings, better citizens, and more employable. That, in turn, would help America remain vibrant in our ever tougher global economy.

* * * * *

HERE is a link to a four-page proposal for a College Report Card.

And HERE is a link to a College Report Card that students and families might use to help pick a college.

Reinventions: Undergraduate Education

Here's a video of my six-point plan for reinventing undergraduate education.

For those who'd rather just read the transcript of the video, it appears below.

REINVENTIONS
Undergraduate Education
by Marty Nemko
(transcript of the above video)

In this video, I present my proposal for how to reinvent higher education. From Time to the New York Times, higher education is finally being called to task for its ever worsening value added. Students and families spend fortunes and so many don't graduate. A major study out of the University of Chicago, Academically Adrift, found that almost half of those who graduate grow so little in writing, reading, critical thinking and so on. So many of those students are able to only find a job they could have gotten without college. But these criticisms of higher ed ar e usually accompanied by only the vaguest or palliative of suggestions for improvement. Here, I present a six-point plan for higher education's reinvention:

1. Colleges should be required to post a Report Card on itself. If each car tire is required to mold its treadline, temperature, and traction rates into its sidewall, should not colleges, one of our largest and most important purchases be required to post their graduation rates and learning growth amounts, broken down by student high school record? Shouldn't colleges be required to report the percentage of graduates within each major who are professionallly employed within a year of graduation? A substantive college report card prominent posted would enable students, counselors and families not only to pick the right college but to decide, if for that student, a wiser path might be a community college, an apprenticeship, a military, or on-the-job training, for example, learning how to run your own business at the elbow of a successful and ethical entrepreneur. After all, according to the U.S. Dept of Education, of the 200,000 students that so-called four year colleges admit each year, fewer than 1 in four graduate even if given 8 1/2 years. And of those who graduate, most do so with a very low GPA in a major unlikely to excite many employers, for example, sociology, physical education, or art rather than computer science, accounting, or engineering. A College Report Card is the least we can do--ensure informed consent for the consumer.

2. There should be two categories of professors: teaching professors and research professors. Universities find it more economical to have their professors do both, but the skills and interests required to teach the typical undergraduate are orthogonal to, the opposite of what's required to do publishable research. Teaching faculty should be selected and promoted on how well they can be transformative, inspirational instructors of undergraduates , not how well they can write a research proposal on the arcana that gets funded, of interest mainly to a few dozen other theoretically oriented PhDs.

3. All existing teaching faculty should be required to successfully complete a teaching bootcamp, consisting in part of master instructors videoing each participant teaching and providing individualized feedback. Any teaching faculty member who subsequently has a year of average student evaluations below a 4 on a 5 point scale should be required to successfully complete a remedial teaching bootcamp.

4 General education courses are the 10 to 15 courses that most colleges require to help ensure a well-rounded education, but which most students view as "courses to get out of the way." While it's true that life should be informed by the wisdom embeddeed in typical general educartion courses such as philosophy and literature, in fact, most young people simply cannot be convinced of that, so poor attendance, cheating, inattention, and minimal learning is more the norm than the exception. Rather than going through the motions, realism dictates that we revise the general education curriculum to focus more on issues of more immediate concern to the vast majority of undergraduates: public speaking, financial literacy, practical problem solving, entrepreneurship, practical ethics, interpersonal communication, career-finding and job-landing, etc.

5. Use Dream-Team-Taught courses. Especially for widely taught and difficult courses such as calculus and organic chemstry, the U.S. Dept of Education should fund development of highly-interactive, immersive courses team-taught on video, disseminated online by a dream team of the nation's finest instructors. The courses would be made available free to all colleges. This would save the colleges money, enabling them, hopefully, to lower tuition, and more important would ensure that all students from the most poorly funded college to Harvard would receive world-class instructor. A university could elect to provide a professor or teaching assistant on site to provide the personal touch or allow students to complete the dream-team-taught courses at home, thereby saving the need for classroom buildings and/or allowing colleges to serve more students with minimal additional expense.

6. the notion of the traditional country-club-like campus is obsolte. Not only does it contribute to enormous cost, it is to the green values espoused on most universities. I believe that most campuses could be shrunk by 80% with little or no loss in quality of experience, perhaps even a gain. In addition to the aforementioned dream-team-taught courses, which students could complete at home, in-person classes could be taught in professors' homes that sit vacant while professors trek to campus, try to find parking spots on campus, etc. Instead of building expensive swimming pools, big, expensive shrub-filled campuses, utlize pools at with local community centers, hotels, and so on. Campuses could be quite compact, consisting of just a streamlined administration building to accommodate a streamlined administration, a student activities building for student club meetings, concerts, and so on, and a reduced number of classroom buildings.

To summarize, the six points in my plan to reinvent higher education are: 1. Require all colleges to prominently post a College Report Card. 2. Have separate faculty for teaching and for research. 3. Require all faculty to successfully complete a teaching bootcamp. 4. Revise general education courses to reflect the content that most undergraduates are open to learning. 5. Use Dream-team-taught courses: Courses taught on interactive video, disseminated online by a dream-team of the nation's finest instructors, with an in-person teaching assistant locally to provide the human touch. 5. Streamline the enormously costly country-club campuses, which would enable colleges to cut student costs of attending dramatically. That's my reinvention of higher education. Thanks for watching. I'm Marty Nemko.

Reinventions: Bolder Approaches to the Big Issues

Reinventions

Bolder approaches to job creation, health care, education, religion, our election system, our economic system, psychotherapy, the gender wars, climate change, the gene pool, the meaning of life, and 30 other pillars of society.

a book proposal

by Marty Nemko

Many Americans believe the U.S. is in permanent decline. A just-released New York Times/CBS News poll finds that 39 percent of respondents believe “the current economic downturn is part of a long-term permanent decline.” That on the top of a June, 2011 CNN poll that found that 48 percent of Americans believe another Great Depression is very or somewhat likely.

And Americans aren't confident that the proposed solutions will help much. A just-released Time poll finds that 62 percent of Americans think the U.S. is headed in the wrong direction. Perhaps that's not surprising in light of the failure of the most recent round of remedies: Despite massive corporate bailouts, government stimulus spending, and two rounds of quantitative easing (QE1 and QE2) the un- and underemployment rate is higher than before. And education, the supposed magic pill, has turned out to be less than magical. For decades now, the U.S. has ranked #1 or 2 in per-capita education spending yet continues to lag in the most recent international comparison, tied for 23rd with Poland, while Shanghai, China, which entered the comparisons this year for the first time and spends far less than the U.S. per capita on education, ranked #1.

Such solutions are inadequate in part, ironically, because of our democratic process. Policies are adopted only after a diverse array of experts, the public, legislators, and political leaders have all embraced it. While that ensures broad buy-in, it tends to create tepid recommendations--that on which nearly everyone can agree, often a lowest common denominator.

There is need for bolder solutions. Unfettered by having to obtain consensus, in the proposed Work, I propose a bolder solution for each of 40 keys to the thriving society. Perhaps like many authors, my goal is no less than to trigger a national conversation that examines--forgive the cliche--out-of-the-box approaches to stemming what appears to be America's permanent decline, especially versus China and India.

I envision a slim volume: Each of the 40 reinventions will be presented in just enough detail to explain the concept, its benefits, and to counter likely objections.

Content

These blog posts provide a sense of my writing style and the content I'll present in the book:

A Blueprint for Permanently Creating U.S. Jobs: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2010/04/blueprint-for-permanently-solving-us.html

Elections Reinvented: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2011/02/reinvented-election-system.html.

The College Report Card: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2010/11/college-report-card-key-to-higher-ed.html

Religion Reinvented: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2008/08/spiritual-atheism.html

Do What You Love and Starve? http://www.martynemko.com/articles/do-what-you-love-and-starve_id1380

Education Reinvented: http://www.martynemko.com/articles/blueprint-for-reinventing-education_id1595

Higher Education Reinvented: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2011/06/reinventions-undergraduate-education.html

Simplism: A new alternative to capitalism and socialism: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2011/06/simplism-new-alternative-to-capitalism.html

Are We So Sure Democracy is the Best Policy? http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2011/02/are-we-so-sure-democracy-is-best-way.html

Health care: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2010/11/nemkocare-how-id-do-health-care-reform.html

New Israel: A solution to the Palestinian-Israeli problem: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-israel-solution-to-palestinian.html

The Un-MBA: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2011/04/while-i-am-critical-of-many-aspects-of.html

Family is Overrated: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2008/09/family-is-overrated.html

Taxation Reinvented: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2011/02/how-id-reinvent-taxation.html

My Plan for Closing the Achievement Gap: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2009/07/my-plan-to-close-achievement-gap.html

The One-Week Job Search: http://www.martynemko.com/articles/one-week-job-search_id1374

A Better Way to Gain Willpower: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2009/02/top-10-ways-to-gain-willpower.html

General Education Reinvented: http://www.martynemko.com/articles/generaledorg-reinvented-online-general-education-program_id1597

Career Counseling Reinvented: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2010/07/career-counseling-reinvented.html

Climate Change: http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=nemko+%22Climate+change%22

In Defense of Men: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2010/06/beginning-of-men.html

The Meaning of Life Reinvented: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2011/05/toward-life-well-led-meter.html

My Top Ten Ways to Improve the World:

http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2010/12/my-top-ten-ways-to-improve-world.html

Other Reinventions to be included in the book:

Parenting

Housing

A proposal for safer, less expensive nuclear energy.

The case for and plan for transforming our product-based to a service-based economy.

A better alternative to mass transit: the shared-ownership auto-piloted hydrogen/solar-powered sky car.

Next-generation desalinization as the solution to our water problems.

Social networking reinvented--toward building real connection.

Genetically enhancing human potential...ethically.

Ending the gender wars ...to both sexes' advantage

Psychotherapy reinvented

5 to 10 more, to be determined.

Author credentials

Marty Nemko holds a Ph.D. specializing in the evaluation of innovative programs from the University of California, Berkeley and subsequently taught in Berkeley's graduate school. He has been a consultant to Consumer Reports, 15 college presidents, and dozens of top for- and nonprofit executives. His previous five books have sold 250,000 copies.

Author platform

He's in his 24th year as host of a weekly hour-long show on KALW-FM (NPR-San Francisco.) He has been a repeat guest on such major shows as Talk of the Nation and The Today Show. He's written for and been quoted in publications ranging from Time to the New York Times to the Los Angeles Times. His blog and site attract a half million visitors a year. Toastmasters International names one non-member its Northern California Speaker of the Year. Marty Nemko was a recent winner.

Marketing plan

With Nemko's ability as a speaker (see above) a media tour and live speaking tour, for example, on college campuses would seem to be cost-effective. The tour might be made additionally effective by the discussions of the Reinventions be debates with local public intellectuals, for example, the president of the colleges at which I'd be speaking.

Nemko will make a YouTube video of each Reinvention, and roll them out (in video and text versions) one per week on appropriate places on the Internet, noting that it is an excerpt from the book, Reinventions. For example, the proposal for reinventing undergraduate education will be posted as a letter to the editor on leading websites for higher educators and for students. Of course, each Reinvention video and its transcript will be submitted to major media outlets: with particular follow-up with producers of shows on which Nemko has previously appeared: Talk of the Nation, The Today Show, 20-20, CNN, etc. Each video will also be sent to major print, TV, and online outlets. Plus, each Reinvention will be posted on Nemko's Facebook, Twitter, Quora, blog, and website, which attracts a half million visitors a year, as well presented one per week on his National Public Radio-San Francisco show.

Timed to occur during the weeks preceding the 2012 presidential election, Nemko will disseminate as above, a special video; My Nine Worries and Their Solutions: The Stump Speech I'd Give if I Were Running for President: http://www.martynemko.com/articles/my-nine-worries-stump-speech-id-give-if-i-were-running-for-president_id1603

He will conduct press conferences on a few of the most newsworthy reinventions:

A bolder plan to create jobs

A bolder plan for reinventing health care

A bolder plan for reinventing education.

A series of contests would be held in which the public is challenged to come up with a better reinvention of, for example, education. Prizes could simply be books from the publisher's catalog. Worst case, the contests would be publicized only on Nemko's radio show, blog, etc, but an attempt would be made to get a major media outlet (e.g., Economist.com, USNews.com, where Nemko is Contributing Editor, etc, to co-sponsor the contests and host them on their site.

What Colleges and Graduate Schools Don't Want You to Know

A couple of days ago, on an impulse, I simply turned on my webcam and started sharing with you what I think you should know about college and graduate school that the universities don't want you to know.

On viewing it, I liked its candor but didn't like its being disorganized. So today, I recorded a more organized but less spontaneous version.

I apologize for rushing --I was noticing that I'd have a hard time getting it finished within YouTube's 15-minute limit. In fact, despite my rushing, my very last word did get cut off.

If you prefer to read the text, HERE it is. Actually, I recommend that--it's faster and I'm not good looking enough for you to want to watch me for 15 minutes--and the text includes that last word. ;-)

One more apology. One viewer said it's conceited of me to mention my credentials. I did so only because, if the video is posted elsewhere, viewers should have a basis for assessing the speaker's credibility.

In any event, if you prefer to watch the video than read the text, here's the video:

My Unscripted Talk: The Case Against College

I've just talked into my webcam for 13 minutes making the case against college (and graduate school.)

I like it because it is an unvarnished presentation of my thoughts, with no glitz. Its honesty and substantiveness seem to shine through.

On the other hand, its lack of polish (not to mention my not particularly looking into the camera) makes it less entertaining and less tightly structured than if it were a prepared speech.

I figure it doesn't hurt to share it with you.

It presents:

• A case against college and graduate school
• Who should and shouldn't consider attending
• Questions you should ask of a college you're considering attending
• A plea that government mandate all colleges to post a substantive College Report Card on itself, as I've written about previously.
  

A Proposal: Each College Must Post a College Report Card on Itself

In preparation for meetings with legislators, I've developed a proposal for mandating that all colleges post a College Report Card on themselves.

Here is the Executive Summary:

Higher education is among the few important purchases that essentially is unregulated, unaccountable, and opaque. That causes great harm to students and society. The research has become unambiguous that American higher education does a far worse job of education than what the higher education marketing and lobbying machines would have us believe.

This proposal recommends that all colleges be required or at least encouraged to prominently post on its website a substantive College Report Card. That would enable students to make a more informed choices of college. Perhaps even more important, it would encourage colleges to reallocate resources from ego-driven new buildings, bloated administrations, lush landscaping, and low-impact research to efforts to improve student growth and in turn the quality of the American workforce, citizenry, and the nation as we face ever greater challenges.

HERE is the link to the proposal. It's four pages long. (My wife says it's the best thing I've ever written.)

America's Most Overrated Product: Higher Education. (A talk at Santa Clara University)

I just gave a talk at Santa Clara University that I believe makes the most compelling case I've yet made for why higher education is, indeed, America's most overrated product.

If that's insufficient to motivate you to watch or listen to it, many attendees told me that in addition to being compelling, it was entertaining, and passion-filled.

Here's the video of it: http://ammsweb.scu.edu/webcasts/126/20110401-173001-Room126/index.htm#. Note: it starts at 1:08:03. It runs about an hour, not counting the Q&A.

The audio of the presentation is also accessible from that webpage but the starting place of the presentation is hard to find for reasons not worth explaining, so I recommend you listen to or download the audio from here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3881916/Marty%20Nemko%204.1.2011.MP3

Outline of my talk at U.C. Berkeley: "America's Most Overrated Product: Higher Education"

Here are my notes for the talk I gave at Berkeley yesterday, "America's Most Overrated Product: Higher Education, how to reinvent it and create a great career for yourself in the process."

They videorecorded it and said they'll email it to me in a week, at which point, I'll upload it so you can watch it.

Here are the not-fully-self-explanatory notes I used for the presentation:

Guido Sarducci: Five Minute University. In five minutes you learn what the average college graduate remembers five years after he or she is out of school. It may be a joke but reflects a real problem.

In fact, value added is terrible. See Spellings Report or my Chronicle of Higher Education article, "America's Most Overrated Product: Higher Education."

The more prestigious the worse the value-added! And when you think about it, it's not surprising: how faculty is trained, hired, promoted. Class size. Political bias--Robert Reich's big public lie. Schumpeter: "The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie." The biggest problem: profs value their arcana over their secular-sacred obligation to fairly and carefully educate students, at a prestigious college, the best and brightest, with greatest potential to abet society.

The true graduation rates.

The true fully-employed rates.

And today, with true 4- and certainly 5 year sticker price over $100K at Berkeley, $200K at designer-label privates.

If a physician didn't disclose that an expensive and time consuming treatment had poor prospects for success, he'd be sued. Yet colleges not only don't get sued, they're rewarded with more taxpayer and tuition money.

What universities really care about: research and prestige. It was so clear to me as student, faculty, consultant to prezes. "Students are a necessary evil." Evidence:

If universities cared about students it would provide:

Maximally useful content not arcana

Ideologically diverse faculty not one where all worthy ideas are deemed to reside left of center.

A separate track of faculty based on ability to be a highly effective if not transformative undergraduate instructor. (It's a self-serving canard that good researchers make the best undergraduate instructors.)

Superprofs (Immersive, interactive courses team-taught online by dream teams of the nation's most transformational instructors drawn from in and outside academe.

A teaching/mentoring bootcamp which all teaching faculty must successfully complete.

Mentoring by faculty and administrators, not mere academic advising by minimally trained peer advisors.

An average class size of 15, paid for by the money saved from much streamlined administrations and modest landscaping and not spending fortunes on unnecessary buildings like the country-club-like RSF. The university wastes fortunes: e.g., $3 million on Bain instead of using its highly paid people in all UC, including Systemwide Budget Office plus Haas faculty. $300,000 for Jennifer Granholm and hubby to teach 2 classes?

Private apartments, not 2-3-to-a-room dorms: the ACLU would sue if they housed welfare recipients that way.

Prominently post a College Report Card: disaggregated graduation rate, price of the degree, value-added in reading, writing, critical thinking, quantitative reasoning, oral communication, leadership), % professionally employed within six months of graduation, the accreditation report, student satisfaction survey results. Instead colleges obfuscate with Madison-Avenue-like brochures and websites.

Why the govt or media doesn't demand college's to be accountable as they do with drugs, tires, even food labels. Reasons: colleges make students more liberal, and the higher ed lobby is very powerful. That's why, for example, student loans are the only loan not dischargeable through bankruptcy.

Making the most of Berkeley

One-on-one--e.g., independent studies. Ask respected people for advice.

Carefully select your instructors. Better a good prof in a not seemingly-interesting subject than vice-versa.

Prioritize learning what you care about, even if your grades suffer.

Ask questions.

Find true ideological diversity

Seek leadership opportunities--join or start a club, project

Make the most of your career center.

Activism

Join ASUC Senate. Fight for a College Report Card, more ideologically diverse speakers.

Become a student member of the Academic Senate

Get a work-study job in the president's office.

Refuse to donate to dear old Cal--explain why.

Get U.S. News's rankings to add value-added to its ranking criteria.

Invite the media to your picketing U.C's development office. Urge people to not donate to Cal until it posts a full and honest College Report Card.

Careers aimed at reinventing higher education

Become a higher education reporter.

Work for USOE, WASC, Consumers Union, PIRG, etc. entities that could hold colleges more accountable.

Create a true consumer advocate website for college shoppers.

Start Utopia U.