Marty Nemko Talks (and Jokes) on The Daily Show about Alternatives to College

Last night, I was on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

What was amazing to me is that they recorded five hours of interview with me about higher education's deceptive practices and about alternatives to college. During those five hours, I made a total of three jokes. All three made it into the segment.

Of course, I don't mind at all. The creators of The Daily Show are masters at making serious messages funny without trivializing them.

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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.

It's Time to Hold Colleges Accountable

The Occupy Wall Streeters are certainly justified in railing against their student loans. College recruitment efforts manipulate students into thinking for the enormous time and money, they'll learn a lot and be professionally employable. The truth is far different.

Perhaps most insulting, the powerful higher education lobby has pressured the government to make student loans the ONLY loan that cannot be discharged through bankruptcy. Indeed it is time to rage against the higher education machine.

My latest Washington Post Big Idea column argues that we must shine a light on what colleges actually do: that is, to prominently post a Report Card with such items as:

• What percent of freshmen graduate in four years, broken down by high school record?
• What percent of graduates are, within six months of graduation, professionally employed, broken down by major and high school record?
• How much do students grow in critical thinking from freshman to senior year, disaggregated by high school record?

Not only would that inform consumers, it would likely finally pressure colleges into spending less on ego-driven new buildings, fat administrations, and silly-research-focused professors and more on transformational undergraduate instructors, mentoring, and a career center that actually is helpful. It might even push colleges to replace lackluster lectures with courses taught on video by a dream team of the world's most transformational instructors.

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.

Higher Education's Marketing Army Launches Counterattack

I knew it couldn't be long before the higher education marketing army started to counterattack the media's recent, powerful excoriations of colleges for the horrendously low value they provide.

Higher education's first major salvo is a study reported in the New York Times, authored by Anthony Carnevale (pictured right,) one of higher education's long-standing insiders and apologists. He argues, deceptively, for higher education's value while skirting inconvenient truths about the hundreds of thousands of weak students admitted to so-called four-year colleges.

As I've reported previously (probably ad nauseam at this point--here's a link to an NPR interview and article,) most such students don't graduate even if they're given eight years. And because of the elitist, real-world-irrelevant arcana so heavily taught in higher education, even many students who graduate grow nearly not at all in reading, writing, critical thinking, mathematical reasoning, etc., nor become employed in a job they wouldn't be qualified for without college. And of course, there's the opportunity costs: what the students could have been doing if they hadn't been spending the enormous sums of money, time, and assaults to their self-esteem in college, for example, in an apprenticeship program or learning entrepreneurship at the elbow of a successful and ethical entrepreneur.

As I've also written previously, the federal government should mandate that all colleges prominently post an externally audited report card on themselves disclosing key information that prospective students can use to decide whether a college, indeed any college, is--given their high school record--the wisest post-high-school choice. And of course, colleges' being forced to report their shockingly bad product would pressure them to improve and perhaps become the national treasure that the higher education marketing machine has led us to believe it is.

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.

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:

Education: America's Most Overrated Product

For two decades, I've written books and articles and given speeches documenting that education is overrated. Education generates surprisingly small benefits relative to its costs, time, and opportunity costs.

I've been particularly critical of higher education and of education as a tool for lifting people out of poverty. I've felt like a lone voice.

But suddenly there's been a spate of research and articles in prestigious publications that have come to the same conclusion.

I've occasionally blogged about education here but more often, I've simply tweeted about it, usually providing a link to one of those recent articles. Here are the tweets I've written on education since March 1.

The first group of tweets is on K-12 education. The second is on college & graduate school.

On K-12 Education

U.S. is #2 in per capita spending on education http://j.mp/eb0OeY, yet ranks #23 in achievement: http://j.mp/gXWkcT

The Atlantic: The Failure of American Schools: http://t.co/pTo3ciL

Promising educ. programs are Page 1 news & on 60 Min, but page B17 when they turn out to be far less (e.g., KIPP, or Michelle Rhee's bogus "miracle" in DC.)

Education cries out for reinvention: replace the mammoth arcana with immersive, simulation-rich opps to build thinking, writing, etc.

A smarter, simpler way to start a school: http://bit.ly/eg4Kxf

What I said to a school of profoundly gifted teens. (Yes, there's relevance in it for everyone): http://bit.ly/eUNUJ1

On Higher Education

One summary of the case against college: http://bit.ly/keoUiQ

Title of a current commentary in Marketwatch: "College is a Scam: "http://j.mp/m9f27z

Chronicle of Higher Ed: A devastating warning to weak students choosing college over other options: http://j.mp/lTZmjg

The unmasking of higher ed accelerates. This time it's New York magazine: A "degree is essentially worthless." http://shar.es/H7c5F

NYT: 36% of students' thinking/writing scores rise 1 point or less on 100-point scale from 4 yrs of college! .http://j.mp/mK8Gpn

Yet another ridiculing of higher education's poor value, this time from the world's best bond valuer: Bill Gross: http://bit.ly/jyKNw4

L.A. Times Op-Ed: Colleges have abandoned responsibility for shaping students' academic development: http://j.mp/iPMY6s

Title of a CNN op-ed today: "College is a Waste of Time." http://j.mp/iAMfIb

Despite a libertarian bias & some hype, a compelling video indictment of higher ed's lack of value: http://inflation.us/videos.html

The six most important things you must UNLEARN from your college education: http://j.mp/l3lwno

Pew: % of college presidents that think U.S. higher ed is best in the world: 9%. % that think it will be so 10 yrs hence: 7%.

Pew: 58% of college prezes say public HS students less prepared than a decade ago. Duh--MOST colleges now admit nearly all.

Thomas Sowell: Today's college/graduate educ makes people LESS employable & creates ideologues, NOT clear thinkers: http://j.mp/iJjn8K

College cost has gone wild while its ROI declines yet the media nor govt says, "Cut your bloat!" when colleges scream for yet more tax dollars. Why?!

Law grads face huge debt: $69K public $106 private PER YEAR! x 3 years!!. Then "extensive, grueling" job search..http://j.mp/j8vxdd

USA Today: Gross oversupply of science PhDs: Only 13% get tenure-track U jobs, and there are few corp jobs: http://j.mp/gDrsFR

WSJ: Yet more on why getting an MBA may be ill-advised: http://on.wsj.com/dHJ78Z

Unlike what the colleges try to manipulate us into believing, here's how average folks CAN find good jobs: http://t.co/CnBp8iU

Don't like your college financial aid "award?" Appeal.

Black 4-year grad rate @ Cal State U's is just 6%!! Should we provide yet more support or redirect weak apps to 2-yr coll, OTJ trng, etc?.

The Economist joins chorus: Higher Ed is a Bubble: the degree, the education, even the vaunted research: http://j.mp/erVzli

CNN: A record high 85%(!) of college grads are feeling forced, jobless, to move back in with their parents. http://j.mp/c24P3v

15 well-paying careers requiring just a two-year degree: http://j.mp/eAsJxg

The College Report Card: A great tool for deciding which college to choose: http://bit.ly/fdQwZi

PayPal founder Peter Thiel: We’re in a Bubble... and It’s Higher Education. tcrn.ch/fRdMz7

Forbes/#CCAP: Govt upping finan aid moves $ from taxpayer to colleges, NOT to students--colleges simply up tuition: http://j.mp/mGmBqy

Forbes/#CCAP: Your tuition pays for things other than your educ: e.g., professors' arcane research. http://j.mp/i76uOb

WSJ: Great piece by Dilbert's Scott Adams: Most students need to learn how to run a business http://on.wsj.com/eoaLdT

I just wrote what I think is my best article on how to become successfully self-employed: an un-MBA: http://bit.ly/h63l3a

To dramatically improve higher ed, require all colleges to post my College Report Card on itself; http://bit.ly/fGBX8k

Harvard study: BA nor MA ups teacher effectiveness. Per my recent tweets, it's ever clearer that educ is overrated. http://bit.ly/gGAdSE

I'm watching professor Rufus Fears on Churchill http://cs.pn/hP5hG7 You can cherry-pick world's best instructors on YouTube, TED, CSpan.org.

Washington Post: it may be wise to skip higher ed: wapo.st/9S9Yti. Higher ed cries out for reinvention.

And the exposing of higher ed continues. This time it's in The Atlantic: http://bit.ly/hxetEC

Finally: U.S. senator demands law schools to stop lying about their employment stats; abovethelaw.com/2011/03/watch-…

Major authoritative new study says that students learn little or nothing at college. http://yhoo.it/grcHNn

My lecture at U.C. Berkeley: America's Most Overrated Product: Higher Education: wp.me/pQChF-P4

Yet another piece on why college is overrated http://su.pr/8B2Ni7

Finally, HERE is an article of mine, America's Most Overrated Product: Higher Education, which first appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education and was republished in a number of other places. I like to think it encouraged the current examination of higher education, which had been America's most underexamined icon.

I want to thank readers of this blog, for example, Peter Christensen and Mark Drevno for sending me a number of the cited articles. I apologize for not recalling the other contributors' names.

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

Crazy U: One Savvy Dad's Experience with College Inc.

The new book, Crazy U, tells of a savvy dad's navigating the minefield of trying to make an informed choice about a college and negotiating the unnecessarily labyrinthine admission process. (The more complicated they make it, the more it seems desirable.) In the process, he provides yet more evidence of that higher education is America's most overrated and most deceptively marketed product. HERE is a review of that book, which provides an excellent summary of it.

A Distillation of Recent Articles on Higher Education's Dubious Value

The spate of articles questioning higher education's value has accelerated and is synthesized in this article just published in The Atlantic. Subsequently, I was just interviewed on that topic for a forthcoming Newsweek article, which the reporter hopes will be a cover story.

But higher education's media, marketing, and lobbying machines are prodigious and so I believe this surprisingly sleazy industry will change only if a fully-disclosing College Report Card, prominently placed on each college's website is required for accreditation or by the federal government. I describe such a Report Card HERE.

Even if the U.S. audits the Report Cards for misstatements, as Senator Boxer accuses law schools, some institutions will cheat in reporting the data. Nonetheless, I believe the Report Cards will contain sufficient valid data to empower consumers to more wisely choose a college and, in turn, force the colleges to improve the quality of what they provide for the enormous sums of money, four to eight years of time, and the opportunity cost.

U.S. Senator Calls Law Schools Liars

For 20 years now, I've been accusing American higher education of sleaziness from its recruitment techniques to poor quality of education, to misleading about its students' employment prospects.

A few other education consumer advocates and I have long tried to get the media to pay attention, but to no avail. Higher education's PR, marketing, and lobbying machine is second only to the teacher's union lobby.

But finally, there appears to be a glimmer of hope, from a source the media might actually pay attention to: one of America's most liberal senators. See this press release from Barbara Boxer:

BOXER CALLS ON AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION TO ENSURE ACCURATE AND TRANSPARENT DATA REPORTING BY LAW SCHOOLS

Recent Reports Suggest Misleading Post-Graduation Employment and Salary Information Used to Skew Influential National Rankings of Law Schools

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) today called on the American Bar Association (ABA) to improve its oversight of admissions and post-graduation information reported by law schools across the country.

Boxer’s letter follows news reports that have highlighted several law schools allegedly using misleading data to enhance a school’s position in the competitive and influential U.S. News and World Report annual rankings. Such inaccurate post-graduation employment and salary data can mislead prospective students into believing they will easily be able to find work as an attorney and pay off their loans despite a sharp decline in post-graduation full-time employment.

The video of my talk at Berkeley: America's Most Overrated Product: Higher Education

HERE is the video of the first section of my talk last week at Berkeley, America's Most Overrated Product: Higher Education. Most or all of the other six parts are accessible on the right side of that page.

I've now been asked to give that talk again at Santa Clara University on April 1. It's a free public event. For info, click HERE.