Instead of increasing financial aid, two states are decreasing college tuition. A quote:
Of course, current colleges (at current rates!) are not necessarily delivering much bang for the buck either: According to Richard Arum and Josipha Roksa, authors of the 2011 book Academically Adrift, 36 percent of college students fail to “show any significant improvement over four years” as measured by the Collegiate Learning Assessment.
In my view, expressed frequently here, the higher ed bubble is a result of the democratization of the higher ed industry. Colleges, designed for scholars, compete for "customers," standards drop, and prices rise to whatever level the market, subsidies, and student loans can bear. A degree is a mass market product, which means that the customer must be kept happy. That represents a complete reversal of historical approaches.
I spoke with a recent state college grad who told me that he never read a book in four years. He told me he mainly got by on what he had learned in high school. I think many people are not aware of how low expectations have dropped outside of the elite schools and non-elite STEM programs.
There must be thousands of profs out there who are teaching well-below their levels of competence due to the requirement to dumb down their efforts.
Underlying all of these issues is a simple fact: learning is not something that can be "delivered," something you "get" or can buy. The life of the mind cannot be bought. It can be ignited, but not bought. A degree can be bought today, but its economic value today as a mass-market product, and its price, are out of sync.
