Party Schools Exposed

Why it takes college students 6 years to graduate

One of the dirtiest little secrets in party school land is that it takes the average college student six years to graduate from a “four-year college.” The main reason for this is that neither students nor colleges are in any hurry for the party to end on time. For students, extending the vacation cruise by a few extra years before they have to go to work sounds like a great deal. Meanwhile, administrators figure why not soak the kids and their parents for another 50 percent bonus in tuition income?

 

The students I advised often told me that taking a full load of classes was way too much work, so they would sign up for only four classes instead of five. When I pointed out that they would be paying the same tuition rate, but getting much less for the money, there was no real concern. Just put it on my bill, they said. Of course, taking four classes instead of five over eight semesters, added up to an entire extra year of school.

 

An amazing number of students also dropped out of classes. It wasn’t unusual for seven or eight students out of 22 to drop out during the semester. The college made this very easy. You could actually drop a class right up until a week before the end of the semester by filling in a half-page form and paying a $10 fee. (That’s right – you have to PAY to drop a class – they get you coming and going!) So even students who started out with a full load ended up taking only two or three courses per semester.

 

Then, of course, there were the students who failed. You would think it would be impossible for students to flunk when they could drop out the week before the end of classes.  But there were always students who thought that a miracle would occur the last week or that they could beg some “extra credit” from the teacher. These were the students who didn’t do math very well and thought that grades of zero, zero, zero and zero could be remedied by getting a 70 on the final exam.

 

But the college didn’t do much about the problem either. Many classes that were required for graduation were not offered every semester. This meant that students who needed the class to graduate often had to wait a semester or two for just one class. To graduate in four years requires a lot of planning and organization, things that many Millennials seriously lack. When I first started teaching, the college would hold classes for as few as five students, but they don’t do that any more.

 

One could also argue that by making it so easy to drop a class the college was actually encouraging students to drop classes, thereby prolonging their stay and increasing the tuition well beyond the minimal four years. So, like many things at subprime colleges, it was administrators and students both thinking they were getting the best of each other. Lazy students spreading out their classes over six years so they could spend most of their time getting drunk thought they had gamed the system, but the administrators, who were collecting a 50 percent bonus on tuition were really having the last laugh.

Close to the tipping point for college tuition

Tough questions are being asked as a result of the global economic meltdown. As states dip deeply into the red, they are slashing their support for higher education. Some public colleges have reacted to this by freezing their hiring and construction programs and some college presidents have taken pay cuts.

 

But most public colleges have reacted to state aid cuts the way they have for a decade: raising student tuition to make up the difference. Some colleges have already announced double digit tuition increases for 2009. Remember that’s in addition to tuition costs that were already increasing at two and three times the inflation rate, higher than health care or gasoline.

 

What this is doing, of course, is creating a huge “tuition bubble.” Parents are so convinced that a college degree is the secret to financial success that they seem willing to pay any cost to buy their children a degree. At some point, of course, they are going to be forced to look at the truth: a degree from a subprime college is nearly worthless in the job market. College has been dumbed down to elementary school standards and grades have been inflated so that almost everyone gets an A. Employers are aware of this even if parents are not.

 

There are signs this week that we are getting closer to that tipping point.

 

While the Chronicle of Higher Education  continues to paint a rosy picture with applications and deposits up at most colleges, even it reports some disturbing signs. Many colleges, for example, are refusing to share their admissions data, perhaps because they are afraid of starting a panic?

 

The non-academic press, however, is full of reports that parents are beginning to question the high costs. Newspapers and web sites are daring to ask the heretical question: “Is college worth it?”

 

Here’s an example from the heartland: Cincinnati, Ohio. Cost to benefits analysis of a college degree have always shown that college did indeed pay off in terms of future income, but as college costs spiral out of control more and more parents will be asking the question and at some point the balance will shift.

Should students get B's for just showing up?

One out of every three college student say that if they attend most of the classes in a college course they should receive at least a B, according to a new study by Ellen Greenberger, a professor of psychology and social behavior at the University of California at Irvine.

These "entitled students," as Greenberger calls them, think that enrolling in college is similar to going shopping in a mall where the customer is always right. They think they deserve the highest grades for mediocre work and achievement and are ready to scream bloody murder if their grades are too low.

These students are also more likely to engage in cheating, more likely to exploit others, run away from anything that resembles work and display a "narcissistic attitude" toward the college experience.

The study was published in the November issue of the Journal of Youth and Adolescence. There seems to be no link to this article and I could not find a single American newspaper article on it. In Canada, however, the article has set off a fire storm of coverage. Take a look here and here and here.  That brings up some interesting questions. Why is an American study showing anti-intellectual attitudes among American college students ignored here while it is big news in Canada? Again, I suspect this is the media's reluctance to expose the heresy that students aren't really learning very much in college, but I have no evidence of that.

Greenberger and other educators quoted in the Canadian newspapers lay the blame squarely at the feet of the self-esteem movement, which is a very sacred cow in teacher training programs in America, even though there is increasing evidence that it turns out students that feel really good about themselves but are too high on narcissism to take the time to learn anything.

Certainly I had many students like this at Keene State College and it's a major cause of grade inflation. Try giving one of these narcissistic snowflakes a grade less than an A and you are accused to not being a good teacher, not liking them or being unfair, even if they got 40 on the final exam. If you stick to your guns you can expect meetings with the department chair, the dean and even the vice president. Is it any wonder that most teachers simply throw in the towel and give everyone an A? There is absolutely no repercussions if you do that. A completely separate study this week found that half of all the grades given at Brown University last year were A. Clearly A is no longer "excellent" but more like "average."

Are colleges taking kickbacks from health insurers?

By now it should be no surprise that colleges have been accepting kickbacks through their cozy relationship with predatory lenders, but yesterday was the first mention of a new scandal between colleges and those other scoundrels of our time: health insurance companies. 

The New York Times broke the story yesterday and it is still rather sketchy and still under investigation. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is asking for records from a number of colleges. According to the story, the problem is that students who have health insurance provided by their parents are being required to purchase additional health insurance by the colleges. 

The problem, as with the student loan scandal, is the payments that these health insurance make to the colleges in return for the business, are conflicts of interest. Once again, the old idea that colleges put the interest of students first, has come into conflict with the new reality: colleges are businesses that put profit first. 

Although it is really too soon to tell, this scandal would seem to fit right into some of the problems that this blog has reported about colleges that sell students addresses to credit card companies and the cozy relationships with predatory lenders. I'm sure we'll hear a lot more about this in the coming months.  The real problem is that no one really seems to be watching what colleges do with all their billions of tuition money.

Racial hate crimes common on college campuses

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported over the weekend that since the election of Barack Obama racial hate crimes have risen dramatically on college campuses across the country. In fact, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, college campuses are the third most frequent sites of hate crimes, after homes and highways.

Since Nov. 4, campus trees throughout the nation have bloomed with the "strange fruit" of nooses and effigy hangings of our president-elect. At LaSalle University a fraternity was suspended after an off campus fight that began when several black students were assaulted and subjected to racial slurs. Racially-charged graffiti was found at St Joseph's University and racial taunts were made toward black students at LeHigh University.

So what is going on here? Can this be happening among today's college students who were taught racial tolerance, multiculturalism and diversity since they were in diapers?

Typically, according to Melissa Harris-Lacewell, professor of African-American studies at Princeton, college students are viewed as more racially tolerant than the general public, but, on the other hand, "young people lack impulse control, drink heavily and stand around outside."

In his survey of elite American colleges in 2005, Barrett Seaman, author of "Binge," found that "as I traveled around campuses, I heard very few racist, or homophobic remarks or even heard about them."

So is this only a minority that is causing the trouble? The 2008 election was supposed to be the one where college students came out in droves and did their part for democracy. They certainly attracted a lot of attention before the election. But the result? As reported on CNN this morning, the percentage of people in the 18 to 29 age group who voted this year was 19 percent, up exactly ONE PERCENTAGE POINT from 2004. It wasn't so much "rock the vote" as "apathy rules again."

At my local college, Keene State College in New Hampshire, which is 95 percent white, there were so many complaints about racism that the college commissioned a study from the prestigious Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence.  The results were pretty shocking, as you might be able to read here, if it is not blocked. Gee, I wonder why the college doesn't want outsiders to take a look at this!

For the rest of the world, here are some examples of what it had to say: "Both white students and students of color hear racial slurs, ranging from daily for some students and occasionally for others. The slurs these students hear include "nigger", "spic", "chink" and "gook."  Students also described racist comments and jokes they have heard on campus."

Even more incriminating were faculty and staff who told interviewers that "some students (or their parents) choose to attend Keene State because the campus has such a small number of students of color." Wow, so isn't that nice. Maybe they should recruit at KKK rallies. "Come to Keene State ya all, we know how to treat white folks right!" 

 

Are American colleges "failure factories"?

Mark Schneider,a political science professor at SUNY Stony Brook in New York, published a paper last week at the American Enterprise Institute complaining about college graduation rates, which are even lower than high school graduation rates.  

Schneider focuses on 408 four-year colleges that he calls "failure factories" because fewer than a third of their students graduate. This results in a waste of $770 million in taxpayer and tuition money, he wrote, and the problem is worst among minority students.

"Clearly, far too many institutions are failing to graduate many (and in some cases any) of their students," he wrote. "American post-secondary graduation rates are low and the costs of these failure factories to students and the federal government are high."

"Colleges let many students begin who who do not have the skills and talents needed to graduate," he continued, and these high failure rates are not disclosed to incoming students because they are not in the best interest of the school.

The kinds of schools Schneider is describing are obviously not the same ones I have been writing about, although we start with the same premise: too many unqualified high school grads are arriving at college unprepared to do college-level work. At the colleges Schneider describes these students fail to meet the standards and cannot graduate. At the colleges I am describing the standards have been reduced to allow most of the students to graduate.

We agree that colleges and universities need to be held more accountable for their performance. In my book, I suggest that colleges institute a "value added" examination that would measure what students learned between freshman year and senior year.

Why parents should avoid "honors programs"

Even at the worst subprime colleges there are always about 10 percent of students who are well above average. The National Survey of Student Engagement (NESSIE) calls them "fully-engaged" and I call them the one-in-tens.

These intelligent and motivated students who must swim in an ocean of mediocrity would often visit me in my office, where I would listen to their tales of harassment and intimidation from the bedimmed and inebriated majority. I would often ask them why on earth they had not gone to another college. In fact, I urged them to stop wasting their time and go somewhere else.

There were really two basic reasons they gave for attending "college-lite." Either they didn't have the money or they were from the local area and didn't want to move too far away.  Attention parents: This is the WORST decision you can make. If you have a smart kid it's worth the extra cash to send him to a real college. Sending a kid like this to a party school is worse than not sending  her to college at all.

Subprime colleges are aware of this problem as well. But they would never dream of asking the smart kids to transfer to a real college.  Instead many of them have set up "honors programs" to separate them out from the intoxicated clowns who have signed up for a six-year pleasure cruise on the SS Party Barge.

Honors programs assign the one-in-tens to live in their own dorms and attend their own special classes. They might even eat in their own section of the cafeteria. It's as if the honors students have to be quarantined from a communicable disease called "slacker virus." Too much contact and they could be persuaded to join the evil cult.

In primary and secondary schools they call this "tracking," and it is frowned upon in favor of "mainstreaming," with the idea being that the the smart kids will challenge and motivate the slackers.

Setting up a real college inside a subprime college makes a lot of sense if you are a teacher and really want to teach. I can image it must be very rewarding to teach an entire class of students who really want to learn something. How refreshing that would be!

The problem, however, is that by removing all the smart kids you are just making the regular classes even more dumb. No one will ever ask a question. No one will pay attention. I think this is exactly what colleges have in mind when they set up this kind of two-tier system. The regular classes can then be dumbed down even further.  You can show movies every day, set up a keg in the middle of the room and serve pizza and popcorn. Who is going to care? Certainly not the slackers, who will happily enjoy the show while they purchase their diplomas and move on at the end of their allotted six years.  And the college can use the smart classes when they are looking for kids to participate in the academic excellence conference and classes to show to parents on college tours.

Parents, if your kid's college attempts to place her in an "honors program" it's a sign you need to find a better college for your child to attend.

Colleges urged to open their books to the public

Any organization that raises its prices at two or three times the inflation rate should probably have a good answer to the question "What on earth do you do with all that cash?"

So far, colleges have gotten away with endless tuition increases without an adequate answer. As long as the customers (parents and students) are willing to go deeply into debt to pay the outrageously high price, why should we tell the schmucks anything?

A group of college administrators meeting this week in Chicago, however, are concerned that with the current meltdown of the economy, parents are going to raise more and more questions about whether the costs are worth it. If you have a subscription to the Chronicle of Higher Education, you can read the story about this here. Otherwise, let me paraphrase.

Budget transparency, the thing that all public organizations are supposed to strive for, "will be difficult," the article states because "universities have long sought to keep some of their costs away from the prying eyes of lawmakers and competitors in higher education."

John V, Lombardi, president of LSU, said among the things they hide are the ways undergraduate tuition (the stuff that parents and students go into hock to pay) is used to finance "expensive research facilities."

Elizabeth Hoffman, Iowa State University's provost, said universities should "fight back" by stressing their "non-educational virtues" such as injection of money into state economies, student life offerings and entertainment on campuses."

Wow! For a group of supposedly smart people, they seem to be clueless about how this sounds to the average parent who is going into hock to pay the soaring tuition bills. Do they really think these parents give a rat's ass about research facilities, state economies and entertainment on campus?

Listen folks, here is what the public is saying:

"College costs too much. You need to do more with less and put a cap on those costs to keep the price down. What are you doing to keep the price down?"

The answer, at most colleges, is nothing. Why reduce the price when parents will always pay the freight no matter how high it climbs? As a former insider, let me explain. Most of the price increase goes to two items: constructing elaborate buildings to lure even more students to the campus and creating endless numbers of administrative jobs such as assistant deans, assistant vice presidents and directors for thing like public events, student life, diversity, etc. Nothing is going to change unless parents step in and demand answers to where all that money is going.

Students who drink to pass out are "idiots"

The 47 percent of college students who meet the criteria of binge drinkers include a smaller group who purposely drink themselves into unconsciousness, where they are referred to as "furniture" by their fellow students who often take the opportunity to write on them with magic markers while they are unconscious.

I have often heard these students brag about how "awesome" it was to spend the weekend in alcohol-induced oblivion, while other students assume the person is in need to help and callthe local ambulance. In Keene, New Hampshire, where I live,  transporting unconscious Keene State College students to the hospital is the largest single activity of the local ambulance drivers. And the college refuses to pay one cent of the cost for this service.

A new report from the Indianapolis Star this week based on a report from the Alcohol-Drug Information Center at Indiana University, finds that there has been a "spike" in the number of students with three times the blood alcohol level that represents the legal standard for intoxication. This can result in brain damage or even death. What does that say about the current state of intelligence of college students, the future leaders of America? Is this "education" or another six-year cruise on the S.S. Party Barge?

Dee Owens, director of the center, was quoted by the Star as saying:

"This is idiocy. That is not drinking. That is not socially interacting and having fun. It is reality TV at its worst." 

And that from a college official!

What we have here, of course, are students who are not yet mature enough to make decisions regarding their own safety. Going to "college" to acquire brain damage? And they want to reduce the legal age to 18?  Is this partying or attempted suicide? What possible fun can it be to spend the weekend passed out in the bushes behind the dormitory? These students need serious help and obviously the college "alcohol education" programs are not doing the job. Colleges simply refuse to do anything about this because these idiotic drunkards pay the tuition that keeps the party running. And once again. taxpayers and parents, guess who is picking up the bar tab?

College builds 165K garage for president

Because subprime colleges can increase their tuition rates endlessly with no fear that students and parents will take their business elsewhere, college presidents have adopted attitudes about money similar to Wall Street tycoons. They can add new buildings and new administrators whenever they want. Parents will always cough up just a little more or take out additional student loans to pay for them.

Every once in a while, just like on Wall Street, something happens that stirs up public outrage as the cover is lifted on what really goes on behind the ivy-covered walls.  I suspect this will happen with increasing frequency as the economy slips farther and farther into the tank and journalists finally wake up to what is going on.

The most recent case in point is President Timothy Flanagan of Framingham State College in Massachusetts and his $165,000 personal garage. Flanagan himself would not comment on any of this, just like Wall Street tycoons who give the public the finger when asked about their lavish lifestyles. But remember, this guy is a state official who is paid by the state. Why on earth should he comment on something like this?

Digging a little deeper into the story you find that the college delayed renovations to the library and a planned new dormitory because of a scarcity of funds. Then, why were funds available to build a personal garage for the president? Why was it first on the list?

Dale Hamel, one of many vice presidents at Framingham, said the garage would help the college attract better candidates for future presidents in addition to the free house and free car the college provides. Why is it that these college administrators don't understand how this kind of wasteful and unnecessary spending looks to parents who are struggling to come up with all that additional tuition cost?

"The timing of when it's being completed is unfortunate," said Hamel. But why worry? Taxpayers will pay for it and why should anyone care?  We're sitting on a gold mine where we can charge whatever we want and parents will go into debt to pay for our outrageously overpriced garage.