Marty Nemko: College is America's Most Overrated Product. Is it even worth it? // higher education university dr. martin nemko is it worthwhile good investment or scam rip-off sham waste degree is college a waste of time and money, is college worth the cost, is college necessary, is college for everyone, is college for me, is college fun, is college hard, is college harder than high school, is college better than high school, is college a good idea, college is a lie, college is not worth it, college is overrated david moadel
dr. Martin Nemco dr. Nemco wrote the seminal article America's most overrated
product higher education which has triggered a national debate on its value
he holds a PhD in educational evaluation from UC Berkeley and subsequently taught
in its graduate school he is the author of over 3,000 articles and nine books
including the all-in-one college guide he's been a consultant to fifteen
college presidents so Marty why do you think that higher education is America's
most overrated product I like the word overrated rather good its we tend to
deify it we tend to think that it is no hallowed it is the it is our national
treasure and for some people it is if you are a lover of learning
intrinsically motivated especially interested in academic life there's no
better place to learn and if you really do love the idea of the liberalized
education and really can squeeze out as much benefit as you can terrific but
ever more people are going to college because it is seen as nothing to do
you're seen as a second-class citizen for that large group of people the
actual data on how much you grow and how employable you'll be is scarily poor at
the same time as the cost of college continues to rise well beyond inflation
and ever more of the quote financial aid is loan not grant and those loans have
to be paid back the higher education lobby has ensured that student loans are
virtually the only loan that cannot be discharged with bankruptcy no matter
what if a person has graduated from high
school in the bottom 40% of their class should they even bother applying to a
four-year college what do you think I'm assuming you picked out that number
because you read the statistic that I had cited that for the US Department of
Education if you graduated in the bottom 40% your high school class your odds of
graduating even if you're given eight and a half years that's eight and a half
years of tuition eight and a half years of lost income because you're not
working are one in four so the risk is enormous especially relative to the
opportunity cost if you weren't good in high school the chances are you're going
to be worse in college so the chances are that your career and your life and
your development as a human being it's much more likely to be embedded through
some non academic experience after high school that could be an apprenticeship
it could be working at the elbow of a successful and ethical entrepreneur
it could be joining military but it's very unlikely for that optimal choice to
be going for more education in an academic study I completely agree with
you on that one now how has how has the publish or
perish culture impacted the quality of higher education especially for the
students I don't think the public realizes this is gonna almost it's going
on at least on its face gonna lower my credibility but the more prestigious the
university the less likely you are to receive quality teaching and I'll
explain why universities gain their reputation their
prestige not through the quality of their education and the quality of
learning that accrues but the quantity of research and quality of research that
comes out and the skills to be a great researcher part of this is a fancy word
orthogonal they're the opposite very often of what it takes to be a good
undergraduate teacher so at the Harvard's and Stanford's and the mi
t--'s of the Princeton the me ales hiring of professors is done almost
exclusively based on their research productivity and
potential thereof and to bring in the research dollars those people are
brilliant at understanding the cutting edge and most esoteric part of their
field that is a skillset and an interest that is extraordinarily different from
what it takes to teach an undergraduate introduction to biology or whatever and
so the more prestigious university the worse the instruction is likely to be
and that's why the promotion and tenure criteria are inimical to good
undergraduate education and that's why you're ending up getting better
instruction in general on average of course those exceptions by attending a
community college than at Harvard although that seems absurd on its face
but it makes sense yeah the way you explained it makes perfect sense what
are in response to that what are two-year colleges and trade schools
doing right that four-year colleges ought to be doing well that's actually
what just said which is better at a community college hiring is the opposite
they don't have a research mission their prestige or their value is defined by
how much value-added they provide to their students so in general and again I
wanna stress there's always exceptions but hiring at the Community College is
primarily thought and based on how well people teach and so that's from an
undergraduate perspective that's very wise now if God forbid I had stage 4
cancer I really love the idea that the best and brightest professors are
researching at Harvard Yale Stanford but here we're talking about from the
consumers effects perspective from the undergraduates perspective at the
community colleges do it right they're much more student centered than Research
Center why do you think the myth and I do mean myth that four-year college
graduates will earn an extra million dollars in their lifetime persist why
does this myth consent continue to be accepted among the populace because it's
two things first of all of the trumpeters of us that mean that's that
statistic are both biased it's obvious that the university's PR departments
trumpet that statistic and because it serves them but also
perhaps less obvious journalists are promulgated are the success stories of
that's of that they they are able to get a job as a journalist which is a very
sort after fun career and they all have college degrees so it would create too
much cognitive dissonance for them to question too deeply the validity of that
statistic but if we really look more dispassionately at the statistic there
are two reasons why that billion dollar more over your lifetime statistic is
completely misleading first of all the pool of students who go to four-year
colleges which by the way it's miss an Ole Miss nomer Colton four-year colleges
cuz only fifty nine percent graduate even if given six years but the that
pool of students who go to a four-year college are much brighter or motivating
them better family connections in the pool of non college bound students so
you could lock that pool of students those college bound students in a closet
for four years and they would earn much more money than would the pool of non
college bound so it doesn't imply that the college is what adds all that value
is that they are better they're brighter more motivated and more persistent that
better failed the connections the other thing is that statistic is retrospective
yes in 1970 when those statistics first came out only forty percent of high
school graduates went to college and so that degree was something unusual and
therefore commanded higher salaries over one's lifetime now we send seventy
percent of all the high school graduates of college at the same time as this
tremendous amount of automating and offshoring of jobs so that would resolve
that college degree today is far more likely in the future to not result in
eight million dollars more income and we don't even subtract out what the cost of
that four or six or eight years of colleges which at a brand-name private
college the sticker price is well over a quarter
million dollars so is there a certain irony in someone having a PhD as you do
and yet being such a well-known critique ER critic of higher education is there
an irony there or does it just make you even more qualified to be a critic good
question certainly if I knew then before I
started from my PhD what I know now I would not have gone for a PhD at all I
have in fact on I have a I have a radio program on national public radio station
San Francisco and I have renounced my PhD on the air because it really was a
testimony to my desire for sizzle rather than stake even in that ph.d program at
Berkeley I constantly was asking myself why do I need to know the material in
six five units graduate level statistics courses in when I like my degrees in
educational evaluation so much is indeed irrelevant so I'm sharing with you now
what I absolutely would do if I were starting all over again but because I
have a PhD from Berkeley I'm not cowed by all of the arguments
that the higher education machine promulgates about the value of higher
and because I not only have a theme the degree itself from the from a very
prestigious institution I have the technical chops to be able to critique
the the PR machines mean and they also can't be seen as having sour grapes like
a guy who would not did not have attention so I'm denigrating I've got
I've listened to the top of that it's the pose and hierarchy that's a great
point now should the United States in terms of their higher education system
be looking to other nations are there other countries that are perhaps doing
it better and we should be emulating them I don't think so I think in fact
we're probably better than most but I think what were seeing the real there
are two problems that we need to do it to two solutions but in wave a magic -
degree that I would I think would make a big difference in post second
education number one first of all this notion that we should have these big
campuses with Country Club lack atmospheres and charging a fortune is is
unfair both to the people who are paying tuition as well as to the taxpayers
we're subsidizing most of the most of the cost of college so we really need to
you know focus on the on the essence of what colleges which is great instruction
taught not by these researchers but by teachers who are awesome and much of it
can be done interactively online really good
immersive simulation centric interactive courses taught by premier transformative
instructors online could be cheaper and better so we need to change who's
teaching we need to scale back the sizes of campuses and we need to have far
fewer students going college because the opportunity cost for them of what they
could have been learning had they been in an apprenticeship program or at the
elbow or an entrepreneur in the military are is enormous instead of having an
enormous debt and tremendous assault to their self-esteem when they usually do
not graduate so we should be probably sending only a half of the students that
we currently sent to a college to move to college that's fascinating to me
because we've had United States presidents recently promote the idea
that more of our youths should be attending four-year universities and it
sounds like you're saying the opposite so let's get to the bottom line if we
may in terms of return on investments we're coming about that sure it wasn't
it's President Obama who did that and that the largest reason for that is not
their desire for academic value for forever learning for career preparation
but really colleges have become basically liberal and I am NOT some
concern I'm a moderate I really have some very liberal views and very
conservative views but I am concerned that higher education has changed from
what used to be the marketplace of ideas where there is wisdom resides across the
political spectrum left and right to a place now where there was a study in New
England that found that the ratio of liberal to
conservative professors is twenty-eight to one and that's not just a private
voting behavior but if you go into the classes you are going to see liberal
track after a liberal track and if you dare disagree
they're likely to either get a lower grade or certainly be disparaged and so
President Obama knows that sending more kids to college is going to get more
Democratic voters on the backend and so that's why I'm very concerned about
about that message now you want to get to the bottom like absolutely quite sure
absolutely in terms of return on investment would it be accurate to call
higher education in the United States as it is now a ripoff or a scam way too
strong absolutely not it's too strong it depends on the student therefore the
right student is absolutely the right thing for the kid who is mature enough
to to handle being away from parents watchful eye and not as so often when
kids are off to college for the first time they abuse drugs unprotected sex
they're lazy and dropout rate is terrible they don't they don't go to
courses go to classes etc but if you are motivated and you would thrive well
among in that halfway house between the protection of childhood and the
independent of adulthood it can be a wonderful experience especially if you
are starting at a community college so the cost is low and then transferring to
a school very carefully based on a high quality major
I certainly wouldn't say that I'm saying that for some people both at the low end
and high end it is America's most overrated product because the average
student and the below average student is just not that motivated to squeeze out
much from the college the colleges don't do much to help them because the
instruction is on average at at most four you quote four-year college is not
great and the studies like that are major study was called academically
adrift down the thirty six to forty five percent of all freshmen at these
so-called four-year colleges grow little or not at all in most key supposed
outcomes of college that is writing and critical thinking skills and in terms of
employability those weeks students those people even
if they managed to defy the odds and graduate and get that typically degree
in sociology of American Studies or whatever their employability is far
worse so for them yes it is America's most overrated product scam is a bit too
strong I think it's more like America's higher education is the business but
they care about is profit they care about money even though there's
ostensibly nonprofit I think that's a fair characterization my answer the
website question is I have a lot of articles that I give away free and I
certainly do encourage you to check out my blog you also might like my my new
book just came out this year called the best Marty Nemco which has a lot on
Career College and unlife or you know and also I still do and I love doing
private counseling of people who are smart and driven but are unhappy about
that what has happened to them in school and are looking for a new option career
or training wise you can email me and I don't have room to see everybody who
wants to see me but if I will either see to myself or refer you to an appropriate
colleague an email addresses am Nemco that's amp n e and Jo at Comcast that
all right and that will be in the description as well dr. Nemco you know
I've learned quite a bit today and you've given so many people a different
perspective from the main from what the mainstream media as well as many
politicians have been feeding to us and so you're welcome back anytime on
looking at the markets dr. Marty nanka thank you for doing this today my
pleasure thank you for watching please like comment and subscribe
and I'll see you next time