It’s
not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves. ~ Sir Edmund Hillary
There’s a straightforward relationship
that explains both the horrendous end of Mt. Everest’s spring climbing season this
year and the added challenges increasing numbers of students face of graduating
from US colleges. These two trends in one sense display a victory for the
marketing of these arduous “projects” to a larger, broader public that’s not
completely ready for them. In cold economic terms, it’s consumer demand
exceeding available supply. But at what cost? Deaths and drop-outs.
The recent deaths on Mt. Everest have
once again peaked the media’s interest. The adventure media while berating the agonies
of defeats and deaths fawns over the thrills of the quest each and every
season.
Why has this season seen 11 climbers
die on the mountain, the most since 2015 when at least 22 people perished due
to avalanches? There were 5 deaths last year. For a change, it wasn’t this
year’s weather or earthquakes or avalanches. It was because climbing Everest
has for some time been commercialized and sold as something folks beyond just the
hardest of hard-core, capable alpinists can successfully attempt. Nepal’s
tourism ministry, seeking hard currency, issued permits to summit Mt. Everest
to a record 381 climbers this season, at a cost of about $11,000 each. Beyond
the permit, the trip itself can cost $45,000 or more.
That’s a very long way from Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay’s initial
ascent 65 years ago. According to veteran mountaineers, this year there have
been too many inexperienced climbers who have bought their way into attempting
Mt. Everest who haven’t been adequately trained or supported. Dreadful results
have precipitated. These results were created in no small part because of the
sheer numbers of climbers attempting to simultaneously reach the peak, shown in
the picture below. This is what it looked like last week when too many people
(probably over 200) were waiting to capture their moment of glory on the narrow,
cold (-13oF) confines of
the summit at 29,029ft. Fascinatingly, Mt. Everest continues to grow about
0.25” each year. With the extended wait, often two hours or more, unprepared
climbers can run out of oxygen among other life-threatening challenges.
The summit jam at the top of Mt.
Everest, May 2019.
Source: Getty Images via The Washington Post.
Meanwhile back in the lowlands, more
than 16.8 million undergraduates traversed the academic slopes at colleges and
universities last fall, representing a 27.8% increase since 2000. The number of
US adults that have a B.A. or higher degree has increased 36.7% since 2000.
For decades, post-high school
academic education has been proclaimed by many authorities, including educators
and politicians, as the very best way of ensuring career success. Students and
their families have listened and acted on this advice. In 2018, 35% of US adults
have received a B.A. or higher degree. This proportion of college-educated
adults has never been higher, as shown in the chart below. College enrollment has
been increasing for young adults for over a century. This is a very good thing
because a more educated, skilled workforce is more productive and more engaged.
This achievement reflects not just individual successes but collective ones that
have benefited society.
Percent of US adults with a B.A.
or higher degree
Source: NCES.ed.gov
This chart illustrates that the
growth of adults having at least a B.A. degree follows a logistic curve during
the nearly 90 years shown. From the 1970s through 2000, the percentage of
adults with college degrees rapidly increased; it more than doubled. After 2010
the incremental increases in adults with a college degree are smaller than before.
This is expected to continue. The total number of undergraduates enrolled in US
colleges peaked in 2010, at 18.1 million.
There are certainly sound reasons
why growing numbers of young adults have elected to follow the college pathway to
hopeful success. One reason, beyond possessing increased knowledge, is being
able to receive higher compensation at work. In his superb Kenyon College
commencement speech,
This is Water, David Foster Wallace offers a much different and appropriately broader perspective when he stated, "It
is about the real value of a real education has almost nothing to do with
knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so
real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that
we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over: ‘This is water.’”
The median annual
earnings of young
adults with a B.A. were $50,000 in 2016. The college income premium is often
used as a justification for those of us who are fiscally-focused. It offers a
rationale for devoting the considerable time, effort and expense required to
receive a B.A. Several studies that have examined the size of the college
income premium have found that it has ranged from about 70% to 100% more than income
earned by people without a college degree. This premium has neither grown nor
fallen very much over the last two decades; it’s plateaued. Other studies imply
that the premium may have started to decline for specific cohorts of college
students.
What has grown are college tuition
and fees, which have greatly climbed for two reasons. First, states have
provided a much smaller proportion of public university budgets; and second,
the demand for an A.A. or B.A. degree has increased significantly. It’s been a sellers’
market for a long time, especially at “selective” schools. Since 1978, college
tuition and fees have increased more than three times as fast as consumer goods
and services’ prices have. Student debt has consequently
risen; 69%
of all college students have taken out at least one loan; the average loan owed
is $29,800; the median monthly payment is $222.
I don’t think this necessarily
comports as a general, capital “C” Crisis that’s often mentioned in the media. Student
debt has increased because a lot more students have chosen to go to college. It’s
principally demand-driven. Student debt that enables earning a college degree
eventually provides added value to each and every student who graduates, as
mentioned above. But defaults on student debt are the highest by a large margin
of any type of private debt, especially for students who don’t graduate.
Entering and thriving in college,
like climbing Everest, is not for the unprepared. As more and more students are
going college, more have found it difficult to summit the academic mountain
facing them. According to one
report,
anywhere from 40% to 60% of first-year college students now require remediation
in English and/or math. These remedial courses cost students crucial money –
about $1.3 billion each year. Also, these courses don’t count towards
graduation requirements. On-time graduation rates of students who take remedial
classes are consistently less than 10%. Basically, remedial education in
college represents a deep crevasse into which all too many students are unlikely
to emerge. The “who’s responsible for this” fingers are pointed in many
directions regarding why this increased level of needed remediation has
occurred and, of course, who should pay for it. More remediation is needed.
Today’s first-year entrants into
college are more broadly representative of all our young adults, rather than a
much narrower slice of them in decades gone by. This breadth is requiring more
support services on the part of colleges and secondary schools, and more determination
on the part of these students. Students who have the required determination and
available resources graduate. But a lot don’t.
The travails of our
ever-increasing number of college attendees have also risen, with only 40.7%
graduating within four years across all US post-secondary educational
institutions. For-profit schools’ graduation rate is contemptibly much lower,
only 17.6% which is less than one-third the rate for non-profits.
Interestingly, there were several
for-profit colleges named after the Earth’s highest peak. Unfortunately, none
of the Everest Colleges ever reached high-altitude academics. Their
owner/operator, Corinthian Colleges Inc., was successfully sued by the State of
California in 2016 for defrauding their students. Everest College graduates
have legitimately expressed concerns that their Everest degrees are effectively
worthless. If colleges like Everest have been offering worthless degrees,
perhaps they should be removed from the education business.
Higher education in the US now is
far different than it was even 20 years ago, let alone in the more distant past.
When I graduated from college, just after the Iron Age, having a B.A. was quite
extraordinary, just one-in-ten adults received a B.A. or higher degree.
Neither the industrial-education
complex, nor politicians, nor young people will allow a return to even the
2000s, when just one in four young adults graduated with a B.A. Now it’s
one-in-three, which sounds like a small change, but it most assuredly isn’t. Getting
a college degree has never been so culturally and socially hard-wired into our
successful futures. Some folks even believe it’s a right, rather than an
option. Go figure. For now and forever-more, returning to the recent past isn’t
going to happen in terms of college access, and shouldn’t. And there are
consequences when college degree holders become ever more widespread and less extraordinary.
Student loans have always been
subsidized, reflecting the positive externalities associated with being a
college graduate. Recently, several Dem presidential hopefuls have proposed
increasing these subsidies in several ways. I do not think we should adopt
policies like free public university that consequently will incent even more
high-school grads and others to enter colleges. Visually think of such programs’
aftereffects as similar to the above picture of the overly long queue of cramped
climbers waiting for the momentary grandeur of summiting Mt. Everest. Instead, multitudes
of additional college students will be waiting and waiting not only to get into
already-filled classes, but also to find a place to sleep and eat. Will these
additional collegians, who would not have otherwise applied if it weren’t “free,”
be adequately prepared academically? I have my doubts.
Policies like those Bernie and
Elizabeth have been pushing for “tuition-free” and “debt-free” college are a
doomed fantasy without also dramatically increasing public colleges/universities’
federal funding for expanded faculty, facilities and especially for remediative
programs. If such free college programs were to see the light of day, listen for
the anguished cries of progressives who whine that such policies will end up
subsidizing un-poor people, mon dieu how inequitable! Such expensive,
expansionary programs are likely to devalue the worth of attaining a college
degree and increase drop-out rates. An A.A. or B.A. would become less exceptional
and more normal. More eateries, and other businesses, would begin requiring wait-person
jobs to have a post-high school degree. At best, smaller wage premiums would be
willingly paid for such normality, just like when high-school degrees became ordinary
starting in the 1970s; 55.2% of US adults had a high-school diploma in 1970. So,
regarding “free college;” be careful what you wish for.
As Sir Edmund stated, it’s not a
real adventure when you have to pay for it. Nevertheless, here’s to prepared
adventuring in high places and higher education.
