Higher Education Is Morally & Financially Bankrupt

In his blog, Charles Hugh Smith pointed out an article on higher education cartel that is a must read.

A system that piles debt on students in exchange for a marginal or even zero-return on their investment is morally and financially bankrupt.

Every once in a while you run across an insider’s narrative of a corrupt, morally bankrupt sector that absolutely nails the sector’s terminal rot. Here is that nails-it narrative for higher education:

Pass, Fail – An inside look at the retail scam known as the modern university

I teach mostly bored youth who find themselves doing something they neither value nor desireand, in some cases, are simply not equipped forin order to achieve an outcome they are repeatedly warned is essential to their survival. What a dreadful trap. Rather than learning freely and excelling, theyve become shrewd managers of their own careers and are forced to compromise what is best in themselvestheir honesty or characterin order to make it in the world weve created for them.

The credentialing game can be played for only so long before the market gets wise and values begin to decline. I have been an educator in Canadian universities for over fourteen years, having taught some eighty-five liberal arts courses. During that time, evidence has mounted showing that a bachelors degree from a Canadian university brings with it less and less economic earning power. Last year, the Council of Ontario Universities released the results of the Ontario Graduates Survey for the class of 2012. Its one of the few documents in Canada that tracks the employment rates and earnings of university graduates. Six months after graduation, the class of 2012 had an average income 7 percent below that of the class of 2005. Two years after graduation, incomes dropped to 14 percent below those of the 2005 class.

Though there are likely several reasons for this decline (increases in the number of graduates, demographic shifts in markets, precarious labour), one in particular matches perfectly with the type of change Ive observed on my watch: the eradication of content from the classroom.

Combine the above description with two graph posted in Smith’s blog, and you get full picture of what is going on.