[...]Creative Class » Blog Archive » The Value of College for Most Students – Creative Class[...]…

Is college debt actually worth the amount invested?

July 9, 2008

by Isaac Basker

While studies I have seen suggest a college degree is generally associated with increased income, I’ve increasingly developed a problem with using income as a means of determining the value of college education. In light of “data” presented by Richard Florida’s literature on the desire to be creative, the creative class, and my own anecdotal and “informal qualitative interviews” with folks, especially younger ones, around Europe, Jordan and living in the U.S. (native born and immigrant) who seem to be not utilizing their education in a professional manner there is even more reason for me to suspect something may be wrong. Why this is the case, I certainly could speculate on, but let’s hold off on that for a minute.

For quite some time, we’ve seen the rationale for a liberal arts education argued as a “benefit to society,” to the individual in terms of developing analytical as well as critical thinking skills deemed necessary to be a “good” worker (which I have read a recent study sponsored by corporations as desirable), and thirdly the civic value, or the notion that it leads one to become a “good citizen.” In no way am I suggesting these to not be true statements, but I believe that there has been, and is a gross level of hypocrisy taking place in how we are actually measuring who becomes a “success” and who is not, via post-secondary education.

American society’s apparent dominant form of measurement for “success” appears to be “income,” or really, those who generally make the most money, what is their education level, which one suspects could correlate to social status, “face,” or more cynically, social control. How can “income” be the measurement for “success” when studies show that after people earn a certain level of money happiness does not generally increase? How can it be that privileged young people choose to rebel against their society’s dominant view of how to be a success and live bohemian lifestyles, pursuing creative careers for low wages as just one example of success being more than simply “income” or hosts of immigrants to the U.S. from societies that also value lifestyle rather than simply money earned who choose to leave?

I suspect that the valuing of material most highly may also be a factor for acculturation in some cases, where children of immigrants to the U.S. or children from/in countries where collectivism and traditional/conservative religions/traditions point towards following the easiest paths to making the most money. I believe this may be true, in particular for those who come from East Asian nations, but also other traditional cultures/nations, including others coming from experiences where their basic needs were not met. After their children are exposed to stronger notions of individualism in West (especially the U.S.) it can lead to conflict between their traditional belief system and a more individualist based one.

This may then lead to increased levels of unhappiness from entering professions they prefer to not follow, but continue to work in because it makes their parents happy, makes the individual a “great deal” of (or “enough”) money, and I suspect either leads to high levels of stress, family conflict, rebellion (even amongst adults) and other negative outcomes. For multi-generational Americans who come to similar thinking, there may be less stigma associated with abandoning the path one’s family wishes, but the social control mechanism of entering the current post-secondary system of education and professional career choices made as a result does not appear to be without consequences for this group either.

We can start with the hypocrisy of modern Educational teacher training that emphasizes the wonderful, well accepted theory of Multiple Intelligences by Howard Gardner, yet we still measure “success” of schools, teachers and students by standardized tests that clearly focus most of their attention on the two intelligences that have dominated Western views of “intelligence,” that has led to vast levels of harm towards those who, this literature suggests are intelligent, and leads to a borderline eugenics arguments presented in the form of the Bell Curve to justify an inherently flawed system of measurement that still remains when it comes to “success.”

My feeling is that most folks are going to college to learn how to be the modern form of cogs in a machine (aka someone give me a job I hope doesn’t make me miserable). What if your skills can be applied, if facilitated either outside of college or through a more tailored apprenticeship program (which studies have show is highly effective with young people out of work or school), supplemented with liberal arts education and critical thinking skill development that harnesses the natural state of rebellion and identity development that young people go through.

I have been wanting to look at whether American universities are really doing a good job of facilitating financial independence (aka, minimal debt or the modern form of slavery that college debt creates for those raised in the U.S. education system) and entrepreneurship. To sum up I sense that the value of a college education has actually severely diminished, and is OVERVALUED.

To speak to my initial suspicion as to what’s behind all of this, I feel that post-secondary education is really a factory for social control where young folks with ideas and interests outside of the norm are conditioned and pressured to eventually take jobs they don’t like (yet may be afraid to leave or not take) to pay off debt they incurred for an education that might not even be worth the investment of the costs associated. I believe this is leading to the silencing of dissent by the conforming of us all to become consumers of stuff that we mostly don’t need, doesn’t actually lead to fulfilled, happy lives, and leaves many isolated, afraid, and angry at others who don’t “assimilate” like the rest of us. This is even if we, ourselves, are not happy with the choices we have made and may be unaware of how other nations and cultures actually function with different approaches to education, and work, in part because we are so engulfed in our own superiority, work culture, consumerism, and isolation (at least in the case of the U.S.).

Perhaps it is when we step outside our own box and really see how other places work that we can then realize the possibilities for education and an economy that actually provides true freedom. One risk of Florida’s work, which is quite poignant as well as inspirational is that I am concerned about the dangers of arguing within the same systems of social and economic control that repeatedly allows for the most powerful and privileged to win in the end. Competition without real collaboration and a sense of community seems to be a factor for demise, at some point. Someone is benefiting from the way things have stood, or are so disconnected from the realities of how harmful our education and post-Regan era economic system has been to most humans. We have to look beyond the language that has limited our way of approaching these problems.

Looks like we’re on roughly the same page. I’m guessing that Duke Power also found other reasons to not hire African Americans with a high school diploma or good test scores. Policy & practice often diverged, and not only in the South.

Today’s tragedy is the number of young people, and minorities especially, who aren’t even graduating high school. For them, college is the least of their worries.

From Wikipedia:

Prior to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,[1] Duke Power Co. had a policy of segregating employees according to race. Specifically, at its Dan River plant, African-Americans were only allowed to work in its Labor department, which constituted the lowest-paying positions in the company.

After the Civil Rights Act was passed, the company changed its policies, adding a requirement of a high school diploma or a minimum score on an IQ test[2] for positions in areas other than the Labor department. This had the effect of eliminating a large number of African-American applicants for positions outside the Labor department.

Seems like the time frame you reference. Duke went from blatant discrimination, to a policy of qualifications. Problem was, African Americans didn’t meet the (minimal) qualifications required, which was deemed discriminatory in and of itself.

Discrimination by unions is still going strong. You can’t get into a trade union unless you know somebody in the union. This is very effective in keeping African Americans out of the trades. The trades that I deal with are almost entirely white, despite the strong diversity in the surrounding community (both hispanics and african-americans).

In fact, forty years ago most employers weren’t giving tests to minorities but were simply turning them away at the door. Or in many cases hiring minorities for menial jobs with no chance at better positions, tests or no tests. The point I was making wasn’t about the tests, but the idea that minorities were being hired on the basis of qualifications at all.

If you aren’t old enough to remember this, it’s documented in tons of legal briefs from the time. Or just find some news magazine photographs from the 60’s and look for Blacks or other minorities in jobs that met the public like hotel desk clerks or receptionists; or jobs with decent pay like office workers or construction workers; not to mention positions with chances for advancement like managers and executives. And while the national unions backed the civil rights movement, at a local level they often shut out minorities and women.

Of course, this isn’t all past tense. Discrimination still happens every day. Whether or not college degree requirements play a role in this is the question.

I’m working on one with my son currently.

If so, why were the employers bothering to give them an intelligence test? Why not just turn them away as soon as they saw their skin color?

Or was it some kind of “Bell Curve” conspiracy? They knew that African Americans score a standard deviation below whites on IQ tests, so giving the test effectively shut them out?

Considering the success that African Americans have had in the military, which uses IQ tests, I think that that is unlikely.

And if service jobs are in fact more like manufacturing than creative ones, maybe it does make more sense to go the “Fordist” direction. Things like scripting can make a telephone receptionist a lot more productive, valuable, and perhaps better paid, than creativity. I think I read an article a few weeks back in the Wall Street Journal about applying Taylorist principles to service work. I can’t remember exactly what job they were applying it to. But Taylor could have a field day in a Starbucks!

Scripting is also a controversial area in education. I think that you would call teachers a part of the creative class, and they certainly can be creative. But programs where lesson plans are given to teachers, and they are told exactly what to say and when to say it have been shown to improve student achievement greatly.

Productivity is also behind the demise of manufacturing employment.

Regarding service workers, isn’t one of your findings that creative class areas have a lot of diversity and inequality? Isn’t one of your conclusions that creative class people substitute low paid service workers for doing menial work like cooking and landscaping themselves? And that a lot of those workers are immigrants, especially illegal immigrants?

Wouldn’t one way to adress the issue of low paid service work to halt immigration and to really crack down on illegal immigration? Presumably, that would bid up the cost of the work to levels where the native born (or existing green card holders) would be willing to do the work.

Or, more likely, it would make creative class areas more like non-creative class areas: people would do their own landscaping, and be less productive as a result.

Inequality would decrease in any case.

As a working class kid who wasn’t good with my hands, it took me years to admit to myself that sitting at a desk could be “Man’s Work.” At one point I wanted to be a cabinetmaker and took the apprenticeship tests — both written and manual dexterity. They told me I should go to law school. Today I have a friend David who’s a superb cabinetmaker, and he’s a Reed College graduate. Lots of smarts and good with his hands. When I think of it, definitely creative class.

Richard’s point about making service jobs creative is right on. Some companies get it and others don’t. Before Whole Foods bought Wild Oats, for a while we had both chains in Portland. They were supposedly in the same business, but very different cultures. Whole Foods employees were/are engaging, helpful, cheerful. Wild Oats employees were resigned and sullen. You can even see the same differences in the same company. In Starbucks’ own stores the employees are friendly and enthusiastic. But in airports where they don’t hire and manage, the employees are often unfriendly and service is minimal. We need a service economy Deming.

Back to college and job qualifications. Is David a better cabinetmaker because of his Reed education? Maybe. Should college be required for the job? No. Where is the line?