Charles Murray readily labels himself as a purveyor of gloom and doom on most of our socio-economic trends. Therefore, his optimistic take on the prospects for significant improvements in education generally and particularly higher education may come as a surprise.
Murray gave the luncheon address at an event sponsored by the Cato Institute last Friday. He is the author of numerous books including Losing Ground (which demolished the intellectual supports for the welfare system) and most recently Real Education. Murray explained why he thinks that higher education is poised for a breakthrough—more learning at lower cost.
He began by reprising the criticism of the status quo in higher education for which he is well known.
The BA is the work of the devil.
What Murray means is that the BA degree, which used to indicate that the individual had chosen to continue his education past basic competence into advanced knowledge, has degenerated into a burden that is expected of everyone. For a long time, having a BA was a mark of accomplishment. Now, failure to get a college degree is a stigma. Great numbers of young Americans who have neither interest in nor aptitude for advanced learning are compelled to go to college anyway, at great expense.
College is a fraud and a con game.
Murray indicts college officials for false claims to lure in students. They are told that getting a college degree will mean better jobs and higher income, but he retorts that while some benefit in that way, it isn’t due to their college studies; moreover, many graduates don’t wind up with better jobs and higher income, but just a lot of debt. Prospective students (and especially parents) are told that college will provide a broadening liberal education. At only a very few schools is that still true. And college is sold as an important part of the maturing process, but, Murray counters, it mostly prolongs adolescence.
College is antediluvian.
That wonderful word means “outmoded.” Murray contends that many features of the traditional college are now outmoded. Libraries, for example, are pleasant places to read but having printed books at hand is no longer essential for serious academic work, much less what most students do. Almost everything is now available online. Class lectures can similarly be replaced with video. Why make students sit in a big hall to listen to a professor who might be a mediocre to lousy teacher when it’s increasingly easy for students to play a superstar prof when they are ready for it? (Murray gave other reasons for regarding college as antediluvian, but I won’t swamp you with them.)
Looking at the very high price tag on college combined with his critical observations, Murray concludes that there is a gigantic market opportunity. Entrepreneurs are going seize that opportunity and find ways of providing the education that people want at much lower cost.
Changes in college education, moreover, will be catalyzed by the fact that many employers now grasp that the college degree, which for several decades worked fairly well as a screening device, is now very inefficient. Whereas employers used to be able to assume that graduates had fairly good basic skills and a good measure of discipline, that is no longer the case. Academic standards are so weak that it’s very difficult to tell wheat from chaff.
Technology—the Internet and who knows what else that might come along—is going to enable “edupreneurs” to develop new ways of providing better educational products. (Murray didn’t use that phrase, popularized if not coined by Anya Kamenetz in DIY U, but it’s appropriate.)
One reason why he says they will be better is that computerized teaching can be more attuned to the younger generation. As an example, he mentioned how his children had gotten hooked on the game “Oregon Trail” back in the late-90s. Not only did they like the game, but they learned far more about America’s westward expansion than their dad had ever known. (I had exactly the same experience.)
Kids today are, for better or worse, computerphilic. Good software can reach them with powerful teaching tools where books and lectures might fail.
But can higher education really be built around distance-learning courses? The naysayers argue that a liberal arts education requires face-to-face interaction with dedicated professors. Most colleges, Murray replies, don’t offer much in the way of liberal arts education any more and besides, few students really want such courses. It’s possible, though, that a student who might sleep or doodle through a course on Shakespeare he had to take to fulfill a distribution requirement, would take far more interest in Shakespeare or other courses in the fine arts or humanities if it were presented in an appealing format.
He’s right. People learn a lot when they want to; little or nothing when they don’t. The traditional college is pretty bad at dovetailing coursework with student desire.
Murray also observes that there is no reason why students can’t demonstrate their competence in a particular field or at least their general employability in less than four years. Instead of insisting that people take the traditional BA, why not devise programs of study through which they can certify their abilities far more quickly? He believes that reliable certification programs will come to displace the unreliable BA for many.
In sum, Murray is saying that freedom to try new approaches should and will transform education in America. That channels the thoughts of the famed British scientist and social critic Joseph Priestley, who wrote in an essay published in 1768, “From new, and seemingly irregular methods of education, perhaps something extraordinary and uncommonly great may spring. At least there would be a fair chance for such productions; and if something odd and eccentric should arise from this unbounded liberty of education, the various business of human life may afford proper spheres for such eccentric geniuses.”
The force of competition has swept away or caused great changes in many industries in the past. Even though higher education enjoys a comfortable status quo and has many powerful defenders, a persuasive case can be made that it’s like the slide rule business just before the invention of the calculator.