Return on Investment is Not the Way to View Education

Circa 1995, my CS/Math department chair told me in no uncertain terms that we had perfected higher education, through small classes taught in person once or twice a week.  There was no need to change education at all.

He was serious.  It was laughable then, and it’s even more laughable today.  Yet, especially in our youth (I am well beyond that, of course) we still look at education as a four (or more) year residential process on a bucolic campus.

Today Quartz is asking the question of what is the better return on investment, getting a college degree or buying a house.  The real problem with that question is assuming four or more residential years on a bucolic campus.  And while that works for some, young adults today have many more options than I had.  In my experience, community colleges are fantastic, rigorous education for two years taught by dedicated professionals.  And they are no longer places to learn auto body; they teach computer programming, nursing and affiliated health care, engineering, and others that were once the exclusive preserve of four-year colleges and beyond.

MOOCs are an outstanding way of learning.  Courses from Coursera, Udacity, and others offer no-cost (for non-degree programs) or very low cost (for degree programs) courses, taught by world class instructors from world class universities.

Several residential colleges in my state have closed over the last two decades.  I’m sure they considered their circumstances unique, but the fact of the matter is that they priced themselves out of their markets.  And higher education is still raising its prices at double or triple the rate of inflation, blindly convinced that someone will pay for it for these students.

Over the last two decades education has become much more egalitarian and accessible to even those of modest means.  Yet young adults still seek that residential experience.  I think I know why; they are driven to it by their parents, who are convinced that only their own experience matters to their children.  Guess what?  You don’t need to be in residence away from home to learn.  And I don’t think parents realize that, or accept it.

But the world has changed, and for the better.  I sincerely wish that both parents and their children will look at the alternatives, because today they are good ones.

A decade ago, I was at the Supercomputing Conference, where the keynote speaker was the recently passed Clayton Christensen.  He talked about higher education, and how lower-end alternatives were chewing away at the bottom of the education hierarchy.  Except that today it’s no longer at the lower end.  Alternatives are not yet Harvard, but they are most certainly at least flagship state universities.

Higher education doesn’t have to be a tradeoff any more, but we as a society think that’s still the case.  Get over it, folks.