Monday, April 07, 2008
It's Not About Money, it's About Class
Inside Higher Ed yesterday brought us the debate over the widely-quoted "a degree is worth a million dollars" in lifetime earnings. All parties agree that the million number is a little funky, and that if tuition were to keep increeasing at the current rates, college would eventually become an economically bad choice. They're only half right.
One of the more worried-over trends of the past decade has been the drop in male college enrollment and graduation rates, trending towards a 60/40 female-male ratio with no end in sight. These developments are not unconnected. College was traditionally more of a class-training mechanism than an economic one--certainly the boys who went to Harvard in 1920 were not doing so in order to improve their career prospects.
As the cost of college continues to grow relative to its economic return on investment, those who decline to take the bet of "pay now, earn more later" are by definition taking an entrepreneurial sort of risk. Anyone whose brain has not been heavily marinated in gender studies will agree that women as a group are less inclined to take risks than men--which applies to the smart risks as well as the stupid ones. But that's only half of it. Women are also far more class-sensitive than men, and have been for thousands of years. Perhaps this is the inevitable result of evolutionary biology, perhaps we can change it by marinating in more gender studies--regardless, it is an obvious fact to anyone whose eyes are at least half-open. It is thus clear that women would place more value on the noneconomic benefits of a degree than men.
In any event I am not so sure that I buy the line that college has become less affordable over time any more than I buy the notion that coffee has become less affordable since 1970 or whenever. Not so long ago, a venti chai latte didn't cost $4 because it didn't exist. Coffee was something the waitress poured into your cup at the diner and nothing more. Cappuccino and espresso were exotic treats you might find at an especially good Italian restaurant. A small drip coffee today costs about the same in real terms as it did twenty or thirty years ago, which is the fair thing to compare.
College, meanwhile, has undergone a similar sort of lifestyle makeover. While University of X has always been more prestigious than X State, the difference in perceived value today is larger than it has ever been. Get into an Ivy League school and you will get a job at a hedge fund, marry a European aristocrat, and hang out with Richard Branson and Bono; go to community college and the best you can hope for is a job complex enough to be outsourced to Bangalore rather than somewhere really embarassing like Sri Lanka.
The result of this is that every college has acquired more of the costs and trappings of elite schools in order to maintain their appeal. You will hear college administrators protest that the new $40m student center-cum-Disneyland amusement park costs only a penny or two on the dollar in terms of tuition, just as we heard dot-bomb managers explain away the cost of all those Aeron chairs. The obvious extravagance you see in a corporate budget is rarely the end of it; more often the pennies on the surface conceal nickels and dimes deeper below. ¶ 7:20 AM
Inside Higher Ed yesterday brought us the debate over the widely-quoted "a degree is worth a million dollars" in lifetime earnings. All parties agree that the million number is a little funky, and that if tuition were to keep increeasing at the current rates, college would eventually become an economically bad choice. They're only half right.
One of the more worried-over trends of the past decade has been the drop in male college enrollment and graduation rates, trending towards a 60/40 female-male ratio with no end in sight. These developments are not unconnected. College was traditionally more of a class-training mechanism than an economic one--certainly the boys who went to Harvard in 1920 were not doing so in order to improve their career prospects.
As the cost of college continues to grow relative to its economic return on investment, those who decline to take the bet of "pay now, earn more later" are by definition taking an entrepreneurial sort of risk. Anyone whose brain has not been heavily marinated in gender studies will agree that women as a group are less inclined to take risks than men--which applies to the smart risks as well as the stupid ones. But that's only half of it. Women are also far more class-sensitive than men, and have been for thousands of years. Perhaps this is the inevitable result of evolutionary biology, perhaps we can change it by marinating in more gender studies--regardless, it is an obvious fact to anyone whose eyes are at least half-open. It is thus clear that women would place more value on the noneconomic benefits of a degree than men.
In any event I am not so sure that I buy the line that college has become less affordable over time any more than I buy the notion that coffee has become less affordable since 1970 or whenever. Not so long ago, a venti chai latte didn't cost $4 because it didn't exist. Coffee was something the waitress poured into your cup at the diner and nothing more. Cappuccino and espresso were exotic treats you might find at an especially good Italian restaurant. A small drip coffee today costs about the same in real terms as it did twenty or thirty years ago, which is the fair thing to compare.
College, meanwhile, has undergone a similar sort of lifestyle makeover. While University of X has always been more prestigious than X State, the difference in perceived value today is larger than it has ever been. Get into an Ivy League school and you will get a job at a hedge fund, marry a European aristocrat, and hang out with Richard Branson and Bono; go to community college and the best you can hope for is a job complex enough to be outsourced to Bangalore rather than somewhere really embarassing like Sri Lanka.
The result of this is that every college has acquired more of the costs and trappings of elite schools in order to maintain their appeal. You will hear college administrators protest that the new $40m student center-cum-Disneyland amusement park costs only a penny or two on the dollar in terms of tuition, just as we heard dot-bomb managers explain away the cost of all those Aeron chairs. The obvious extravagance you see in a corporate budget is rarely the end of it; more often the pennies on the surface conceal nickels and dimes deeper below. ¶ 7:20 AM
