The 'Take All Comers' School (a.k.a. Hard Luck U.)

Very few college professors want to admit it, but in most college classrooms at least half to two-thirds of the students present shouldn't be there. Well, maybe that's an overstatement because the students who don't belong in college typically don't bother showing up for class: I should have said that at least half to two-thirds of students admitted don't belong in a college classroom.

As you can imagine, this is heresy in educational circles. In What Obama Should have Told the Kids, John Carney lays out the case against college for most people better than I could. Call me a hypocrite, but I know that without such a healthy demand for a product which most will go into debt to obtain regardless of whether they will actually benefit from it, I would be unemployed. This is a fact of American higher education, I tell myself, and I can do nothing to change it except possibly inspire that rare student.

Virtually every college and university is home to some students who do not enjoy learning, don't know what they want to do with their lives, and are doing just enough to get by. Without them (or, more accurately, the tuition dollars which accompany them), most colleges and universities would be bankrupt within 5 years. Every new gym, student center, and upscale dormatory built requires a certain number of fee-paying bodies to cover its operating expenses. If college admission were limited to the top 10-15% of students, the fees charged would be enormous. Better to water down expectations, most colleges reason, than stand on principle and go broke.

Having said that, there are certain colleges for whom enticing marginal students has become the prime focus of their business model. These are schools, like the jock schools, which generate money through the 'bring' which accompanies each student; a combination of tuition, federal, and state grants and financial aid.

Hard Luck U. schools are fairly easy to spot once you know what you're looking for. The admissions portion of the Hard Luck U. website will not state any requirements for ACT/SAT scores, class rank, etc. and may not even require a high school diploma. Once you arrive on campus, the admissions offices are palatial and the sales representatives (uh, "Admissions Counselors") are attractive and attentive. Look outside of the plushly carpeted offices, though, and the big-ticket items like parking lots, windows, and sidewalks show signs of decades of deferred maintenance. Classroom buildings and faculty offices may leak or even present hazardous conditions.

Along with the hard sell to under-prepared students and second-string athletes, Hard Luck U. is a very diverse place. Unlike the Castle on the Hill Schools, however, this is an unintended diversity born of desperation. Hard Luck U.'s open admissions (it's not unusual for 80-100% of applicants to be accepted) and low expenses are particularly attractive to locals and minorities. International students are recruited, just like Castle on the Hill and Big-Name Universities, but these students are from Kazakhstan and Zimbabwe, not France and Japan.

WHERE THE MONEY COMES FROM:

• Like the Jock School, most of the money comes from students' "bring" - whatever educational grants and scholarships the student is eligible for, as well as whatever tuition (if any) the parents can afford. Hard Luck U. has driven down its costs so far through deferred maintenance and part-time faculty that it can actually get by quite nicely on the federal grants brought in by low-income students.
• Along with the constant fight for survival, Hard Luck U. has perfected the art of charging someone, somewhere, for every service it offers. Scrutinize the fees carefully.

PITFALLS FOR PARENTS:

• Like the Jock Schools, education at Hard Luck U. can be illusory. Academic rigor can be variable among degree programs, but administrators focused on "student retention" may also pressure faculty to lower standards.
• Since the whole place needs money, be on the lookout for signs that the college is going bankrupt and will be shutting down. Sometimes this can have disastrous effects, as in the case of Nasson College, which was sold to a private investor who later held student records and transcripts hostage.
• Peer influence may not be what you had in mind for your student, particularly if security is lax.
• The faculty may be largely part-timers and/or retired high school teachers. This is not bad in itself, but as it reflects the administration's emphasis on cheapness, don't expect adequate science labs or guest lecturers beyond stand-up comics.

PROMISING DEVELOPMENTS:

• Hard Luck U. can be a place to park a so-so student cheaply in the hope that he or she will grow up and learn some useful job skills.
• Unlike the Castle on the Hill, Hard Luck U. will expose students to people (international and domestic) who might not have entered their middle-class background otherwise.
• Unlike Big Name U., Hard Luck U. will probably not have any classes with more than 40 or 50 students

The Jock School's Business Model

The term "Jock School" covers about as much ground as a marathon. In fact, it may be more accurate to state that virtually every institution of higher education has a Jock School enclave. These range from college credit factories to the more recondite corners of respectable research-1 universities where unofficial 'jock majors' enroll students in undemanding courses which leave plenty of time for the field and the gym.

I should come clean right here and state that most professors despise the role college athletics assumes on their campus. From their point, the marketing (i.e. recruitment), management (special dorms and classes for athletes), and finance of college sports is the single greatest threat to higher education since Cliff Notes. Having spent eight to ten years of their adult life in school, subjected to the rigors and uncertainty of higher education before earning a dime from their efforts, few professors appreciate the seven figure salaries and bonuses paid to coaches who remind them uncannily of the whistle-bearing Nazis who tormented them in their Junior High phys. ed. classes. That these coaches were chosen for their salesmanship abilities with the boosters and the alacrity with which they bail out their charges from the local jail and run damage control when their prima donnas run amuk also does not set well with most faculty.

Having said that, Jock Schools and Jock School enclaves in large state universities are here to stay. The alumni enjoy the spectacle of "student athletes" (whom professors call the ultimate oxymoron) run up and down the field (or court), doing things they could never manage physically while imagining themselves superior because they actually went to the school in question to learn something (or so they tell themselves). It's a convenient fiction for both sides, and many schools are so convinced that athletics are the way to keep their doors open that they re-brand themselves as Jock Schools as a business strategy.

Smaller state schools and private colleges know that they can't hope to compete with the large state schools in this arena, so they market their message to the students who are neither sports superstars nor academic superstars. Like the Take All Comers schools, Jock Schools are very free with institutional financial aid (which amounts to a discount off the advertised tuition and fees, just like when buying a car), relying for the most part on whatever federal and state financial aid and grants their student athletes are eligible to receive. Coaches at Jock Schools often double as admissions representatives, and may be given quotas of students they must recruit and enroll regardless of the needs of their team.

One of the ironies of the Jock School is that many of the student athletes it recruits may not get to compete on the field. Sports teams may have much larger rosters than they need because so many students receive sports scholarships because that is the primary marketing strategy of their Admissions Department. Relatively few merit scholarships tend to be offered at Jock Schools, since the college itself generally can't support the academic environment needed to keep academically-oriented students. Student athletes at the Jock School, unless they are exceptionally good athletes, can be counted on to provide a steady stream of federal and state grants for four, five, or six years.

WHERE THE MONEY COMES FROM:

• Students' "bring" - whatever educational grants and scholarships the student is eligible for, as well as whatever tuition (if any) the parents can afford
• Sports revenue - Although small college ticket prices are lower than 'professional' student sports at a large state university, their expenses are much lower and Jock Schools can actually earn higher profits than large state schools in this area
• "Credit factory" courses offered to student athletes at other, more demanding colleges which require some academic components beyond the reach of the student athlete.

PITFALLS FOR PARENTS:

• Jock Schools are not known for providing a very rigorous education, in large part because of the demands placed on student athletes by their coaches. Many do not have late afternoon classes and may explicitly excuse students from certain classes.
• As a result, your student may have difficulty transferring into a better school or getting into graduate school.
• Most non-sports areas tend to be under-supported. Compare the admissions office, the gym(s) and the library if in doubt.

PROMISING DEVELOPMENTS:

• While the educational component may be lacking, Jock Schools do provide a cheap education, and may be a good place to park a student who needs some time to mature.
• Academic Education may not be the Jock Schools' strong suit, but good professors can be found everywhere. For the right student, Jock Schools fill a market niche
• Some students (although many fewer than you'd suppose) DO make it into professional sports. A Jock School can give a student another chance to grab the brass ring, and time to mature when it doesn't work out.

The Castle on the Hill's Business Model

The Castle on the Hill is what most people think of when they hear the word "College", although this kind of college experience of grassy quads lined with mature trees and well-maintained historical buildings is rarer than you might think. Although I never taught there, Colby College in Waterville Maine is a good example of The Castle on the Hill type of school. In fact, its address is actually Mayflower Hill and when it relocated from the center of Waterville in the 1940's its isolation from the even then declining micro-city center was complete.

Castles on the Hill are great places for adults to visit and relive the kind of life they imagine they might have had if they'd gone there in their youth instead of attending Beer-Bong U or Hardscrabble State. The facilities are immaculate, the library is extensive, and the wingback chairs found in every campus niche invite reflection and contemplation of the bigger issues of life beyond earning a living, raising a family, and avoiding being mugged in the process.

As you might expect, none of this comes cheap! The student services rival the physical plant maintenance for extravagance. (One grounds worker at Colby told me how the school trucked in several loads of special sand for a mid-winter beach party, and then paid overtime to have it trucked back out the following morning.) Yes, you do get a lot for your money at the Castle on the Hill, but then you can expect to pay a lot of money for what you get.

Perhaps the biggest operational problem confronting The Castle on the Hill is student diversity. The combination of good grades and capacious checkbooks does not come easily to the African-American and Hispanic students that the college needs to avoid being considered elitist. The Castle on the Hill will try to fill this gap with as many American minority students as it can lure, and fill in the rest of their requirement with international students. The latter have the advantage of being diverse yet still well-prepared academically. The student from Kenya who enrolls in the Castle on the Hill is probably closer to the top of the Keynan distribution of income than the average Castle on the Hill American student is to the U.S. distribution of income. Yes, language may be a problem (though not as much as you might think, since most international students have studied English extensively in their home countries), but the Castle on the Hill has lots of English and Foreign Language resources to help with that. Besides, American minority students from Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles have even more problems with English yet are much less amenable to correcting them.

But back to the money... There IS some good news for students interested in the Castle on the Hill: financial aid can be quite generous for some students. The same white-bread guilt which inspires such diversity angst also extends to under-represented non-minority Americans. You may get a deal if you're a well-prepared rural white student from a modest background and a public school. Male students may have an additional leg up, since like most liberal arts colleges, students with a Y-chromosome are in shorter supply these days and the colleges worry about becoming female ghettos. (Why they never worried about becoming male ghettos in the 1940's and 1950's is a question for another day.)

Here again, though, the Castle on the Hill may do things its own way. Back in the early 1990's many Castles were charged with anti-trust violations for doing things their own way, namely by forming an 'overlap group' which would control how much financial aid they would offer students who had applied to more than one of the group's colleges. See this article in the New York Times, followed the next day by this article.

PITFALLS FOR PARENTS:

• Be prepared for gadget and spending creep. If you send your student to the Castle on the Hill they'll be swimming with wealthier students and there will be pressure to compete on the same playing field. (I warned you about my penchant for mixed methaphors in the first post on this blog, so stop rolling your eyes.)
• Financial aid for tuition may be generous, but watch those fees!
• The political atmosphere at the Castle on the Hill is more liberal than at other colleges. This ain't no business school, after all.

PROMISING DEVELOPMENTS:

The quality of education here is generally quite high:

• Virtually no large lecture classes;
• Little to no pressure on faculty to pass unprepared students;
• Peer pressure, while annoying, is usually in the right direction academically speaking
• Positive perception by future employers

Higher Ed = Big Biz? Say it ain't so!

The other day I calculated how many colleges I had taught a course or two for (or ten or twenty) over the years and came up with this breakdown from most humble to most exulted:

Private, for-profit two-year colleges: 2
Public two-year colleges: 1
Private four-year colleges specializing in business: 3
Private four-year liberal arts colleges: 6
Public doctoral degree universities: 2

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a lot of schools trying to attract students, allocate financial aid, convince the government to give them more money (and not just the public colleges), pay their bills, and keep all their balls in the air at the same time. In other words, higher education is a business like any other. If you don't have enough dollars coming through the front door (on the arms of students, generally), you can't pay your bills, maintain your buildings, or educate the students you do have.

Think of this series of posts as a field guide to American higher education based on the business model (devotees of the liberal arts may sneer at this point, but are welcome to continue reading) each chooses to pursue. While no college administrator will acknowledge something as, well, tacky as a business model, they all use them, refine them, and change them when they no longer work. As a parent, knowing what kind of business model a school is using can help you and your student avoid some costly mistakes. As a potential educator, knowing something about a school's business model can help you avoid a lot of the frustration that comes with dealing with administrators. As a citizen and taxpayer, knowing which schools are destined for the ash heap of history, well, that's not going to help you very much because there's really nothing you can do about it but wait for the carnage and make sure you have a good seat.

Next: The Castle on the Hill Liberal Arts College, The 'Take all Comers' non-selective College, Jock Schools, the R-1 Big Name University, God n' Grades Colleges, and Specialty Schools for women and minorities

Ivory Tower, My Tookus!

Have you ever dreamed of a job where you worked on a tree-lined campus, hung around the library, had deep conversations with the interesting people you worked with, influenced young minds and had both a month off at Christmas and three months off in the summer to boot? If you're under 35, you imagine being an advocate for students fighting an insensitive bureaucracy and those over 40 you relish being able to complain about the current crop of students who are invariably either more rebellious, docile, arrogant, ignorant, drunk, or fundamentalist than you and your college cronies were back in the day.

The truth is, (spoiler alert) while being a college professor really is a great gig - it's not great for the reasons most people think. Even being a part-timer or adjunct (which is the vineyard where I'm currently stomping) is pretty decent, though their ivory tower is just as likely to be in a suburban strip mall or online. In this blog I plan to show the good, the bad, and the just plain ugly about American higher education. I also plan to show some of the funny things (OK, a LOT of the funny things) that happen there, have happened there, or could happen there. Whether you consider yourself a loud lauder of the liberal arts (history, English, psychology) or a proud practitioner of the practical arts (business, computer science, engineering), I welcome your readership and your comments.

So c'mon you polymaths - you know who you are - jump on board this peace train of mixed metaphors!