University tuition, the problem isn't the price, it's the value.

they're strong bad I want to be a
graduate of crazy go nuts University just like you please let me know how I can accomplish this goal after decades of growth in higher education he says many New England colleges and universities are struggling with a sharp downturn in college enrollment since 2016 more than 20 New England colleges have closed consolidated merged or were acquired by another institution let's not pretend were any more sophisticated and open-minded than we really are it's really easy to complain about education as if you know we just live in this society that has this this terrible unfounded prejudice you know you can only earn people's respect if you have a master's degree you have a PhD but you don't but you and me we're sophisticated open-minded people we we judge one another by the content of our character do we this is a straw Taylor Astra Taylor didn't go to school at all until age 13 she was briefly in school from age 13 to age 16 when she dropped out again her parents philosophically rejected formal education this is the part that's really puzzling Taylor has taught sociology at the University of Georgia and su NY New Paltz University it's University Nealon how did she get that job she didn't complete high school she never even got a bachelor's degree in university what qualifications could possibly have justified her teaching sociology at the University of Georgia and at another new University in New York State you think you open-minded about these things but you're not yep show business is show business the main thing she's famous for is as a filmmaker she made a documentary film in 2005 another in 2008 and she's now appearing in the news she's being interviewed by TV news for 2019 film titled what is democracy question mark and that's why I looked into her credentials oh that oh is this somebody who studied political science or philosophy what does she know about philosophy that she's making this film sometimes you asked yourself how did this person get the financial backing to make a mainstream movie and a movie that's very unlikely to earn money I mean this movie is not gonna have collectible action figures it's not really gonna be a fumar ah-ah and then you find out who she's married to she's married to someone rich and famous but that's show business we all accept on some level or to some extent that movies get made deals get hatched because people know people and people have money and connections it's on to some extent maybe we can accept that but can we accept that someone who never even completed high school so we never went through the exam to the end of high school someone who never got a bachelor's degree master's degree and a PhD taught sociology at university there is a crisis of Education right now in 2019 and the crisis of education is not just economic it's not just about students being bankrupted it's not just about parents being bankrupted it's not just about the universities themselves going out of business and closing down because they have been bankrupted and it's not just about the wealthy and successful universities bankrupting the rest of society Marygrove College will close after 92 years in the city of Detroit the college says due to financial troubles it can't operate past the fall semester we interviewed mayor gross president inside the library built in 1905 about this bombshell decision president dr. Elizabeth burns says the college made the difficult choice that closed its doors after 92 years due to decline in student enrollment and persistent financial struggles I probably look like I've been crying because I have the faculty and staff had seen the enrollment numbers throughout the spring and summer so they knew that our numbers for fall were not looking good they knew our numbers for summer were not great and it's just you know it's sort of inevitable Virginia Western Community College eliminating positions because of a decline in enrollment in the 2013-14 academic year there were more than twelve thousand eight hundred students but enrollment for last year was only ten thousand in 1967 twenty percent of students majored in the humanities or liberal arts now it's down to five percent we have focused on a primary revenue stream that is undergraduate traditional enrollment we have not been able to diversify our enrollment so we rely on a very heavy 18 year old freshman class to come in and when those numbers don't come in there's a spiring effect we're running out of 18 to 24 year olds especially in New England which has a very flat growth rate the other thing that's happening to these institutions is that because of their cost and because of the dearth of supply they have to provide higher levels of financial aid and discounts a 2017 study from the National Association of college and university business officers shows the average tuition is discounted by nearly 50% for first-time full-time students politically it's convenient to pretend that the problem is cost it's convenient and it's dangerous to pretend that the problem is cost the problem is value value is harder to measure value is harder to fix right now Bernie Sanders is the first American politician in living memory - seriously want to address what's wrong with American universities but what he's proposing is the wrong so who shouldn't it's an irrelevant solution he just wants to dump money on the problem to make admission cheaper can still have a terrible university system that still bankrupts students and parents and the nation with cheap tuition or free tuition and to a larger extent than people want to admit that already is the case community colleges across New York State are working hard to try and stem the tide of declining enrollment on their campuses statewide enrollment of these two-year schools has dropped about 20 percent since 2010 it's not that long ago honored Agra Community College had over 13,000 students taking classes at the school its highest enrollment ever but since that year 2012 the school has seen less and less students almost every single school year last fall it was just over ninety eight hundred students enrolled enrollments going down it's going down here it's going down to four years it's just there's more competition for fewer people it's not exclusive to OCC let's look at Cayuga Community College it had just over 4,700 students back in 2010 but last fall the enrollment was down 20% from that mark at Jefferson Community College just to our north the drop 12% in that same time period for Mohawk Valley Community College it's an 11 percent decline from nearly 72 hundred students in 2010 to just a shade over 6,300 that enrolled last fall and down the throughway in the Rochester area Monroe Community College fell 35% from nearly 19,000 students in 2010 to just over 12,000 last fall and finally one of the bigger drops 57 percent for Tompkins Cortland Community College from fall 2010 where they had 5,500 students - last fall were the enrollment just under 2,400 students many of my viewers just listen to the audio and don't watch what's on screen when my videos are playing if you did that you missed the that I added to the video there I had popping up on screen the price of tuition at the community colleges that were mentioned in sequence $4,000 $5,000 when the price is that low it's trivial relative to the other costs that devoting years of your life to study really entail you have to rent a new apartment you have to buy new furniture you have to stop living in one place and start living in another you have to start a whole new life and become a whole different person and maybe learn a new language the type of sacrifice and commitment being made relative to $5,000 relative to $5,000 plus student aid and a bank loan spreading the cost out amortizing the cost over many years when you're talking about $5,000 tuition cost is no longer the problem the problem is value and the problem of the low value of university education goes much much deeper and much much further than the problem of credentialing and the value of a credential to colleges in New England have shut down recently for more are closing their doors this month this is an alarming number of schools going out of business affecting thousands of students new centers Chris Costas shows us how it's affecting students from Maine and why experts say this is happening research firms shows New England faces a dire forecast in the next ten years at least 15% fewer students will go to four-year colleges fewer students to choose from means liberal arts schools will start dipping a term that means admitting students they normally would not or offering them more financial aid but that phenomenon repeats itself until some schools simply start running out of students and income and the week schools have no where to death leaving students like Tara who just finished her sophomore year at Green Mountain with big decisions to make Green Mountain College is not alone since 2016 in New England alone six private liberal arts colleges have announced plans to close another three are merging larger universities and one more is not admitting any new students experts say this trend is only going to get worse I mean the population of college young students literally is gonna fall off of a cliff many years ago about ten years ago approximately I spoke to a university professor by email and I just want to say I'm very often in a privileged position partly just because I'm so old when I touch these bursty professors they often want to kind of unburden themselves and talk to me like I'm their friend or talk to me like I'm their therapist even tell me about I'll hard their lives ours professors and I get a little bit of an insider's view I used to be married to a university professor worst years of my life but I I get a little bit of an insider's view even though I'm an outsider even though really I'm an applicant when I talk to these people so started talking to this professor and he's complaining to me about how terrible the university is he works at it see it's a famous University in London England and everything about the university is terrible and the quality of education is terrible and if you get the degree it won't lead to any employment for you there's no future so don't do it it tells me all this stuff which is probably probably good advice oh oh oh and I remember he even complained specifically but even he is a professor he wasn't able to use the library in between semesters you know it's the details that stick with you you know even he even resented the way library privileges were said everything about this university is bad and you know it's just too expensive said to them you think $5,000 $10,000 in tuition you think that's what matters here let me tell you something if your university were offering me a real educational opportunity I could turn to my parents and ask them to buy me a diamond-encrusted pen and a solid gold desk to sit at and do the research to get that degree okay and that would be worth the cost of a golden desk and a diamond-encrusted pen could be justified relative to the value of that education okay the tuition cost you're talking about here or trivial now trivial compared to what trivial compared to completely ending my life in Cambodia completely ending my life in Canada losing my home losing all my furniture losing all my friends if I had a job quitting my job I think I did a good job in time quit my job moving to a new country renting an apartment in London England extremely expensive I'm sorry the cost of rent you know ridiculous and then living there and devoting my life to that area of studies for years it's it's much more like the type of sacrifice you're thinking about with joining the army you know even if you're just gonna join the army for five years you're gonna think about that really carefully and the most fundamental and profound question you ask yourself is what kind of person am I gonna be at the end of this what kind of human being am I gonna become and I've applied to join the army I thought that through I'm not gonna come out of this you know a little bit demented am I gonna come out of this psychologically morally ethically a worst person than I am now or a better one is this gonna make me stronger this gonna make me weak is this gonna make me sophisticated is this gonna make me cosmopolitan is this gonna make me a philosophically a better person how am I gonna come out the other end of this if you really believed in the value of that education going to that University and doing that the cost of a diamond pen and a gold desk would be nothing relative to that education you'd receive said to him in the email the problem is I don't believe in the value of this education being offered this University and you don't either you've just spelled out for me all these reasons why it's a terrible University and be a terrible decision as soon as I said that he wrote back right away saying oh no no if your parents have the money you should sign up you should become a speaker you'd be grateful this guy was just telling me that it's terrible in every possible way and even that it makes his life terrible as a professor even he feels ripped off by the system and as soon as you say you got the money he's so eager to rip me off alright there's a lot of attention being paid to cost and there's very little attention being paid to Valiant for a hundred and eighty-five years this college campus in Vermont was teeming with students now it sits empty in January the school announced it would be closing enrollment was down and it had to offer ever larger tuition discounts to attract students while annual tuition was around $36,000 no one paid that price we were actually discounting that about 67% so the average student was really only paying about $12,000 for tuition in Vermont three colleges have ceased operations this year losing roughly a thousand students a fourth college is on probation and a fifth one has merged with another school in Connecticut while this state has been particularly hard-hit the closures reflect a wider trend across the United States according to Moody's in the next few years the closure rate for nonprofit US private colleges will climb to around 15 a year this was the list of suggested careers for the most recent university degree I enrolled in University of Victoria Asian Studies and - at least two different professors I've presented this list I said well what are they thinking literally not a single one of these jobs not a single one would I be qualified for by this degree like every single one of them is a lie and in many cases these are jobs that require a different degree even being offered at the same University what do you what do you mean legal professional what do you mean with a BA in Asian Studies from a Canadian University I can be a legal professional really well what kind of legal professional is that a weight writer editor publisher those are all jobs I've had in the past but I have worked as an editor have worked in the publishing industry and so on some of these are negotiated to coach with my bachelor's degree in Asian Studies I'm gonna be employees as negotiating some of these I looked into at that time actually the research foreign service do you know what it takes to get into the Canadian foreign service I do I did the research I looked into it in a this you are not qualified for any of these jobs not even one not even office administrator not even teacher not policy analyst not intelligence officer I talked to the military about that I actually looked into these jobs tourism analysts there was a separate University in the same town giving giving credentials and tourism completely different line of work needs different not a single job and you know one of the professor's I showed this to he just started laughing and laughing and he didn't really tell the story in a clear way but he told me you know there was some meeting were like that a round table meeting where they had to come up with this list of jobs and none of them none of them could really come up with anything so he was laughing so much I never really got the story but he was allegedly at the meeting were a group of professors and and university administrators had to come up with the list of jobs I would supposedly be qualified for by studying at this university in Asian Studies and you know what I could forgive it all I could forgive all that if this university had just done a decent job in teaching me the Chinese language if they had just been decent and competent and caring and good I would have paid the all the thousands and thousands of dollars and devoted years of my life if they just could have taught me the language even everything else was even if the credential was worthless but they can't the system is broken in the ways that matter most it reminds me of the an interview with an executive from an airline corporation and the executive said rewording this and condensing this everyone says that they want more legroom everyone says they want more space between the rows of seats in the airplane but that is the most expensive thing the airline can give you the airline can give you free peanuts and give you free beer they can give you free champagne bottles of champagne would cost them less than increasing the space between the rows because when they do that the total number of seats and the airplane goes down and they lose money on every single flight for the rest of that airplanes life once those seats are installed that's the one sacrifice that can make you know what the tragedy is the most expensive thing the university can give you is exactly what we're paying them for and that's tutoring that's face-to-face quality time between one student and one professor or maybe very small groups of two or three students it's people actually helping you and teaching you not lecturing you not one professor at a podium in front of a crowd of 200 students that's profitable they can make a lotta money you got two hundred students in the room they're all paying thousands of dollars and just one professor stands there with a projector and gives this performance it's a high profit industry okay but one on one teaching which is what learning the Chinese language especially really requires learning the Chinese language you can't just do studying alone at the library you need help you need direct interaction and what you're paying for the university is exactly the one thing that the internet can't give you that the library can't give you that working alone with computers and textbooks and pen and paper can't do for you okay it's exactly that tutelage [Music] what is the value of education how would we measure value apart from price apart from the earnings potential of the degree apart from credential ization the value of the credential in that sense I don't think anyone today expects a student to be a refined or well educated or sophisticated person after they complete a bachelor's degree I don't think there's any expectation of that culture I don't think anyone says oh well you know you've been to university so you know these things you're you're just well educated and center with anything in general people of all ages not just young people because people go to university in their 20s 30s where people go back to university at any age partly because it is so expensive people do not come back from university with a refined or sophisticated outlook on life I don't think anyone really feels that spending five years in university is gonna change you profoundly for the better not even compared to five years in the military in many ways all that university now does is give you a membership card for the library and a cubicle for you to sit down and to work alone back and forth from the library back and forth in the lecture and apart from the question of whether or not university graduates are employable it's an important question its way there really is a question of is the University experience making these into better people at any price I think we all know right now that the answer is no remember at crazy Thomas University the future is you probably [Music]