College 2: Analyzing Its Value To Create An Alternative
Part I can be read here.
It’s commonly stated that a bachelor’s degree will, on average, increase your lifetime earnings by ~$1m. It’s useful to ask, however, what parts of college make graduates worth that extra $1m to employers. Some aspects are core to the graduate’s economic value, but many certainly aren’t — colleges are full of students who would gladly live without some facilities, events, or initiatives if it meant lower tuition, and their salary post-graduation would remain unaffected. Those who desire an economically valuable education can end up paying $70k for luxuries they hardly want, as every respected academic institution seems to raise tuition to provide these; none choose to forego excess in favor of economically useful stuff.
The purpose of this post is to design a more cost-efficient alternative to the traditional college, with a clear goal in mind: produce skilled laborers of equal talent at a lower per capita cost (vocational school-esque, but higher quality with a better reputation).
The theoretical reasoning behind the importance of cost-effective yet societally-respected college is:
for consumers, creating an easier gateway to skilled labor employment / high salary, which will create more wealth, thus hopefully limiting its own target market over time. Future generations will have a higher likelihood of having parents who can afford to send them to traditional colleges that provide more personal development and fulfillment higher on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It only requires moving one generation into skilled labor for the most likely path (economic inertia) to result in many generations of familial wealth. Altering the cost of that movement by a factor of 2 would affect millions of lives.
for colleges, increasing competition and incentivizing them to be more fiscally responsible. Regardless of their social and non-economic expenditure/value (which is worth it to many consumers), a 63% increase in tuition & fees over the past decade is unacceptable. Either colleges are becoming needlessly overpriced, or companies further in the education vertical are charging a lot more, thus forcing colleges to increase tuition. Both cases are solvable via responsibility and/or resistance on the part of the college. An industry in which colleges need paying students as much as students need the colleges would be a healthy balance, and would force colleges to better control their tuition.
So, from the ground up, what does a cost-effective college need, and what changes can be made?
Courses: Despite what’s trendy, keep classes offline, as studies show students will dedicate themselves more and perform better. Take away most humanities-focused and ‘elective’ courses, and concentrate on offering a wide array of practical courses. Design a preset, organized curriculum term by term per concentration; this minimizes costs through preventing the typical situation of less-than-full classes that are held every term. Concentrations for specific employment roles rather than fields of study, and many joint ones, i.e. Front-end Development and Graphic Design. Focus on experiential learning (more on this later).
Faculty: Minimize academic faculty in favor of those with industry experience. They’ll have better judgment on what to teach, and have a view of what makes a competitive job candidate from the hiring side.
Facilities: Eliminate unnecessary buildings and amenities such as gyms, or at least limit campus to one of each amenity. If it’s not used by every student, it’s a wasted expense to some. The real world offers a pay-for-what-you-specifically-want system that will be cheaper for most students than the ‘bundle’ offered by colleges. A city location, though more expensive per building, can equate to less buildings if the city is leveraged correctly (see below).
Internships: Form valuable partnerships with reputable employers for term-long internships. These internships, at practically no cost to the institution, will both outsource some of the educational burden in an economically productive manner while likely providing more employability value for students than the classroom.
Reputation: This will be the most challenging aspect. With little valid comparisons to be made to traditional colleges, it would be challenging to assign a rank or prestigious reputation to the institution, especially while being publicized as a more affordable option. The solution to gaining a reputation would likely be a hierarchy of these institutions, similar to the current college system. While all would be financially lean, some would be smaller institutions with lower acceptance rates. To put it simply: You can’t have a Harvard without a Boston University or Emerson for it to look superior to, and when you’re competing with actual Harvard grads for employment, you need to be a Harvard. Primarily serving the underprivileged and less wealthy yet talented population would also make students more valuable for recruitment, in the way of good publicity for the most common employers post-graduation.