December 15, 2013

We Must Change the Delivery of Higher Education

Today only the very wealthy can afford to pay the cost of a college education from a top university. A significant number of students without wealthy parents depend on student loans to pay the steadily increasing costs for obtaining an education.

Nationally, the average student has accumulated loan debt of more than $26,000. However, students enrolled in exclusive colleges or pursuing educations in advanced fields, such as medicine or law, can easily end up with student loans greater than a quarter of a million dollars.

The dirty little secret not commonly understood is that these loans can never be forgiven, even in bankruptcy. Lenders retain the ability to garnish wages, and even take Social Security benefits if the loans are federally backed or subsidized, for as long as the borrower is alive to ensure being paid back in full.

We should be wondering why we are continuing to rely on so many students attending traditional brick-and-mortar colleges and universities and paying such high costs to receive an education.

Historically, institutions of higher learning existed as brick-and-mortar facilities in fixed locations because this is where the faculty using traditional classroom teaching methods lived and worked. However, today the technology available to share information electronically has become so easy to use and cost-efficient that it seems obvious teachers can expand their reach to a much larger audience without losing effectiveness.

In fact, many lecture-driven courses are so one-sided, and delivered in such large auditoriums, that little interaction can happen, anyway. This results in it being irrelevant that teachers and students are inside the same physical classroom. For these types of lectures, the students would be much better served having the ability to watch a video at their convenience, and even repeat viewings as often as needed.

Even where interactive learning is preferred, available electronics already allow full participation in real time, and recorded Q-and-A formats would allow students to see if the question they are pondering has already been asked/answered.

The most important thing to be considered is that our No. 1 objective should be to provide the best education possible to the largest number of students at the lowest cost. It's quite clear most American families cannot afford to continue to support the current cost-ineffective classroom methods for delivering advanced education.

The American taxpayer is once again facing the collapse of another financial bubble that is about to burst. Student loans now total more than $1.3 trillion and are spread out among more than 39 million borrowers. Worse, one in seven is in default within three years of having to make repayments.

Those of us without student loans may take comfort in hearing that these loans can never be forgiven, but the old adage of not being able to get blood from a turnip also applies. So what if lenders can garnish Social Security benefits and wages? Doesn't that simply result in even more people ending up in the safety net welfare system that all taxpayers will have to fund? Think about the negative impact on the U.S. economy with so many young Americans unable to afford to buy homes and other goods to help drive the economic machine.

We need to demand that expansion of electronically delivered education begin immediately.

In the future, we will see the best teachers from the most highly regarded educational institutions cost-effectively expanding their reach by producing and delivering video lectures that will be accessible via computer through a variety of pay-per-view arrangements.

Heck, I often pursue video education today for just about any information I need by going to YouTube, where most videos are free. Admittedly, some videos are not very good or even always accurate. However, like Google, with a bit of discernment the usefulness is quite good. Why wouldn't we expect to see our higher education delivered in the same simple manner?

Yeah, I know, the value of the social education realized by attending college away from home will be diminished, and sports teams will have reduced followings. For the wealthiest Americans, I'm pretty sure change will come very slowly because they can afford to pay for their children to enjoy the traditional college experience.

However, for most Americans, it all comes down to remembering that the original objective is to obtain an education that will allow one to be employed in order to support oneself.

By the way, if you are the parents or grandparents of college-age people and you see them pursuing an education in a field you know has little practical economic demand, please convince them to reconsider their choices.

Similarly, if you see them attending college but not working hard at learning, or barely making it, you would be doing them a favor by convincing them to stop school until they have matured enough to give it their best. As a former corporate recruiter, I saw far too many nice young people who graduated from college with a bare C average who were then as unemployable as if they had shown up with only a high school diploma. Finally, if you see that some of your kids/grand kids obviously have greater mechanical than mental skills, try to convince them to pursue careers in the trades instead of a traditional college. They will likely have a much better chance of being self-supporting.

Mike Tower