Transcription
What do you get when you mix rising tuition, outdated curriculums, and AI generated essays? You get New York magazine publishing articles titled, "Everyone is cheating their way through college." Professors saying their students can no longer write. And for the first time in recorded history, college graduates facing a higher unemployment rate than the average worker. Welcome to the end of the college system as we know it.
Quick shout out to this Substack by Neils Gilman for helping guide this video essay. In 1963, University of California President Clark Kerr delivered a series of lectures called the Godkin lectures where he described the role of the university post World War II. At that stage, Kerr explained the role of the university as a multiver, an institutional hodgepodge of research, job training, credentiing, a coming of age experience, and a hub for the technical elite. It was the great mediator of the finest minds this country produced, providing loads of different avenues one could focus on. A multiversity's job, he says, was to quote administer the present. Essentially, it means that the university is where most big advancements in tech, culture, and economy originated. That was its overarching goal, to move society forward. And in post World War II, the technocratic function of the multiversity was capable of keeping the varying degrees of use from falling out of balance. But beginning in the late 1970s, the scales on which those varying degrees laid on began to collapse.
This era was the earliest days of what is now known as the privatization of college finances. Imagine a single location that provides all the experiences I just mentioned for less than $1,000 a year. Seems almost too good to be true, right? Well, that was the reality in the 1960s when Kerr first presented his lectures. In the 1960s, states viewed higher education as a public investment. Tuition was exceptionally low because taxpayers covered a much larger share of operating costs. As a result, most public schools awarded little to no financial aid. Only private schools did.
But then came the state funding cuts. States were unwilling or unable to raise taxes to increase university revenue while at the same time facing infinitely increasing health care and public safety costs. As a result, policymakers left universities with no choice than to hike up admission fees. These cuts were especially bad during recessions because tax revenue fell sharply while demand for public services rose and they had to cut their budgets somewhere. So more often than not, it was the public universities. At the same time, state funding was being cut in the 80s and 90s, federal grant programs began to stagnate. And this is when universities had no other option than to participate in what was usually reserved for private institutions, financial aid.
At first, this aid was actually focused on the right people. In 1995 to 1996, the school spent about $1.5 billion on financial aid with 55% going to need-based aid. A 2011 report from the US Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics found that 13% of first-time students received need-based aid that year, while only 8% of non-needy students received so-called merit aid. But it still wasn't enough to keep up with just how much state funding was being cut out.
The problem was public universities knew that if they hiked up admission costs too much, their enrollment would go down unless they pulled out a tactic that was being used at private universities. And that tactic is called enrollment management. The idea is simple. Instead of offering need-based pay to only students who need it, start offering it to rich, privileged, high achieving kids, too. Providing more money in financial aid to otherwise fully paying students is more lucrative than spending money on needy students for several reasons. These students end up paying more in overall tuition. They are more willing to pay full price for other expenses like books and room and board. And their parents are more likely to become lavish donors to the college in the future. All of this improves the public university's bottom line and it means that they can keep their admission prices higher without enrollment rates dropping due to inaffordability. In fact, financial aid leveraging is most effective when universities keep the sticker prices high because it ensures the biggest merit scholarships to the highest achievers who in most cases need it less than the average applicant cuz they're usually better off.
Here's what this looks like in practice. Say the sticker price of annual tuition for a public university is $40,000. The high achiever, that is the one with a 4.0 0 GPA or perhaps an exceptional athlete receives a scholarship of $20,000, leaving them with only $20,000 more to pay. Conversely, an average applicant with an average GPA may only receive a scholarship of $8,000, meaning their pay is $32,000 per year. It's a huge win for the colleges. Public universities become less accessible to those with disadvantages due to the cost and the high achieving often wealthy people are more attracted to go to public universities due to reduced costs. It makes the public universities much more competitive with everyone else. And in our privatized world, seeming better than your peers means everything.
Speaking of increasing perceived value for colleges, let's talk about the huge budget dump into upgraded facilities. With so many public universities across the country, they need a way to justify the egregious costs, even to richer families. So, what did they do? Build a bunch of ridiculously overpriced facilities that don't even really add much value to the multiversity experience. One example of unnecessarily expensive builds is Texas Tech Lazy River. Built in 2009, this 645 ft tube carer includes a 25p person hot tub, a diving well with a slide, water volleyball, and even a basketball area. all for only $8.45 million. The managing director of recreational sports at Texas Tech even admitted that the Lazy River was quote a great recruiting tool for the university. Another example is University of Texas's Callaway House. The Callaway House is a privatelyowned and operated residence hall with private bedrooms, walk-in closets, full furnished living rooms, and kitchen steel appliances. So, public universities took the coming of age part of the multiversity experience and pumped it with money to justify high tuition. Even though most economists agree the biggest driver of rising tuition has been decades of declining state support. Public colleges might be 10 to $25,000 a year now. But at least you have marble countertops.
Right now, let's move on to a crucial aspect of the college system that has been neglected much more than the facilities, the professors themselves. Beginning in the 1970s, there was a surge of adjunct professors. Adjunct professors are part-time professors, usually on contract work with no permanent role or office, working multiple teaching jobs at once. Before this, the overwhelming majority of college professors were tenured. Tenured professors are indefinitely employed at universities and are typically given multi-year research goals and grants. It provides really strong job security, and you usually can't get fired unless you do something horribly wrong. It also gives them the ability to teach controversial topics without political or institutional pressure backfire.
Now, the reason that adjunct professors have been on the rise for so long is multifaceted. For one, there's an overupp of prospective faculty members. There are many more potential professors with PhDs and MAS now. Also, non-eing professional staff has grown rapidly. There are an increasing number of specialists in career services, diversity and inclusion, and student affairs. Additionally, hiring adjuncts over tenure professors allows institutions to adapt to this increasingly volatile college system. You know, enrollment rates and also demand for different majors just flip-flops so much now. And with an adjunct professor, you can have this kind of non-committal agreement where you can just kind of slip them into a major for a little while and you don't have to have this tenure professor who has this huge curriculum that they suddenly have to change. Also, there's just less money going into instruction and more going into financial aid and recreational stuff. Like I said, and adjunct professors are significantly cheaper than tenure professors. Today, roughly 37% of faculty at public colleges and universities are adjunct instructors, while nationally more than 2/3 of all faculty appointments are now contingent rather than tenure track.
Why does this matter? Well, firstly, I do want to say that the research on whether adjunct professors are less effective is mixed, but it has been shown in some studies that students taught by adjuncts are less likely to continue in subsequent courses, perform worse in later classes, or less likely to graduate. To me, this makes sense. Your instructor will probably take his role less seriously and place less of an emphasis on caring and mentoring students when he's working multiple jobs at once and he's only going to be there temporarily anyway. I'm not saying that's always the mindset of adjuncts, but I can only imagine that that mindset is more prevalent in a higher percentage of adjuncts than tenure professors.
But without a doubt, the biggest disruptor of the college system in the present day has to go to modern technology. Before modern technology, the way one transmitted knowledge was simple and straightforward. Provide the students books, give a lecture, give them a problem set pertaining to that lecture, and give them a written examination. But in the present, administering this system in the context of a college campus without any integrity issues is damn near impossible, rendering it obsolete. For decades, a degree signaled something indisputable. You were competent enough to make it through four years of lecturing and following rules and therefore competent enough to participate in the workforce. Unless you were cheating, but cheating a 4-year degree used to be really hard. But ever since the smartphone's incipients, professors have had to battle with the streamlined convenience economy that is ravaging our ability to focus. When we can't focus, when our attention is increasingly fragmented, paying attention in class is much more difficult. And when something is too difficult, we try to offload it. Now more than ever, students can accomplish the offloading of their thinking, focus, and patience thanks to artificial intelligence. A January 2023 survey of a thousand college students found nearly 90% use the chat bots with homework assignments. 3 years after the launch of Chat GBT and that survey, and we are already beginning to see the disastrous effects of AI on teaching.
In a New York Magic titled, "Everyone is cheating their way through college," James D. Walsh writes of several anecdotes of this. In one account, a freshman from the University of Ontario first used it in spring semester, then quickly adopted it for every one of their classes. My grades were amazing, they said. It changed my life. Walsh wrote, she continued to use it next semester. Why wouldn't she? Why wouldn't she is the most revealing sentence in this entire article. If jobs care that you got your degree, a piece of paper more than inspecting your specific college work, what reason is there to learn and apply the knowledge if that takes dozens more hours without chat GPT? It's a genuine question and it's one that students now have to grapple with as AI tests their patience. Another story comes from a freshman finance major from one of the country's top universities. Now, this student actually told Walsh she is against AI use. I'm against copying and pasting. I'm against cheating and plagiarism, all of that. Then she goes on to explain how she used AI to outline a four to fivepage essay due in two hours. It did all the outlining work for her and all she had to do was fill it in. This is coming from someone who claims to actually enjoy writing. She states that she understands the importance of learning how to outline better, but she cares about good grades more. An essay with chat GPT, she says it's like it just gives you straight up what you have to follow. you just don't really have to think much.
In response to this meteoric rise in AI use, professors have been trying and failing to stop it or even incorporate it. Some allow it so long as students cite it, some only allow it for conceptual help, and some require receipts of their dialogue with the chatbot. The problem is that this method is not very foolproof. Some students accidentally cheat on their assignments without even knowing it or knowing how much because the policies and guidelines for AI use are in most cases pretty nebulous. Professors have also tried more oral exams or AI proofing assignments, but that can't account for all the AI use still taking place outside of the classroom. And for the professors that think AI detection tools are the solution, they are highly misguided. AI detection tools are notoriously garbage. There are loads of stories on the internet of student essays and assignments being tagged as AI by detectors even though they wrote them. And studies show the detectors trigger more false positives for neurodivergent students and students who speak English as a second language. If you throw the book of Genesis into one of these detectors, they're most likely going to flag it as AI. Walsh did this on something called zero GPT, and they found that it was 93% AI. Even the professors, the ones who, you know, are supposed to be trained to teach students, are now letting AI grade papers. There aren't any studies yet to show how many, but one survey of 1,800 higher ed staff found that 30% use it daily or weekly.
And now, the consequences of this for students entering the job market are disastrous. Like I said at the beginning, employment rates for college grads are now lower than the average worker. Because if AI can conduct many entry-level job roles, or if companies are convinced it can, even though it really can't, many employers will see hiring new college grads as virtually useless, a risk even. They know most students are paying less attention, relying ever more on AI. So, at this point, what does a degree even really signal? Can we really say that it signals the same level of competency as it did even just a decade ago? Unfortunately, I don't think so. And I can't even blame the students for using it because if there is no tangible reward for not using it and there is no tangible punishment for using it, then why stop using it? I said something in the same vein in a previous video, but I'm not condoning this behavior. I'm just explaining why students would be pushed to have this belief. And when we add everything else we discussed into the mix, it's clear to see why the college system is collapsing. Tuition costs are absurd. Universities are investing into recreational and research purposes more than instructors. And what once could only be acquired through a degree can now be acquired in an albeit less cognitively challenging way through AI. It's no wonder why so many young people now see college as a huge risk with little to no upside. It still has the aspects of the multiversity. You know, it has the networking opportunities. It has the fun activities and clubs. It has the research hubs. But the value proposition is no longer a no-brainer. And the system itself is built on increasingly unstable foundations.
So if a degree is too expensive and no longer proves that you're ready to work, what does? Well, there's actually a tech company, which is today's sponsor, Course Careers, that I think is helping solve this problem. And their results speak for themselves. The way it works is they focus on teaching in-demand jobs that are currently hiring entry-level people such as supply chain, construction, project management, construction estimating, other trades like electrician, plumber, and HVAC. basically all the industries where you have a real chance of getting hired without experience. Once you choose which career you want, they then teach you everything that employers want you to know. And the best part is it's completely online and very affordable. A guy named Noah recently went through their program. He had no degree or professional experience, but he ended up landing a logistics coordinator job just 6 weeks after finishing the supply chain course. Another guy named Andrew went from working in oil fields to becoming a junior construction [music] estimator. So, if you're looking to land an entry-level job, but you don't want to rely on just having a degree, then course careers is probably your best option. I'm going to include a link to their free introduction courses in the description below, which will help you get started on the right career path. But let's get back to tackling the college problem.
With all that being said, what would a next generation university look like, or what should it look like? Well, the author of that Substack article, Neils Gilman, and others like him seem to think the solution lies in a collaborative co-curriculum future. And for the most part, I agree with them. The co-curricular, as Gilman defines it, is the focus on residential life and human connection as the university's irreducible value in the age of AI tutors. In practice, the university would function somewhat like a monastery, where informal discussions produce the greatest breakthroughs in lessons and research. More specifically, that might look like chance hallway encounters with faculty members, late night bowl sessions in the dormatory common room, and heated dining hall debates. It aligns with what students believe are the most important aspects of the university experience, which are relationships, belonging, and dialogue. The Platonic Academy in Athens in ancient Greece is probably the best concrete complete example of this, where the academy functions as a metaphorical public olive grove, a place for debate, a gymnasium, and a garden. In fact, before all the negative developments for public universities in the 1970s, freshmen cited that one of their most important goals in college was to help them develop a meaningful philosophy of life. And that means we focus less on written assignments and more on live assessments and demonstrations. So basically like oral exams but done in a way that AI can't. Think of a collaborative student project in which two people argue for or against a certain viewpoint. They bring in their own evidence. They practice critical thinking by changing or strengthening their arguments on the fly and demonstrate reasoning in [music] real time. Those are valuable skills that transfer to just about every other sector of life and they would encourage what students want the most from college anyway. Still, that doesn't address the prodigious tuition costs which definitely need to be tackled. Other than that, you could consider an alternative school like course careers. I mean, that teaches you a specific skill and that skill usually pays well. But if we want to make sure the college system doesn't collapse, it must provide a value that is on par with the financial and time investment [music] and in some ways almost regress to a system which made college great in the first place. We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. And also, I just published my debut novel. It's a sci-fi novel about a 21-year-old who lives in the modern world and develops the ability to see into a parallel reality. So, if you want to check that out, link in the description. And if you enjoyed this video, you'll probably like my video about how AI is destroying education for everyone. I focus specifically on AI and education in that video, so check that out if you want to. And now I'm leaving.