What colleges won't tell you

February 22, 2023. In 1980, I was the youngest professor ever to be named a finalist for the university-wide teaching award at the University of Kansas, at the start of my third year teaching there. After that, I spent forty more years in higher education, having already spent ten years getting to Kansas. What follows is some of the accumulated lessons and, hopefully, wisdom and advice for prospective and current college students.

Let's start with tuition. How do most colleges use tuition? Lacking a significant endowment, most private colleges rely on students paying the complete tuition ("full payers") to supply the financial aid for students receiving financial aid. I think colleges would like you to think that aid is simply a discount off of the sticker price; in real accounting terms, aid comes primarily from tuition paid by others. So when you hear that the college offers a 50% discount rate, the effect is that a student paying full tuition is actually paying two tuitions -- his or her own and the tuition of a students with a 'full,' 'need-based' scholarship.

You might assume that tuition is used primarily to fund instruction, i.e., to pay professors to teach. But look up a college's annual tax return (try guide star.org) and you'll find that salaries for faculty are a small fraction of tuition. Of course there is more to instruction than salaries, things like classrooms, computers, course materials, utility bills, but they are still pretty small compared to the tuition dollars that go into two huge accounts: financial aid and administration. And even when counting instructional costs, they would include administrative costs associated with academic affairs, e.g., deans, directors, department chairs, who may teach little if at all. The precent age of tuition that "goes into the classroom" is probably less than twenty percent.

Employment after college. When you hear a college make claim such as this -- "Ninety-six percent of our graduates are sinfully employed within six months of graduation" -- what they are not telling you is that this claim is based only on those graduates who responded to a survey or questionnaire. It is not a census or a complete study of graduates, just of those feeling positive enough to respond. If a third of graduates don't respond, don't conclude that 95% of them are employed as well. In fact, it is safe to assume that many did not respond because they are not happy with being unemployed and are not willing to answer the survey.

College completion. As shown in the accompanying graphic, about half of the 3.9 million college degrees awarded -- I am not going to say 'earned' -- in 2019 were four-year bachelor degrees. Sixty-seven percent of recent high school graduates went on to college in 2017. Of those going on to four-year colleges, 41% of them completed their degree in four years. By 2019, about 35% of Americans over the age of 25 had a college degree, up from about 4% in 1940. The metro areas with the highest concentration of people with college degrees tend to be college towns, e.g., Lawrence (KS), Boulder (CO), and Corvallis (OR), or a high tech hub like Silicon Valley (Santa Clara/San Jose/Sunnyvale).

Standardized tests. While many colleges are dropping standardized admissions tests and using more subjective, 'holistic' criteria, many expensive, elite, private colleges are also using' ability to pay' and an estimate of how well an applicant 'fits' their desired composite entering class. Top colleges have been accused of sharing data on applicants to help the colleges not 'overpay' for aid to students. And until recently, college admissions offices had adopted a 'professional code' that prevented a college from trying to outbid a collage for an accepted student. The higher education industry works primarily on a model of revenue maximization and non-transparency in pricing that would make any healthcare provider blush.

While easing admission standards, the higher education industry basically abhors or simply rejects the notion that the outcomes of their four years should be assessed, meaning that they are not willing to be held accountable for actually educating students. A diploma has become a credential, not an indication of (college) education. More likely, a college degree is an indicator of persistence and resources, not an increase in knowledge or skills.

Speaking of indicators, the 'best indicator' of college potential continues to be standardized test results. This does not mean that they are perfect or complete indicators. And the fact that various demographic groups perform at different levels on these tests is NOT a sign of bias; rather, these differences indicate a difference in preparation and readiness for college. True, wealthier students have more resources to better prepare them to do well on their standardized tests, but if high schools were doing their job, this 'extra' resource would not be necessary or useful. When I was in high school, much of any 'Regents exam' course time included extensive preparation to help students to do well on the test, e.g., practice tests, study tips, feedback to correct weaknesses before taking the exam.

When 49% of all high school grades are A- or higher, high school grades are increasingly less useful in predicting success in college. As bad a s grade inflation is in college, high schools have a similar problem. While average grades go up, performance by Americans on international tests have declined.

Education or credential? In talking about their prospective students, colleges confuse a high school degree with a high school education, just as they conflate a college diploma with a college education. There are huge differences. Despite efforts to have some national standards for a high school education, there is no useful evidence that these standards are met, other than perhaps with standardized tests like the SAT or the ACT or, better yet, AP test scores (not just AP courses taken). Just as college majors and curricula vary widely, so does the curriculum of high school students. Even if a college requires 'four years' of English, there is little consistency assessing what students learned or what levels of achievement they have reached in those courses, regardless of the letter grade earned.

Not wasting time. A final note to those who will embark on a four-year college degree program: Take a blank sheet of paper. Draw a table with seven columns and 24 rows. That creates 168 cells, each repenting an hour in a week. A typical college curriculum includes about 15 to 18 hours of 'face time' or class instruction each week, leaving 150 hours under primary control of the student. Make every minute of every hour in that week count. Start by filling in cells with activities you know that need to happen, e.g., eating, sleeping, socializing, working out. Even if you provide generous allocations to these activities, the unfilled hours must not be wasted! As I for years told students: "Neither your parents for professors begrudge you having a good time in college. Just don't waste your time." And, "Years from now, you won't regret what you did in college as much as you will regret what you did not do in college." These four years will be the most influential on what you will do and be able to do for the rest of your life. Seize the moment!