Q. Why is the cost of college tuition increasing faster than gasoline or health care?
A. College administrators have learned that they can increase tuition any time they need more money, with no fear that parents will balk at the price. They set tuition rates the way OPEC sets the price of oil. It has nothing to do with costs or demand. It’s the highest price they think they can get away with before customers will walk. Some colleges raise their tuition for no other reason than that some parents equate high cost with quality education. They use these additional funds to give themselves salary increases, add new administrative jobs to the payroll, purchase expensive frills like hot tubs, climbing walls, and food courts, and construct buildings with little connection to instruction, such as student centers, alumni centers, administration buildings, and workout centers. Where is the incentive to make cuts when they can raise the price any time they want? Even OPEC sometimes lowers the price of oil, but it is a rare college that ever reduces its tuition, even when states increase their contributions.
Q. Why have colleges dumbed down their classes, inflated grades and generally reduced the amount of work they expect from students to earn a degree?
A. Today, about 70 percent of high school graduates go to college. That means colleges no longer limit their admissions to the smartest and best prepared students. Today, they admit the mediocre and below average students as well. These students are poorly prepared for college-level work, and many have elementary-level academic skills.
To accommodate them, colleges have had to dumb down their classes and reduce their expectations for what they require students to learn. Even with those lower standards, half of the students drop out of college without a diploma.
Q. Are today’s college students dumber than previous generations?
A. Not at all! IQ tests show that today’s students are just as smart as previous generations. What is different is students’ attitudes towards education. A generation ago, students went to college because they were curious and wanted to learn. Now, the National Survey of Student Engagement finds that only 10 percent of college students are “fully engaged” in the education process, while 20 percent are “fully disengaged”, meaning they have no interest in learning anything at all. They are in college either because it is a great place to party, or because their parents made them attend. Other reports show that the percentage of disengaged students in today’s colleges may be as high as 45 percent.
Q. Why do colleges admit students who are unprepared for college-level work?
A. Money! Colleges admit as many freshmen as they can squeeze into their dormitories, often stacking bodies like cord wood: four students in a room designed for two. Instead of screening out the poorly prepared students, they take the students’ tuition money, knowing that half the students will drop out. This improves the college’s bottom line, but leaves half the students in debt with no diploma to show for it.
Q. Why are so many college graduates unemployed or underemployed?
A. Unlike community colleges and trade schools, most four-year colleges are out of touch with the world of work, turning out thousands of students trained for jobs that no longer exist. Graduates trained to be movie directors, astronauts, oceanographers, business executives, and psychologists end up taking jobs as mail carriers, pizza deliverers, temp workers, or waiters, and must move in with their parents because they cannot afford to live alone. Faced with an average of $23,000 in student loans and $3,000 in credit card debt, it takes graduates decades to pay off the cost of an education they did not use.
Q. Why did you write The Five-Year Party?
A. It became clear to me that college administrators were not interested in fixing the problems that I was finding: dumbed-down classes, unemployed graduates, inflated grades, bloated administrative budgets, money wasted on frills like climbing walls and water parks, and functionally illiterate graduates. So if administrators didn’t care, who did? That’s when I decided to focus my book on the people who were paying for all of this: parents, students, and taxpayers. They are the real audience for the book and the ones who can gain the most by reading it.
Q. Are college campuses dangerous?
A. Not if you look at college’s official crime statistics. These reports claim there are few crimes committed on college campuses. However, investigations in several states have shown that these numbers are fraudulent, and that colleges systematically cover up the kinds of crimes you would expect when you concentrate tens of thousands of adolescents into a small space, with little supervision and unlimited amounts of alcohol and drugs. Crimes like assault, sexual assault, and theft are common daily events. College counseling centers report “hundreds” of sexual assaults per year, and national reports show that a female student has a one in five chance of being the victim of a rape or attempted rape.
Q. Why are parents turned away when they ask college officials about their children?
A. College officials cite a federal law that they interpret as preventing them from releasing information to parents, but courts have ruled that colleges are deliberately abusing this law, which was intended to restrict access only to educational records and not disciplinary records. Colleges don’t tell parents that students can sign a release allowing parents to look at their information. The real reason for this obsession with secrecy is that administrators don’t want interference from what they refer to as “helicopter parents”, and will go to great lengths to keep them out of the loop. College officials worry that if parents find out too much about what happens on college campuses, they will stop the flow of unlimited funds.
Q. Why do most college students get As and Bs in all their classes?
A. Because it makes everyone happy and discourages students from dropping out. Students think they deserve a B just for showing up, and react violently if a professor should dare give them a C. The real grading structure at colleges today is that good students get an A and poor students get a B. The C has become an endangered species. Parents, of course, do not know this and think a B grade still means “good”, when it really means the student is in the lower half of the class.
Q. What is the value of a bachelor degree from a party school?
A. Very little. Employers understand that a degree from We-Party-All-The-Time University does not guarantee that the student is literate, able to do basic calculations, think critically, or make good decisions. Studies of college seniors have shown many of them can’t understand newspaper editorials, or figure out if they have enough gas to reach the next gas station. Graduates lack an understanding of third grade grammar, and don’t know how to write a resume or what to do at a job interview. At party schools, all a degree shows for sure is that the student was able to come up with the money to purchase a diploma.
Q. Can going to a party school really ruin a student’s life?
A. Yes. College administrators and predatory lenders work closely together, in what New York Attorney Andrew Cuomo called the “unholy alliance”, to fleece students into signing promissory notes leading to a life of poverty. Colleges raise their prices to astronomical levels, and hand students the forms to take out the loans to pay the college’s bill. Kickback money flows from the lenders to the colleges in return for being placed on “preferred lender” lists. Colleges also sell students’ personal information to credit card companies. After graduation, students are drowning in debt and cannot afford to take jobs as teachers or social workers, can’t afford to live alone, and face decades of crippling payments.
Q. How dangerous is the party school binge drinking culture?
A. About 1,700 college students die every year as a result of binge drinking, but hundreds of thousands more are injured. Even those who don’t drink are constantly harassed by the drinkers, who pass out in the hallways, have to be rushed to the hospital, or assault other students. Nationally, 44 percent of college students are classified as binge drinkers, but at party schools they are a majority, putting peer pressure on students to stop studying and join the inebriated majority. Cities with party schools have to hire additional EMTs to handle all the unconscious students, who need to have their stomachs pumped to keep them alive. Students fall off roofs or out of windows. They run over pedestrians or hit other cars. Fraternities force students to drink gallons of liquor as part of hazing rituals that often result in death.
Q. What can parents do about this?
A. Don’t send your kids to college if they aren’t interested in learning. It’s a total waste of time and money, and can damage your children’s future. For many students, trade schools and community colleges are a much better link to a career and cost much less. Consider delaying college until your children are more mature. Consider “gap year” programs after high school and before college. Don’t be caught up in the fallacy that not sending your kids to college is a form of child abuse. Colleges spend millions of dollars on marketing to get you to buy their product, but college is not the best choice for every student, no matter what colleges and guidance counselors tell you.
