The transcript of my opening comments at the Bradley Symposium on the Future of Higher Education is now available. I’m a bit demagogic and, at best, semi-coherent. Am I criticizing myself? Well, no, because I got more than my share of laughs and managed to highlight my takeaways.
I now get sent all kinds of articles on higher education. I won’t link them. Partly that’s because I’m a one-link-per-post guy. And because NRO wants us to be very light on the links. Every link is an invitation to leave this site and maybe never return. So here are some random observations.
1. Reason 407 you shouldn’t major in business. Your marketing or management or accounting textbook will set you back $400 or more! And for what? It’s not like you’ll be counting on that text for a lifetime of reading pleasure or consulting it constantly for perennial wisdom concerning the human condition. My advice: Take only classes that use real books, books that people read for reasons other than “for class.” They’re always cheap. Not only that, the world is flooded with perfectly serviceable used versions that you buy for a tad more than nothing.
2. Reason 188 you shouldn’t major in business. The only thing the libertarian economist and I agreed on at Bradley is that if you want to go into business, you’re much better off majoring in something like philosophy. Why? Your general level of literacy and attention to detail is much more likely to have improved significantly during your time in college.
3. Google and other Silicon Valley employers, it turns out, hire a good number of people with humanities degrees. If you’re a Tyler Cowen fan, you can understand why. The future belongs, in part, to people who can work comfortably with “genius machines.” It also belongs to those who can herd around said nerds and keep them motivated. It also belongs, I read, to those who can market and “humanize” their products, and it’s the humanizing part that business majors can’t deliver on. What about economists? They’re valuable as the cheerleaders for our wonderful techno-future. If you were paying attention, you just acquired the competency of reason 44 you shouldn’t major in business.
4. It turns out that kids with highly productive and highly literate parents still tend to choose the “traditional” majors such as physics, philosophy, literature, political science, and so forth. First-generation college kids from poorer and less bookish backgrounds tend to choose techno-vocational majors, such as marketing and management — sometimes in specialized forms, such as sports management or whatever. Studies show that the traditional majors — despite the political correctness, grade inflation, and undisciplined reforms in the direction of “engagement” — still do pretty well (or better in some places) in adding value to the student’s intellectual package of skills and habits. It’s the techno-light majors that are indicted for not upgrading students in the key competencies that make them ready for “real life” in all its forms. So this seems to be one way among many that the rich getter richer . . . And there’s more than one way that the poor are getting poorer, insofar as they’re often the ones saddled with the big loan debt.
5. Articles and such are still being churned out with the allegedly cutting-edge news that the disruptive innovation is purging us of the boring lectures that have been the center of higher education since medieval times. No longer will students be stuck with having to spend loads of time in uncomfortable desks to get a college degree. All they will have to do is demonstrate their competencies, and how they become competent will be pretty much up to them. At this point, these always boring and jargony articles are yesterday’s news. It is true that competence sells as being cheaper than excellence. And easier to measure.