5 thoughts on “UH faculty union leader announces intent to step down in 2015”

1. Lopaka43 June 30, 2012 at 7:59 pm

   One of the good guys who has great communications and facilitation skills

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2. Ulu July 1, 2012 at 8:15 am

   He will be a tough act to follow.

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3. Tracey Kelly July 1, 2012 at 9:22 am

   Even though I am not a fan of the “evergreen clause,” he represented his union well.

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   1. Ian Lind Post authorJuly 1, 2012 at 9:43 am

      And will continue, I expect, to do so until the end of his contract.

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4. skeptical once again July 4, 2012 at 2:17 pm

   University leaders might be seeing the writing on the wall: Higher education could be in for big changes.

   Here’s a WSJ article entitled “Do Too Many Young People Go to College?”

   http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203960804577239253121093694.html

   In it, “Four education-policy experts debate whether a lot of students would be better off spending their time and money somewhere else”.

   A college education was once regarded as a first-class ticket to a better life.

   But the rising costs of higher education, the burden of student loans and a less-certain job market have left many wondering: Are too many young people going to college?

   The first question is fielded to the right-wing Richard Vedder, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, who argues that too many people go to college, and that college should be for the elite.

   WSJ: Dr. Vedder, you’ve written that we currently have a glut of college graduates. Why do you think college is no longer the valuable investment it once was?

   DR. VEDDER: First, the proportion of society’s resources going to fund higher education has tripled over the past half-century, and tuition costs are rising significantly faster than inflation.

   Second, the reality is that at least 40% of full-time students entering four-year programs fail to have their degree in six years, and the dropout rate is even greater among lower-income students. There are vast numbers of universities where the four-year college graduation rate is less than 30%.

   Third, the biggest problem is that we are turning out vastly more college graduates than there are jobs in the relatively high-paying managerial, technical and professional occupations to which most college graduates traditionally have gravitated. Do you really need a chemistry degree to make a good martini? Roughly one of three college graduates is in jobs the Labor Department says require less than a bachelor’s degree.

   The comeback always is college graduates make vastly more than those with high-school diplomas. True. But that is comparing apples and oranges. College graduates, on average, are smarter and more disciplined and dependable than high-school graduates—so much of the reported earnings differential has little to do with college learning.

   Moreover, supply has created its own demand—as we flood the market with college graduates, even bars demand bartender applicants have a degree. We have engaged in massive and costly credential inflation to certify competency for jobs. College is still a good deal for some, but not for many others.

   First, he complains that the resources going to higher education have tripled over the past half-century. But that should be expected, considering that three times as many Americans (30%) are graduating from college today than they did in 1962. He does not explain why that is a problem. It might be a worthy investment.

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States

   Second, he claims that it’s taking longer for college students to graduate, and that more of them drop out as more people go to college. That itself is not such a problem, because it can be argued that as college becomes more open and available to more students, the method of selection shifts to attrition (in fact, there are people who do better in college than they did in high school — including some professors); the problem could be that the drop-out rate is not high enough. (Also, in a consumer society, students have a very different set of expectations than did Baby Boomer college students who lived frugally; many contemporary students go to college part-time so that they can work full-time and have iPhones and drive sports cars and spend the weekends not in the library but in the clubs. What is inherently wrong with that? It might be a problem, but he does not address it.)

   He complains about “credential inflation”, that it increasingly takes a college degree to get jobs that don’t really require college skill sets. But he doesn’t explain how this is a problem. If restaurants want to hire only college grads as bartenders, do they not do so for a good reason? Wouldn’t the real problem be when the restaurant avoids the college grad because they are “over-qualified”?

   The second person to answer the question is Vivek Wadhwa, a fellow at Stanford University’s Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance.

   MR. WADHWA: It is true that cost of education is rising, but so is the amount of information that we need to process and the complexity of work we need to do. The majority of U.S. jobs aren’t in agriculture or manufacturing anymore. They require technology and social skills—the stuff you learn in college.

   I know many people who started their careers as grocery clerks and waiters and went on to become hotshot CEOs. Is there anything wrong with a cocktail waiter having a chemistry degree? People don’t always seek or achieve their potential when they are young. They change as they grow. Education provides the necessary foundation to make this progression.

   If we do as you are suggesting—educate only a subset of our population—we will need to pick the winners while they are in high school at the latest. What criteria do you suggest for this selection? Would you want your children to be on the list that doesn’t get educated?

   This seems like a realistic rejoinder to Vedder: That performance in college, not high school, is the only way to determine ability in an advanced economy like the US, and that if college graduates find themselves in “menial” jobs, that is just a normal start of their work lives.

   The sharpest and most original criticism comes from James O’Neill, co-founder of the Thiel Foundation’s 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellowship.

   MR. O’NEILL: The most powerful driver of economic growth is tech innovation. And one drag on innovation is college debt, of which there is nearly $1 trillion outstanding. There are two groups of unhappy people mailing student-loan checks to banks every month. One is the bartenders and waitresses Rich mentioned. The others are the dreamers and explorers who would love to change the world with some invention or innovative company, but are stuck in a boring corporate job because they can’t quit while they are still in debt.

   Vivek is on to something important when he says useful education can come from a community college. Let’s extend that logic: Useful and satisfying education can also come from reading great books, from hearing great lectures and demonstrations, and from engaging in interesting debates. Technology is making all of these forms of learning more affordable and accessible, and you don’t need college or student loans for any of them.

   If college were really a more valuable way to spend time than jobs, then diplomas would be an afterthought. Going to college for two years would earn exactly half the return of four years, and smart investors would double or triple their return by going to college for eight or 12 years rather than wasting their time working.

   This is a rather difficult argument to refute. College debt is massive in the US. Solutions like reducing and eliminating tuition at state universities would simply shift the costs to the public.

   A very effective counter-argument to this is made by Sandy Baum, senior fellow at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development. The reality is that while some college graduates were wasting their time in terms of the financial benefits of college, most are not. In fact, there is an under-supply of college graduates.

   DR. BAUM: Labor-market economists provide convincing evidence that the demand for people with postsecondary credentials has grown more rapidly than the supply—an explanation for the growing gap in earnings between high-school graduates and those with postsecondary credentials. On average, men with some college but no degree make 22% more than men with a high-school education. The average for men with a bachelor’s degree or higher is almost twice that for those with no college education. The gaps are far more than enough for most people to make up for lost earnings and repay their students loans and still enjoy many years of a standard of living that would otherwise have been out of reach.

   It is true that there are also some people who go to college who shouldn’t, and there are others for whom it just doesn’t work out. But for the vast majority, life is better if they have some further education or training.

   The argument that outcomes are really the result of the characteristics of incoming students has logic. But there are many sophisticated statistical studies measuring as carefully as possibly how much of the effect of college is explained by these differences, and the answer is not much. College does lead to higher earnings for most people.

   She backs up her statements with research. Although studies do show that the people who go to college are smarter and more disciplined than their peers who do not, it’s not by much. College matters. People are bettered by college, and their superior incomes reflect not their inherent superiority, but their superior education.

   Now, while all these arguments are excellent, they are also essentially corrupt.

   The primary reason for higher education is not improving students’ future incomes, although that is a factor.

   The primary purpose of higher education is to have a pool of educated citizens who are relatively financially secure — and therefore politically independent — and who are informed and who ask critical questions in the public realm.

   The future income of students is obviously relevant to this issue, but is subordinate.

   This is especially true in relation to public or “state” universities. A public university exists primarily for the survival of the public political realm of society, and only secondarily for the private economic life of the alumni (although their prosperity and independence promote democracy).

   Talking about the future income of students is like seriously debating whether society should expand or contract the size of the military … based on the future income of soldiers. It’s irrelevant.

   So the question of “Who should go to college?” central to the debate above shifts away from SAT scores and future earnings toward determining who has the capacity for – and INTEREST in – citizenship. And there is probably a strong but not complete overlap between those who are interested in democracy and those who actually want to be in college FOR ITS OWN SAKE. That is, the kind of people (the “attentive public”) who read public affairs newspapers are probably the same kind of people who value their college education not just for their future incomes.

   So the primary criterion for acceptance into college should be an actual interest in learning. Public universities should be tuition-free by that measure, and not just open to people who are good at math. The question is, how should they determine just who is genuinely interested in being in college? Administer a lie-detector test to incoming freshmen? “Do you really want to be here?”

   But universities are going in just the opposite direction. They are becoming Disneyland. They seek to attract students with sports venues, luxurious amenities, technological perks, etc. And the focus on the future earnings of students is a part of this consumerist paradigm that also fuels this expensive turn toward entertainment on campus. And there is nothing wrong with that at a private college. But public universities should be bare-bones, no-frills and focused on hard-core education. But this is not in the self-interest of administrators and professors who want expansion and higher salaries, or politicians who want to pander to lower elements of the public. But turning colleges into Las Vegas is unrealistic and unsustainable.

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