My View of Optimism

Oh if you only knew me when. Back when I was a sulking teenager and twenty-something the world was harsh, no cruel. How could I be happy or optimistic when there is was much pain and suffering in the world? How could I be happy when I had not written my first symphony by the age of twenty, no twenty-five, no thirty? How could I be optimistic about my career when there are so many people smarter and more talented than me and how was I going to make my mark on the world?

It was too much.

After I went through some life events that I briefly discussed in My Complete Failure I changed and my world view changed. Below are five simple reasons why today, I am optimistic.

First; I live in a safe and secure country. As a resident of Arizona I do not have to fear that New Mexico or Utah might invade my state (California might), I do not have to fear that terrorists will blow-up my university, or a civil war break out causing carnage and pain.

Second; I was born to a middle class family and did not experience trauma during my upbringing. I have had opportunities that others have not had but most people in the US today have opportunities abound compared to other countries or the past. We do not live in one of the 100+ countries where people have to fight just to survive.

Third; I have no complaints about my journey. Although my career path has gone a completely different way than I had planned when I was 16, I have no complaints. Throughout my life my failures have been learning opportunities, ways to self-reflect, re-direct, and improve.

Fourth; not everyone is healthy and I am blessed to be healthy. I eat right, I stay active, and do not abuse my body.

Finally; I have decided to be optimistic. I do not think that if you believe in happiness wealth will soon follow like some self-help philosophies espouse but I do believe that if you are positive and optimistic about yourself and the future, good things will happen. Along the way you still have to work hard, play well with others, and be actively engaged in your own optimism.

At this point where I am closer to 40 than 30 I have learned to enjoy life and take each day as it comes. I do not think I am particularly wise or insightful but I am amazed how so many people who are similar to myself decide not to be optimistic. I am especially surprised how many people in higher education, people with countless degrees, creativity, and ‘smartness’ in droves are not optimistic about themselves or the future and are often actively negative. But maybe they know the truth and are negative because of a keen insight into what is and what will be while people like me, who decide to be optimistic, are just naive.

WP Poll

In response to the National Labor Relations Board decision allowing Northwestern football players to unionize, the Washington Post asked their readers what they thought about the implications. Below are the three questions in relation to unionizing and paying college athletes:

These questions are short, succinct, and to the point; not bad. With that said, I have a few comments.

First; 44% of the people who responded are not fans of college sports. That is a lot of people commenting on something they do not like. In addition, at the Washington Post you can filter the results to see what different ‘types’ of people think of the question such as 64% of the people whose education included graduate studies support college sports versus 34% do not. I assume this tells us that if you spent 6+ years in college you are more willing to be a fan of college sports (but graduate graduates are not that numerous).

Second; the opinion on unionization was evenly split, 47% to 47%. Before I saw the results I assumed more people would oppose unionization but I was wrong. With that said when you look at the numbers divided by party affiliation 62% of democrats and 28% of republicans support unionization as expected.

Finally; according to the poll, 64% of adults oppose paying salaries to college athletes beyond scholarships. I find the wording of the question biased, “beyond any scholarships they receive” implying that college athletes are already get paid. I know that according to economists, many of the services that these athletes receive is considered ‘pay’; I discussed this in my previous article, Respectfully Disagree. So it makes sense that people oppose paying salaries to college athletes, but would they keep their position if they knew player take home pay was between $2-18k each semester even if their program raked in $109,400,688?

So is it a good poll? Sure. Is it scientific? No; polls rarely are. What did we learn from this poll besides the obvious? Well, it seems most people oppose paying college athletes and the people who do not want to change the status quo are citing this and other polls to support their position.

Supporters of the status quo always talk about college athletes as if they were all the same but they are not, there is a huge difference between how the University of Arizona's tennis and basketball teams are treated on- and off-campus. Unionization of college athletics is not about tennis, soccer, water polo, lacrosse, or the like, it is about men’s football and basketball, and women’s basketball.

Since the Washington Post poll seems to focus on dividing up data, I would like two things to happen that would make both democrats and republicans happy; (1) allow football and basketball players to unionize, and (2) allow market forces to guide big-time college sports. Do this and big-time college sports will be completely different; what you see on ESPN's game day will look almost exactly the same but what happens on and off campus during the season and how much players and coaches would be compensated would be completely different.

Blogging is not Scholarship

Blogging is not scholarship. This comment has been repeatedly posted by many people in the comments section of articles about academic blogging and scholarship these days. Is it true? Yes and no.

A sizeable portion of higher education and most of what we would describe as academia is all about research. People spend years getting a basket of degrees to conduct research that allows them to get a professorship, tenure, and the freedom to research their specialty. Along the way each and every one of these people publish in a variety of peer-reviewed journals, write books, and speak at conferences; things that bolster academic street cred. It has been this way ever since modern higher education took shape and it will be this way for the foreseeable future.

In addition to traditional scholarship, many people are blogging in higher education; faculty, administration, staff, and students are all writing about higher education topics with varying degrees of quality. Some of the writing is of the highest possible quality available, some matches anything written in peer-reviewed journals, some are very creative, while others are messy, crass, unfocused, and just bad. And this is why so many traditionalists say blogging is not scholarship

Back to the top; I agree that blogging is not traditional scholarship. For tenure-track positions at research university and highly regarded private institution blogging is not a replacement for peer-reviewed scholarship. These positions usually require a doctorate and as much academic street cred that can fit on a CV (CV’s can go on forever).

What about the rest of higher education? In my opinion some truly great writing occurs on blogs and it should be considered ‘scholarship-light’. The only problem with blogs is that you have to actually read the contents to know the quality. If an applicant submits their CV for a position and if most of their writing is on a blog that would require the hiring committee to actually go the blog and start reading while a list of articles published at known journals is a known quantity. What is easier; judging a candidate based on articles published at journals that everyone in your department knows about or reading a blog with hundreds or posts?

For those schools that abide by publish or perish or hire truly renown faculty members scholarship will continue to be traditional. For everyone else, ranging from community colleges to directional schools to other positions at research universities, blogging is a viable option to prove to others that you can communicate through words, have research skills, and have a history of writing and thinking about higher education.

Addendum:

For myself, I have decided to go the blogging route than tradition scholarship ever since I completed by doctorate. Since I do not intend to write articles about Mozart’s bassoon concerto or French salon music I am at a loss; how can I ever publish in a peer-reviewed journal (the gold standard)? The topics that I like to write about are more journalistic than academic since I do not actively participate in my content anymore (unless you include playing the ukulele for my son).

At the end of the day I would rather write ‘general’ higher education articles and get it published at The Chronicle, Inside Higher Ed. or if I am super-lucky, The Atlantic and have thousands of people read my articles then have a few dozen highly specialized people read a peer-reviewed article at the IDRS.

What to write?

As an amateur composer I fight with myself every time I sit down to write. What should I write? When I use the term amateur composer I mean that my full-time gig is not writing music (very few people write classical music full-time). When I sit down and dedicate time to music I have to choose my notes carefully. Do I write something for the bassoon? Do I write something huge that will comment on the ills of the world? Do I write something light and fluffy? Do I write something pop? Do I write something for my son; kids music?

I have no idea.

I say I do not know what to write because at this point in history, I am using the same musical language that has been used for the last 600-years. I am using the same notes, the same scales, the same harmonies that were used during the Renaissance, the Baroque, the Classical and Romantic Eras, and the 20th century. Below is a very short list of some of my favorites from 1450 to 1947 (feel free to add add a hundreds more):

Missa prolationum, Johannes Ockeghem

Pope Marcelli by Monteverdi

B Minor Mass by Bach

Symphony No.6 by Beethoven

Te Deum by Bruckner

Death and Transfiguration by Strauss

The Poem of Ecstasy by Scriabin

A Survivor from Warsaw by Schoenberg

After 1947 Classical Music or Art Music, has become...interesting. Because of the popularity of movie music with the general public and its fond love of the romantic and post-romantic style, serious composers have focused on self-expression and for the most part have migrated to academia rather than the concert halls. For those all familiar with Classical Music, what could I write that expands on 4:33 by Cage?

I also have to budget my time carefully. I work 40-hours a week at a job that I enjoy and I am lucky to be in a position where I contribute to the success of my department. My music degrees play a role in my job but the actual music part of those degrees do not. When I am off the clock my time is first and foremost taken up by my family and then everything else. I teach classes online (although not very often), so that takes up a portion followed by my blog to help my writing and career. What is left is for music.

With little time to write and the weight of Classical Music history behind me, what do I write? I am not sure; I will let Saint Cecilia guide my pen and see what happens.

There is no Reason not to be Optimistic

In an article at The Atlantic, Zachary Karabell discussed the possible reasons why so many people have reacted negatively to the positivity in this writings. Most of these negative comments are just that, comments posted in response to his articles and as Zach states, “the very hint of optimism makes a fair number of people extremely angry.”

When reading articles at The Atlantic, New York Times, Huffington Post, The Chronicle, or Inside Higher Ed. I have to agree; people are negative (I also read articles at Reason.com but forget to look over the comments). With that said I speak in generalities, but when I read comments a good percentage of them have a negative tone, a small percentage are overtly negative, a super-small percentage are aggressively hostile yet still on topic, and a handful are trolls. This means after reading an article and comments, noticeable number of comments will be negative making your overall reading experience possibly negative.  

Is my analysis too simplistic? Probably. But I think this is the core of many negative comments; it is dull and boring to be optimistic, positive, or constructive but oh how fun and easy it is to be negative. I also understand why people slide into negativity, as Zachary Karabell stated “anger is a hot experience that triggers action; agreement, even strong agreement, tends to be a more passive reaction.”

But let me ask a question: what is accomplished by being overtly negative? Focusing on higher education, I understand the ethos of higher education is to ask questions and to offer differing opinions; I get it, I participate, I relish in it. What I do not understand is how negative so many super-smart people are about real issues and topics while not offering any fixes or ways to improve the situation at-hand. Remember, these people have masters degrees and doctorates, often published well crafted articles and books, and have jobs at ‘legit’ schools. There is no lack of critical thinking skills or academic firepower but there seems to be a serious lack of filters or the willingness to collaborate.

Back to the article. When discussing optimism in the US, Zach presents some data that states more Americans feel negative about the future today than anytime since the 1970s and offers this interesting tidbit, “Interestingly, according to these surveys, blacks and Hispanics in the United States are more positive about the future than whites.” I think it is great that African Americans and Hispanics are optimistic about the future; why are Whites not?

Again, focusing on higher education, Americans are completing four-years of college or more in greater numbers today than at anytime in history, the difference is staggering. If you peer into the future these numbers should continue to increase as should the higher education attainment of African Americans, Hispanics, and Whites (maybe a little for Asians). This will change higher education institutions, not in what they teach (there might be a few new degrees) but in how they teach and how they service their students. When you have a more diverse student population you have to meet the needs of the many not just the traditional few. Again, I am optimistic about this because this will allow for the US to not only be more educated and trained, but to be more diverse and stronger as a unified country.

The final quote from Zachary Karabell article is a good comment on how to holistically be optimistic about change, “every society must find some balance between addressing real shortcomings and building on real strengths.” Higher education needs to take this advice to heart. Colleges and universities and the people who populate them need to take a real hard look at their shortcomings and collaboratively work to improve. This does not mean faculty versus administration or administration versus faculty, it means that change truly needs to come about through shared governance while looping in the locals communities for input and help.

Colleges and universities in the US offer real, tangible value to every part of society and I am optimistic about the future. More and more students will be able to get a college degree, or something equivalent, and depending on the individual, get the education they want and need.

Is it going to be easy? No; but there is no reason not to be optimistic.

Healing Academic Wounds

In a recent Inside Higher Ed article, Lee Bessette discussed the struggles of attaining a tenured-track job and the challenges of being a woman in higher education. I have read Dr. Bessette’s articles for a while and they resonate with me and my own experiences in and out of higher education (minus being a woman).

For myself, I have written a few articles about my struggles with higher education and not getting a tenured-track job;  My Complete Failure, What to do with my Humanities Degree?and Advice for Getting a Job in the Real-World. I was only able to write these articles after I had fully transitioned from tenured seeking academic to academic working a nine-to-five in the ‘real world’. By that time I had already gone through the realization and acceptance that I would not be getting a tenured-track job that I had worked for well over a decade to get. This realization and acceptance takes time and is extremely difficult for many academics; each individual works through this transformation differently and at their own pace.

Back to Dr. Bessette’s article; one of the threads throughout her article, and other articles is about negative reader comments. She has not been writing much lately because some of these comments she describes as attacks on her, her opinions, and, who she is. This is unfortunate because she is a good writer and has a valid perspective to share and yet because of the nature of the internet, jerks and trolls have the ability to write any stupid thing that comes to their mind; anytime, anywhere and because of this she has pulled back.  

When you publish an article, especially on one of the higher education website, there will be a percentage of responses that will be highly critical and negative. Some of these will be comments by people who work in higher education; they might have tenure, might not, and fancy themselves smart, insightful, having put in ‘the time’, and are often geniuses waiting to be discovered or validated (so their opinions are always spot-on). Some of these comments are just plain stupid, mean, or asinine because the people writing them are mean and asinine (I can’t say stupid because they are geniuses). Finally a handful of posts will be written by trolls who write crap just to make people upset (crap is the technical term).

So what do you do? My only advice for Dr. Bessette, and this comes from the title of her article is yes, be less sensitive. If you are not comfortable reading through comments don’t, or have your friends do it for you. Don’t post a response or defend your article when it is just a troll; everyone passes over those comments anyways.

One part of the article that I honestly cannot relate to is the part about being a woman. I am a male; I was born this way, I had no choice. With that said I understand that my reality, the reality I see through my eyes and the interactions I experience because of who I am, is different than other people’s reality.

Do women experience a different reality than I do? Yes. Do minorities in higher education or the culture at-large experience a different reality than I do? Yes. As someone who is male I need to have the self-understanding that my reality is not standard; it is not universal and when typing away comments on other people’s articles, I cannot view their experiences through my filter. I have to have empathy, I have to understand their perspective, and most importantly, I have to approach every word with humility (if ‘geniuses’ and trolls had humility they would never cause problems).

Moving forward, I feel for Dr. Bessette and her past experiences; as president of the Graduate Students’ Association, her experience when writing articles, and the example she shared at the University of Ottawa. These are unfortunate and no one should never have to go through such negative experiences, but they do. The choice you have to make is does this keep you from living your life? Do these experiences stop you from creating and writing or do they make you mad and inspire you to write even better articles?

To finish my article, I will reference a quote from the first paragraph of Dr. Bessette’s article, “not to mention the fading dream of ever attaining a tenure-track job.” I understand, my dream faded in my early 30s but I woke-up, got out of bed, and started living my life. I look at a tenure-track job as the dream of the 18-year me; at that time I so badly wanted to emulate the people I looked up to, my teachers and professors. But as I aged and my life went down a completely different path before and after I completed by doctorate, I had to adjust.

Ask yourself: do I want to wake-up every day with regret; letting one of my life ‘failure’ affect my present or do I want to live my life? Will I use the skills I learned during my graduate studies to help and further my new non-academic career? Will I let people’s negativity stop me from writing or will I use this negativity to inspire me to write more?

It is your choice.

Poor Walmart; the Higher Education Punching Bag

Poor Walmart; you are constantly the higher education punching bag. In a recent article in The Atlantic about the current health of higher education, the sound bite of the article came from Karen Arnold, associate professor at the Educational Leadership and Higher Education Department at Boston College.

“We are creating Walmarts of higher education—convenient, cheap, and second-rate.”

Leading up to this delightfully quotable quote, the author of the article went over the all the things wrong with higher education; reduced funding, programs and degrees being cut, focusing on graduation rates, reducing requirements, MOOCs, and adjuncts teaching everything. After Dr. Arnold’s came Steven Ward, sociology professor at Western Connecticut State University and his soundbite , “Ward calls it the ‘McDonaldization’ of universities and colleges, ‘where you produce more things, but they’re not as good.’”

To start; all of these issues stated in this article are legitimate and are concerning to everyone in higher education. This article, because it is published at The Atlantic probably has had one hundred times more readers than the most popular articles at The Chronicle or Inside Higher Ed. allowing it to be far more influential than those higher education specific sites. The most ho-hum aspect of the article is that it states nothing new; higher education writers have been discussing these issues for years; so we have a good summary of the current state of higher ed with two zingers, Walmart and McDonaldization.

One aspect that Walmart and higher education have in common is a large pool of part-time employees. Employees at Walmart have been trying to unionize for a long time but for the most part have been unable to. Adjunct faculty all around the country would like to unionize but much like Walmart, have been unable to. I am surprised that the article did not go over this, the most interesting point of comparison (I will not go into the money aspect of unionization or more full-time employees; that would be another article).

Going back to Dr. Arnold’s, I will comment on the quote about Walmart, “convenient, cheap, and second-rate.”

First, what is bad about convenient? Just wondering. Is it better that you go to college 1000-miles away or go to your local college even though you live in Arizona or Arkansas? Obviously the better colleges and universities are other places (this argument can be repeated in 44 other states). Also, online is widely available and convenient; is online equivalent to Walmart? The complication that arises with online is that although it is convenient, motivation and persistence are extremely difficult for even the brightest of students.

Second cheap; does she mean inexpensive or products that are cheaply made? Or both? Inexpensive products are not a bad thing; any family on a budget will attest to this. Cheaply made...well true, there are countless products at Walmart that are cheaply made but I am wonder how the future state of higher education is going to be cheap?

Maybe Dr. Arnold means that future Higher Ed education products will be cheap; poor curriculum and adjuncts teaching every class. As far as adjuncts teaching I have only had wonderful experiences with adjuncts and the quality offered by these hardworking professionals is not second-rate to a tenured professor. Now if a tenured professor is teaching a doctoral class close or in their speciality then quality will be off the charts, but most of the time when we are talking about full or part-time instructors we are discussing undergraduate education. In many people’s opinions adjuncts and tenured instructors provide the same quality and either way you want to argue there is no actual research to back-up your position besides opinion ( it is hotly argued that adjuncts might offer better quality for undergraduate education). As far as curriculum goes, that is up to the instructor teaching the course; if a college or university trusts the instructor to teach at their institution then they are trusting that the curriculum is top notch.

And finally second-rate; second-rate to what? Everything is second rate to Harvard and Stanford; the majority of institutions are considered second-rate to Michigan and Florida; many institutions would be considered second rate to Arizona and Ohio State. The ‘tiered-system’ of higher ed can go on and on down to the bottom; but what is bottom? Do you want to call out what schools you (whoever you are) might think are second-rate? Is the University of Massachusetts-Boston second rate because its overall graduation rate is 38%? Is Bunker Hill Community College second-rate because its graduation rate is 11%?

Finally I will circle back to the quote from Dr. Ward, and the ‘McDonaldization’ of universities and colleges, ‘where you produce more things, but they’re not as good.’” I would be wary of calling institutions second rate or the products that they produce not as good because by doing this you are calling the students, the faculty, and the community that supports the students and faculty, second rate and not as good.  

College, The Great Plutocracy: Snarky and Optimistic

Read the first part of the article: College, The Great Plutocracy: Serious

Snarky:

Finally, Dr. Suzanne Mettler is a professor at Cornell. I am always amazed how the Ivy League and equivalents are always commenting on how the rest of higher education is doing such a poor job. I am sure that the Ivy League has given thousands, if not tens of thousands of poor people an excellent education and a golden ticket to opportunity. They have also given hundreds of thousands if not millions of rich and upper-middle class people an excellent education and a golden ticket to opportunity and for some, the life they feel they deserve. According to one source, 0.4% of all undergraduates attend an Ivy League school; do we really care about the 1% (I mentioned the percentage)?

My final snarky comment; I am sure Suzanne Mettler knows all about the hardships poor, underprepared college students out there. With a BA from Boston College, a Ph.D. from Cornell and her first professorship deep in the ghetto, Syracuse, she truly has first hand experience knowledge of what that student population needs to succeed. To repcap my usual usual criticism of the Ivy League; the likes of Cornell do not have to educate poor, underprepared students yet every professor and director has an opinion of how the rest of higher education is failing.

On a side note, I am sure Dr. Mettler is a wonderful person and from her extensive CV, is truly a brilliant academic. Her publishing record is lengthy and her writing is clear, focused, and enjoyable to read (many academics have writing styles that are convoluted, overly verbose, dull, and just plain boring).

Optimistic:

As with most things in my life, I am optimistic. I know that all of those elites who populate the halls of the Ivy League will help fix higher education for the better. Like it or not, the Ivy League helps guide the direction of higher education and if enough brilliant researchers get together and work for the common good, rather than working in solitude in their offices, great strides can be made. This, coupled with directors and administrators who have the business savvy to understand the money part of higher education, extensive networks to bring the right people together, and the political know-how to get things done, higher education at every level will benefit (things might actually get fixed).  

So what has to change to make this happen? What event and/or crisis in higher education has to occur for people all around the country get together, put their personal careers and ambitions aside, and work for the common good of everyone? What  has to happen?

Addendum:

Inside Higher Ed. published an article referencing Suzanne Mettle’s book and discussed the for-profit sector in an article called, Proxy War on For-Profits. I find it funny that the author would use the word ‘war’ since many academic make fun of it when mainstream media outlets use it; war on women, war on the constitution, war on gun rights, et cetera. You cannot have a constructive dialogue about how to fix things if your first action is to declare war.

College, The Great Plutocracy: Serious

The other day, Suzanne Mettler, a professor of government at Cornell wrote an opinion piece that was published in the New York Times about inequity in higher education. At first I was going to respond to this article and then I decided against it. Then I changed my mind and agin quickly shelved the idea. Finally I am back to where I began; in this article I am going to be serious, then snarky, and finally optimistic.

Serious:

Jumping into the article, one comment I find interesting that Dr. Mettle wrote was, “Higher education is becoming a caste system, separate and unequal for students with different family incomes.” I have to ask; was there ever a time in higher education when opportunity was equal and different colleges and universities did not represent the American caste system? Dr. Mettler did mention the GI Bill at the beginning of the article and that legislation did a lot of good but did it make everything equal and ‘flatten’ the economic divide? What could possibly be done today to give everyone equal opportunity?

Next, she comments on sticker price. “Private nonprofits, schools like Stanford or Vassar, list the highest “sticker prices, but the average student pays less than half of full fare.” I can’t imagine many people are interested in sticker prices even when the price is cut in half at an elite institution. Yearly fees at Vassar are $60k; if the average student pays less than half, they are still paying between $25k to $30k a year; multiply that by four years and you have $100k to $120k. I do not know many ‘average’ middle class families that can afford that much per child. In addition, if a low SEC student attends Vassar they might feel out of place because they might struggle fitting in. The last time I checked, 18-year olds, no matter what socioeconomic status they come from, who they are, or what they look like do care about their social circles and want to fit in no matter if they are at Vassar or at a directional university.

Next, Dr. Mettler goes through three points in the middle of her article; less bang for your buck at public universities, dwindling government support, and the big bad for-profits.

Point one, less bang for your buck, “In the 1970s, the maximum Pell grants for low-income students covered nearly 80 percent of costs at the average four-year public university, but by 2013-14 they covered just 31 percent.” I agree this is concerning because it means that in the 1970s, if you were eligible for the maximum Pell you could graduate from a four-year public virtually debt free. So what has happened in the last few decades? (Dr. Mettler does not go into why; maybe her book does.)

Point two; dwindling government support. Government support for higher education has decreased over the past fifteen-years; funding increased during the great bull market of the 90s but then took a steep dive because of the recession after 9-11 and more recently, the Great Recession. A sober stat I found while writing my article, The Tennessee Promise presents this point perfectly. In Tennessee , four-year public institutions received 58.2% of their funding from state appropriations during the 1990-91 academic year while in 2011-12, it was 32.1%. Almost a 50% drop! Colleges and universities, as do any large organizations struggle to change quickly especially when it comes to money. (Dr. Mettler does not offer a fix; maybe her book does.)

Point three; the big bad for-profits. Dr. Mettler briefly discusses the for-profit higher education sector and presents nice graphs about how much funding the top five get from Title IV funding. She also recommends regulating for-profits more, “Tougher regulations of the for-profits, long overdue, are the quickest way to help the poorest Americans who seek college degrees.”

According to the National Student ClearningHouse Research Center, 1,321,107 students were enrolled at four-year for-profit institutions in the Fall of 2013. Of this total, 81.4% that attend for-profits are over 24 while the other sectors are 38.7% at four-year publics; 38.5% at four-year privates; and 29.4% at four-year publics. Also from the Research Center, for-profits are educating ,more females (like all of higher education); 66.4% are women at four-year for-profits; 55% at four-year publics; 58.3% at four-year privates; and 57.1% at two-year publics are women.

For-profit institutions educate a different demographic than public and private four-year institutions, two-year public institutions, and they educate students who are by a supermajority over-24 and women.  

I am not going to defend the for-profit industry, but if the government regulated for-profits out of business by the summer; what percentage of those students could be absorbed by the rest of higher education? Could Arizona State University, University of Maryland-College, Southern New Hampshire University, or the dozens and dozens of smaller online public schools absorb all the University of Phoenix, Ashford, Kaplan, and Capella students? Do they have the capacity? Do these schools all have online student support services to help students who are older than 24 with numerous risk factors and be successful? Do they have scheduling flexibility? Will tougher regulations help the poorest Americans get college degrees and save money? (Dr. Mettler does not offer a fix besides more regulations; maybe her book does.)

Read the next part of this article: College, The Great Plutocracy: Snarky and Optimistic.