Student Loans and "Free" Higher Education (Updated)

Go here to read a post by friend Colin Chan Redemer titled "Minerva Has Left the Building." In even more unpleasant detail than the piece by Patrick Deneen (below the fold), Redemer explains that 

It is not the few tenured radicals, or the vocal woke students. It is not a few elite institutions. Rather the whole enterprise is rotten. From financing, to administration, to recruiting, to instruction, to accreditation, there is a tunneling wound in American higher education that I fear is fatal.

Just what is this tunneling wound? For an answer Redemer turns to history:

To understand a beast we must look to the head that guides it. In higher education that head is the administration. In the beginning, “administration” meant the servants of the university. The actual university was the faculty and the students.

But now: 

Is it an exaggeration to say that in the modern university the students and faculty exist for the benefit of the administration? Think about it in terms of sheer numbers. People think quite a lot about the student-to-faculty ratio when they are looking into investing in their higher education. But they should be asking about the faculty-to-administrator ratio. According to Forbes, a 2014 Delta Cost Project report shows that “the number of faculty and staff per administrator declined roughly 40% at most types of colleges and universities between 1990 and 2012, now averaging around 2.5 faculty per administrator.” In other words, in the span of just two decades, universities became 40% less efficient at providing instruction to students, if you measure efficiency by the number of administrators you hire per faculty member.

There's much more of value in Redemer's piece but little of hope so I will leave readers with his conclusion:

For now it is enough to say that as parents and students gain clarity on what they want and on what universities now are, the demise of what we think of as higher ed in America is certain. New institutions that kindle the fires of philosophia—the love of wisdom—will rise not because of a billionaire’s vision or bequest, but because humans, by nature, reach out to know. And when their desire to know profound truth touches the cold reality of the modern university, like a root growing on concrete, they will turn aside to deeper, more fertile soil. Granted, billionaires could help this along by donating to already nascent projects; but these will have to be projects run by people who understand that higher ed is dead, at least to its original purpose

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I've posted many times about America's student loan problem. I've addressed the law that student loans are well-nigh impossible to eliminate in bankruptcy (here), although I've also observed that there may be some cracks in the nondischargeability wall (here). I've also written about the peculiar way in which the student loan programs subsidize foolish choices, educational scams, and ultimately drive up the cost of higher education (here, here, and here).

Higher education has become part of the battlefield in the race for nomination as the Democratic Party candidate for president. To the best of my knowledge, the Republican candidates aren't talking about education or student loans but Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton certainly are.

But here's the rub: whether it's Clinton's easier loan-payback terms or Sanders's free higher education for all, what are students and taxpayers getting for their money? Rather than wading into the swamp myself, I'll direct folks to two blog posts that address these concerns in significant detail.

First, go here to read Patrick Deneen's post "Res Idiotica" that painfully illustrates the un-education for which we pay billions.

My students are know-nothings.  They are exceedingly nice, pleasant, trustworthy, mostly honest, well-intentioned, and utterly decent. But their minds are largely empty, devoid of any substantial knowledge that might be the fruits of an education in an inheritance and a gift of a previous generation. They are the culmination of western civilization, a civilization that has forgotten it origins and aims, and as a result, has achieved near-perfect indifference about itself.

Deneen is not a crank (he currently teaches at Notre Dame and has taught at Princeton), and his observations of students at elite American universities rings true. Modern-day college graduates are not stupid but they are the products of a federal "No Child Left Behind" program of primary and secondary "education" to learn the skills of taking standardized multiple choice tests as well as undergraduate programs that do little more than train for evanescent jobs in the service economy.

Well, one might ask, if what passes for education is such thin gruel, why does college cost as much as it does? Why does the cost of education continue to rise while its quality continues to decline? Why are students incurring such inordinate student-loan debt?

As James K.A. Smith writes in USA Today here, the educational-industrial complex spends ever-growing sums for "experiences" instead of education:

The story behind the story of student debt inflation is the inflation of the university into an expanding behemoth of goods and services that have little to do with education and more to do with expectations of coddled comfort. Rather than being an institution centered on education, the university now aspires to be a total institution that meets every felt need. The campus is now a sprawling complex of fitness centers and cineplexes, food courts and gargantuan coliseums. Students aren’t taking out loans to pay for an education; they’re effectively borrowing money to pay exorbitant, short-lived taxes for the privilege of living in a scripted, cocooned city.

I would appreciate learning what our candidates for America’s highest elective office have to say about this. Could any of them provide any rationale for education beyond the utilitarian? Could any of them specify what it is that an educated person should know? I am not, however, holding my breath for any answers.