To the extent elite universities are finishing schools for the rich, poorer students will have an incentive to attend for the networking opportunities.
Never been a fan of the academy myself, your piece clarifies my reasoning. You are quite right about the deleterious effects of MFA programs on literature; the same thing is happening in the plastic arts as well. The arts especially seem a strange field to be colonized by the academy system - historically, artists would work with masters, and underwent a long apprenticeship before heading out on their own. In the past century or so, most of the innovators in the arts were self-taught - can you imagine Picasso dreaming up cubism as part of the university system?
Modern universities might represent an interesting example of cross class subsidies. Similar to how a passenger plane relies on the income from the cheap seats to make the first class seats possible (and the cargo cross subsidizes the cheap seats). Since universities transformed from small, elite institutions into bloated sausage factories that took in anyone with a little spare motivation and ambition, there has to be some kind of structural cross subsidy effect. To go back to the airplane analogy, sure the elites could take their own private jet, but the energetic efficiency of small planes is fundamentally lower than for large ones. If the university system relies on nine middle class schmucks to complete degrees for one upper class individual to succeed (ultimately thanks to their connections) then might the whole thing crack up if the middle class majority simply walk away one day?
At the margin, universities produce more social harm than good (see Bryan Caplan). We should be taxing them, not subsidizing them.
If you care about equity, universities help preserve social class differences and keep poor people poor. And yet we subsidize them at the expense of their victims.
Very well written; I have a hard time finding something to comment upon, since you seem to have covered every useful angle on the subject.
I suppose it would be interesting to see whether there is a difference in the size of CLA changes between fields. E.g., based on the structure of the programs at my university, it was _really hard_ to pass a second year pure mathematics course without having done well on the first year courses and having gotten a basic grasp on working with abstract ideas--comparatively, I sat in on what was reputed to be the hardest English class and found it mostly empty and pretentious intellectual masturbation. Thus, I would expect an English degree to have a smaller change in CLA than a mathematics degree.
Oh, and one more thing: I don't have access to the Arum and Roksa book you cite, but it is strange to me that they measure CLA changes from the beginning of Freshman year to the end of Sophomore year, rather than from the beginning of Freshman year to graduation. It seems like a less natural metric. Is there a reason for that?
To the extent elite universities are finishing schools for the rich, poorer students will have an incentive to attend for the networking opportunities.
Excellent review and summary. I don't have anything to add at the moment, but well done.
Never been a fan of the academy myself, your piece clarifies my reasoning. You are quite right about the deleterious effects of MFA programs on literature; the same thing is happening in the plastic arts as well. The arts especially seem a strange field to be colonized by the academy system - historically, artists would work with masters, and underwent a long apprenticeship before heading out on their own. In the past century or so, most of the innovators in the arts were self-taught - can you imagine Picasso dreaming up cubism as part of the university system?
Modern universities might represent an interesting example of cross class subsidies. Similar to how a passenger plane relies on the income from the cheap seats to make the first class seats possible (and the cargo cross subsidizes the cheap seats). Since universities transformed from small, elite institutions into bloated sausage factories that took in anyone with a little spare motivation and ambition, there has to be some kind of structural cross subsidy effect. To go back to the airplane analogy, sure the elites could take their own private jet, but the energetic efficiency of small planes is fundamentally lower than for large ones. If the university system relies on nine middle class schmucks to complete degrees for one upper class individual to succeed (ultimately thanks to their connections) then might the whole thing crack up if the middle class majority simply walk away one day?
Subsidy is the root of all evil.
At the margin, universities produce more social harm than good (see Bryan Caplan). We should be taxing them, not subsidizing them.
If you care about equity, universities help preserve social class differences and keep poor people poor. And yet we subsidize them at the expense of their victims.
Very well written; I have a hard time finding something to comment upon, since you seem to have covered every useful angle on the subject.
I suppose it would be interesting to see whether there is a difference in the size of CLA changes between fields. E.g., based on the structure of the programs at my university, it was _really hard_ to pass a second year pure mathematics course without having done well on the first year courses and having gotten a basic grasp on working with abstract ideas--comparatively, I sat in on what was reputed to be the hardest English class and found it mostly empty and pretentious intellectual masturbation. Thus, I would expect an English degree to have a smaller change in CLA than a mathematics degree.
Oh, and one more thing: I don't have access to the Arum and Roksa book you cite, but it is strange to me that they measure CLA changes from the beginning of Freshman year to the end of Sophomore year, rather than from the beginning of Freshman year to graduation. It seems like a less natural metric. Is there a reason for that?