More Musings on the Commission on the Future of Higher Education

When the Department of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education met in Nashville last week, most of the stories covering the two-day event focused on high profile announcements and attendees. The chair of the Commission, Charles Miller, was quoted in several sources about testing college students (http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2005-12-07-college-testing_x.htm, http://chronicle.com/daily/2005/12/2005120902n.htm, http://insidehighered.com/news/2005/12/09/commission). Senator Lamar Alexander, former Secretary of Education, also got good press coverage (http://chronicle.com/daily/2005/12/2005121201n.htm, http://insidehighered.com/news/2005/12/12/commission). In his remarks, Alexander calls for 1) supporting research in our institutions, 2) appoint a lead advisor to coordinate US higher education, 3) deregulation of higher education, and 4) overhaul Medicaid to free states to fund higher education.

Amidst all the high profile comments and reports, the one that stands out to me is a report by Daniel S. Hamermesh of the University of Texas at Austin. He is the Edward Everett Hale Centennial Professor of Economics; Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research, and Program Director, Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit (IZA). His report, “Four Questions on Labor Economics of Higher Education,” quietly, and in academic economics language, sets the value of higher education for both the students and the society—the private and the public good.

My fear is that his report will be ignored because it actually sets a framework for improving higher education. He frames his points with four questions: 1) How much higher education should there be? 2) What kind of higher education—general vs. “vocational”? 3) What are the disincentive effects of prices on college attendance and completion? And 4) How to fund higher education, public vs. private?

He is an economist, so he gives economics answers. And that is good, particularly from my point of view. The quick answer to the first question is that the payoff is better for students and the public now than in the 1970’s. The second, third, and fourth questions are more interesting to me, however, and I will talk about each in separate blogs, beginning with question two today.

II. What Kind of Higher Education—General vs. “Vocational”? is Hamersmesh’s title to this section of his report. As a person who spent over 30 years in a community college, and as a person raised with the dictum that I should have a major that gives me job options to fall back on, and as a person who still has ringing in his ears his father’s statement on hearing that I had switched majors from math to English, “Well, maybe you can get into administration someday,” I have always been bedeviled by that question. What is the practicality of a liberal arts education? What value do we find in a general education? My answer has always been that the best education is a general education—if we can learn in multiple modes, we can learn the nitty-gritty of our job demands.

Hamermesh reinforces that strongly with his economics study of the kinds of education we need. Here is what he says, “We know from substantial evidence from the past 15 years (Berman et al, 1998) that technology and skill are complementary—there is a greater demand for generally skilled workers in those companies and industries where technology is changing more rapidly” (4). Well, how about that. This is kind of like teaching them to fish rather than giving them a trout. He goes on to say, “Which curricula [vocational or general] are more likely to stimulate technological advances is unclear; but it is clear that a concentration solely on vocationally-related education will narrow the channels along which new technology might be developed and in the end retard economic growth” (5). [Emphasis mine.]

It sounds to me that the best education in the long run is a general education. Yes, we need the tools of our trades, but we need to know how to use the tools generally rather than in specialized applications. That changes, and changes rapidly. I have in this paper what I have always wanted, an economics answer to the age-old question, should I pursue job training or general education. As a humanist, I have always favored the latter for its intellectual and aesthetic reward. Now we have an economist demonstrating an economic reward.

Because commissions are established out of the particular pique of the moment, they usually produce a short-term answer. In this case, we can hope that, below the radar screen of media attention, the commission heard Hamermesh’s report. Not only that they heard it, but that they realize the chance they have to address the real needs of higher education.