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Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education College Rankings 2021 methodology

Ranking of us universities and colleges puts student success and learning at its heart.

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View the full results of the  Wall Street Journal / Times Higher Education  College Rankings 2021

The Wall Street Journal / Times Higher Education College Ranking is a pioneering ranking of US colleges and universities that puts student success and learning at its heart.

The ranking includes clear performance indicators designed to answer the questions that matter most to students and their families when making one of the most important decisions of their lives – who to trust with their education. Does the college have sufficient resources to teach me properly? Will I be engaged, and challenged, by my teacher and classmates? Does the college have a good academic reputation? What type of campus community is there? How likely am I to graduate, pay off my debt and get a good job?

The ranking includes the results of the THE  US Student Survey, which examines a range of key issues including students’ engagement with their studies, their interaction with their teachers and their satisfaction with their experience.

The ranking adopts a balanced scorecard approach, with 15 individual performance indicators combining to create an overall score that reflects the broad strength of the institution.

For all questions about this ranking, please email: [email protected]

Data sources

Data come from a variety of sources: the US government ( Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System  – IPEDS), the College Scorecard , the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), the THE  US Student Survey, the THE  Academic Survey, and the Elsevier bibliometric dataset.

Our data are, in most cases, normalised so that the value we assign in each metric can be compared sensibly with other metrics.

Methodology

The overall methodology explores four key areas:

Resources (30%)

Does the college have the capacity to effectively deliver teaching? The Resources area represents 30 per cent of the overall ranking. Within this we look at:

• Finance per student (11%)
• Faculty per student (11%)
• Research papers per faculty (8%)

Engagement (20%)

Does the college effectively engage with its students? Most of the data in this area are gathered through the  THE  US Student Survey. The Engagement area represents 20 per cent of the overall ranking. Within this we look at:

• Student engagement (7%)
• Student recommendation (6%)
• Interaction with teachers and students (4%)
• Number of accredited programmes (3%)

Outcomes (40%)

Does the college generate good and appropriate outputs? Does it add value to the students who attend? The Outcomes area represents 40 per cent of the overall ranking. Within this we look at:

• Graduation rate (11%)
• Value added to graduate salary (12%)
• Debt after graduation (7%)
• Academic reputation (10%)

Environment (10%)

Is the college providing a good learning environment for all students? Does it make efforts to attract a diverse student body and faculty? The Environment area represents 10 per cent of the overall ranking. Within this we look at:

• Proportion of international students (2%)
• Student diversity (3%) 
• Student inclusion (2%)
• Staff diversity (3%)

Key changes since last year

Student survey.

We had planned to conduct our student survey during Spring 2020, but we had to cancel it because of the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent difficulties for institutions in the US. Not only could we not expect institutions to invest time and effort surveying their students at this time, but the data collected would probably have been coloured by students’ experience of a sudden move to online-only teaching and therefore would not generate a reliable indicator of general teaching success. We hope to be able to return to a normal survey collection for our 2022 ranking, but for this ranking the data for the three student engagement metrics has not been updated: we are using the scores obtained by institutions last year .

Student inclusion

Our student inclusion metric previously used data from the College Scorecard (CSC) on first generation student enrolment and from IPEDS on Pell Grant enrolment. The CSC data are no longer being published, so for this year we are using the Pell Grant data from IPEDS only. We will review this for the coming ranking to ensure we are still able to measure economic diversity in a meaningful way.

Value-added salary

Following the March 2019 executive order on accountability at colleges and universities, College Scorecard is now focusing on collecting outcomes data at the field-of-study level and as a result is no longer publishing overall salary values 10 years after matriculation. These longitudinal data were what we used in our value-added model, and we are not able to replace it with the new values published. This year we are reusing last year’s scores from the value-added metric. We will be reviewing our methodology for next year to find a suitable replacement for this measure for future rankings.

Metrics used

Students and their families need to know that their college has the right resources to provide the facilities, teaching and support that are needed to succeed at college.

By looking at the amount of money that each institution spends on teaching per student  (11%), we can get a clear sense of whether it is well funded, with the money to provide a positive learning environment. This metric takes into account spending on both undergraduate and graduate programmes, which is consistent with the way that the relevant spend data is available in IPEDS. The Department of Education requires schools to report key statistics such as this to IPEDS, making it a comprehensive source for education data. The data on academic spending per institution are adjusted for regional price differences, using regional price parities data from the US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis.

By looking at the ratio of students to faculty members  (11%), we get an overall sense of whether the college has enough teachers to teach. It gives a broad sense of how likely it is that a student will receive the individual attention that can be necessary to succeed at college, and also gives a sense as to potential class sizes. The source of this statistic is IPEDS. We are using the average of two years of data for this metric to provide a better long-term view.

Faculty who are experts in their academic fields and pushing the boundaries of knowledge at the forefront of their discipline can significantly enhance a student’s educational experience when they are able to distil their knowledge and demonstrate the power of real-world problem-solving and enquiry. So our teaching resources pillar also gives a sense of whether faculty are experts in their academic disciplines by looking at research excellence. We look at the number of published scholarly research papers per faculty member (8%) at each institution, giving a sense of their research productivity, and testing to see whether staff are able to produce research that is suitable for publication in the world’s top academic journals, as indexed by Elsevier.

Decades of research has found that the best way to truly understand teaching quality at an institution – how well it manages to inform, inspire and challenge students – is through capturing what is known as “student engagement”. This was described by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker in 2011 as “the extent to which students immerse themselves in the intellectual and social life of their college – and a major component of engagement is the quality of a student’s contacts with faculty”.

THE has captured student engagement across the US through its US Student Survey, carried out in partnership with two leading market research providers. In 2018 and 2019, we gathered the views of more than 170,000 current college and university students on a range of issues relating directly to their experience at college (see key changes detailed above).

Students answer 12 core questions about their experience that are either multiple choice or on a scale from 0 to 10, and also provide background information about themselves. The survey was conducted online and respondents were recruited by research firm Streetbees using social media, facilitated, in part, by student representatives at individual schools. We also worked with participating institutions that distributed the survey to random samples of their own students. Respondents were verified as students of their reported college using their email addresses. We used an aggregated group of respondents from both years (2018 and 2019 surveys). At least 50 validated responses in the 2019 survey were required for a university to be included.

To capture engagement with learning (7%), we look at the answers to four key questions:

• to what extent does the student’s college or university support critical thinking? For example, developing new concepts or evaluating different points of view;
• to what extent does the teaching support reflection on, or making connections among, the things that the student has learned? For example, combining ideas from different lessons to complete a task;
• to what extent does the teaching support applying the student’s learning to the real world? For example, taking study excursions to see concepts in action;
• to what extent do the classes taken in college challenge the student? For example, presenting new ways of thinking to challenge assumptions or values

To capture a student’s opportunity to interact with others  (4%) to support learning, we use the responses to two questions: to what extent does the student have the opportunity to interact with faculty and teachers? For example, talking about personal progress in feedback sessions; and to what extent does the college provide opportunities for collaborative learning? For example, group assignments.

The final measure in this area from the survey is around student recommendation  (6%): if a friend or family member were considering going to university, based on your experience, how likely or unlikely are you to recommend your college or university to them?

In this pillar of indicators we also seek to help a student understand the opportunities that are on offer at the institution, and the likelihood of getting a more rounded education, by providing an indicator of the number of different subjects taught  (3%). While other components of the Engagement pillar are drawn from the student survey, the source of this metric is IPEDS. We are using the average of two years of data for this metric in order to provide a better long-term view.

At a time when US college debt stands at $1.6 trillion, and when the affordability of going to college and value for money are prime concerns, this section looks at perhaps the single most important aspect of any higher education institution – their record on delivering successful outcomes for their students.

We look at the graduation rates for each institution (11%) – a crucial way to help students to understand whether colleges have a strong track record in supporting students enough to get them through their course and ensure that they complete their degrees. We use reported graduation rates for all students including part-time and transfer students.

This pillar also includes a value-added indicator, measuring the value added by the teaching at a college to salary  (12%) (see key changes detailed above). Using a value-added approach means that the ranking does not simply reward the colleges that cream off all the very best students, and shepherd them into the jobs that provide the highest salaries in absolute terms. Instead it looks at the success of the college in transforming people’s life chances, in “adding value” to their likelihood of success. The THE data team uses statistical modelling to create an expected graduate salary for each college based on a wide range of factors, such as the demographic make-up of its student body and the characteristics of the institution. The ranking looks at how far the college either exceeds expectations in getting students higher average salaries than one would predict based on its students and its characteristics, or falls below what is expected. The value-added analysis uses research on this topic by Brookings Institution, among others, as a guide.

We also include a metric on debt after graduation  (7%). The concern over student debt and the cost of higher education in general has come to the forefront of public discussion recently. A measure of the debt accrued by a college’s students when they graduate reflects this concern and holds institutions accountable for the cost that they represent to individuals and funding sources. We are using the cumulative median debt reported in College Scorecard, which represents the “median loan debt accumulated at the institution by all student borrowers of federal loans”.

This pillar also looks at the overall academic reputation of the college (10%), based on THE ’s annual Academic Reputation Survey, a survey of leading scholars that helps us determine which institutions have the best reputation for excellence in teaching. We used the total teaching votes from our 2019 and 2020 reputation surveys.

This category looks at the make-up of the student body at each campus, helping students understand whether they will find themselves in a diverse, supportive and inclusive environment while they are at college. We look at the proportion of international students on campus  (2%), a key indicator that the university or college is able to attract talent from across the world and offers a multicultural campus where students from different backgrounds can, theoretically, learn from one another.

We also look more generally at student diversity – both racial and ethnic diversity (3%), and the inclusion of students with lower family earnings (2%). For the former, we use IPEDS data on diversity. For the latter, we look at the proportion of students who receive Pell Grants (paid to students in need of financial support), as reported in IPEDS.

We also use a measure of the racial and ethnic diversity of the faculty (3%), drawing on IPEDS data.

Technical overview of metrics

• Finance per student – spending on teaching associated activity per full-time equivalent student (IPEDS). This is adjusted using regional price comparisons (BEA)
• Faculty-to-student ratio – the number of faculty per student as provided by IPEDS
• Papers per faculty – the number of academic papers published by faculty from a college in the period 2015-2019 (Elsevier) divided by the size of the faculty (IPEDS)

The data from the student survey have been rebalanced by gender to reflect the actual gender ratio at the college.

• Student engagement – the average score of the four questions (critical thinking, connections, applying learning to the real world, challenge) in the THE  US Student Survey
• Interaction – the average score of two questions (interaction with faculty and collaborative learning) in the THE  US Student Survey
• Student recommendation ( THE  US Student Survey)
• Subject breadth – the number of courses offered (IPEDS)
• Graduation rate – the proportion of bachelor’s or equivalent graduates six/eight years after entry (IPEDS; six years for full-time students and eight years for part-time students). This covers both first-time and transfer students
• Value-added salary – the average calculated residual of the value-added models for salary 10 years after entry. This is calculated using a range of independent variables for the College Scorecard data representing the years 2013, 2014 and 2015. It also draws on data from IPEDS and the BEA
• Debt after graduation – the median loan debt accumulated by students at the institution, after they graduate. This is the GRAD_DEBT_MDN variable released by College Scorecard.
• Reputation – the total votes received for teaching excellence in the THE  Academic Reputation survey, which is conducted in partnership with Elsevier. We use only votes provided by academics associated with US institutions.

Environment

• International students – the proportion of students identified as non-resident aliens (IPEDS)
• Student diversity – a Gini-Simpson calculation of the likelihood of two undergraduates being from different racial/ethnic groups (IPEDS)
• Faculty diversity – a Gini-Simpson calculation of the likelihood of two faculty members being from different racial/ethnic groups (IPEDS)
• Student inclusion – the post-normalisation average of the proportion of Pell Grant recipients (IPEDS) 

Why isn’t my college included?

There are two reasons why a college might not be included in the ranking.

First, does it meet the eligibility requirements? This is an abbreviated summary:

• Title IV eligible
• Awards four-year bachelor’s degrees
• Located in the 50 states or Washington, DC
• Has more than 1,000 students
• Has 20 per cent or fewer online-only students (the current shift to remote learning during the Covid-19 pandemic is an exception)
• Is not insolvent

We also accept US service academies provided that they are able to supply the necessary data.

The second reason is missing data elements. Where possible we will impute missing values, but where that is not possible we have excluded colleges. In addition, some colleges did not meet our threshold for a valid number of respondents (greater than or equal to 50) to the student survey in 2019. We have also excluded private for-profit colleges.

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'It killed my spirit': How 3 teachers are navigating the burnout crisis in education

After two years of weathering pandemic disruptions, safety concerns and tense public scrutiny, burned-out teachers have quit the profession in droves.

At least 300,000 public-school teachers and other staff left the field between February 2020 and May 2022, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Teachers have experienced alarmingly high rates of anxiety during the Covid-19 pandemic — even more than health-care workers, according to recent research published in Educational Researcher, a journal of the American Education Research Association. 

K-12 teachers report the highest burnout rate of all U.S. professions, with more than four out of every 10 teachers noting that they feel burned out "always" or "very often" at work, according to a June 2022 Gallup poll . 

Many of the predominant challenges teachers face, including safety concerns , low salaries , funding deficits and declining mental health, are not new issues — but the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has intensified existing problems within the profession.

The burnout crisis in teaching has been exacerbated by a national educator shortage — enrollment in teacher preparation programs has plummeted , a trend amplified by the pandemic, and schools throughout the U.S. are competing for a shrinking pool of qualified teachers. 

Some teachers quit because of the challenges of teaching during a global pandemic, while others, taking note of the Great Resignation, found higher-paid opportunities in other industries. Those who remain in the classroom report feeling exhausted and disillusioned with the role they had once considered to be their dream job. 

'If I didn't have retirement to look forward to, I'd probably quit' 

August Plock's class size has nearly doubled since he started teaching 11th grade U.S. history at Pflugerville High School 23 years ago, thanks to a persistent teacher shortage and a flock of families migrating to trendy Austin, a mere 30-minute drive south.

"I used to teach about 140 students a year, and now, that number is close to 200," Plock, 54, tells CNBC Make It . He's teaching six classes this year, each consisting of 28 to 33 students.

Texas has faced a teacher shortage for years , and the pandemic made it worse — the state lost close to 43,000 teachers last year , setting a new record in Texas for retirements and resignations.

"It's been bad the last couple of years, but this year, it's been really hard," Plock says. "We've had to dissolve the jobs of teachers in special programs and put them into classrooms that had no teachers, even if they didn't want to do that — it's caused a lot of people to quit." 

Plock has had at least 10 additional students added to his class this year, and is teaching a second subject, geography, because of the educator shortage.

"It's fun working with the students," Plock says. "But I'll be honest, I have two years to go until I retire, and if I didn't have retirement to look forward to, and I was a young teacher, I'd probably quit too."

'It was chaos' 

Jeanne Paulino never imagined she would become a teacher. 

The 24-year-old had her heart set on working as a lawyer all throughout high school and college — but at the start of her senior year, one conversation changed her mind. 

"I was approached by a recruiter from Teach for America, and I was just blown away," she says. "He began the conversation about how education is full of inequity, and how teachers can help resolve some of the inequity that exists."

She was accepted into the program in November 2019 and was placed at Intrinsic Charter High School in Chicago as an 11th grade English learning specialist for the 2020-2021 school year — then the pandemic hit. 

"It was chaos," Paulino recalls. "I spent my first year of teaching entirely online, and I really felt like I had no idea what I was doing." 

When her school re-opened for the 2021-2022 school year, Paulino felt even more lost. 

"I probably went home crying at least twice a week that first semester, because I was so frazzled and confused about how to effectively manage all of these students in the classroom," she says. "It was their first time being in-person together after a long time apart, plus a lot of them were still coping with the stress of the pandemic and lack of social interaction … it led to new behavioral challenges I did not anticipate."

Now, however, with two years of teaching under her belt, Paulino is confident leading her classroom, and is excited about the positive impact she's able to make on her students' lives. 

Teach for America only requires corps members to teach for at least two years, so Paulino has finished her commitment to the program, but Intrinsic Charter School hired her to stay on staff as a full-time teacher for the 2022-2023 school year.

"Teaching has been both better and more challenging than I thought it would be," she says. "Sometimes I'm an instructor, other times I'm a confidante or a therapist, but it all feels like incredibly important, meaningful work."

When she first started teaching, Paulino planned to leave after two years, noting that the teaching has never been an "end goal" for her, but her career goals have changed — instead of going to law school, she now dreams of becoming a therapist or a writer.

But there's one thing that's keeping her in the classroom for at least one more year: her students. Paulino explains: "The great relationships I have with the students has motivated me to stay in spite of all the stress and sometimes feeling overworked and underpaid."

"I felt a huge amount of guilt telling them I wasn't coming back, like I was abandoning these little kids who needed me." Amy Owen a former third grade teacher in Los Angeles

'Teaching became intolerable' 

Amy Owen still cries when she recalls her last day in the classroom where she spent more than 20 years teaching. 

Owen, a former third grade teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District, sent her letter of resignation on June 30 — and was surprised when someone from the human resources department responded to her email congratulating her on the decision. 

"It really gave me pause, because I was not happy to be leaving teaching and didn't see it as something to be celebrated," Owen, 48, says. "I felt like I was being forced out of teaching."

She fought back tears while breaking the news to her students. 

"All day, there were kids telling me how excited they were to visit my classroom when we returned in the fall, or how they had hoped their younger sibling would have me next year," Owen says. "I felt a huge amount of guilt telling them I wasn't coming back, like I was abandoning these little kids who needed me." 

Owen says she reached her breaking point "many, many times" over the years, and had debated quitting teaching before — but the 2021-2022 school year pushed her over the edge. 

"Everything immediately shifted in terms of what leadership expected from us," she says. "We went from valuing the whole child and caring about our students as human beings during virtual learning to testing them to death." 

On top of that, many of her students were still struggling with stressors that had cropped up during the pandemic: losing family members to coronavirus, worrying about getting sick with the virus themselves, feeling insecure or timid around their classmates after so much time spent apart. 

"That killed my spirit," Owen says. "At that point, teaching became intolerable, and I couldn't do it anymore." 

She moved to Charlotte weeks after quitting teaching and has been focused on volunteering for causes she's passionate about, like gun reform, and finding a new job — she's interested in pursuing a career in marketing or communications. 

"My heart is still broken," Owen says of her decision to quit. "Part of me still wants to be a teacher, I was proud of it, and really loved it … but I don't think I will step foot in a classroom ever again."

Want to earn more and work less?  Register for the free CNBC Make It: Your Money virtual event   on Dec. 13 at 12 p.m. ET to learn from money masters how you can increase your earning power.

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Guest Essay

One Way to Help a Journalism Industry in Crisis: Make J-School Free

By Graciela Mochkofsky

Ms. Mochkofsky is the dean at CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.

Many uncertainties haunt the field of journalism today — among them, how we can reach our audience, build public trust in our work, and who is going to pay for it all. But one thing is certain: as complicated and dark as the world looks today, it would be much worse if journalists were not there to report on it.

Research shows that towns that have lost sources of local news tend to suffer from lower voter turnout, less civic engagement and more government corruption. Journalists are essential just as nurses and firefighters and doctors are essential.

And to continue to have journalists, we need to make their journalism education free.

This might sound counterintuitive given the state of the industry. Shrinking revenue and decreasing subscription figures have led to a record number of newsroom jobs lost. Much of the local news industry has fallen into the hands of hedge funds focused on squeezing the last drops of revenue out of operations by decimating them. Billionaires who appeared as saviors just a few years ago have grown tired of losing money on the media organizations they bought. Public trust in the value of news is at historical lows, while a growing percentage of people are avoiding the news altogether.

Generative artificial intelligence, which is on the verge of reshaping almost everything around us, is bringing yet another technological disruption to the industry. Against this grim backdrop, authoritarian leaders are increasingly targeting journalists as political enemies both at home and abroad.

And yet there are still tens of thousands of jobs in news media in America, with exceptional journalism being produced every day. Some major organizations have even found ways to thrive in the digital age. Prominent foundation leaders have started an effort to pour hundreds of millions of philanthropic dollars into local journalism, and a movement has formed to push for federal and local legislation to direct public funding to news. An initiative to replant local news has founded dozens of nonprofit newsrooms in cities around the country. And a small but growing number of organizations are redefining the way news agendas are set, focusing on rebuilding public trust within small communities.

No matter how the news industry evolves, we will continue to need journalists. Successful business models for media are necessary, but the most crucial element for strong, independent journalism is the people who make it. Given the present stakes in the industry, our society and the world, we need mission-driven, imaginative news leaders who are not bound by the models of the past, who have the motivation and freedom to reimagine the field, and the empathy and commitment to serve the public interest, undaunted by attacks and threats.

We must also move beyond the lack of economic and demographic diversity that has long been a problem in the industry. News has too often been reported by predominantly middle-class, white, male journalists, resulting in coverage that has repeatedly missed the issues that are most important to the people receiving the news, contributing to the public’s lack of trust in the media.

In a resource-starved industry, few newsrooms can offer the type of mentoring, guidance and time that it takes to shape a great journalist. This is now primarily the responsibility of journalism schools. It is the civic duty of these schools to find and train reporters and news leaders, instill in them an ethical foundation, help develop their critical thinking skills, allow them to try and fail in a safe environment, open doors and provide a support network. (Journalism schools should also contribute research in a variety of areas, from the impact of A.I. to new business models to identifying and responding to emerging threats.)

But the cost of a journalism education has become an insurmountable barrier for exactly the kind of people we need the most. And those who, with great effort, manage to overcome that barrier, carry a weight that could limit their professional options.

Reporters burdened with debt are less likely to take professional risks and more likely to abandon the field. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median reporter salary in America is less than $56,000 a year, or about $27 per hour. In low-income areas, where news deserts are more prevalent, annual salaries can be as low as $20,000. A Wall Street Journal report about the debt-to-income ratio of alumni of 16 journalism masters programs found that many graduates leave with debts that exceed their postgraduate income.

As the dean of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York, I can tell you that half measures won’t solve this quandary. My school was founded in 2006 as a public alternative to elite journalism schools in the city and it remains one of the most affordable in the nation.

Our in-state students pay about a quarter of the cost of an equivalent degree from top-tier schools with which we successfully compete. This year alone, 90 percent of our students are on scholarships, and a record 25 percent are attending tuition-free. We also waived the $75 application fee this admission cycle and saw an increase of more than 40 percent in our applicant pool.

Thanks to these policies, we have succeeded where the media industry keeps failing. Over 50 percent of our students are people of color and from underserved communities. Many couldn’t have attended our school if we hadn’t offered significant scholarship support. But that’s not enough. Though we rank as one of the journalism schools with higher-medium-income and lower-median-debt alumni, our students still don’t graduate fully debt-free.

This is why this year, we began a campaign to go fully tuition-free by 2027. While other schools might face different financial challenges, we hope that many more will follow us.

We need journalists whose only obligations are to the facts and the society they serve, not to lenders; who are concerned with the public interest, not with interest rates; who can make risky decisions and take the difficult path if that’s what the mission requires, free of financial burden. Journalism schools can help achieve that. In tough times, it is natural to mourn the past or lament the present, but what we really need is bold action.

Graciela Mochkofsky is the dean at CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. She is the author, most recently, of “ The Prophet of the Andes: An Unlikely Journey to the Promised Land .”

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• The Future Trends Forum

Losing faith in the value of college: an important Wall Street Journal article

(Greetings from a hectic month.  I’m writing this right after starting to teach a big class, participating in several professional events, and now traveling to Qatar.  Greetings from the Istanbul Airport.)

How are Americans turning away from higher education?

I’ve been writing about this for a decade, exploring enrollment declines, changing political attitudes, macroeconomic developments, and more. Recently I’ve offered the term “shattered consensus” to describe the end of popular belief on college for everyone.  Last week Doug Belkin (a fine Future Trends Forum guest ) wrote a good Wall Street Journal article summing up explanations for that broken consensus.  I’d like to summarize it here and offer some reflections

Belkin starts off summarizing the consensus model neatly:

For three generations, the national aspiration to “college for all” shaped America’s economy and culture, as most high-school graduates took it for granted that they would earn a degree. That consensus is now collapsing in the face of massive student debt, underemployed degree-holders and political intolerance on campus.

What caused that collapse?

Belkin criticizes institutional governance as slow and conservative, not letting academics respond more quickly and effectively to a changing world.  He blames pre-college prep as insufficient and duns college teaching for not being up to the task.  Colleges and universities have hired larger proportions of undersupported adjuncts to do the teaching work; those temporary employees are also strongly incentivized to reduce instructional demands and inflate grades in order to win better evaluations.  On top of this, cheating seems to be widespread and growing.

The price paid to attend college has famously increased, due to familiar reasons: “state budget cuts, administrative bloat and runaway spending on campus amenities.”  Meanwhile, returns to degrees are not guaranteed:

Of  100 random freshmen  enrolling in college today, 40 will not graduate. Of the remaining 60 that earn a degree in six years, 20 will end up chronically underemployed. In other words, for every five students who enroll in a four-year college, only two will graduate and find a job based on their degree.

Belkin adds that polling shows declining faith in higher ed, and argues that there’s deep interest in alternatives, such as apprenticeships.

This all maps onto what I’ve been seeing pretty well.  Adjunctification, rising prices (and costs), declining polling, hunts for alternatives, etc. all fit the picture.

I do want to offer a gentle commentary on a few points.

First, while colleges and universities can be very slow to change, it’s not true of all.  Small institutions, like small ships, have a tighter turning radius and have the potential to implement new ideas faster than their giant colleagues.  Private institutions also have the benefit of independence from a layer of state policy and observation.  Further, community colleges are laser-focused on their local community needs (hence the name!) and frequently adjust their offerings to better suit demand.

Belkin argues about enrollment that “As students abandoned the humanities and flooded fields like computer science, big data and engineering, schools failed to respond.” Actually, enrollment in STEM, allied health, and business has soared for more than a decade. Many colleges and universities have managed to offer classes and degrees to power those rising enrollment numbers.   I’ve actually heard from more than a few deans that they fear overdoing it and pushing supply past demand.  (Naturally, much depends on the specific situation of a given campus and the people it serves.)

Second, I would caution readers that Belkin tends to focus on one part of higher ed for most of the article.  Higher ranked four-year colleges and graduate program-offering universities are the main target.  For example, when he writes “Professors compete for tenure on the basis of the quality of their research and publishing track record. Teaching is mostly an afterthought” that leaves off liberal arts colleges and community colleges, among others.  The criticism of amenities arms races boosting costs also sets aside institutions with low numbers of residential students.

Al Akhawayn University

Third, I remain skeptical of many commentaries based on “administrative bloat.” The term is a tricky one, usually accounting for all staff at an institution who aren’t faculty or students who aren’t working on campus.  That means presidents to custodians, IT staff and librarians, deanlets and grants officers. Their numbers have grown for plenty of solid reasons: increased regulatory burdens, the expansion of IT, greater demand for student services (think of mental health, student life), and more.  Decreasing state support for public institutions has led some of those schools to hire more people for fundraising, from development offices to people charged with nurturing business partnerships.  Sure, there is excess staffing in some fields and outright featherbedding, like in many aspects of American life – but also plenty of overworked, underpaid, marginalized, or just plain ignored staff who badly need better support.

Fourth, and this might have more to do with the Wall Street Journal’s politics*, Belkin touches on American politics too quickly.  It’s important to tease out some details, like the large upsurge of academic skepticism and outright fury from Republicans.  It’s also worth digging into surveys to see different levels of support vs skepticism broken down by age, gender, academic attainment, race, and geography. In other words, politics play a big role in breaking up the college for all consensus, and it’s worth at least a whole article just making sense of it.

Summing up: this is an important article, for all the extra themes I wanted it to sound.  The shattered consensus seems to be breaking into reality.  How will academics respond?

*I’m referring to the WSJ’s investigative journalism wing, not its opinion pages.  The former does solid work, like cracking the Theranos story. In contast, the latter can be,… extreme.

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2 Responses to Losing faith in the value of college: an important Wall Street Journal article

“For three generations, the national aspiration to ‘college for all’ shaped America’s economy and culture, as most high-school graduates took it for granted that they would earn a degree.”

I hate to be difficult, but given that fewer than half of working adults in the US have a Bachelor’s degree, this “consensus” sounds like it excludes everyone lower down the socioeconomic ladder than middle class suburbia.

That’s a very good catch, Steve.

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