Why did you downmod my informative comment?! You dick!

Accident

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

Yes, but there are not enough jobs in the high paying fields to support all of the college students.

Really? Then why am I surrounded by Indian and Chinese engineers on H-1B Visas?

The truth is that at least in tech there are enough jobs but companies lobby for more and more H-1B Visas because they can pay the workers less and exert downward pressure on wages in general. There are 117,000 spots for H-1B visas every year, a figure that continues to rise. If there weren't enough jobs, we wouldn't need to import a few hundred thousand skilled workers

From wikipedia:
According to Ron Hira, assistant professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, the median wage in 2005 for new H-1B information technology (IT) was just $50,000, which is even lower than starting wages for IT graduates with a B.S. degree. The US governments OES office's data indicates that 90% of H-1B IT wages were below the median US wage for the same occupation.

I can personally attest to this. A few jobs ago one of our senior executroids accidentally published the salaries of everyone in the company. I found that engineers on H-1B Visas made less than half what citizens or green-card holders made. I was staggered to find experienced developers making only $40,000 in Silicon Valley. For those in the hinterlands, San Jose's cost of living is 177% of average, so $40K here maps to about $30K in Portland, Oregon.

The fact is that there are plenty of jobs for skilled workers in America. There isn't what you'd call an even distribution across all skill levels, occupations and geographic areas to be sure. I mean, there isn't much call for auto workers in San Jose, CA and there isn't a huge market for Perl developers in Roswell, Georgia.

If there really aren't enough engineers around to fill all the jobs as the Republican Party claims, then there are two paths:

1. We can import engineers from other countries so they can learn here, send money home and eventually take their skills back to their homeland.
   
2. Invest in education so we can produce more engineers. Dole out scholarships and grants to people who've worked hard and earned a shot at a college degree. Who better than someone who volunteered to serve their country and get shot at for 4 years? If nothing else, I can't think of a more powerful motivator to study hard than the prospect of four years of people shooting at you. Just ask Dick Cheney and Karl Rove.

-=Logan
Research, facts, a Republican needs not these things.

I will agree, we are artificially depressing demand (and wages) by importing workers.  The wages paid to H1Bs are actually pretty much illegal - they are supposed to be paid market rates - but everybody knows they aren't.  What would be the point if importing somebody with a questionnable educational pedigree, lackluster skills, and iffy English skills if you had to pay them as much as everyone else? (My apologies to any H1Bs reading this, but in my experience, this holds true on average.  I have met some extremely competent H1B holders, but on average, the quality is poor).

I think educational subsidies are crap - they distort the market for higher education and the skills it provides.  We should however utterly abolish the H1B visa program - yesterday.  We should then invest in programs that generate demand for skillsets that we deem to be important to our nation in the long term.  We shouldn't push the supply side with no thought to how those whose education we've all paid for will find a job.

There's a funny thing about the way America handles skilled-labor resident aliens: we do it in the worst way possible. When someone comes to America on a student visa to learn medicine, engineering, computer science or whathave you, the INS is very clear: as soon as you finish school get the hell out. Don't even think about trying to get a job and staying here. How much sense does that make? We subsidize education in America (probably not enough) so even the tuition paid by a foreign student doesn't cover anywhere near the whole cost. Ergo, someone comes here, learns skills on our dime, then goes home to put their skills to work.

If someone comes to America on an H1-B visa the INS is very clear: as soon as your time is up, get the hell out. How much sense does it make to import people from our economic competitors, let them work on our bleeding-edge technology, then send them packing as soon as they get socialized? Come here, work mad hours, send half your paycheck home to your family, and as soon as you figure out football and develop a taste for pizza we want you gone. Take your big brain and your money and your business ideas and kick it back to Bangalore, Kumar. The last thing we want here are people who appreciate being here.

A far more logical way of doing things would be to require foreign students to stay and work (and pay taxes) for X years so we get the benefit of their education. Considering how many foreign students tend to stay here long after their original planned departure date, I don't see a problem.

My Dad taught chemistry at Oregon State University for 30-odd years. One of the constants of his career was a parade of Chinese grad students asking him for help with immigration: they all wanted to stay in America, but the INS wanted them to go and the Chinese government wanted them to come back. Some went to extreme lengths to stay in America. Many deliberately slowed their research as they approached graduation so they could stay. Others sabotaged their own thesis papers so they'd have to start over. A few took a great risk by traveling to Taiwan, knowing that doing so would bar them from re-entry into mainland China, in the hopes that they could then apply for political asylum in the US.

The unifying factor for all these people was that they were brilliant scholars. Every one had gained entry into the graduate program of a first-rate Chemistry department, mastered English well enough to navigate the Kafkaesque bureaucracy that is the American immigration process and convinced their government to pay for them to study overseas in a semi-hostile nation. Why on earth should we let people that smart, educated and motivated go put their skills to work for someone else?

-=Logan
Research, facts, a Republican needs not these things.

A few people crashing on the rocks chasing the siren's song is what ensures the highest concentration of talent for our corporate workforce. A few more ensures depressed wages. Since I posted that bit about Fromm's editorial, I've been looking for it on the web to no avail. He was saying salaries among college graduates are down against inflation the past ten years. You are correct--salaries are going down for college graduates while the costs to get that education in both tuition and text books continues to go up.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

Frankly, I think most of the people who go to college shouldn't be going, regardless of the costs.  They'd be better served by vocational training in high school (which in the US has been utterly eviscerated).

The reason why so many people are going to college is not because vocational training in high school has been wiped out; it's because becoming middle class in America is now about working in companies that requires degrees.

The increasing corporatization of the U.S. has decimated many of the traditional routes to middle class without a higher degree.  Manufacturing is non-existent in the U.S. with most products being manufactured abroad and small businesses have to compete against chains.  There's still construction, but that's pretty tough work.  People I know who've worked in that industry suffer rheumatism from their early 50s onward.  And given the increased mechanization of everything, it might be impossible to get a decent salary job in the U.S. without a degree.  There is still the service industry, but those jobs don't pay well.

A college education implies some training in analytical thinking.  It is analytical thinking that is increasingly being valued on the job.

   

But carpenters, plumbers and auto mechanics frequently still make solid middle-class to slightly above incomes (not going to say upper middle class but certainly above the middle class mean). These jobs can be landed through vocational education that require barely more than high school diploma and these fields are traditionally under-filled (thus the relatively high compensation).

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

But carpenters, plumbers and auto mechanics frequently still make solid middle-class to slightly above incomes (not going to say upper middle class but certainly above the middle class mean).

I know someone who sells supplies for bathrooms (sinks, toilets, faucets, etc).  She works a few hours a day, makes a significant sum of money every year, and spends the rest of the day cooking elaborate meals and drinking gin.  

One of the things I've felt since leaving college is that there really needs to be more focus in high schools in teaching the students about various careers/jobs and how to get them.  I would never have thought of selling bathroom fixtures as a lucrative business.

Dude, I'm totally quitting my job to go sell bathroom fixtures.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

The increasing corporatization of the U.S. has decimated many of the traditional routes to middle class without a higher degree

What does that mean? That there are more corporations today than before? What has that got to do with higher degrees?*

Manufacturing is non-existent in the U.S. with most products being manufactured abroad...

Just about as much is manufactured in the US today as in the past. So what the hell are you talking about?

There is still the service industry, but those jobs don't pay well

You mean like banking or IT jobs? Yeah, those pay peanuts.


*By the way, what is "middle class" to you?

Just about as much is manufactured in the US today as in the past. So what the hell are you talking about?

Fifty years ago, a third of U.S. employees worked in factories, making everything from clothing to lipstick to cars. Today, a little more than one-tenth of the nation's 131 million workers are employed by manufacturing firms. Four-fifths are in services (from USA Today).  The decline of U.S. manufacturing has long been studied by sociologists studying poverty in the U.S.

That there are more corporations today than before? What has that got to do with higher degrees?*
If manufacturing is increasingly being sent abroad to maximize profit for shareholders, there is a corresponding decrease of blue collar jobs domestically.  If chains grow larger in the U.S., there is a corresponding decrease of privately owned small businesses.  Both manufacturing and small businesses were possible to people who didn't go to college in the past; however, now as both roads are closed, people who might have done either are going to college.

There is still the service industry, but those jobs don't pay well
You mean like banking or IT jobs? Yeah, those pay peanuts.
Actually, I meant washing dishes in restaurants, being a cash register person in a supermarket, the guy making my coffee in the morning, the people working at department stores...pretty much all the people who are the faces of retail (as opposed to the people who make the decisions on what to purchase and how to manage things for retail).  I doubt there are many banks these days hiring clerks who don't have college degrees.  On the other hand, there are companies hiring IT people without college degrees.  However, those kids could probably have gotten into college regardless if they really wanted to.

*By the way, what is "middle class" to you?
It's pretty hard to tell in the U.S., where everyone and their mother defines themselves as middle class whether they live off food stamps or live on a sizable estate.  And these days, it would seem that the traditional "owns a home" is not an indicator of middle class (not that I ever used that definition in my life given that I grew up in cities mostly).  And nor does it seem to have any reliable correspondence to money in the bank or not having debt in a consumer culture.

For me, personally, it's having a decent sum of money left after paying my rent so that I can socialize, pay bills, put in money to my retirement, and have money leftover for my savings account.  But that's a personal definition.  Again it's hard to say in this country.  One keeps reading about people with extremely good salaries who go bankrupt because of their consumer habits.

I would also say that middle class is extremely difficult to define in the U.S. since it encompasses so many varying degress of expenses depending on the area in which one lives.  I've lived in rural areas where rent is only $500 per month for a large one-bedroom as well as urban areas where a one-bedroom rent is $1800.

    It will be repeating past comments, but I think any discussion of the American class system has to take into account that part of status is the number of people you answer to at work, and the pay is only part of it. Why the marked (and remarkable) drive to own a business (and home) that drives so many Americans? Certainly not the wealth-- even a successful small business rarely pulls in more for the owner than a good job at a large firm. College teachers often (usually?) make less than their public counterparts, yet are lower on the status pole, though I wouldn't want to overstate this too much. Think about it some more, and examples should come to mind in droves. A good starting place if Paul Fussell's Class, though he admits he cribbed a good deal from other sources-- but he's an entertaining writer, so the book reads fairly well, even 20+ years later.
    This is why, I'd suggest, so many folks think of themselves as middle class; it doesn't matter if you make 20K or 120K a year-- as long as you have two or three layers of management above you, you'll still feel "powerless" on the job. Clearly, the more you make the more options you have to take your mind off your "misery", but in an independence minded people*, the two positions will still feel very similar.

    *A less charitable view would be that Americans feel it's their God given right to tell others what to do, and feel stifled when they aren't doing so. As an uncle of mind pointed out, John Wayne spent an awful lot of time on screen telling other people what to do, and not so much time actually doing anything. If Wayne is really an American archetype, I think this warrants some thought.

Ex ignorantia ad sapientiam; e luce ad tenebras

The decline of U.S. manufacturing has long been studied by sociologists studying poverty in the U.S

No, the decline of US manufacturing employment has been studied by sociologists. US manufacturing is studied by economists.

Did you even bother reading the article you linked to? I'm guessing not because you seem to be under the impression that "manufacturing is non-existent in the U.S." but, as the article says, the reality is not nearly so dire:

Many in manufacturing disagree that the sector is dying. They say it's just changing. The sector's output grew for a decade through 2000 before weakening during the economic downturn in 2001 that swept across the economy but hit the manufacturing sector hardest.

And economists say the change in manufacturing, albeit painful, is healthy for the sector and for the overall economy in the long run.

"It's good for us to displace low-wage, manual kinds of labor with higher-skill, higher-tech, higher-education-content labor," says Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President William Poole, who compares what's happening with the decline in agricultural employment of the early 20th century

If chains grow larger in the U.S., there is a corresponding decrease of privately owned small businesses.  Both manufacturing and small businesses were possible to people who didn't go to college in the past; however, now as both roads are closed, people who might have done either are going to college

You seem to believe things that are not true. (Why is that?) There are more small businesses today than in the past, and those businesses account for a larger portion of jobs and most of the new jobs created.

You also seem to believe that service sector jobs don't pay well, or at least that the service sector jobs that don't require college don't pay well. If that were true and if there were more of those jobs being created, then we should expect to see a significant drop in the incomes of people without college degrees, right? (Say...I bet you've read Nickel and Dimed, haven't you?!)

And these days, it would seem that the traditional "owns a home" is not an indicator of middle class (not that I ever used that definition in my life given that I grew up in cities mostly).  And nor does it seem to have any reliable correspondence to money in the bank or not having debt in a consumer culture

Maybe there is no middle class! You're either rich or you're poor!

And economists say the change in manufacturing, albeit painful, is healthy for the sector and for the overall economy in the long run.

Oh, I don't doubt that there are many people who think that a decline in manufacturing "employment" (Is it that you believe somehow a decline in manufacuturing in the U.S. doesn't correspond to a decline in employment in manufacturing in the U.S. that you make a point of placing employment in as a significant semiotic difference in talking about manufacturing in the U.S.?) is good for the overall economy, particularly people who make money off cutting costs in production.  However, the people who are most likely to be affected by the changes in manufacturing practices are not the people who will get the most advantages from the change in the "overall economy."

You seem to believe things that are not true. (Why is that?) There are more small businesses today than in the past, and those businesses account for a larger portion of jobs and most of the new jobs created.
I'd be interested in reading a politically unbiased account of growth in percentage of small businesses in correlation to overall percentage population as opposed to 50 years ago.  I can believe there might be a boom in the last ten years given that there's been a difference in public perspective on small businesses, but a decade is not a long term growth that's reliable for overall sectors.

You also seem to believe that service sector jobs don't pay well, or at least that the service sector jobs that don't require college don't pay well.
There are several ways to consider a job, and one important factor is a long-term career.  Another factor is benefits.  The retail service sector has been unreliable in both.   We went a round of where I defined what I meant in my post when i talked of service sector.  Perhaps you could extend the same courtesy?

And since I have gone to the trouble to answer your question in regards to how I viewed the middle class, perhaps you might clarify why you keep jeering at me with this issue instead of logically laying out your viewpoint on the issue.  That really doesn't get anywhere interesting.

The reason why so many people are going to college is not because vocational training in high school has been wiped out; it's because becoming middle class in America is now about working in companies that requires degrees.

Meanwhile, many of these same companies can't even tell the difference between a quality degree and one earned from an internet school or a diploma mill.

A college education implies some training in analytical thinking.  It is analytical thinking that is increasingly being valued on the job.

Which is why I have to hold back my urge to do the "facepalm" motion every time I see one of those ads for a "university" where you get credit for "life experience" or whenever I talk to somebody who thinks just by going back to college without any thought as to why at age like 50* or something is a good idea and will turn their life into a magical utopia with sugarplums dancing in the sky and money growing on trees.

*=Really at any age. I'm not ripping on non-traditional students. There are too many people who go to college without thinking why or without any plan. This is A Bad Thing.

why at age like 50* or something is a good idea and will turn their life into a magical utopia with sugarplums dancing in the sky and money growing on trees.

Ironically, it's only by going to college and getting a degree at a considerable expense that one learns the lack of a corresponding financial reward.  Yet, I still consider myself very privileged to have gone to college and then graduate school and realize that it's a privilege of time and learning that not everyone has access to.

I have a good friend who wants to return to college because he thinks he's not recognized enough as a translator because of a lack of degree.  I keep telling him it's because he's not spending enough time sending his material out there to be published.  I had to talk him out of going back to freshman level classes for a language that he has spoken for several decades and a language in which he has published and translated several volumes of poetry and fiction.

I have a good friend who wants to return to college because he thinks he's not recognized enough as a translator because of a lack of degree.  I keep telling him it's because he's not spending enough time sending his material out there to be published.  I had to talk him out of going back to freshman level classes for a language that he has spoken for several decades and a language in which he has published and translated several volumes of poetry and fiction.

Exactly. Your friend is a good example of this. For some people it is better not to go to college. Is anybody going to tell the plumber making boatloads of money that he needs a BA to "Advance?" Or what about the exterminator I paid $115 last year for 30 minutes of work (five minutes of filling out forms, five minutes of applying pesticide to a wasp infestation and twenty minutes standing around bullshitting about tragic insect related deaths and how bees are his best friend sometimes) and he has 10 appointments a day?

In those cases I would rather have the extra 3-5 years in the workforce pulling in fat stacks of cash.

The big problem is that colleges have started to move away from their core mission of educating students towards a "Club-Med for Twenty-Somethings" style where they try to compete for students by offering useless amenities like world class gymnasiums, gourmet food, and luxury on campus housing.  They then jack tuition to justify this.  I think it's a backhanded way of trying to increase graduation rates and college rankings - if you raise tuition so only the rich can afford to come, naturally your quality of student will go up.  Due to this we have a segregation of schools now - you've got the publicly funded small state schools who are usually limited by law in what they can charge to in-state students, and they are overburdened with lower income disadvantaged students who couldn't afford to go anywhere else, and then you've got the private schools and the more expensive large state schools who are in many cases allowed to charge higher tuition rates, even to in-state students, which tend to have the better students but also charge ridiculously high tuition rates.  

Universities should be focusing on education first - hiring more faculty, offering more courses (especially more certification / vocational courses), and so on.  Students should also be held to a somewhat higher standard, I think.  While I don't believe the amount of work assigned for classes has gone down over the last few decades, or that the classes have gotten any easier, I do think that perhaps expectations for what students will actually do has gone down.  I've been a TA or teaching my own classes now for three years, and I've come to realize that you can't expect (and indeed, nobody really expects) that more than about 10% of your class will actually do the assigned readings, on time.  You can sort of force the students to do the work by having weekly quizzes and so on, but that takes away from the amount of time you can actually spend teaching them, so most faculty don't bother.  I think this is probably where we have the dichotomy of people arguing that college now is easier, while others argue that it's the same or harder.  I think that if you actually come to learn and do the work, it's probably harder now than ever before - but since faculty are less interested in forcing students to learn than they used to be, it's also easier than ever before to just "skate by" if that's all you want to do (and I think the ability/desire for students to skate by is facilitated by administrations that want to keep enrollment figures up and the dollars rolling in - the club med atmosphere tends to attract students who are more interested in partying than learning, and the desire to keep the enrollment figures up means that most schools make it pretty hard to flunk out, with things like allowing students to withdraw from courses that they're failing right up to finals week, etc.).

 If we want to fix this, I think that probably the best way is to work to decrease costs by spending less money coddling students, to offer more "practical" certification courses & vocational courses (after all, many land-grant colleges still have agricultural departments - why is there just a stigma against universities offering courses in things like being an electrician?  Many of these "vocational tracks" probably require more intelligence than being an IT worker, but almost every school has a degree in information technology), and find a way to change the incentives of administration so that they match the core values of the university system - which should be educating students - instead of the peripheral economic motivation of keeping enrollment figures up.

How about going to a numerical percentage based grading scale. Most grade reports list an "A" as excellent or outstanding. If 70% of the class has an "A" due to Vietnam era grade inflation, then it is not really "Outstanding" is it?

However, that would go against the wishes of the customers as you mention. Nobody would want that. Plus that would artificially create a massive drop in average grade the year it was implemented, and nobody wants that because each class has to be progressively brighter than the last.

Maybe colleges should just go to a grading system like some medical schools have. Pass with Distinction, Satisfactory, Unsatisfactory. You get a U, you're repeating it. Otherwise, it doesn't really matter.

"The big problem is that colleges have started to move away from their core mission of educating students towards a "Club-Med for Twenty-Somethings" style where they try to compete for students by offering useless amenities like world class gymnasiums, gourmet food, and luxury on campus housing.  They then jack tuition to justify this."

I'd argue that this is really part of a classic bubble economy in education.  Gourmet food, world class fitness facilities, etc - all of these are the stainless steel and granite counter tops of the education bubble.  All of it funded by cheap money in the form of student loans.  

Let me tell you about my Alma Mater.  It was really a very good liberal arts school.  Top notch professors - an excellent educational program that included foreign study, internships, and a senior thesis - all mandatory.  What they lacked was anything fancy.  They spent money on the things that mattered.  The buildings were old.  The dorms, well, the dorms sucked - cinder block and decades old mattresses.  But they spent our money on the things that mattered.  It all had a very old world feel to it.  I imagine that people who went there in the 1920s had a very similar experience to my own.  Hell, they probably slept on the same mattresses.

Then the bubble happened.  Suddenly my school could not compete.  You simply couldn't show prospective students and their parents the old dorms and expect them to bite, when all of the other competing colleges were upgrading their physical plant.  That old cafeteria was depressing.   And where were the brand new chemistry labs with all the fancy new kit for the brochure photos?

So they went on a spending spree.  They built 2 new buildings (which for a school our size was a massive expansion).  They gutted most of the old buildings.  They gutted the cafeteria.  The old educational plan was scrapped, as it was deemed too inflexible for the modern student.  Foreign study - optional, internship - optional, senior thesis - well, depends on the major.  Standards were lowered.  In a matter of a decade the place changed into something entirely new - and in the process more than doubled tuition.  I doubt the quality of education increased, in fact it most likely decreased as there was less money to spend on the things that mattered, like professor salary.

Oh well, it won't much matter - the coming recession and the utter collapse of the student loan market will usher in a new era of austerity in higher education.  Hopefully my school will find it roots and become something exceptional again.

I'd argue that this is really part of a classic bubble economy in education.

I see where you're going on this but I'm not sure if I would call it a bubble, exactly.  Or at least, not a bubble in education...it's more a bubble in "education resorts" I guess.  Maybe the solution should be that government-backed financial aid can only be used for tuition, but not room and board?  That would probably cut down on the amount that schools could get away with charging for R&B and would therefore force them to go back to the more bare-bones dormitories, cheaper cafeteria options, etc.  At the same time it would encourage them to put their money into the educational side of things, since that's where they still get away with spending money like water.

But it's not just dorms and cafeterias.  Again, my Alma Mater as an example, they built a massive amount of new square footage that had zero impact on education.  They had to do it because if they didn't have the new chemistry labs, admissions would drop off because their competitors had the new labs.  You had to have the new state of the art lecture halls with white boards and digital projectors, because well, everyone else had them.  Were they any better than the dingy old rooms with the creaking wooden chairs, and the 6 sliding chalk-boards that my professors used?  No, not really.  But it kept the tuition dollars flowing.

Further, I argue that a lot of new capacity was built for students that would not be there if not for cheap student loans.  If those loans go away or become harder to get, we are looking at a precipitous drop in enrollment, which will result in a lot of empty state of the art lecture halls.

Extravagant spending building facilities that aren't justified by the educational needs of the students, and building more capacity than can be justified by the long term demand - that's a classic bubble.

But it's not just dorms and cafeterias.  Again, my Alma Mater as an example, they built a massive amount of new square footage that had zero impact on education.  They had to do it because if they didn't have the new chemistry labs, admissions would drop off because their competitors had the new labs.  You had to have the new state of the art lecture halls with white boards and digital projectors, because well, everyone else had them.  Were they any better than the dingy old rooms with the creaking wooden chairs, and the 6 sliding chalk-boards that my professors used?  No, not really.  But it kept the tuition dollars flowing.

Here is where I disagree with you, at least somewhat.  State of the art equipment may not be strictly a requirement, but I do think that it serves an educational purpose in many cases (that state of the art chem lab, for example, allows students to do advanced research that they otherwise could not).  Digital projectors probably save money in the long run, because they allow faculty to use powerpoint for lectures instead of running off hundreds of overhead transparencies (which have a labor cost, in terms of making the secretarial staff do more work).  Familiarity with these technologies is also important, since most students will be using / exposed to them in their work environment.  I fail to see the problem with whiteboards - if anything, they're probably cheaper than chalk boards to install and maintain.

Further, I argue that a lot of new capacity was built for students that would not be there if not for cheap student loans.  If those loans go away or become harder to get, we are looking at a precipitous drop in enrollment, which will result in a lot of empty state of the art lecture halls.

Extravagant spending building facilities that aren't justified by the educational needs of the students, and building more capacity than can be justified by the long term demand - that's a classic bubble.

Again, I disagree with you.  I think the demand is there for education, and I think that even if the overall amount of student loans was lowered, the same number of students would/could go if the overall cost of education was lowered, and the focus was placed on education and not on "club med" facilities.  

 I think the demand is there for education, and I think that even if the overall amount of student loans was lowered, the same number of students would/could go if the overall cost of education was lowered, and the focus was placed on education and not on "club med" facilities.

I am seeing it as you and joshv disagreeing where joshv is thinking about his specific alma mater driving up demand for itself whereas you are talking about education overall.

As more colleges and universities compete for the students, the more they are spending money on frills for students.  Like joshv, I've seen it happen at my own alma mater (although my alma mater has always tended towards attracting students with frills; after all, it has its own golf range complete with a clubhouse, albeit small).  

My alma mater has added many new costly buildings with name brand architects and completely renovated the gym facilities in their bid to attract students on the strength of an attractive campus along with a very rampant social life with its academic strength coming in last (enough though there is a very good faculty there).

If students consider colleges and universities to be some kind of frivolous time to party before they get a job, perhaps some educational institutions have encouraged students to think that.  Yet, as one of my old professors pointed out, my alma mater excelled at thinking kids to network with its huge fraternity system.  In the white collar world where most of these kids will end up, that might matter more to them financially than whether they understand British Lit.

I've been a TA or teaching my own classes now for three years, and I've come to realize that you can't expect (and indeed, nobody really expects) that more than about 10% of your class will actually do the assigned readings, on time.  You can sort of force the students to do the work by having weekly quizzes and so on,

One of the best teachers I've had required us to write, for five minutes, a short essay on some subject (her choice) from the reading at the beginning of class.  Everybody did the reading, so we all (sort of) knew what was being discussed that day in class.  It really raised the quality of discussion.

Moi aussi.

I have to say, one of my two management courses in college was extremely helpful in the workplace. It happened to be the one I got a C in because I scored an A on all the tests and projects while skipping every class of the second half of the semester. The thing that landed me the jobs I've had, though, has been the ability to do research and form (something of) an argument. And all that came from my history degree.

The reason I knew better than to take work place preparation type courses in college was because they were easy as fuck. I could have sailed through college on Dean's list with a management major. Real life, though, is about work and you learn to work and discipline yourself through a rigorous course load, which typically comes from the sciences or the humanities, not that laughable criminal justice degree my college gave out.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

No doubt.  My MBA coursework was so much easier than anything I had in college, with the exception of Accounting and Finance, which was tough mainly because it was all new to me.  Some of the young whippersnappers ran circles around me there, but I drank all their milkshakes in other areas because I had been in the business world for 10 years and could apply real world experience.  I wiped the floor with them in Information Systems, Project Management and Marketing Management.  

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Some of the young whippersnappers ran circles around me there, but I drank all their milkshakes in other areas

So, what you are saying is your milkshake brought all the MBAs to the yard?

And then some

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