Confessions of a Community College Dean

What if financial aid went directly from the federal (or state) government to the student, rather than running through individual campuses? The students could use the aid to attend any accredited institution.

The Boy continues to careen into tweenhood. On Wednesday morning I dropped him off early at school for jazz band. As we approached the front entrance, a girl started to cross, and I stopped to let her pass. He got oddly quiet. Later that night, he told me that she’s his crush, and that he was silently praying that she didn’t see him in the car.

A couple years ago, The Onion ran a story headlined “Unemployment High Because People Keep Blowing Their Job Interviews.” I was reminded of that in reading about the governor of North Carolina, Patrick McCrory, and his fusillades against the liberal arts in general and gender studies in particular. He’s the latest in a string of governors to declare that the recession lingers because students keep studying the wrong things, like he did. (McCrory was a double major in education and political science.) If only public colleges and universities would stop teaching the liberal arts and just focus on STEM, he implied, all would be well. Um, no.

The New America Foundation released a wonderful and thought-provoking paper proposing a serious overhaul of Federal financial aid. It’s a lot to digest, and I’ve only had the chance to give it a brief run-through. That said, a few thoughts ....

Okay, I admit, this is crowdsourcing as a blatant attempt to save time. Researching this formally would be quite an undertaking, but I’m hoping that some of my wise and worldly readers have seen something like this.

Are more expensive colleges better? Working at a community college, I’d have to say “not necessarily.” They could be, and sometimes they are, but it depends on how they use that money. That’s why this piece -- about a study of liberal arts colleges showing little relation between cost and value -- didn’t especially surprise me.

I don’t know if I’m just the fluky exception or if this is indicative of a larger truth, but I don’t Google job candidates.

My Dad used to teach courses on advertising, which was how he justified his weird attention to commercials. He used to pick up on odd turns of phrase from locally produced ads -- anyone who lived in Rochester circa 1980 will remember those awful/great Hill T.V. ads, with Dick and Linda Hill -- or anything by Ronco. Three easy payments! But wait, there’s more! Now how much would you pay? If you act now...