INTRODUCTION: SCENES FROM A GRADUATION
ON A BEAUTIFUL LATE spring day in Washington, DC, at a graduation ceremony at one of the nation’s better universities, a middle-aged couple sits in folding chairs on the lawn and watches the ceremony. The scene on campus is idyllic (especially if one avoids student housing), and more than one onlooker has the wistful feeling that all of this is perhaps wasted on the young.
The father turns to his wife (or significant other) and says, “We did good.” It is a sentiment repeated hundreds, perhaps thousands of times at similar ceremonies around the country, capturing our attitude toward college, or at least the attitude of parents. Getting a child through college is one of the sacraments of parenthood, a milestone of achievement and success at least as important to parents as to the holder of the degree. And indeed, that degree for many has offered entrée into the respectable middle class, exemption from work that involves getting dirty, and access to attractive members of the opposite sex.
Books on higher education, such as this one, often assume that colleges are primarily or even largely about academics, but the reality is far more complex. The four-year or longer sojourn in the groves of academe is a kaleidoscopic experience of classrooms, frats, lectures, keg parties, all-nighters, political correctness, hookups, alcohol, athletic spectacle, and the occasional intellectual insight.
At some point in their college experience, students are thankful that their parents have only the vaguest idea what they have been paying for on campus—not just the extracurricular bacchanals but also the bizarre cultural intolerances, the obsessive rituals of conformity, the absentee faculty, teaching assistants unable to speak English, the hair-trigger racial, cultural, gender, and political sensitivities, and the junk courses with their effort-free As. Even some of the professors—elaborately begowned for the commencement ceremony—recognize that much of what happens on campus is silly and that their pretensions are a target-rich environment for satire and ridicule. Perhaps that explains the higher education complex’s chronically thin skin and its shrill defensiveness in the face of occasional criticism.
But the degree has covered a multitude of sins.
“We did good,” and the financial burden behind those words, had little to do with their child’s curriculum or the quality of the interaction with faculty; it didn’t matter whether the proud graduate had ever read Shakespeare or even whether he or she could pass a test in basic critical thinking. “I have never heard a single parent speculate about what value might be added by those four undergraduate years,” novelist Tom Wolfe wrote, “other than the bachelor’s degree itself, which is an essential punch on the ticket for starting off in any upscale career.”1
“We did good” was simply the essential, required rite of passage: obtaining the degree. What that degree actually signified beyond the validation of social and economic standing was almost an afterthought. At least until recently.
THE BUBBLE BEGINS TO BURST
In March 2015, Virginia’s Sweet Briar College announced that, despite having an $84 million endowment, it was closing its doors after the spring semester. The liberal arts all-women’s school, with one of the most idyllic campuses in the country, was basically out of money. It was closing, officials said, because it faced “insurmountable financial challenges,” including a steadily declining enrollment. However, after an alumni revolt, Sweet Briar was able to win a reprieve that allowed it to keep its doors open—at least temporarily.2
But Sweet Briar was not alone. Moody’s Investors Service has been downgrading the financial outlook of dozens of schools in recent years, and the number of private four-year institutions that have shut down or been acquired doubled from 2010 to 2013. “What we’re concerned about is the death spiral—this continuing downward momentum for some institutions,” Moody’s Susan Fitzgerald told Bloomberg in the wake of Sweet Briar’s closing. “We will see more closures than in the past.”3
Allowing for its unique circumstances, Sweet Briar’s story was a familiar one among colleges. Like other schools, it had spent generously on amenities to attract students. It boasted the country’s largest indoor equestrian arena, “which included an enclosed lunging ring, seven teaching fields, and miles of trails.”4 For tuition and fees of $47,095 a year, Sweet Briar also provided its students with a bistro, four libraries, and a Fitness and Athletic Center that included a three-lane elevated track, a newly remodeled gym, and squash and racquetball courts. The college’s Prothro Natatorium featured a six-lane competitive pool, deck space for home swim meets, and a balcony overlooking the pool for spectators.
The school also offered what a sympathetic account in the Atlantic called a “prolific academic program.” Despite having only 532 students, Sweet Briar offered no fewer than forty-six majors, minors, and certificate programs. Its administration remained fully staffed and it retained a faculty of 110, including 80 full-time professors. Classes were small, some with only a single student.5
“Needless to say,” the Atlantic deadpanned, “these features are very expensive to maintain.”
Copyright © 2016 by Charles J. Sykes
