Everything falls apart

The death of higher education and the sad sociological lesson to be learned

Hey, did you read Thursday’s post about what I learned in a novel workshop with Elizabeth Strout? Probably not if you’re not a paid subscriber. You can pay just $5 for one months’s subscription and read all the paid content. Just saying. Thanks as always for reading.

Higher education as an institution is dying in the United States. At least in the form we’re familiar with from the last fifty years or so. The explosion of new colleges and universities, as well as the expansion of  existing institutions that started post World War II with the G.I. Bill and then the Baby Boom is coming to an end.

The main problem is demographic. It’s called the higher ed apocalypse. It’s official date is 2026, but of course, the effects are already being felt. In 2026, the number of high school age students will peak and begin to decline from there on out. There will simply no longer be enough college-aged students in the United States to support all the colleges and universities that exist. A great winnowing will occur. It is already under way.

But the higher ed apocalypse is just the tip of the iceberg. If you’re a small institution steeped in the liberal arts you’re battling more than just demographics for your survival. The liberal arts model of education assumes that the purpose of going to college is something more than just getting a well-paying job at the end. The purpose of a liberal arts education is to produce critical thinkers…to create curious, happy, well-rounded citizens.

I know, it’s laughable even to write that now, isn’t it? Many of my students find it mostly amusing when I suggest to them that they might think of their four years of college as more than another hoop to jump through on the way to a good job. That’s not their fault. I can’t be angry at them. They live in a culture of hoop-jumping and will be entering a world of late-stage capitalism where the idea of a ‘job’ itself is also dying a painful death. They sit in their desks as I talk about the social construction of reality and iron cages, patiently waiting for me to get to the point. To tell them what the hoop is and when to jump.

Once upon a time I described my job as reading books and then sitting in a room and talking about them. It doesn’t get any better than that, does it? Only now, both administrators and students would rather skip over the book part. Some of my students are deeply confused when I assign an actual physical book, which they must somehow get access to a copy of. Some of them are a little resentful. Books cost money. Isn’t all information available online?

Photo by Jason Wong on Unsplash

Instead of using physical books, I’m supposed to either create my own course content or use an online, preferably free, text. If you’re wondering what “create my own course content” means, translate it as “ write an entire textbook for zero compensation, while, you know, also teaching three courses.” I do use an online textbook for introduction to sociology because there’s a good one easily accessible. But there are not good online textbooks for classes like sociology of food or sociological theory and I would rather not have to write an entire textbook on those subjects for free. I won’t bother to get into all the research about the differences between how we read a physical book versus how we read online.¹

I could go on and on and sound increasingly bitter and exhausted, which is how I feel more often than I’d like. That’s not the point. Not really. The slow death of higher education is what C. Wright Mills, sociology guru, would call a public issue. Which is to say, there isn’t shit I can do about it. Even now, No Child Left Behind-like assessment is encroaching and it won’t be long before every college and university will be judged based on the incomes of their graduates. I can’t tell you how horrifying this idea is to me.

A public issue is beyond my control as an individual. I can’t change the demographics. I can’t change the culture my students grow up in. I can’t do anything to stop the assessment-ification of higher education. All I can do is figure out how to live through it.

Here’s where I would tell you what that looks like, only I have no idea. I know there’s a lot of grief involved. I am a product of a liberal arts education. I believe in it deeply and I believe it’s something that should be accessible to everyone—not just the elite. When I look around today, it feels like we need a generation of critical thinkers more than we ever have. And I’ve seen students’ lives transformed by their four years here. Their minds opened. Their trajectories forever altered. The effects are infinite and unmeasurable. I am mourning the loss of that.

I know there’s anger, because, of course, where there’s grief, there’s anger, too. But who should I be angry at? Not students. Administrators? People who are having fewer children? The internet?

I know that not everything I love about higher education will die. The elite institutions will survive. Harvard might struggle, but it isn’t going under. Other places will twist and contort themselves into unrecognizable shapes in order to survive. They’ll focus more on STEM because the connection to those well-paying jobs seems more clear-cut. They’ll add graduate programs for the income stream until the undergraduate mission of the college becomes a mere appendage. Or they’ll go under.

I’ll admit, I’ve always thought there was some comfort to be had in understanding that the problem is bigger than you. Mills obviously believed that being able to identify the moments when we’re caught up in the broad stream of history was a useful skill to have. At the moment, I’m not so sure.

1. The simple answer is skimming. We skim online. We read fast. We absorb less, but whatever. Who cares about absorbing knowledge, right?