Cost of College – Top 5 List

After a holiday hiatus, I thought I’d wrap up this Monday series on the cost of college with a look at what some reasonably priced (albeit not free) alternatives to a traditional residential degree program might include.

While the Internet and the culture of open access that accompanied it has certainly made possible the notion of “free education for all,” on a practical level nothing (including the Internet itself) costs nothing. For when we talk about students attending school for “free,” we’re really talking about a combination of subsidies (by tax payers, by course developers, by institutions and entrepreneurs) that might add up to the cost of delivering something that qualifies as genuine “education.”

The trouble is that if and when those subsidies are eliminated or scaled back (as they have been with state-sponsored schools over in recent decades), suddenly a necessity we’ve created as a society (such as demanding a college degree for jobs that previously didn’t require one) comes at a cost with many people squaring this circle by going into debt (sometimes ruinous).

But if we move the threshold from “free” to “reasonable,” suddenly the number of options that open up increases considerably.

The first observation (from early in the summer) that needs to be re-enforced is that if you strip away all of the stuff associated with going to college that does not involve getting an education (dorm life, extra-curriculars, sports teams, cafeteria meals, etc.), you actually can get a perfectly good education for less than $15K a year (that figure being the most college should cost if higher education was simply hyper-inflationary – like housing, vs. hyper-hyper-hyper inflationary like – well, like college).

Actually, you can get a Harvard education for that sum (less, actually), albeit one that would bear the label “Bachelor of Liberal Arts” from Harvard Extension School vs. Harvard College. Many of your courses would be taught by the same people who teach the same classes to traditional undergraduates (not to mention many HarvardX MOOCs). And, since most extension school classes are taught at night, you could get your Harvard degree while earning the money to pay for it during the day.

Thinking back to my One Year BA experience, it occurred to me during the whole “$15,000 or Bust!” discussion that if I had spread my MOOC courses over a more reasonable timeframe (say 3-4 years vs. one) and supplemented that program with whatever I could buy for $15K per year (tutors, paper graders, study trips abroad), I would end up with a damn-fine education, one superior (and potentially more fun) than what most students earn during four years of study at the undergraduate level.

But one needn’t be that radical to get the most out of a non-outrageously priced traditional higher ed program. Writer and student Zac Bissonnette, for example, did just fine enrolling in the honors program at his in-state university (U Mass Amherst) and, rather than going into debt, he seems to have turned a profit from the experience. And, unlike the Thiel or Uncollege or MOOC U or even the Harvard Extension options noted above, attending a state school is already a mainstream option chosen by a majority of college students.

Even if you are not a financial or educational entrepreneur, the skills needed to get the most out of any of the alternatives to the most expensive schooling are identical: a passion for knowledge, an ability to learn independently, and just enough entrepreneurial zeal to take advantage of whatever educational opportunities are in front of you.

Come to think of it, these are the same factors that determine success and failure for any student attending any school, from the cheapest community college to the most expensive Ivy, to out-there programs like Uncollege, Minerva or my own One Year BA. Which means the best thing we might be able to do for the future of higher education is to teach our own kids how to become independent learnings in this age of educational bounty.

So if I were giving that friend whose questions about what all this MOOC stuff might mean for her (as a mother with looming college bills), a Top Five list of purely practical advice would include:

• Start saving for your kid’s education as soon as you can afford to do so.
• If you can’t afford to do that, start learning the rules of the financial aid program years before you need to since that system tends to reward (1) the most needy; (2) the most talented; and (3) those who best understand the eccentric rules under which the system operates.
• Neither parents nor students should take on ridiculous amounts of debt or sacrifice other important things (like retirement) to afford the best school a kid gets into. College is great, but so are the years after college and it makes no sense to sacrifice decades of post-college independence and happiness (for anyone) for the sake of maximizing an experience that goes on for just four years.
• Rather than try to outsmart this year’s crop of admissions officers, better to put your effort into becoming an independent learner (possibly by becoming one of the thousands of high school students who enroll in nearly every MOOC – not for credit but for the joy of learning). For an independent learner is more likely to succeed anywhere while someone lacking that skill is likely to struggle everywhere.
• Break out of the mindset that says only a degree from a competitive college carries any value in the market. For while such a degree does have weight (if only as a form of shorthand employers can use as the basis for discrimination) so do the accomplishments one achieves before, during and after being handed a diploma. And in this age of extreme networking, the Ivy Leaguer is relying on LinkedIn more than his or her alumni network, just like the graduate of any other college or university in the country.

As a final note, while I welcome the efforts some schools are making to try to keep tuition under control (or to experiment with new options – like a three-year degree), I don’t recall many industries that, after establishing premium pricing, were able to transform their cost and pricing structure in time to fend off more affordable and innovative competitors. So while a wrecking ball (which implies the immediate destruction of a previously sturdy structure) is probably the wrong metaphor for what is likely to happen in higher ed over the coming decades, I do anticipate that emerging and maturing new options will ultimately grow at the expense of schools that charged too much while delivering too little.