Category: Education

The cost of higher education has increased dramatically resulting in a corresponding increase in student debt. It is worth considering the cause and what could be done to reduce costs without reducing the quality of education.

One obvious approach is to consider whether university presidents are worth their expense. If a university president received $1 million in compensation, they would need to contribute the equivalent of 40+ adjuncts in terms of value created. It could, of course, be argued public university presidents bring in money from other rich people, provide prestige and engage in the politics needed to keep money flowing from the state. If so, a million-dollar president is worth 40+ adjuncts. If not, either the adjuncts should be paid more or the president paid less (or both) to ensure that money is not being wasted—and thus needlessly driving up the cost of education.

One reply to criticisms of high president pay is that for big public universities, even a million dollar president is a tiny part of the budget. As such, cutting the presidential salary would not yield significant savings. However, something is driving up the cost of education—and it is not faculty salary.

One major contribution to the increasing costs is the growth of the administrative sector of higher education.  A study found that the public universities that have the highest administrative pay spend half as much on scholarships as they do on administration. In such situations, students go into debt being taught by adjuncts while supporting the administration.

It is easy enough to demonize administrators. However, a university (like any organization) requires administration. Applications need to be processed, equipment needs to be purchased, programs need to be directed, state paperwork needs to be completed, the payroll must be handled and so on. There is a clear and legitimate need for administrators. However, this does not mean that all administrators are needed or that all high salaries are warranted. As such, one potential way to lower the cost of education is to reduce administrative positions and lower their salaries. That is, to take a standard approach used in the business model so often beloved by some administrators.

Since a public university is not a for-profit institution, the reason for the reduction should be to get the costs in line with the legitimate needs, rather than to make a profit. As such, the reductions could be more just than in the for-profit sector.

In terms of reducing the number of personnel, the focus should be on determining which positions are needed in terms of what they do in terms of advancing the core mission of the university (which should be education). In terms of reducing salary, the focus should be on determining the value generated by the person and the salary should correspond to that. Since administrators seem exceptionally skilled at judging what faculty (especially adjuncts) should be paid, presumably there is a comparable skill for judging what administrators should be paid.

Interestingly, much of the administrative work that directly relates to students, and education is already handled by faculty. For example, on top of my paid duties as a professor, I have always had administrative duties that are essential, yet not important enough to merit an increase in my pay proportional to an administrative salary. In this I am not unusual. Not surprisingly, faculty and students at universities often wonder what some administrators do, given that so many administrative tasks are done by faculty and staff. Presumably the extra administrative work done by faculty (often effectively for free) is already helping schools save money, although perhaps more could be offloaded to faculty for additional savings.

One obvious problem is that those who make decisions about administration positions and salaries are usually administrators. While some are noble and honest enough to report on the true value of their position, self-interest makes an objective assessment problematic. As such, it seems unlikely that an administration would want to act to reduce itself merely to reduce the cost of education. This is, of course, not impossible—and some administrators would not doubt be quite willing to fire or cut the salaries of other administrators.

Since many state governments have been willing to engage in close management of state universities, one option is for them to impose a thorough examination of administrative costs and implement solutions to the high cost of education. Unfortunately, there are sometimes strong political ties between top administrators and the state government. There is also the general worry that any cuts will be more political or ill-informed than rationally based.

Despite these challenges, the administrative costs need to be addressed and action must be taken—the alternative is ever increasing costs in return for less actual education.

It has been suggested that the interest rates of student loans be lowered and that more grants be awarded to students. These are both good ideas, those who graduate from college generally have better incomes and end up paying back what they received many times over in taxes and other contributions. However, providing students with more money from the taxpayers does not directly address the cost of education, it just shifts it.

Some states, such as my adopted state of Florida, have endeavored to keep costs lower by freezing tuition for as long as possible. While this seems reasonable, one obvious problem is that keeping tuition low without addressing the causes of increased costs does not solve the problem. What often happens is that the university must cut expenses and these tend to be in areas that serve the core mission of the university. For example, a university president’s high salary, guaranteed bonuses and perks are usually not cut—instead faculty are not hired, and class sizes are increased. While tuition does not increase, it does so at the cost of the quality of education. Unless, of course, the guaranteed bonuses of a university president are key to education quality.

As such, when trying to lower the cost of education, it should be done in a way that does not sacrifice the quality of education.

 

 

 

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Despite being seen as an academic liberal (with all associated sins), I have long had a mixed view of affirmative action in education and employment. As an individualist who believes in the value of merit, I hold that college admission and hiring should be based entirely on the merit of the individual.  That is, the best qualified person should be admitted or hired. This is based on the principle that admission and hiring should be based on earning the opportunity and this is fairly and justly based on whether an individual merits the admission or job.

To use a sports analogy, the person who gets the first-place award for a 5K race should be the person who runs the race the fastest. This person has merited the award by winning. To deny the best runner the award and give it to someone else in the name of diversity would be absurd and unfair—even if there is a lack of diversity among the winners.

However, I know about the foundational institutionalized inequality in America and that addressing it can, on utilitarian grounds, allow treating some people unfairly for the greater good. There is also the matter of the fairness of the competition, which allows me to believe both in merit and affirmative action.

In my 5K analogy, I assume the competition is fair and victory is a matter of ability. Everyone one runs the same course, and no one possesses an unfair advantage, such as having a head start or using a bike. In such a fair competition, the winner earns the victory. Unfortunately, the world beyond the 5K is rigged and unjust.

Discrimination, segregation and unjust inequality remain the order of the day in the United States. So, when people are competing for admission to schools and for jobs, some people have unfair advantages while others face unfair disadvantages. For example, African-Americans are more likely to attend underfunded and lower quality public schools and they face the specter of racism that still possessed the body of America. So, when people apply for college or for jobs they are not meeting on the starting line of a fair race which will grant victory to the best competitor. Rather, people are scattered about (some far behind the starting line, some far ahead) and some enjoy unfair advantages while others carry unfair burdens.

Many of these advantages and burdens involve employment and education. For example, a family that has a legacy at a school will have an advantage over a family whose members have never attended college. As such, affirmative action can shift things in the direction of fairness by, to use my 5K analogy, moving people to bring everyone closer to the starting line for a fairer competition.

To use a problematic analogy, 5K races usually divide awards by age and gender (and some have wheelchair divisions as well). As such, an old runner like me can win an age group award, even though the young fellows have the advantage of youth in competing for the overall awards. The analogy works in that the 5K, like affirmative action done properly, recognizes factors that influence the competition that can be justly addressed so that people can achieve success. The analogy, obviously enough, does start to break apart when pushed (as all analogies do). For example, affirmative action with awards will never make me as fast as the youth, whereas affirmative action in college admission can allow a disadvantaged student to gain an education to match those who have enjoyed advantages.   It also faces the obvious risk of suggesting that the competitors are inferior and cannot compete in the open competition. However, it does show that affirmative action can be squared with fair competition.

In closing, I do believe that a person of good conscience can be concerned about the ethics of affirmative action. After all, it does seem to run contrary to the principles of fairness and equality by seeming to grant an advantage to some people based on race, gender and such. I also hold that a person of good conscience can be for affirmative action—after all, it is supposed to aim at rectifying disadvantages and creating a society in which fair competition based on merit can properly take place. Unfortunately, the most vehement foes of affirmative action are white supremacists and misogynists who do not argue in good faith. Ironically, the anti-DEI folks in positions of power, such as certain Trump regime officials, seem to have been gifted with these positions despite their utter lack of merit. That is, they exemplify the claimed horrors of affirmative action gone wild.

 

 

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Since education is expensive, it is reasonable for a student to expect a return on their investment (ROI). Given that the taxpayers contribute to the education of students, it makes sense that they also receive a return on their investment.

A practical measure of the ROI for a student is often the salary of the job they get relative to the cost of their education. Roughly put, a student should be able to work out of their school debt and be able to live with the job that education is supposed to get them. In terms of the ROI for the taxpayer, the return is similar: students funded by the taxpayers are supposed to get jobs and repay the investment through the taxes they pay. The student becomes the taxpayer, thus enabling the next generation of students to also become taxpayers. One could also factor in the role of the worker as a consumer and the impact of the very few who become job creators.

Because the cost of education grew so high, some folks placed their hopes on the free market. The idea was that for-profit schools would provide a high-quality product (education that leads to a job) at a lower cost than the state and traditional private schools. As might be suspected, the ideal turned out very different from the real.

While state schools obviously receive state funds, the for-profit schools received massive federal support. Unfortunately, this money was ill-spent: 20% of the for-profit school students defaulted on student loans within three years of entering the repayment period. About half of all student loan defaulters went to such for-profit schools, although these schools made up only 13% of the student population. The estimate was that about half the loans funneled through students to the for-profit schools were lost to default, which is not a good investment for the taxpayer.

Students most often default on loans due to financial hardship. As might be imagined, not earning an adequate paycheck leads to hardship. While there are over 2,000 programs where the students had loan debt, but whose earnings put they below the poverty line, 90% of these programs were at for-profit schools. As such, these schools were a bad investment for both taxpayers and students. While public and traditional private schools did account for the other 10%, they have been a better investment for taxpayers and students. This is not to say that such schools do not need improvement—but it is to say that the for-profit model was not a solution and probably never will be. For all the obvious reasons you suspect.

There were some attempts, such as in 2011, to impose regulations against the predatory exploitation of students (and taxpayers) by institutions. Not surprisingly, these were countered by the well-paid lobbyists working at the behest of the for-profits. Under the Trump regime, the stated goal is to destroy the Department of Education, so little help for students can be expected from that department.

Interestingly, some states pushed hard for performance-based funding for public institutions. For example, my adopted state of Florida has seen the Republican dominated state legislature micro-managing of education and imposing their professed ideology. In any case, we have been operating under a performance-based model in which funding is linked to achieving goals set by the state. Naturally, for-profit schools do not fall under the same rules as public schools, which could give them an advantage.

Some might suspect the performance-based funding approach is cover for reducing funding even more. This approach also shifts funding towards schools that have more political influence—which is supported by looking at where the money goes.

It might be suspected that performance-based funding was designed to harm public schools and push students towards for-profit schools. These schools often enjoy political connections and would benefit from reduced public education opportunities. Of course, the profits of such schools come largely at the expense of students and taxpayers. They are well-subsidized by the state in a new twist on the old corporate welfare system.  Shockingly enough, there has been little conservative rage at this wasteful socialism and these academic welfare queens.

 

 

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I have seen the cost of a university education explode since I was a student, even adjusting for inflation. As a professor, I can assure you that faculty salaries have not increased proportionally nor are we to blame for the increase in the cost.

Professor salaries, especially at state school, are often compressed. For those of us who have been around a while, the compression can be extreme. For example, a full professor who was hired in the early 1990s might have a salary on par with a brand-new hire. This is one reason why star faculty move around in search of ever larger salaries. Universities also rely heavily on underpaid adjuncts. While the rates vary, an adjunct might make $24,000 over nine months for teaching eight classes. As adjuncts usually receive no benefits, they are cheap labor for higher education. As adjuncts often have advanced degrees, they are perhaps the worst paid of the best educated.

To be fair and balanced there are star faculty who command large salaries and perks. They are celebrities of academics who use their status and connections to slide from one well-paying job to an even better paying job. Such stars sometimes enjoy exemptions from the mundane duties of faculty, such as teaching. As with any profession, stars are relatively rare and are usually not a significant factor in the increased cost of education. As such, blaming the faculty for the higher cost is not, in general, a legitimate complaint.

But complaining about the cost of education is legitimate: costs have increased significantly while there are increasing doubts about the quality and value of education. The rise of AI is also raising significant doubts, although AI is likely to be yet another bubble. However, we should put the cost of education into perspective. Being a professor, I will focus on the educational aspects.

At a state school like my own Florida A&M University, a student will most often take a class from a person with a terminal degree, usually a doctorate. A standard class is three credit hours, which means that a student is supposed to be in class two and a half hours per week. In my college four classes per semester is common and we are required to hold two hours of office hours per class. We also have various research and administrative duties. For example, I am the unit facilitator for Philosophy & Religion and seem to have a lifetime sentence to be the chair of two university committees. Thanks to email, students can contact us around the clock—and most faculty, including myself, respond to emails outside of normal hours and on the weekends. I’m writing this on a Sunday and just completed an email exchange with a student.  We also typically do work for the classes, such as grading, preparing lessons and so on throughout the week and during vacations. Even the unpaid three months that 9-month faculty get in the summer.

While the exact hours will vary, a student at a school like FAMU will have access to a professional with an advanced degree for 2.5 hours in the classroom, have access to 8 hours of office hours, and typically have unlimited email access. Most faculty are also willing to engage with students in their off time—for example, I have stopped while grocery shopping to explain a paper to a student who also happened to be in Publix at that time. This is in return for the cost of tuition, only a small fraction of which goes to the professor.

Now, compare this to the cost per hour for other professionals. For example, a psychiatrist might charge between $125-$285 per hour. As another example, a plumber might charge $9-150 an hour. As a third example, a consultant might charge anywhere from $30 to thousands of dollars an hour. As a fourth example, an attorney might charge hundreds of dollars per hour or more.

 Imagine what it would cost to have a plumber, medical doctor, or attorney spend 2.5 hours a week with you for 16 weeks (divided by the other people, of course), be available an additional eight hours a week, do work for you outside of those hours, respond personally to your emails and so on.  If professors billed like plumbers, lawyers or medical doctors, the cost of school would be insanely high.

It might be replied that plumbers, lawyers and medical doctors perform services that are more valuable than professors. After all, a plumber can fix your pipes, a lawyer could get you a nice settlement and a medical doctor might re-attach your quadriceps tendon. A professor merely teaches and surely that has far less value. The obvious practical reply is that people with college degrees make, on average, more than those without—this would suggest that teaching does provide some value. There is also the fact that plumbers, medical doctors and lawyers need education to do what they do—thus showing that education does provide something of value (although plumbers typically do not go to college to become plumbers).

As such, while education is too expensive, the actual cost of paying professors is ridiculously cheap relative to what other comparable professionals cost. You might suspect that I implying the blame lies elsewhere, and you would be right.

 

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Negativity bias is the tendency to give more weight to the negative than the positive. For example, people tend to weigh wrongs done to them more heavily than the good deeds done for them. As another example, people tend to be more swayed by negative political advertisements than by positives ones. This bias can also have an impact on education.

Some years ago, one of my colleagues always asked his logic students if they planned to attend law school. When he noticed a dramatic decline in logic students planning on law school, curiosity led him to investigate. He found that logic had been switched from being a requirement for pre-law to just recommended. Back then, my colleague said it seemed irrational for students who planned on taking the LSAT to avoid the logic class, given that the LSAT was largely a logic test and that law school requires logical reasoning.  From his philosophical soap box, he said that students prefer to avoid the useful when it is not required and only grudgingly take what is required. We discussed how this relates to the negativity bias.  A student who did not take the logic class when it was required would be punished by being unable to graduate. When the class became optional, there remained only the positive benefits of taking the class. Since people weigh punishments more than rewards, this behavior made sense—but still seemed irrational. Especially since many of the students who skipped the logic class ended up paying for LSAT preparation classes to spackle over their lack of logic skills.

Over the years, I have seen a similar sort of thing in my own classes. My university had a policy that allowed us to lower a student’s grade if they missed too many classes. While attendance has always been required in my classes, I have never inflicted a punishment for missing class. Not surprisingly, when the students figure this out, attendance plummets. Before I started using Blackboard and Canvas for coursework, attendance would increase dramatically on test days. Now that all work can be done on Canvas (a relic of COVID), attendance remains consistently low. Oddly, students often say my classes are interesting and useful. But, since there is no direct and immediate punishment for not attending (just a delayed “punishment” in terms of lower grades and a lack of learning), many students are not motivated to attend class.

I do consider I might be a bad professor or that most students see philosophy courses as useless or boring. However, my evaluations are consistently good, former students have returned to say good things about me and my classes, and so on. That said, perhaps I am deluding myself and being humored. That said, it is easy enough to draw an analogy to exercise: exercise does not provide immediate rewards and there is no immediate punishment for not staying fit—just a loss of benefits. Most people elect to avoid exercise. This and similar things show that people often avoid that which is difficult now but yields lasting benefits latter.

I have, of course, often considered adopting the punishment model for my classes. However, I have resisted this for a variety of reasons. The first is my personality: I am inclined to offer benefits rather than punishments. This is an obvious flaw given the general psychology of people. The second is that I believe in free choice: like God, I think people should be free to make bad choices and not be coerced into doing what is right. It must be a free choice. Naturally, choosing poorly brings its own punishment—albeit later. The third is the hassle of dealing with attendance: the paperwork, having to handle excuses, hearing poorly crafted lies, and so on. The fourth is the that classes are generally better for the good students when people who do not want to be there elect to do something else. The fifth is my moral and religious concern for my students: if they are not punished for missing classes, there is no reason to lie to me about what they missed. Finally, COVID changed things and if I punished students for not attending, too many students would end up failing simply because of not attending enough.

I did consider adopting the punishment model for three reasons. One is that if students are compelled to attend, they might learn something and I do worry that by not compelling them, I am doing them a disservice. The second is that this model is a lesson for what the workplace will be like for most of the students—so habituating them to this (or, rather, keeping the habituation they should have acquired in K-12) could be valuable. After all, they will probably need to endure awful jobs until they retire or die. The third is that perhaps people must be compelled by punishment—this is, of course, the model put forth by thinkers like Aristotle and Hobbes. But I will almost certainly stick with my flawed approach until I retire.

Back in 2014 Sandra Y.L. Korn proposed dispensing with academic freedom in favor of academic justice. Korn begins the essay with example of Harvard psychology Professor Richard Hernstein’s 1971 article for Atlantic Monthly. Hernstein endorsed the view that intelligence is primarily hereditary and linked to race. Hernstein was criticized for this view but was also defended by appeals to academic freedom. Korn seems to agree that the attacks on Hernstein impinged on academic freedom. However, Korn proposed that academic justice is more important than academic freedom.

Korn uses the American Association of University Professors view of academic freedom: “Teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of the results.” However, Korn regards the “liberal obsession” with this freedom as misplaced. 

Korn notes that there is not “full freedom” in research and publication. As Korn correctly notes, which proposals get funded and which papers get published is largely a matter of academic politics. Korn also notes, correctly, that no academic question is free from the realities of politics. From this, Korn draws a conditional conclusion: “If our university community opposes racism, sexism, and heterosexism, why should we put up with research that counters our goals simply in the name of ‘academic freedom’?”

One might suspect a false dilemma is lurking here: either there is full academic freedom or restricting it on political values is acceptable. There is not full academic freedom. Therefore, restricting it on political values is acceptable. This would be a false dilemma because there are many options between full academic freedom such restrictions. As such, one could accept that there is not full academic freedom while also rejecting that academic freedom should be restricted on the proposed grounds.

To use an analogy to general freedom of expression, the fact that people do not possess full freedom of expression (there are limits on expression) does not entail that politically based restrictions should therefore be accepted. After all, there are many alternatives between full freedom and the specific restrictions being proposed.

To be fair to Korn, no such false dilemma might exist. Instead, Korn might be reasoning that because political values restrict academic expression it follows that adding additional restrictions is not a problem. To re-use the analogy to general free expression, the reasoning would that since there are already limits on free expression, more restrictions are (or could be) acceptable. This might be seen as a common practice fallacy but could be justified by showing that the proposed restrictions are warranted. Sorting this out requires considering what Korn is proposing.

In place of the academic freedom standard, Korn proposes “a more rigorous standard: one of ‘academic justice.’ When an academic community observes research promoting or justifying oppression, it should ensure that this research does not continue.”

While Korn claims this is a more rigorous standard, it seems to be only more restrictive. There is also the challenge of rigorously and accurately defining what it is for research to promote or justify oppression. While this was of concern way back in 2014, it is of even greater concern in 2026. This is because the American right has embraced the strategy of claiming that white, straight, men are the truest victims of “woke” oppression. This is part of a broader approach of the right to turn terms, tactics and strategies used by the left against them. For example, the right has used accusations of antisemitism to attack institutions of higher education.

Back in 2014, Korn proposed that students, faculty and workers should organize to “to make our universities look as we want them to do.” While that sounds democratic, there is still the concern about what standards should be used.

While there are paradigm cases (like the institutionalized racism of pre-civil rights America), people do use the term “oppression” to refer to what merely offends them. In fact, Korn refers to the offensiveness of a person’s comment as grounds for removing a professor.

 One danger is that the vagueness of this principle could be used to suppress and oppress research that vocal or influential people find offensive. There is also the concern that such a principle would create a hammer to beat down those who present dissenting or unpopular views. Ironically, this principle from 2014 would be ideal for “conversion” into a tool for the right: they could claim that “woke” and “DEI” views oppress white, straight men and hence “academic justice” would require suppressing such views. This would, of course, strike some as a perversion of the principle.

In closing, I favor justice and what is morally good. As such, I think people should be held morally accountable for their actions and statements. However, I do oppose restrictions on academic freedom for the same reason I oppose restrictions on the general freedom of expression. In the case of academic freedom, what should matter is whether the research is properly conducted and whether the claims are well-supported. To explicitly adopt a principle for deciding what is allowed and what is forbidden based on ideological views would, as history shows, have a chilling effect on research and academics. While the academic system is far from perfect, flawed research and false claims do get sorted out. Adding in a political test would not seem to help with reaching the goal of truth. Ironically, this sort of political test under the guise of addressing (imagined) oppression of white straight men (like me) is now being used by the right.

In terms of when academic freedom should be restricted, this is when an action creates enough harm to warrant limiting the freedom. Merely offending people is not enough to warrant restrictions—even if people are very offended. Threatening people or engaging in falsification of research results would not be protected by academic freedom.

As such, back in 2014 I was opposed to Korn’s modest proposal to impose more political restrictions on academic freedom. As Korn noted, there were already many restrictions in place—and there seemed to be no compelling reasons to add more. As this is being written in 2026, the right is using their own version of Korn’s principle and attempting to achieve their end of shaping the academy to fit their values. As would be suspected, I also oppose this.

https://famu.zoom.us/meeting/register/kPbbUjbsTWayeb7ceb3HTw#/registration

On April 8, 2026 I’ll be participating in a debate on the question “will AI destroy higher education?” I’m taking the “no” side. It takes place on Zoom from 12:00-1:00 PM Eastern and you can register (free) here: Meeting Registration – Zoom.

As this is being written, I’m scheduled to debate whether AI will destroy higher education. I’m arguing that it will not and what follows is how I will make my initial case.

In supporting my position, I have optimistic and pessimistic arguments (although your perspective on optimism might differ from mine. I’ll begin with my optimistic arguments, the first two of which are analogical arguments.

One way that AI might destroy higher education is by making students, broadly speaking, incompetent. While the exact scenarios vary, the idea is that using or depending on AI will weaken the minds of students and thus doom higher education. Fortunately, this is an ancient argument that has repeatedly been disproven. Socrate, it is claimed, worried that writing would weaken minds. More recently, TV, calculators, computers and even the dreaded Walkman were supposed to reduce the youth to dunces. None of these dire predictions came to pass and, by analogy, we can conclude that AI will not make the youth into fools.

A related concern is that AI will destroy higher education by rendering it obsolete though radical economic change. While scenarios vary, the worry is that higher education will no longer be needed because AI will eliminate certain jobs. While AI might result in radical change, this is also nothing new and higher education will adapt, by analogy, as it has done in the past. This will be an evolutionary event rather than a mass extinction.

My third optimistic argument is in response to worries about cheating. While AI does provide a radical new way to cheat, cheating remains a moral (and practical) choice and is not inherently a technological problem. Good ethical training and practical methods can address this threat, allowing higher education to survive.

My fourth optimistic argument, which is unrealistic and idealistic, is to content that AI might succeed and bring about a “Star Trek” utopia in which an abundance of wealth means that higher education will thrive as people will have the time and resources to learn for the sake of learning. I put the odds of this even with my various AI kills us all scenarios. Now, on to the pessimistic arguments.

One pessimistic argument is that AI will either be a bursting bubble or, less extreme, fail to live up to the hype. If the AI bubble bursts, it will hurt higher education because of the economic damage, but the academies will survive yet another bubble. If AI fails to live up to the hype, it will continue as it is, doing some damage to higher education but failing to destroy it.

My two remaining arguments are very pessimistic. The first is that AI will not destroy higher education because state and federal government will kill it first. What began with  cruel negligence has evolved into outright hostility that seems likely to only worsen. As such, the state might kill the academy before AI can do the job.

The second is, obviously enough, that AI might destroy everything else. But higher education might persist embodied in AI educating new models, with Artificial Education being the new higher education.

 

 

While Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University has obviously been concerned with preparing students for careers, this semester I learned that we are explicitly moving away from the idea of education having intrinsic value and instead embracing workforce readiness.

To be fair and balanced, this can be seen as an acknowledgement of reality: most of my students have always been rationally focused on education as a means to a career. This also has clear practical value as our students, for unless they have inherited great wealth, will need to labor to survive. But a case can be made that the main beneficiaries of a university focus on workforce readiness are businesses and the political right.

First, workforce readiness helps shift the cost of workforce training from businesses to students (and taxpayers). The old model was that universities sent students to their employers ready to learn the specifics of their jobs. This seemed a reasonable approach, as the specific skills needed varied with each job and could change over the four (plus) years required for a student to graduate. This is still true, which is why most businesses now want employees with experience—they have specific, current skills and the business does not need to spend resources to train them. My university has started requiring all majors to include an internship as an elective, which can benefit the students but will, one infers, provide businesses with free labor.

It is well worth considering some of the practical problems with trying to train students to be workforce ready. One concern is that education focused on workforce readiness can become obsolete. Students take 4+ years to graduate, and it takes time for departments to update and implement curriculum.  There is also the obvious problem of trying to get students ready for a diverse range of jobs that require different skills and knowledge that previously required on the job training. Since philosophy majors could go on to do jobs ranging from managing a business to being the vice president, it is not clear how one would workforce ready students in a way that differs from the current approach to education.  

My university is also embracing AI, which makes sense. However, readying students for the workforce in the age of AI presents a dilemma. If AI is a bubble that bursts, then getting them ready for the AI workforce that will not exist will leave them unprepared for the world that will be. But if AI is not a bubble (or is an enduring bubble) then we might also be preparing them for jobs that AI will replace. The example of AI can be generalized to the workforce dilemma: If we do not prepare them for a specific job, they are not workforce ready and businesses will not want to hire them. Instead, they will continue the practice of hiring experienced workers. If we prepare students for a specific job, that job might not exist when they graduate or their skills might be obsolete. In pushing for workforce readiness we might find that we are abandoning an imperfect educational approach in favor of one that is even worse.

A second benefit of a focus on workforce readiness is that if it succeeds, then it will decrease the value of labor. This, obviously, is a benefit for businesses and not students. This devaluing will arise from two factors. One arises from the positive focus on workforce readiness. If this creates more workers, then the value of each worker is thus diminished—which will benefit businesses. The other arises from a negative factor, which is the effort to reduce or eliminate degrees and programs that are perceived as not focused on creating workforce ready products for what will be the true consumer of education, the businesses. Success in reducing or exterminating such programs will provide benefits to business and the political right. Students who would otherwise have entered these programs will probably end up getting workforce ready degrees, thus increasing the workforce and decreasing the value of labor in these areas. The areas targeted for reduction or elimination often produce graduates who are critical of the harmful practices of businesses (like exploiting labor, polluting the environment, and producing harmful products and services). Hence, thinning their numbers is advantageous. These graduates are also often critical of racism, sexism, inequality, fascism, authoritarianism, and other such evils, which tends to put them at odds with the political right (who tend to favor business as well).

As a philosopher, I unsurprisingly think that education can have intrinsic value. You know, the idea of the examined life and all that stuff. However, there are also practical reasons to be concerned. While a focus on workforce readiness might yield short term benefits, there are long term harms to be considered. After all, as fans of Western civilization themselves love to point out, the old universities have been critical in making this civilization, its economy and its technology possible—and this goes back to Plato’s academy. There is also the very practical concern, as noted above, that workforce readiness might simply not work—especially with the uncertainty about AI. In closing, while I do understand why businesses want to shift training costs onto students and the taxpayers (as many of them have shifted costs by exploiting the SNAP and welfare systems), this is unethical. Businesses should pay to train the workers who will provide them with their profits. They have the resources to do so and, from a practical standpoint, they would be the best at providing the very specific and most current skills needed for their very specific job.

While philosophy is about inquiry and students should ask questions, there was a question I hoped students would not ask. That question was “do I need the book?” In some cases, this question arose from the challenge of limited finances. In other cases, it arose from a profound hope to avoid the pain of reading philosophy.

My answer was always an honest “yes.” As opposed to a dishonest “yes.” I must confess that in years gone by I heard the whispers of the Book Devil trying to tempt me to line my shelves with desk copies or, even worse, get free books to sell to the book buyers. In the before time, publishers often sent free copies to professors. Those days have passed.

But I always resisted the temptation. My will was fortified by memories from my student days of buying expensive books we never used. Even though the books for my courses were truly required and I sought the best books for the lowest costs, students still lamented my cruel practice of requiring books.

Moved by their suffering, I found a solution in technology. Since most of the great (and not-so-great) philosophers are not only dead but really, really dead, their works are usually in the public domain. This allowed me to assemble free texts for most of my classes. These were first distributed via 3.5 inch floppies (kids, ask your parents about these), then via the internet. While I could not include the latest and (allegedly) greatest contemporary philosophy, these free digital books are as good as most of the expensive offerings. The students are, I am pleased to say, happy that the books they will not read will not cost them a penny. Yes, sometimes students ask, “do I have to read the book?” I, of course, say “yes.” We smile and pretend that they will read the book.

As I make a point of telling the students on day one that the book is a free PDF file, I rarely hear “do I need to buy the book?” Now students ask, “do I have to come to class?” I must take some of the blame for this, thanks to COVID my classes are designed so all the coursework can be completed online via Canvas. Technology is thus shown, once again, to be a two-edged sword: it solved the “do I have to buy the book?” problem but helped create the “do I have to come to class problem.”

When I was first asked this, I remember feeling a bit annoyed by the question. After all, the question seems to imply that the student is thinking: “I have nothing to learn from you, but I don’t want to fail.” Honesty compels me to admit that a student might have nothing to learn from me. After all, there are arguments that philosophy is useless and presumably not worth learning. Alos, Things like logic, critical thinking and ethics could be worthless—after all, some people seem to do just fine without them. Some even manage to hold high offices and accumulate fortunes without any of these. I could also be useless in particular.

After overcoming my initial annoyance, I applied some philosophical thought to the matter. As with the “do I have to buy the book?” question, there could be a good reason for the question. Perhaps the student needs the time that would otherwise be spent in my class to do things for other classes or need the time to work to earn money to pay for school.

Out of curiosity I created an anonymous survey to see what the students would say.  28.8% of claimed work was the primary reason they missed class. 15% claimed that the fact that they could turn in work online was the reason they skipped class. 6% claimed they needed to spend time on other classes. These were the top three.

While the survey was anonymous, respondents might be inclined to select the answer that seems the most laudable reason to miss class. That said, these results are plausible. One reason is that many of my students are from low-income families and often need to work to pay for school. Another reason is that I routinely overhear students talking about their jobs and I sometimes even see students wearing their work uniforms in class.

While it might be suspected that my concern about attendance is a matter of ego, it is based on concern for my students. In addition to being curious about why students were skipping my class, I was also interested in why students failed my courses. Fortunately, I had objective data in the form of attendance records, grades, and coursework.

As would be expected, I found a correlation between missing class and failing grades when I went through a few years of classes. None of the students who failed had perfect attendance and only 27% had better than 50% attendance. This was hardly surprising: students who do not attend class miss out on the lectures, class discussion and the opportunity to ask questions. To use the obvious analogy, these students are like athletes skipping practice. But it must also be noted that there are other factors that can cause students to miss class and also do poorly, such as lack of interest and life problems.

Over the years I have tested a solution to this problem. Even before the pandemic, I created YouTube videos of one of my classes and put the links into BlackBoard.  Thanks to the Pandemic, most of my classes have “decent” videos of all the content. This allows students to view (or ignore) the videos at their convenience and skip or rewind as they desire. As might be suspected , the view counts are very low. However, some students expressed appreciation for the availability of the videos. If they can reduce the number of students who fail by even a few students each semester, then the effort will be worthwhile.

I also found that 67.7% of the students who failed did so because of failing scores on work. While this might elicit a response of “duh”, 51% of those who failed did not complete the exams, 45% did not complete the quizzes, and 42% did not complete the paper. While failing grades on the work was a major factor, simply not doing the work was a significant cause. I did find that no student who ever failed my class completed all the work and this was part of the reason for the failure. While they might have failed the work even if they had completed it, failure was assured by not making the attempt.

My initial attempt at solving the problem involved having all coursework either on Black Board or capable of being turned in via Black Board. My obvious concern with this solution was the possibility that students would cheat. While there are some awkward and expensive solutions (such as video monitoring) I decided to rely on something I had learned about the homework assigned in my courses: despite having every opportunity to cheat, student performance on out of class work was consistent with their performance on monitored in course work. It was simply a matter of designing questions and tests to make cheating unrewarding. The solution was easy: questions aimed at comprehension, a tight time limit on exams, and massive question banks to generate random exams. This approach worked for years: student grades remained very close to those from the days or proctored in-class exams and quizzes. On the plus side, there was an increase in the completion rate of the coursework. However, the increase was not as significant as I had hoped. Then AI arrived and enabled easy cheating on online quizzes and exams, thus creating a problem whose obvious solution seems to be a return to proctored in-class exams and quizzes.

To address the problem of uncompleted work, I decided to have generous deadlines. Originally, students got a month to complete the quizzes for a section. For exams 1-3 (which cover sections 1-3), students got one month after we finished a section to complete the exam. Exam 4’s deadline was at the end of the last day of classes and the final deadlines at the end of the normal final time. The paper deadlines were unchanged from the pre-online days, although now the students can turn in papers from anywhere with internet access and can do so round the clock. The main impact of this change was another increase in the completion rate of work, thus decreasing the failure rate in my classes. When COVID hit, I made the deadlines even more generous for exams and quizzes: students can complete these for full credit up until the last day of finals week. This increased the completion rates for the coursework and, I must say, removed much of the end of the semester stress arising from addressing student grade crises.

As would be suspected, there are still students who do not complete all the work and fail much of the work they do complete. But the number of failing students has been reduced dramatically, and they are still learning. But, as noted earlier, the newest challenge is AI: while cheating has always been a problem, AI has obviously turbocharged this problem.