Hey kid, you want some candy?: Higher ed courts (and scores with) wayward youth

As jobs continue to be lost across the country, tuition levels hit new heights and banner ads on web sites have broadened from last winter's originals stating that "Obama wants working mothers to go back to school" to those hawking online degrees from Capella, University of Phoenix, and, now, less traditionally on-line programs. This is amidst rapidly decreasing retention rates for students attending residential colleges and universities showing that only 65.1% return for their sophomore year (source: ACT, Inc.), and unchanging statistics stating that, in many cases, only 1/3 of those who enroll online finish their course. In one study, a comparison between on-line and in-person programs at East Carolina U found drop out rates for the MBA program to be 11% for those on campus and 43% for those online, and 4% for on-campus Communications students vs. 23.5% for those enrolled in the Comm program online. Also part of this is the realities of un-benefitted and over-worked adjunct staff teaching almost all on-line courses. As the economy tanks, young people are being told yet again that they need to re-tool, that the deficit lies in them, that they are they problem that needs fixing. On top to this, they are being given shitty options to try to do this. What is the plan here? Further deviancing of youth? Further construction of them as failures, as unable, as problems? Oh higher education, you are yet another recipe for young people feeling incompetent within our society, for society seeing them as incapable, and for all of us agreeing that they do not deserve full citizenship, their efforts and "hard work" be damned. I had expected better of you. But with roots so deeply meshed with industrialization, Westernization and individualism, I realize once again that my expectations are more tied to Disney than to you..



Academia is reaching out to those rejected by the labor market with a greedy and unsympathetic hand, showing itself to be less interested in "skill development" than in profits. Academia is a money maker. Shake it.



Here's an article on this.



And here's the ECU study cited above.