The American Spectator : BSU and the Troll in the Basement

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Books in Review

BSU and the Troll in the Basement

By John R. Coyne, Jr. from the June 2011 issue

What's the point of trying so hard to get into college?

Crazy U: One Dad's Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College
By Andrew Ferguson
(Simon & Schuster/228 pp/$25)

In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: Confessions of an Accidental Academic
By Professor X
(Viking, 258 pages, $25.95)

Andrew Ferguson, senior editor at The Weekly Standard and a widely published journalist who, like so many of today's best conservative writers, took his basic training at The American Spectator, begins this saga by consulting his own experience. After taking tests and writing essays, he was told by his career counselor at Occidental: "You must understand...that you have no marketable skills whatsoever."

"So I became a journalist."

He shares this anecdote, he writes, "because it encapsulates a larger confusion I have encountered in my....recent efforts to wedge my son into college. While expending vast amounts of money and energy on higher education-both selling it and buying it-we seem not to be sure what it's for."

How do parents pay that annual bill that can run $40,000? For advice and guidance, "especially the glories of subsidy and debt, we were expected to rely on the touts of colleges, the College Board, and the Education Department, the whole higher-ed establishment....But please don't ask why the bills are so enormous in the first place."

Apparently, it has little to do with acquiring knowledge. Today, says Ferguson, there are "college graduates who can scarcely write a complete sentence and identify John Quincy Adams as the bass player for the Funkadelics." Rather, the obsession about which Ferguson writes, perhaps most intense if not largely peculiar to the Northeast, where people tend to be obsessive, is focused on the admission process itself.

The notion, spreading like a virus, is that your kid just has to get admitted into a place that the neighbors view as suitable, and if that doesn't happen you've failed as a parent. As Ferguson describes it, it's become a test of parenthood-a contest involving "our vanities, our social ambitions and class insecurities, and most profoundly our love and hopes for our children."

As part of that contest, Ferguson writes, there's a "large, lucrative, and parasitic industry" that has "puckered up and suctioned itself onto the tumescent host of college admissions." A friend tells him about a woman he "could hire to take all my college worries upon herself and resolve them without fuss. I thought she sounded like a yuppie version of the sin eaters who once served the villages of Ye Olde Scotland."

"But it will cost you," his friend added. "A lot."

Forty thousand dollars: that's how much it would take to hire one of the country's most notable independent college admission counselors, Katherine Cohen, for a full-service "platinum package" of advice and guidance that would last from the first starry dreams of ivy-covered brick to the day of matriculation.

Ferguson talks to Kat (as she prefers to be called) as a journalist, and travels with her as she sells her platinum package to a group of mothers in Greenwich, Connecticut, a group warmed up by a banker who tells them it will soon cost $1 million a year to send three kids to college. Money aside, Ferguson asks Kat about the admission prospects for his son, now a high school junior. She questions him on the steps he's taken so far-making a list of colleges, visiting campuses, taking SAT preps. He's done none of them.

"Oooooh," she said. "Baaaaaaad daaaaaaad."

Bad or not, Dad has been bitten, and he jumps into the college admission process with both feet. There are setbacks. He and his son go for an interview with a high school adviser.

"I can tell you the kind of school I'd really like," my son told the college counselor, with an air of finality. "I want to go to a place where I can go to a football game, take off my shirt, paint my chest, and major in beer."

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About the Author

John R. Coyne, Jr. a former White House speech-writer, is co-author with Linda Bridges of Strictly Right: William F. Buckley Jr. and the American Conservative Movement (Wiley).

Letter to the Editor View all comments (35) | Leave a comment

calvin| 6.27.11 @ 7:00AM

Lovely piece. Humerous writing conveying the ongoing angst of (especially down east) parents who turn their progeny into idols to worship rather than gifts from heaven to raise up to be worthy of same.
In the 70s at Dartmouth it was the same only cheaper. Current alumni journal (it is a coed college now, alas,) makes me gag at the hubris.
Back to the midwest for me.
I think the next bubble headed down the tracks is the higher ed collapse.
Romans 1:22

J.C.Eaton| 6.27.11 @ 10:56AM

We can only fervently hope so. What a racket....hundreds of thousands in debt, ruined credit scores, broken tax-payers ultimately financing worthless "degrees" in useless fields. Oh my, how I devoutly wish for you to be right.

alice moore| 6.27.11 @ 8:55AM

From what I've seen families Re looking at colleges and majors where one can be placed in a job at graduation. These seem to be in Health Care and technology.

JP| 6.27.11 @ 8:56AM

We're in the middle of the "higher education" bubble. Both young adults and middle aged people are following the outline put out by "experts": that the only way to secure your future is to get a college degree. And many unemployed middle aged college grads are getting MBAs. Of course, it helps that many of our Fortune 500 firms require a 4 year degree to fill even the lowest jobs. In my neck of the woods, a tooling firm was looking for a machinist who knew CAD/CAM, had a 4 year degree, and had 7 years on the job in a tool room. In the add, job expirience wasn't as important as the diploma. The pay was $15/hour. Insane. There is no machinist I know who even have a 2 year degree. What the firm will get is some college grad who couldn't tell the difference between a lathe and a surface grinder.

We see this in all types of fields. Sales, marketing, HR, small business office management, IT, and order entry.

This nations is about to be hit with a tidal wave of college grads who only bring one thing to the job - a mountain of debt.

DG in GA| 6.27.11 @ 4:35PM

"This nation is about to be hit with a tidal wave of college grads who only bring one thing to the job - a mountain of debt."

This mountain of debt will be compounded by the fact that so many young people in their 20's and early 30's have decided that since they can't find jobs in the Obama economy, the solution is to go BACK to college and get ANOTHER useless degree like a Master's or a PhD or both. They are doing this to postpone the inevitable job search and joining the ranks of grown-ups. Of course, as they do this they are adding $50K - $100K more debt to their undergraduate tab. And since 50% of all PhD's cannot find jobs in their field, they'll be using that exalted and expensive degree working at Starbucks.

Handy| 6.28.11 @ 12:33AM

JP,
I always enjoy your posts. Let me play guidance counselor for a few moments. Not to you, of course, but to any parents and young people contemplating college.

Not so long ago, students went to undergraduate colleges to obtain educations in the liberal arts and basic sciences. It worked for a long while. It was thought that with their knowledge of history, literature, calculus and biology, those college graduates could contribute their broader academic training to their communities and businesses. This, while those who did not have the abilities and enthusiasm for "higher" education could be carpenters, plumbers, and gas pumpers.

Graduate schools were not for education, per se. Medical, engineering, and law schools were not where one went to become educated. Those were places where already educated people went to learn specialized trades.

Today, of course, things are upside-down.

Without preaching too much, I hope; there are great opportunities today for young people to succeed. So, here is my guidance counselor advice.

First, graduate from high school.

If you are physically fit, join the military as soon as you can; collect that signing bonus and don't forget tuition assistance, either. If not, get a regular job and enroll in comminty college or a trade school. Live at home, if that is an available option. Your parents still have many lessons to impart, and they might like the idea of saving $40K per year in tuition, room and board.

If you take the military option, consider staying in. If you decide to get out, use those bennies to your best adavantage. Consider moving back to your home town and rekinding old friendships.

I am trying to wrap this up.

The point is that education is no longer the province of the universities or undergraduate curricula. Education is what you do on your own throughout your life.

Sorry have taken so much of your time.

lydia| 6.27.11 @ 9:00AM

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I think the next bubble headed down the tracks is the higher ed collapse.Romans 1:22

Petronius| 6.27.11 @ 9:00AM

In my day among my blue collar cohort at parochial school, college was regarded as next to worthless by fathers who considered what was taught as such in the old world of cut throat commerce. Since English lit had no relation to a balance sheet, why bother? If his sons were jocks, college was fine if they got the scholarship, and he didn't have to pony up. At the bottom of it all was earnings potential. Except for the professions and hard sciences, college was crap. And for average students it's always been just that: 4 years of hoop jumping and ingestion of a load of B.S. to get that B.A. The ticket of admission to the managerial class it used to be just might get you hired at Kinkos today. The high school grads across the street at Quiktrip make the same money. The admonitions of parents who told us that college degrees lead to flush wallets and fat life styles were wrong then and now. The knowledge required to bring success and wealth is not taught in any school, especially since that level of innovation is beyond post graduate except for research institutions. There is no Killer App class anywhere. The instructors I faced just wanted to pontificate and collect the check. Today it's far worse. Those I know who have kids in college are up to their gills in frustration; not only with the liberal canon being force fed to their sons and daughters by the brie-brained adjuncts, but with the realization that no teacher in any class room wants any student to think. Believe what they tell you, or else....
The Maryland legislature just passed a law mandating "environmental literacy" as a high school graduation requirement. I can't wait until some senior gets expelled for refusing to believe in global warming. There won't be any employment for the B.A.'s or for them. Their parents might as well rough in and finish their basements in the burbs. Have a nice life guys.

mike daniels| 6.27.11 @ 10:27AM

My daughter took a class taught (?) by the infamous Ward Churchill (he of the 9/11 "little Eichmans" fame) at the University of Colorado. It was a summer class and she needed the credit. It consisted of sitting outside so Ward could smoke and listening to him talk about the travails of unidentified Indian tribes while claiming to be one of the tribesmen himself. That was a lie as was his educational background and ultimately he was fired by the university. The real question is why was he hired? Why does a course (?) like his pass for education and why do we pay huge dollars to send our kids to learn this stuff? I've two more kids at home and I doubt I will finance a similar experience for either.

Purple Lips| 6.27.11 @ 1:44PM

But earnings potential is diluted with every extra grad. And there is no tomarrow in today's economy. It would be better for an 18 year to stay home with his parents, get a job, save every nickel and buy some kind of business. I know a 19 year old who purchased a small vendors cart and sells soda pop and water in the park during the summer. He clears $300/week, and recently purchased a small ice cream cart. He pays his younger brother 50% of the takes if he operates it. Between the 2 of them, they will clear nearly 10 grand by autumn. These brothers will go somewhere, and they will do it without a college degree.

Harry the Horrible| 6.27.11 @ 9:31AM

We need trade and vocational schools. Not everybody needs to go to college; not everybody is qualified to go to college.
There is a good living in being a good plumber, carpenter, electrician, etc. And, IMHO, a great deal from personal satisfaction. Probably more than you find in the average computer geek (like me...).

TrueBlue| 6.28.11 @ 1:56PM

Carpenter at the very least requires a lot of training unless we're talking just straight construction (which still is a good deal of training). That said, pretty much every job requires that stupid piece of paper that proves nothing except that you spent an inordinate amount of money to learn absolutely nothing about the field you got the B.A. in.

The college degree is becoming so important these days because nobody wants to believe that personal experience counts for anything without it. When you have people getting laid(sp?) off after working a job for 10-15 yrs, and then unable to get a job in the exact same field because they don't have a degree, there is a problem.

glenny44| 6.27.11 @ 11:58AM

Let's see. My son graduated from LSU in 2004 with all of $3,000 in student loans. Degree in Construction Management. Lives/works in Houston, makes $100,000/year, works his butt off, has company truck/gas card/cell phone paid for.
Ivy League? NY/DC/Wall Street? Who needs it?

glenny

Anommynous| 6.27.11 @ 12:18PM

"his son is admitted to the university he wanted to go to in the first place-BSU, Big State University, as Ferguson calls it (a.k.a. University of Virginia)"

As Big State Universities go, Virginia is not at all a bad choice. It's right up there with Berkeley in terms of prestige, making it one of the top public universities, more prestigious than most of the expensive private universities. It was also founded by Thomas Jefferson, which is pretty cool. The boy's surely no dummy if he was able to gain acceptance.

Occam's Tool| 6.27.11 @ 4:36PM

Indeed, UVirginia is an excellent choice. But here's the kicker---undergrad school choice isn't that important anyway---what matters is the grad school if you are going that far. For example, I attended TCU with 4 guys who did the following in post grad---1 went to Harvard Law, One got accepted to HLS but chose Yale, one got a full ride to Vanderbuilt University School of Medicine, and one went to grad school at CalTech. Me, I got accepted to med school at University of Illinois and UTMB. Note that Linus Pauling did his undergrad at Oregon State.

Again, again, and again---it is the student, not the school. If you are good enough, you will get the training you want no matter if you go to State or Private. I went Private on a full tuition scholarship. I graduated from college without debt. My kids will be going to U of Minn or UND or NDSU unless they get a scholarship to send them someplace else. There were 5600 undergrads at TCU when I went there; there are 10,000 at UND, 2500 in the school of arts and sciences, which has a Phi Beta Kappa Chapter, a graduate school of sciences (PhD in chem, biology, and physics), and a med and law school on campus. My wife had 2 full ride academic scholarships going concurrently at 'Bama. We both know what it takes to succeed academically and are homeschooling the little ones.

But my advice to anyone thinking about college is to first, make sure you're interested and need or can pay for it, and two, remember that graduate school is MUCH more important than undergrad. If all you are planning on is an undergrad degree, why are you getting into so much debt over it?

Ken (Old Texican)| 6.27.11 @ 5:51PM

Hey Scalpel!
Fascinating post!

Neither TCU, (Texas Christian University), or Baylor even has a "major in basket-weaving" though, much less "women's mentrual studies".

I was delighted to hear your kids are being home-schooled. (I wound up being asked to be the national advisor to homeschoolers for extra curricular activities a few years ago.)
Socialization skills don't you know.

As you DO know, from private correspondence, I have spent 40 years recruiting and retaining thousands of the best of the best of the best in their fields.
Engineers need to be competent drawing the plans. "Superintendents" need to put those drawings into steel in the sky. Secretaries need to be able to keep everything organized. Accountants need to be able to keep score on the dollars in and out.
Heh,
Salesmen need to be able to bring the needs and offers together. (Desperately difficult).

Then of course we need the "technicians" who fix things when they are broken.....: (doctors, mechanics and dentists etc.)

...Other than the "technicians" most "higher education" is wasted...other than understanding life and death.........maybe.
Thoughts?

cicero| 6.27.11 @ 1:26PM

Cicero's first law of economics:
Debt expands to meet the money allotted to it.
The only way to bring college costs, and universal enrollement down is to get government money out of the picture. Be that I mean, do away with government backed student loans. Once students have to finance their own educations, or parents have to pay what they can afford, and no more, the cost will be brought it line with economic reality. In addition, the student who is paying for his/her own education in real time dollars will make sure that those dollars are being spent on something worth learning.
Of course, common sense would have to brought into the picture. This would reduce the campus population to about 25% of today's total, and would close 75% of the current schools of lower learning. It would also see the end of the $1million college president, and the $400,000.00 professor who teaches 2 hours per week.

YeloStalyn| 6.27.11 @ 3:07PM

You must be one of the uncolleged idiots. That will never work! If you had gone to college, you would have been instructed to believe that without government assistance, the next Eisnstein who happened to be born to a historically overlooked, exploited minority would be unable to pull himself out of poverty and Uncle Sam's envolvement would garauntee that he would a) succeed and b) become someone. Maybe even president. How can you possibly say that you want a stupid population? Everyone should go to college so that we can continue to perfect society. Imagine a day with no undesireables!

You and your silly common sense! Bah! Had only you gone to college... of if you did... had you only done what you were told and believed as you were instructed.

YeloStalyn| 6.27.11 @ 3:08PM

-end sarcasm-

Mary Wilbur| 6.27.11 @ 9:29PM

I couldn't agree with you more. Govt backed student loans enable universities to charge whatever tuition they want.

Ron| 6.27.11 @ 6:57PM

Why is my question? Where is it written in stone that parents are supposed to pay for a college education? While I appreciate the parents out there that want to take care of their "children" at some point they need to stand on their own two feet. neither my wife nor I had our college paid for. I told my children they would have to fund their own college as well. The lesson that something free ceases to carry the same weight and seriousness as something one pays for is still true. Maybe if the students today were paying for their own schooling, they would tend to be more realistic in their choices.

shipley130| 6.27.11 @ 7:46PM

College is like any other product. As the price rises, the product loses quality these days. I remember when the Burger King breakfast croissant was a good tasting product. Now it's a cheap, frozen food product. If we aren't careful about education going forward, it will turn into a Chinese product. A diploma will be worth about as much as the paper document it's printed on, and of course, made in China.

Bob Grant| 6.27.11 @ 9:12PM

Question: All the talk about the worth of a college degree is fine and dandy but what about the other spectrum? Many have commented that a large percentage of people attending college are wasting their time; especially if they are only pursuing bachelors degrees.

So lets talk about what those who are "wasting their time" to do. The job market for those who work with their hands is shrinking fastly mainly because of this crazy notion that our economy should be based on the service industry and consumerism. This is crazy...and suicidal!

A whole industry is being stolen right in front of our eyes and in plain sight. All in the name of cheap labor. It's becoming increasingly difficult for young Americans interested in entering the building, plumbing, or other labor-intensive industries because the entry point is controlled by people who have access to large pools of undocumented (illegal!) workers. They want nothing to do with Americans interested in working those jobs as they are unfairly tagged as too high maintenance, unreliable, etc. All for the sake of cheap labor.

Soon, it will be a thing of the past for a young American to work his way up from hanging sheetrock, roofing, framing, to a contractor, to a builder, to owner of a company. The same goes for plumbing apprentists and the like. These industries will be controlled by people who are barely legal citizens. Some of whom not able to speak English.

This problem is and will be more dire that any "education" bubble we might see.

Mary Wilbur| 6.27.11 @ 9:32PM

I think that the difficulty getting into the trades is that they are controlled by unions who say whose in and whose out.

Bob Grant| 6.27.11 @ 9:45PM

As soon as amnesty is passed you might see a powerful home builder's trade union.

CalMark| 6.28.11 @ 1:06AM

It's the professions, too. Oodles of new tests and requirements for "legitimacy." A "self-licking ice cream cone": necessary because it's required, required because the people in charge arbitrarily say so. The people in charge often being foreign-born refugees from rotten caste systems seeking to impose the same rotten caste system here--except with themselves in charge. And we stupid Americans are letting them.

Like suddenly requiring people who have been practicing competently for years to get an M.S. or Ph.D.--or lose their license. Inventing licenses for ever-narrower sub-specialties, with onerous requirements just to take the wickedly difficult exams, without passing which you are banned from independent practice.

Surrounding it all, a parasitic, extremely lucrative cottage industry preparing people for the tests. All of it expensive, the best of it in limited supply. A vicious circle: the more and harder the tests, the more review courses required.

We are losing American by becoming Mandarins: caste trumps competence. Increasing numbers "professionals" with degrees and licenses making them "experts," who are dangerously ignorant in real-world practice.

Occam's Tool| 6.28.11 @ 1:40AM

Oh, my---the latest board certification stuff by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology now has evaluation by peers, patients, and continuous self improvement modules. You can't just do the usual 10 times the normal amount of Continuing Medical Education and get sky high reboard scores alone anymore. Sheesh.

Handy| 6.28.11 @ 4:11AM

Good observations, but it is not just "Board Certified" physicians, engineers, lawyers and public school teachers, cosmetologists, etc. who are problems. In the wake of EnRon, World Com and the utter failures of our largest companies, it is scandalous that accountants have escaped almost blamelessly.

The pubic accounting industry is dominated by the Ameican Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). Oh, add in the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The utter incompetence of Arthur Andersen in the EnRon affair, and Deloitte in the case of General Motors speak volumes. There are plenty of other examples. "Mark to Market" was an invention of both the FASB and the SEC. Both were supported by the AICPA. It caused the financial panic of 2008 as much as easing of the credit requiremets to people unqualified for home loans.

However, it is for certain that all the people involved maintained their "continuing education" credentials. Attending seminars at fancy resorts are tax-deductable expenses, afterall.

It is rare to find a CPA who has actually closed a trial balance or computed a payroll. They just want to load you down with nonsensical rules, and to audit you later.

Next time you find yourself talking to a CPA, he, or she, will probably tell you that your unfunded liabilities are actully assets. They are nuts!!!

My advice? Talk to a cosmetologist who actually runs a business.

TrueBlue| 6.28.11 @ 2:12PM

Most of these are imposed by the various unions seeking to keep any kind of competition low, if not non-existant. Then if you even get all the quals you're required to become part of the union in order to actually work in the field (right to work state or not in a lot of cases).

It's all to increase the power of the unions and limit non-union competition. A monopoy that bypasses anti-trust laws because the union isn't actually a company.