I want to be like Ke$ha when I grow up. I want to become an auto-tuned "artist" and spell "Chris" as "Chr!s". I have nothing against Ke$ha so I will not bad mouth her, but I will forever be bedazzeled as to how someone who sounds like they are intoxicated while recording can make it to my car's audio system? Amazing.
However, Ke$ha and similar "artists", intoxicated or sober, have a lot in common with American businesses at the high level. Music today is very interesting. The quality of music, like many conveniences we enjoy, has been cheapened. We live in an age where the concept "artist" has been lost to terms such as "singer", "rapper", "performer", and other nouns that describe someone who is capable of making a catchy tune or two for us to shake that bonobo to on a Saturday night, but lacks the talent for a lasting career. Ke$ha epitomizes this trend and sadly there exists similarities in areas outside of music. By the way, for those who do not know, a bonobo is a very sexually active monkey. Thanks, anthropology class.
In a capitalist society the goal for competitive businesses and services is not sustainability or profit, but to maximize profitability. A few fundamental ways to increase profit are to increase the cost of goods or services (for consumers) while maintaining an equal production cost, lower the production cost, or lower the production cost and increase the cost to consumers simultaneously. Simple, right? The music industry has in fact reduced the production cost (and quality, of course) of what we hear, but has maintained the cost we pay for CDs, iTunes, and concert tickets. While I would rather go snorkeling at a BP water park than attend a Ke$ha concert, to each his or her own.
Ke$ha (and those involved in her production) holds the same business model as administrators of a college or university. Just as music of the Ke$ha flavor reduces to the quality of music without reducing the cost of consumption, college administrators continue to maintain or (usually) increase the cost of consumption without increasing the quality of education to its students.
I will use The Ohio State University, my great alma mater, as an example. I was highly upset when this past summer the parking meters on South Campus were no longer free after 6pm, but 10pm instead. As if that wasn't enough, it now costs $3 for 2 hours of parking opposed to the previous $2 for 2 hours. For students who take evening classes the benefit of these is the inconvenience of parking and walking much further. Ohio winters, hello? As if that isn't enough, football tickets went up an average of $7 per ticket for the 2010 season (reported by 97.1 "The Fan" radio). At an extra $7 per ticket, for 100,000 tickets, for five home games, that is an extra $3.5 million in the pockets of Brutus Buckeye. With all of the unnecessary increases no wonder five of our star players sold their Big X championship rings to come up with the extra money. Go Bucks.
Still, parking meters and football tickets are just scratching the surface and largely annoyances on my part. Tuition is the most important cost when considering higher education. By increasing the cost of tuition for enrollment each year, colleges and universities are adding disproportional benefits to the student population, namely increased debt. Consider college textbooks for additional evidence of disproportional cost-benefits. According to CNNMoney.com, college textbooks are among the top 25 mark-ups in all of America, meaning the cost to consumers is severly higher than the cost of production and distribution. Surely our students will be twice as fluent in the tongue of espanol by paying $150 for a spanish book and disc set that are valued at 60% less for the exact same content, correct?
Does an increase in the cost of education result in an increase of students' your earning potential? CNNMoney.com recently reported that, according to the US census, the average American salary has been roughly unchanged for 30 years, constantly hovering at about $33,000 per year. Yet, those in the top 1% of income earners in America, i.e. those making more than $300k per year, have nearly tripled their wealth in the same time period. With more people going to and graduating from colleges and universities than ever before, especially women, the cost we pay for education hasn't exactly been reciprocated in our personal checking accounts.
Does an increase in the cost of education result in an increase of students' your earning potential? CNNMoney.com recently reported that, according to the US census, the average American salary has been roughly unchanged for 30 years, constantly hovering at about $33,000 per year. Yet, those in the top 1% of income earners in America, i.e. those making more than $300k per year, have nearly tripled their wealth in the same time period. With more people going to and graduating from colleges and universities than ever before, especially women, the cost we pay for education hasn't exactly been reciprocated in our personal checking accounts.
Even if tuition is not increased, consider the following: If an additional 200 freshman students are admitted into a university at $25,000 / year each, and there is no staff increase to accommodate this new group of partiers, your school just profited $5 million dollars. This may sound farfetched to those at small schools, but coming from an institution that is home to more than 50,000 students this isn't too surprising. While new facilities and equipment upgrades are necessary expenses over time, it is hard to imagine the cost of construction and maintenance is proportional to the profit received from such increases as previously stated. To quote Charles Barkley, I could be wrong but I doubt it.
Moving forward, does an increase in the cost of education increase the quality of education?
Again, let's consider Ke$ha to settle this question. The desired effect of music is for people to enjoy, and maybe even sing and dance to; get jiggy with it. In that sense, Ke$ha is successful as her music can be heard at most night clubs and usually sparks irresponsible young adults to sing and dance along to her songs like wild bonobos. However, all is not well that ends well in this case. The reason being is that albeit a desired ending, because the means of acquiring the end are of mediocre quality at best, there is no lasting effect or appreciation for the work. In just weeks, a Ke$ha song will go from favorite to permanently forgotten. No more bonobo dancing to “Don’t Stop”. While no song remains in the top 40 forever, the turnover rate of popular to not popular songs today as indicated by Billboard Charts is at an all-time high because today’s music simply lacks lasting quality.
Given the previous Ke$ha example, let's apply the same to education. The desired end effect to a college education is a degree and some sort of legal employment. While everyone who completes college is awarded at least a degree and should be in a better position to earn and sustain employment, I argue the quality of learned content has not been enhanced and somewhat deteriorated, especially in fields outside of law, medicine, and physical sciences.
One culprit of a weaker quality of education is the multiple choice test. Multiple choice tests do not necessarily test what students know. While multiple choice tests are not completely void of predicting understanding, they really measure students' ability to recall information from given context clues. Though more painful, students would learn more, and learn more effectively, if written assignments were of greater commonplace than multiple choice tests. Writing does not test recognizability alone, but rather it combines multiple cognitive functions: it forces empathic thinking from the writer to the perspective of the audience, tests the analyzation and interpretation of content, and leaves room to express thoughts in the author’s own unique writing style. Most importantly, writing enhances our ability to retain information more so than seeing what is in front of us. What do you remember better, that five page multiple choice final or the 5 page paper you had to write?
Another culprit to a deteriorated quality of education is the idea of a "well rounded" education. While it sounds good in theory, why take multiple courses you have no interest in and will never make use of the content? As a pre-declared Business major, I had to take Biology 101. I specifically remember a lesson about insect antennas. It is possible that one day my unborn, Heisman Trophy winning son will ask me, "Father, for what art those ants waving those sticks above their heads so frantically", and I will explain to the young, well-spoken and athletic lad how the ants are using their antennas as a compass. Nice to know, but was it worth the $250 per credit hour it cost to learn that? Yes, It is definitely beneficial to have knowledge outside of students' chosen are of study, but a full year's worth of classes not pertaining to one's specialization could be much better utilized perhaps via related work experience or independent study. Then again, maybe our knowledge of ants will prepare our defense against them when they attempt to bring Armegeddon to passage.
In closing, solutions and not simply stating the obvious are of greatest importance. Sadly, reducing the cost of education and increasing the quality of higher education is a massive task that very few people have the power to influence. I will get there eventually and am accepting law school donations to start my path towards the White House. However, I do have a suggestion for the masses - take control of your education! The likelihood of financial and professional prosperity without a college education is very slim today and will be true forever going forward. A college education has gone from an ammenity to a necessity. Get the most out of your education as possible. Take courses that encourage hard, transferrable skills, study for the overall understanding of the content and not simply to get the grades, and demand nothing less than excellence from your institution. Bland, yes, but really that is best we can do in addtion to taking an active role in political decisions affecting our collegiate education system. Remember, the customer is always right.
If all else fails, be like Ke$ha. Purchase a drum machine, chase down a few shots of the do-it-fluid, get behind a microphone, befriend Flo Rida, and keep hope alive. After all, someone has to make cheap hits, and it just may be you. Just don't be too disappointed when you are soon forgotten. Education, on the other hand, is forever.
Thank you.
-Christopher Charles Ivory
