WASHINGTON, D.C. Jan. 24 (DPI) – The nation’s long-held faith in formal education – especially in the value of advanced academic degrees – has eroded sharply in recent years, as horror stories of student debt, shrinking job markets and falling standards combine to change middle-class perceptions of what an education is.
Mainstream media outlets are latching on to the trend, as hundreds of thousands of students emerge from second-tier schools with lifelong debt burdens and no better job prospects than when they entered school.
http://money.cnn.com/gallery/news/economy/2013/01/24/masters-degree-debt/index.html?hpt=hp_t3
The trend has even inspired spoofs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=UOg6czPMmac
A majority of reader comments acknowledge that “grad school isn’t worth it anymore,” as one put it. Readers debated the value even of so-called STEM (Science/Technology/Engineering/Mathematics) graduate-level education.
Meanwhile, top-tier schools — Ivy League law schools among them — are debating their economic model, as more academic leaders state publicly that three-year graduate schools with six-figure tuition bills aren’t sustainable in an age in which the number of good-paying entry-level jobs in the law keeps shrinking.
None of this is to suggest that middle-class Americans are any more anti-intellectual or anti-academic than before — there have always been strains of that – but there is no question that the well endowed institutions must make a choice in the coming years: Either strengthen their cloistered walls, and protect and maintain their perceived exclusivity; or open up their academic communities to the outside world, as some institutions are beginning to do.
Underlying all of this, of course, is the growing influence of online academic offerings, so-called massive open online courses (MOOCs) offered by start-ups like Coursera (https://www.coursera.org/). That area of education, while in its infancy, has no business model – yet. But it is already buffeting the once-cloistered academies.
In many respects the trend bears a resemblance to the disruptive pressure that technology and the internet have inflicted on the print publishing industry over the last decade. Academics are only beginning to feel the same pressure, with broad implications, academics say.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/education/moocs-to-be-evaluated-for-possible-college-credit.html