QUARANTINE BROODINGS

I sit here in protected, comfortable isolation, preparing my Hume lectures, all the while trying to understand what is going to happen to the world I thought I knew.  Because I spent my entire adult life as a university professor, my attention has been drawn to the likely impact of the present crisis on that part of the social world.  I do not have any knowledge that is not readily available to all of you, but perhaps my musings will be of interest. 

Almost all of the discussion I have seen of the impact of the virus on universities or colleges has focused on one small corner of the higher educational world, that occupied by the famous elite schools.  This elite school is considering starting the fall semester early and ending by Thanksgiving so that students will not go home, get infected, and bring the virus back to campus.  That elite school has extended until June 1^st the deadline for admitted applicants to accept admission.  Another elite school is cancelling lectures while hoping to continue small in-person tutorials.  All of the top schools, despite their bloated endowments, are privately worried that overseas students, who pay full tuition and do not get financial aid, will stay home, throwing school budgets into the red.  An old friend who has spent his entire career at Columbia tells me that 31% of Columbia’s students come from overseas, and all of the name schools have been living large for years off the fees paid by the hordes of students who come from Mainland China.

But I want to try to think about the impact of the virus on the schools not in the elite enclave.  One commentator I read remarked at one point that the top schools would adapt and survive but what about the 1000 schools below them?  That comment caught my eye because, in an effort to be ecumenical, it was so utterly clueless.

Let us remind ourselves of some facts, many of which I have cited before on this blog. 

1.         America has a sharply pyramidal, extremely unequally compensated job structure.

2.         A four year college degree is, more than any other credential or characteristic, the entrée to the good paying jobs that offer, in addition to good wages, health care, paid vacations,        and advancement opportunities.

3.         Roughly 63% of high school graduates enroll in four year degree granting colleges and university campuses, and 55% of those actually graduate, so that in the adult population, roughly 35% have BA’s or equivalent degrees.  65% do not!!

4.         There are more than 4,600 colleges and university campuses in the United States.  Not 8, not 20, not 100, but 4,600!  The 1000 schools below the elite 100 are still in the top one-fourth, with another 3500 below them.  Every graduate of the least of these schools is among the favored 35% who can at least have a chance at one of the good jobs in America.  [Forget Bill Gates.  I know he never graduated.  In this discussion, he and his ilk are just shiny objects meant to distract us from the facts.]

5.         [Personal note]  A school like UMass Amherst, where I went to teach for 37 years after resigning my Columbia professorship in 1971, is not one of the nameless campuses in the hinterlands of the great unwashed.  It is an elite school.  Why do I say that?  Because I am pretty confident that UMass Amherst would be considered one of the 200 – 250 best colleges or universities in America, and that would put it in the top 5%!  Indeed, unless you are a college basketball fan, I would bet you would have a hard time even naming 250 American colleges and university campuses, and if you could, could you also name a second 200?  That would still only get you to 10% of the total.

Most of the 4,600 institutions of higher education have small endowments, whether they are public or private.  Can they survive a year without their customary tuition and fee income?  What will happen to them if 30% or more of their students decide to take a gap year and stay in their parents’ homes?  Will parents be willing to pay the outsized costs of a college education if that education is delivered on-line to young men and women who never leave home?

Much has been made in the discussions I have seen of the value of the campus experience, something that is missing from on-line education.  But that experience is essentially enculturation into a privileged social class rather than a desideratum for intellectual development.  I rather suspect similar doubts were expressed when the aristocratic tradition of private tutors gave way to the vulgarity of classrooms.

My guess is that a great many colleges will be forced to close their doors in the next twelve months, a number of HBCUs among them.  All I can do is sit here, my zoom skills honed, and offer my services to any college or university, here or abroad, looking for someone to teach the Philosophy of Hume, the Philosophy of Kant, the thought of Marx, the elements of formal methods in political theory, Ideological Critique. Or anything else that comes to mind.