Retention Rate Madness

Karl Marx, if you can believe it, told us that “History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy and the second as farce.”  I would like to share two stories with you and ask you to judge whether these are tragedies or farces.

Back in the 1980’s, I worked at a psychiatric hospital in Rochester, New York during the height of the deinstitutionalization movement.  People had long concluded that the places originally known as “asylums” had mutated into “snake pits.”  Most observers were therefore overjoyed when it seemed that psychotropic drugs could allow patients to function normally outside their gates.

Hence a move began to discharge all but the most severe cases into the community.  The difficulty was that there were few good places to send these people.  Many of their families were as damaged as they, and because group homes were in short supply the only available alternatives were often rooming houses run by mercenary tyrants.

As a consequence, the psychologists and social workers assigned to facilitate these transitions acted slowly and cautiously.  But this was not good enough for the politicians in Albany.  They demanded that the hospitals be emptied—and emptied immediately.  If not, heads would roll.

And so the patients were discharged under circumstances that those who put these plans together were confident would not work.  Indeed, within weeks the Rochester papers reported an upsurge in indigents living under the bridges over the Genesee River.

This, at least in upstate New York, was the primary source of the “homelessness” crisis.  More than anything else this fiasco was caused by overeager politicians determined to make naïve voters happy.

Fast forward to contemporary Georgia.  Now people are complaining that our colleges and universities are failing in their mission to educate that state’s young people.  Not only do these schools cost too much, but too many of their students take more than the traditional four years to graduate.

Enter the state legislature.  Its sincerely concerned members came up with an elegant solution.  They decided to change the formula whereby they funded state schools.  Institutions of higher education would now be allocated dollars on the basis their graduation rates as opposed to their enrollment numbers.

In schools like Kennesaw State University, where many students are low on funds and/or high in family obligations, they must take one or more jobs to make ends meet.  This necessitates that they not carry full college loads and consequently that they take longer to complete their studies.

Nevertheless KSU, like Rochester’s psychiatric hospital, must find ways to hurry these folks along lest it be underfunded.  And so its faculty and administrators are forced to devise plans that give the appearance of improving quality while shrinking the time needed to obtain a degree.

The fact is there is only one way to achieve this—and that is by lowering academic standards.  Sadly, the credentials students ultimately receive are thereby cheapened, with the consequence that they will have greater difficulty getting good jobs.  But hey, the numbers will look first-rate.

Isn’t this ironic?  In an effort to reform higher education, alleged legislative correctives are guaranteed to harm the very students who are most in need of a solid college education.  The fact is that KSU is not the University of Georgia.  Many of its students simply require more time than traditional college students.

But no, in the name of helping these learners, their opportunity for social mobility is to be torn from their grasp.  A “one size fits all” mentality instead dictates that they be pushed out into the cold cruel world before they are ready.  Where is the sense in this?

Isn’t it time that politicians who don’t understand higher education meddle a bit less?  Do we really want an academic version of the deinstitutionalization scandal?  Perhaps those responsible for this dilemma should take a second look at the absurdity they have wrought.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Hopeless Naiveté

In recent weeks the question has been asked many times.  Pundits on both the left and right have wondered aloud if president Barack Obama is pursuing his Syrian policy because he is utterly naïve.  Most answer that at least in part this seems to be true.

My question is, why did it take them so long to discover this?  Barack Obama’s foreign policy has borne the mark of inexperience since before he began running for president.  Right from his first moments on the national stage he has been advocating guileless solutions to difficult problems.

Recall that this was the man who wanted to bring the Iranian mullahs to reason by the simple expedient of sitting down and talking with them.  Once they realized that he was prepared to respect their interests, they would obviously cease being belligerent.

This was also the man who went on an apology tour through Muslim lands to reach out the hand of friendship.  Here too he believed that once people who mistakenly distrusted us realized we no longer had aggressive intentions, they would embrace us as fellow human beings.

Obama likewise seriously advocated reducing our atomic weapon stockpile to nearly nothing in the expectation that this would set a good international example.  Other nations would be so impressed by our sincerity that they too would dismantle their nuclear programs.

But Obama’s naiveté was not confined to foreign policy.  It also permeated his domestic initiatives.  After all, this was the man who gave us a trillion dollar stimulus in order to jump-start the economy.  That it was loaded with pork for his political cronies somehow escaped his attention.

But then he argued that these funds would get out into the economy to do the job because they featured “shovel-ready” projects.  Folks on the other side of the aisle warned that this was not true, but he scoffed at them for being obstructionists.  Then, when shovel-ready turned out not to be shovel-ready, he merely laughed off the inconvenience.

And, of course, there is the ObamaCare debacle.  The president’s “affordable care act” was supposed to supply quality medical services to tens of million more people while simultaneously lowering costs and making zero changes in the medical insurance programs that were functional.

This too turned out to be an adolescent mirage.  As, needless to say, were the president’s promises to cut the deficit in half by eliminating waste and fraud, and to make the government more transparent by opening its internal operations to public scrutiny.

But the real mystery is why have the American people been so naïve as to swallow this grab bag of unsophisticated misadventures.  Remember, it has been less than a year since they re-elected Obama after having experienced four years of inflated gobbledygook and economic stagnation.

Why specifically didn’t young people notice that there were fewer jobs available to them when they graduated college?  Forced to return to their childhood bedrooms, just as Paul Ryan warned, weren’t they mature enough to connect the dots and realize that Obama’s policies had something to do with this?

And why didn’t women appreciate the fact that free contraceptives did not compensate for having to postpone marriages and families because these were too costly to manage during what was turning out to be The Great Recession?

As for minority members, their love affair with a Black president was understandable, but could they not recognize that they were paying dearly for their loyalty?  As the first to be fired and the last to be hired, they were falling further behind their fellow citizens with each passing day.

Childishness can be charming when exhibited by children.  When, however, a president and those who voted for him manifest it, it can be frightening.  In this case, it places the rest of us in mortal danger—both at home and abroad.  Growing up is apparently difficult, but a nation converted into a romper room is in deep trouble.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Complete Nonsense

I was going to lambast Barack Obama for his latest silly proposal for improving higher education.  Somehow in between the Syrian Crisis and the ObamaCare debacle, he found time to take a bus trip during which he proposed to make a college education available to all by lowering costs and raising quality.

This was yet another example of our president’s free lunch mentality, but I soon found it topped by a local example of political vacuity.  It was only upon receipt of a memo updating Kennesaw State University’s fiscal situation that I realized how absurd were Georgia’s plans for higher education.

Governor Nathan Deal is promoting a policy called “Complete Georgia.”  This is theoretically designed to increase the completion rates for those attending the state’s colleges, but it really seems to stand for “complete nonsense.”

Deal tells us that he wants to see the percentage of Georgians obtaining a post high school education rise from 42% to 60%, while at the same time improving the quality of what they learn.  Why, presumably, should any Georgians be left behind?  Don’t they all deserve to be winners?

Despite what appears to be the governor’s generous impulse, there is a very good why.  In fact, there are several of them.  To begin with, not everyone is college material.  Not everyone has the intelligence or the motivation to benefit from a genuine college education.

People who believe in social justice poo-poo this observation.  They, along with traditional Marxists, believe that accomplishment is solely a matter of preparation.  Everyone, they assume, has equal potential.  The difference is merely in how they are brought up.  Provide all with equal advantages and all will turn out equally well.

However, since not all families are equally competent at raising their children, the state must correct any deficiencies by providing the appropriate schooling.  It doesn’t matter whether their homes are mad-houses or their neighborhoods are snake pits, teachers are expected to do magic.

To date, we have seen how well this has worked in K-12.  Now this strategy is to be applied at the university level.  As a result, we certainly can’t allow students to drop out.  Nor must we challenge them with materials above their IQ levels.  This might be a tragic blow to their self-confidence.

Not long ago I was told about Graduate students at a Georgia college (not KSU) who objected to the lessons they were taught on the grounds that they were too intellectually demanding.  They believed that as “customers” of higher education, they should only be asked to do what made them feel comfortable.

The point is that if we are to have higher education for all (i.e., 60%), the only way to achieve this is by lowering standards.  Like it or not, we cannot expand our university programs to include everyone without lowering quality.  To conclude otherwise is specious reasoning and/or an egregious form of wishful thinking.

For political reasons, both Deal and Obama are trying to sell their constituents on the idea that we can all be Chiefs without anyone having to be an Indian.  They appeal to our vanity—or perhaps our kindness—with visions of everyone climbing to the top of the social ladder.

Although I understand this instinct from the neo-socialist Barack Obama, I am mystified when it comes from a Republican office holder.  What is even stranger is that at the very time Deal is demanding state colleges live up to this fantasy objective, his government is cutting their financing.

Hasn’t anyone in the capital learned math?  Don’t they know that doing more with less doesn’t add up?  Nor did their lessons in psychology take if they believe that everyone is equally talented and uniformly dedicated.

About all they seem to have learned is how to make promises that cannot be fulfilled.  Sadly, it will be the students they seduce who take the biggest hit.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Land of the Weak; Home of the Losers

You’ve probably heard the news.  The Cato Institute found that in many states people can earn more money from government welfare programs than they can if they take a paying job.  Evidently in Hawaii a family of four can make the equivalent of sixty thousand per annum on the dole.

What you may not be aware of is that this underestimates the amount of money the poor have available.  When, several decades ago, the sociologist Christopher Jencks decided to study the “out-go,” as opposed to income, of the underprivileged, he found that they spent almost twice as much as they theoretically earned.

How, you may ask, is this possible?  The answer is that not every dollar received came in over the table.  Nor were all of them legal.  Many even came from friends and relatives.  This then explained all that “bling” and those large-screen TVs.

Once upon a time Americans took pride in their “can-do” abilities.  Prepared to meet virtually any challenge, they assumed they could do whatever needed doing.  Was there a continent to be tamed?  They were ready to take it on.  Could they construct a rocket to the moon?  No sweat!

But now we seem to regard ourselves as a nation of weaklings.  We require someone else—preferably Uncle Sam—to take care of us.  The question is not what we are going to build—our president has already assured us that we do not personally build anything—but how we are going to divvy up the spoils.

Ours, we have heard over and over again, has become a dependency, or some say, an entitlement culture.  The issue is what will we be given, not what will we achieve.  He or she who can persuade the federal government to cough up the most loot is the winner in this race to the bottom.

In fact, winners must win.  They must take on difficult tasks and succeed in accomplishing them.  Only then do they deserve the respect that has traditionally been accorded victors.  Otherwise they are losers—no matter how loudly they crow about deserving the best.

Despite this, millions of Americans apparently feel too weak succeed on their own.  They whine, and wail, and gnash their teeth about how unfair life is and demand that the winners be taken down a peg or two.

Not long ago our national motto was “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” whereas today it is more accurately “the land of the weak and the home of the losers.”  It isn’t that we do not boast millions of young people prepared to defend our freedoms; rather it is that the protesters and lay-abouts are currently setting the national agenda.

Still, when I ask my students at Kennesaw State University how many of them aspire to be losers, not a single arm goes up.  On the other hand, when there is reading to be done or papers to be written, a large proportion look for the easy way out.  As long as they can pass a course, they do not worry about passing with flying colors.

Plainly, hard work is for chumps.  Nevertheless, as Malcolm Gladwell observed in his book Outliers, truly successful people dedicate years of concerted effort to becoming good at what they do.  Because they want to win, they devote themselves to becoming strong enough to prevail.

We must never forget that if our objective is for everyone to do equally well, we must set standards everyone can meet.  That means we must become a nation of less than mediocrities.  Because half of us are always below average, this half can only be accommodated by very low benchmarks.

The truth is that not everyone can win; yet if we are to be a nation of winners, we must both work at it and acknowledge those who come out on top.  The false God of victory for all merely ensures defeat for all.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University