The Education Con Game

Maybe it is just time for me to leave school, but this is how my school seems to be engaged in an elaborate con game.  The only reason that it doesn't violate ethical standards is because the con is so transparent.  This game is a con in the original sense--establish and maintain confidence in the institution.  

The con isn't one-sided though.  Really, it's more of a mutual exploitation at all levels--undergrads, grads, researchers, professors, and headliners.  The deal is you get access to the elite school brand to splash around your resume, your conference, your paper, your business card.  The elite brand will make some pretty rigorous demands of you, but it won't demand as much as outsiders think.  In general, it is a very easy life.  You live in great housing with outstanding facilities with your friends that the administration has already certified with a base level of intelligence ability to jump through academic hoops.  

The administration is sitting on billions in an endowment that is kept away from the tax man and chooses which slightly used buildings to demolish in order to make way for a new gleaming glass and steel altars to the modern education gods.  Undergrads spend their lunches and dinners enthralled by conversations about how busy everyone is.  Non-PhD grads are the cash cows--two years, get them in and out, let undergrads take their classes to feel special, include a high proportion of foreigners who you can totally stiff on financial aid.  Don't worry, their governments are probably funding them anyway and they will splash that elite brand all over the world for you.

Professional schools are basically in a game of roulette--screen for well connected people, let them group together under the elite brand, and eventually some will rise to the top.  Then hit those CEOs for another $400MM business school addition.  Basically, they are the vanity license plates of the billionaire crowd.  If they don't have money, then at least provide a revolving door back to Washington or Wall St.  Even treasury secretaries need to have a believable stamp on their resume to justify the time they are taking off.    

PhD students fall into two camps--humanities and sciences.  Humanities, generally, get screwed.  They will throw you $20k a year to live on, maybe.  Suffer through 7 years here and then go teach at a community college in Ohio.  Sciences have it better, sort of.  Headliner professors (the ones with Nobel potential) try to construct a profitable little fiefdom--try to lure a lot of smart people who come with outside funding.  Accept some people you will have to fund, but don't let them graduate too quickly.  You will get a lot more bang for your buck out of an 8th year PhD student than a 2nd year n00b.  Hire a lab manager to oversee all of your minions.  But your own mini brand on grant proposals--your research days are over, your job is to make it rain $100 bills and play golf on conferences.  

But the administration does such a good job branding, that applicants at every level fall all over themselves to be cannon fodder for the self-preserving system.  Really, it seems sort of ridiculous.  Education prices have outpaced inflation by almost double for more than twenty years.  

But here I am attending a school propped up by federal research money, seated on a tax-free perpetual endowment, that charges me fees that need to be paid for with unbankruptable debt that is also backstopped by the federal government.  That's all fine.  My job is to go around and exploit my affiliation with this school to the greatest extent possible.  Hey everyone, haven't you seen the marketing?  I went to awesome, therefore I am awesome.