This might be the next bubble. College tuition is fed by student loans but they are getting close to the limits of what will be tolerated.

Certainly a timely topic.

If you want to see what one poor, cash-strapped institution of higher learning is doing to scrape by, you can check out this article:

"Harvard Signs On to a New Line of Upscale Clothing": After trying for years to overcome its elitist image, Harvard is in a deal to promote a line of clothing that only the elite can afford.
(http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/fashion/06harvard.html?scp=2&sq=harvard&st=cse)

Next up: the Harvard line of weight loss products and the Harvard 10-in-1 vegetable dicer.

Yes it's cheap, and on the other end of the wireless connection is a lower paid, more overworked Ph.D. or M.A. trying to make a living as a scholar. Straightout cheap labor model here and nothing more. If the student is logging on with 100 or more (1,000?) others for the same prof's attention they are going to get a smaller cut of that time. Undoubtedly it's better than nothing, but it's worse than what we could offer if we did for universities what we can't seem to do for healthcare; i.e., reign in the administrative skimmers and put dollars into teachers and classrooms.

Meanwhile we need research, which is what universities do, and we need it to happen at more places than the Ivy League. A democratic society spreads knowledge, an authoritarian one hoards it. Online courses look like the former but eventually, by eroding the knowledge-generating side of higher ed, they create the latter.

I take it all back, of course, if the on-line educorps start tenuring their faculty, keeping their class size small, and giving them time to read and write.

Gee, I've been trying to explain to my daughter that going away to college and living in a dorm is the only way to get the real college experience.

Am I missing something? You can't fake this stuff.

Am I missing something?

That college is nominally about getting an education and not a "cultural experience"?

This is an example of how debased higher education has become in this country. Real education is among the lowest of our priorities with regard to colleges and universities. We place higher importance on things like athletics, an empty credentialism that reflects only a half-hearted attempt at vocational preparation, college as a rite of passage, and research. Actually learning things is almost an afterthought.

There is no more reason that a two or four year undergraduate education be intimately associated with scientific research than there is that high school education be associated with scientific research. For the most part, our great research universities are not our best undergraduate schools—in many ways, they're among the worst.

Even at the graduate level, the association between research and education is problematic, though more justified. The biggest problem is that the need for cheap, skilled labor for research hugely conflicts with the educational mission. Specifically, we are training far, far more people to advanced degrees in most fields than will ever find appropriate jobs simply because research universities rely upon grad students as their primary source for skilled labor.

There's almost as much myopia about our higher educational system in the US as there is about health care. In both cases, that we're the best at a few things has led people to wrongly conclude that we're the best in most things. In higher education, what we're the best at is in scientific research. Insofar as good research opportunities provide for good graduate-level educational opportunities, we're pretty good at that, as well. But our undergraduate education is mediocre, at best, and often below that of the other developed nations. We badly need a true vocational education system—but as we don't have one, our vocational preparation of workers is terrible, by the standards of other developed nations.

I have a hard time believing that the US's research system, as advanced and mature as it is, wouldn't quickly adjust to radical changes in the higher educational system. Research might temporarily suffer, but it will recover. Meanwhile, education itself will only get better once it is divorced from these competing institutional missions.

With the growing potential for open-source textbooks, and all the possibilities for networked organization via the Internet, Straightline may find itself eaten alive by its inability to compete with "free and open source" alternatives organized on a P2P basis.

We can add another proprietary culture corpse to the pile, along with publishing, software, and music.

I don't really understand the point of tenure myself. Students can't afford the current model and it's because Professors are unbelievably pampered (at public institutions and certain public ones).

One example I heard today: A professor buys $3.50 pens with the department budget because that's what he likes to use to grade papers.

Dear MNPundit,

I assume you are serious in your comment about unbelievably pampered professors.

I would like to request further information about the $3.50 pens story. Which institution and department?

It certainly does not sound like the situation I am familiar with here in Oregon. When I joined my Department 12 years ago, the Department provided pens (Bic & Pentel, I think - nothing in the $3.50 price range), ruled notepads, and printer paper to a professor or lab, somewhat as necessary. They were considered 'tools of the trade', I suppose, crucial for the University mission in teaching and research.

Those practices ended a few years ago. Notepads and printing paper are now out-of-pocket or research grant expenses. I'm not sure about the pens, though. I buy my own, by the box at OfficeMax or Staples. I do usually avoid the cheapest kind of pen - does that make me pampered?

I'm sure that 'unbelievably pampered' means different things to different folks, and I'd like to hear some examples of what kind of treatment or lifestyle you put in this classification. I have no illusions in believing that the professor lifestyle is one of the toughest in the world, but, on the other hand, I certainly wouldn't consider it close to 'pampered' ...

I've been in academia all my adult life (I'm 54). The only "pampered" university faculty I've encountered are those who bring in most of their salary and benefits from extramural sources. IOW, the university isn't paying much for the "pampering" and is enjoying the positive externality of having a recognized strength in research. The "pampering" comes from the awareness that many research faculty could make more money in the private sector. At medical schools, more and more faculty are moving to the private sector for that reason.

In my experience, the "pampered" faculty idea is largely a myth. Look around: all the leading colleges and universities have tenure, and all the colleges and universities that don't have tenure are in the second and third tier. If tenure were a barrier to a successful business model, it would be the other way around.

It's worth pointing out that for the largest research universities, a large fraction of their operating expenses are paid for by income from their endowments. The institutions whose business models will be most affected by online education are the community colleges, whose whole purpose is to deliver education. Few, if any, faculty at community colleges are tenured, and none are "pampered."

But it could be disastrous for universities' ability to provide the goods besides student instruction for which we depend on them.

This is a silly overreaction. Those goods have tremendous value, and so people will continue to pay for them. On the other hand, a little bit of competition never hurt anyone, and if there are more low-cost alternatives in the marketplace, the traditional institutions might have to think harder about how to provide the same value they provide now, but at somewhat lower prices.

If you don't think there is any inefficiency and waste in the management of institutions of higher education, I encourage you to do more research.

The sole meaningful role of public education at the grade school thru college level is to provide an adequately trained work force for corporate America.

There is nothing wrong with making education of the masses as cheap as possible. It is good that higher education becomes priced out of reach of the unwashed masses. An online skill level training process will be an excellent alternative and should help avoid increasing taxes that we, the wealthy job creators of our country, have to pay.

A major contraction of public higher education facilities will be welcomed. For those of means, the Ivy League and other institutions will continue in existence to provide the breadth of education and experience that should be reserved for our elites. Other higher education institutions will continue in their existence to provide the appearance of educating the masses and to provide their sports entertainment functions.

MNPundit is obviously repeating some right-wing meme about academia intended to reinforce the propaganda that academics are leftist elitists who are out-of-touch with the realities of everyday American experience.

I'd guess that the average American, left and right alike, hugely overestimate the pay of university faculty and possibly underestimate the pay of university administration. If only they knew how poorly even tenured professors are paid, relative to equivalently credentialed workers in industry.

It's not educators' salaries which are driving the faster-than-inflation rise of tuition.

This is hardly a new idea--online courses are just an extension of correspondence courses. The idea has been around for well over a century, and it's never gained that much traction.

Why? Because students aren't actually going for the course, they are going for the lifestyle experience. Sure, if you need a very specific kind of certification, this kind of course can work, but it's already available now, and it has zero bearing on what most students do at four year colleges.

The cost of college tuition is driven primarily by the need to provide students with a "lifestyle" experience sufficient to build the brand loyalty needed to get them to donate as alums. You can't get that sitting at the laptop at home

If you believe that personal interaction with a teacher is useless, then of course a cheap internet model will seem attractive. This is the functional equivalent of learning by reading books, and there are some things where that is a useful mode of operation.

However, if you actually think that professors add value by being able to answer questions and talk to students, then you're going to find that internet college courses are sub-par. And, to be blunt, they are. You're not going to get the deep understanding of your major subject, or be talked through material you find confusing, if you're being self-taught.

I'm sure we'll get the usual collection of bitter ex and current academics, as well as the know-nothings, who will go on about how great of an idea this is. This model already exists, and the resulting degrees are correctly perceived as second class.

Frank Zappa said, "Quit school, go to the library, educate yourself."

Einstein, Edison-and a bunch of others- pretty much were self educated.

If you feel the need for the 'university experience', go to any big lecture hall, slip in the door, take a seat in the back, and LISTEN. . .

check out schools like National Technological University which is part of Walden University now. It is online and is much less expensive than traditional university

To the commenters who know of the one prof who goldbricked and who think that research and tenure are irrelevant to good teaching: first go check the salaries for faculty and compare them to other professions that require a 5-7 year post-graduate training. What a life university profs have compared to medical docs, lawyers, and MBAs, who by the way goose their employers for way more than a nice pen.

Tenure, why would you want that? It's less an issue of academic freedom question, which is thoroughly compromised, than it is a question of job security in a field with a very tight labor market. It is the same thing as a union contract that protects seniority. If you can't see why that matters there's no common ground for discussion.

Research. Think of it this way. You have two doctors you can see about the pain in your neck. The first one has not read a medical journal, gone to conference, talked to a colleague, or otherwise learned anything new about treating necks since they left med school in 1979. The second, has done all of that.

It's not about making first year undergrads lab scientists but rather about teaching them the latest discoveries. The greatness of the American research system is what gets diluted when more and more people trained to do research and teach just teach and never have the time to learn what's changing in their field. They teach out of date material to students who are poorer for the experience. It's not a zero-sum game between research and teaching. It's the same game.

University professors are the only "professional" class who have seen their standard of living (wages + benefits) decline over the last generation. Everyone else at high ed levels (lawyers, doctors, corporate execs, etc.) have seen big increases. This is not about "pampered" profs. Rising costs at state schools have much more to do with declining public sector investment, as states have balanced their budgets on the backs of colleges.

Be wary of the argument that higher ed can only "advance" through deregulation and radical marketization. This is the same argument that brought us AIG, Lehman, the S & L mess, and the American health care fiasco. Teaching is a profession. Education is more than a credential. The dream of college for $99 a month is the Music Man's pitch. As the Simpsons paraphrased, "Monorail!"

As several posters have already pointed out, there is a hell of a lot more to instruction than just information distribution. If your college education was just about lecturers, you should get your money back. Online education is just an automated form of correspondence school. This works fine for some people, but there is a substantial body of pedagogical research why this is not a general solution.

Even the successful "online" universities are anything but. U of Phoenix is VERY people intensive with physical campuses to support discussion groups and other activities.

"It's not what you knmow, it's who you know."

That, in a nutshell, is what "higher education" is all about. Whether it is Skull and Bones at Yale, or Tappa Keg at State U, contacts made in college are the first steps on any sucessful career.

It is a college degree-of any sort- that separates the wheat from the chaff, the cab driver from the passenger in the back seat. . .

Going to college online sounds like watching movies online. You can do it, you may get the point, and if it is a crappy movie it may not make much of a difference, but you sure aren't getting the experience of watching it properly presented in a movie theatre.

This is a very old idea. All that's changed is the technology. It used to be called "correspondence courses," and used paper, ink, and the mail service. And it worked quite well -- as long as student numbers were low enough to let the instructor give every student personal attention. My university offers on-line courses, and they are popular and successful, but we still have to cap enrollment.

The fact is that there's no magical solution for providing the education that students need. My faculty, unfortunately, is currently on strike because even though our university is in exceptionally good financial shape, the administration sees a golden opportunity to gut tenure and faculty governance in the name of fiscal responsibility. This is the same university that just gave its president a 40% raise, a hefty raise to other administrators, and continues to pour good money after bad by maintaining two money-losing golf courses, which are apparently more important than an arts building or a language lab.

MN, I don't know where that guy works who buys $3.50 pens on the department dime, but at my institution, we have had to paint our own offices for years. Technically we're not supposed to do it, but they'd charge our department budget $700 that we can't afford to have it professionally done, and we don't want our new faculty members to be greeted by stained walls and chipped paint.

The university provides us with computers, but only the CPU and monitor. I bought my own printer and mouse. The CPU was a cheap off-brand that refused to boot one fine day, and spent the next three months at the repair shop, where the technicians finally determined that "a few ones and zeros were in the wrong places" in the programming of the hard drive. During that time, I did all my class preparations on my own laptop, and the monitor that I couldn't use was the only piece of computer equipment in my office that I hadn't bought myself.

The problem with these types of articles is that they are written by people who have (a) no knowledge of basic pedagogical theory, (b) no understanding of what a professor actually does for a living (it isn't just about classroom time), or (c) how universities are actually run as a business. Which is why all the academics just roll their eyes.

It is as if someone who believed in bodily humors wrote an article about the health care debate.

Here are a just a few things to keep in mind:

(a) At a small liberal arts university, the average faculty is paid less than the average public high school teacher. Furthermore, at these schools tenure is based entirely on education, and so they are often places within innovative teaching that cannot be replaced with online courses.

(b) At universities where professors are paid a lot, tuition is not the major revenue source for the university. It is research grants and endowment. Tenure at these universities is typically determined by your ability to pull in research grant money; teaching is a secondary objective.

I've taught both on-line and in classrooms and, while you can do a decent job on-line, it is just not the same or as good as in the classroom. I wouldn't want my own kids to have an on-line "college education" and I rather doubt people planning these programs and reading about them would.

Everyone else at high ed levels (lawyers, doctors, corporate execs, etc.) have seen big increases.

You don't know any doctors if you believe this. In California, most medical groups are insolvent. Doctors' incomes have steadily declined as reimbursement has declined. Medicare now pays from 10% to 20% of billed charges. That is one reason why many doctors are choosing alternatives like "retainer" practices.

The article assumes, incorrectly, that the purpose of universities is purely education. But the value of top-tier universities is more for their signaling mechanism ("our students are the smartest and hardest working") than for the knowledge they impart, the most valuable of which is provided on the job - whether that job is in the corporate world or doing some specialized research.

If you make universities cheap enough to become available to everyone, their value will decline commensurately.

Wow Mike K if being a doctor is such an onerous profession that costs more than it pays then why don't they all just quit and do something else like work in a cubicle in a 20 story office hive somewhere.
Besides that I don't know or even know of any poor doctors, I don't see any of them driving beaters or living in crummy houses.
I have a number of doctors in my family and guess what? None of them are poor or even middle class.
Your basically full of shit.

There are certainly some subject areas and classes that might not suffer too much from being taught on-line. I'm thinking here particularly of those big intro/survey lecture classes.

But a lot of learning is very hands-on, especially when you get to any level above absolute beginner. It's one thing to take a intro to biology class on-line, another thing to learn your way around a lab (how I struggled to get good cross-sections for my botany slides!), or to learn how to go out into say, a forest, and make observations, take samples, etc.

Some other examples of learning that require you are there in person:
* any kind of arts studio, be it visual, music, dance or drama (a little drama training by the way, is great for anyone who is planning to do any sort of public speaking in their career, including but not limited to, sales and teaching).
* architecture. The architecture students I knew were always building models.
* I don't know much about the various sorts of engineering, but I assume structural engineers also make models, materials engineers must work in labs with various materials, and so on.
* time spent overseas, to really learn another language, and really understand another culture.
* intern-type experience, including but not limited to, things like student teaching
* learning how to work in groups through group projects. A lot of the "real world" requires you to work and negotiate with others. It's well known that most people who have trouble keeping their careers on even keels are those who have problems fitting in. Some practice doing so can be very valuable.

I'm sure others who have more experience in different fields than mine (which have been social services and education) would have many other examples of the sorts of learning experiences that require you to be there, and not in front of a computer screen.

Mike K, if you doubt what I said above about income levels, just check the census data (or Wiki), which show (a) that profs make a small fraction of what physicians make and (b) that while physicians have seen income going up for decades, profs are basically flat (negative 1% in one study I read recently). I know a lot of doctors, and they all make a hell of a lot more than all the profs I know.

Much good discussion here, but I'd add to the list of subjects you can't adequately replicate on line: science (labs), education, liberal arts. Sure, you can replace a large freshman lecture class or a business admin seminar, but those classes also help pay the bills for everybody else in traditional universities. Take those away, and everything else (everything more vital) will suffer. Phoenix isn't doing students a lot of favors. Their 6-year grad rate for the strictly on-line operation is 4% (!!!).

I'd also stress the political angle here. As a few GOP posters above indicate, much of the on-line movement is driven by a simplistic contempt for universities and teaching generally. Higher ed helps train for the job market, but it has always had another, more noble calling: the cultivation of critical thinking, reasoned analysis, and civil discourse. These are the very things today's GOP seeks to kill. Not surprisingly, people with higher levels of education tend to vote Dem at much higher rates. Not because they're being indoctrinated, but because they're encountering a world bigger than their own pocketbook. Let doctors and lawyers make their inflated incomes. But don't tell me that the universities have to go corporate because greedy profs are standing in the way of profitability.

I was never a great student, so take with the grain of salt. But among my professors, from community college to a first-tier public university (University of Texas if anyone cares), I was unable to detect any relation between how well I comprehended the course materials, and the quantity and quality of that instructor's research.

Shorter: if we had two entirely separate career tracks in academia, one for instuctors (for whom pedagogy would be a much larger portion of their training) and one for researchers, I'm not sure that would be a bad thing for the students (nor is it immediately obvious that the effect on research would be bad).

All these comments have merit, but they really are pretty elitist.
Most people have to work AND go to school. Most people can't afford the $20 or $30 thousand a year for brick and mortar. Single mothers, new immigrants, the poorer segments of the society. Rural people.
Who wants to start adult life fifty to a hundred thousand in debt? My niece is still paying off loans 10 years after graduation.
Sheesh. You are talking about denying higher education to many people, just because on-line teaching ISN'T HOW YOU WERE TAUGHT. It may not be perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better THAN NO EDUCATION AT ALL.
Doesn't mean it can't be improved. Doesn't mean that ALL courses are on-line. Our community college offers the basics on-line, but hands on for the more advanced stuff.
And what about the argument that lack of education is the major impediment to our competitiveness in the world? What about getting people a better standard of living?
This sounds more like 'I've got mine, so f--k you.'
Give me a break. No, give THEM a break.

I actually teach college classes (a state college) online, and I'm all for it. However, I don't think it's as good an education as you'd get in-person (I also teach in-person classes, the very same courses, so I do have a basis for comparison). Online courses are great if that's all you can get (like the student I had who had just had twins a month earlier-- obviously she couldn't get to campus that semester). But we need to do some work, I think, to improve online classes, to restore the individuality of the teaching (many courses are quite standardized, and teachers pretty much become grading machines).

It's a good option, but sometimes necessity trumps quality, I'm afraid. It's been really important for those in the military, those who would otherwise not be able to attend college at all. I've had students deployed in Iraq the last couple years. I'd love to make these classes more real, more powerful, but the desire to standardize is too great. Oh, well. Teaching online is a whole lot less work for the same pay, and no, that's not actually what I personally want, but I haven't much to say about it!

MNpundit, really, that's not what's happening. College professors are paid considerably less than equally trained workers in other professions (so much less that a tenure-track professor somewhere like Berkeley probably can't afford even to rent a house-- she's lucky to afford a 1BR apt in Berkeley). And of course, up to half of class hours are taught by adjuncts who might (if they're lucky) get $10 an hour and no benefits. (I don't even get a desk-- I get an hour a week at a desk and my very own file drawer, which is emptied at the end of every semester.)

In fact, far from getting $3.50 pens, most professors (and all adjuncts) are limited to a certain number of photocopies every course, and end up paying for some material themselves. I think there was a golden age of university teaching, but it was long ago. The tuition increases every year don't go to faculty-- most of it seems to be going into building new buildings and upgrading technology.

So no, professors just aren't "pampered". And the trick to solving the education access problem isn't making even more of us into $1666/section robots. (That's what I get paid per section. It works out to $8.86 an hour. I get no benefits. Is that pampered? You tell me.)

Engineering and Children.

Kevin Carey lumps Engineering in with Business, Nursing, and Education as the big four vocational college subjects. This is a mistake. The prestige degree in Business is the MBA, the route to CEO-dom, and the traditional best preparation for the MBA is an engineering degree. The content of the MBA is substantially the same as that of the undergraduate Business degree, albeit covered in two years of hard work instead of four years of undergraduate leisure, so doing both is redundant. The prestige degree in Health Care is the M.D., and the best preparation for medical school is an undergraduate major in biochemistry. The prestige degree in Education, leading to becoming a school superintendent, is the Ed.D., and the best preparation for the Ed.D. program is an academic masters degree (with thesis), following on a liberal arts B.A./B.S. In Education. The path of ambition is to become an administrator, and spend comparatively little time with children. In all three fields, Business, Health Care, and Education, studying the subject as an undergraduate is a career-limiting move. Engineering is different. The prestige degree is the undergraduate degree. There are prestigious undergraduate engineering schools, such as MIT, Caltech, Colorado School of Mines, etc., which have no equivalent in business education, health care education, or teacher education.

Of course, outside of specialized engineering schools, engineering students are very much a minority on most campuses, as rare as serious liberal arts students. There are usually at least twice as many business students.

Engineering schools vary in prestige according to the mathematical preparation of their incoming students. Mathematics is the lingua franca of Physics, and Physics is the lingua franca of Engineering. If one were to imagine what a superlative engineering school would look like, it would graduate students after only two years, half of which would be spent in liberal arts, and this would be possible because the students would have done so much work in high school. Even MIT cannot reach this point because it sits on top of the American high school, and especially the American middle school, which are not set up to teach the more advanced mathematics, even if the students are capable of learning them. A French Lycee is set up to do that kind of thing, and does so, but that is another system. For learning mathematics and related subjects, younger is better, just as it is for foreign languages.

Distance learning is likely to enable end-runs around the high school and middle school. A seventh-grader can start serious study of mathematics with an Indian tutor, working extra time on mathematics and hard science over the summers; pass the AP Calculus, Physics, and Chemistry exams in the tenth grade; and then study Engineering Fundamentals (the equivalent of a B.S. in Classical Physics, rather than Modern Physics, the foundation of engineering school); At present, there isn't a really satisfactory certifying examination, but the student could take the Graduate Record Examination subject tests in both Mathematics and Physics, and perhaps Computer Science. The Fundamentals of Engineering exam (Engineer In Training) would be even more suitable, but permission to take this exam is restricted to enrolled senior engineering students. The student might have to spend an extra six months covering subjects in the GRE Mathematics and Physics exams which are not incorporated in the standard engineering curriculum (eg. quantum physics and modern [abstract] algebra). I might add that all necessary books for this project are available as open-source on the internet. At the same time as all of this, the student would proceed normally through high-school English and Social Studies classes. He would be obviously qualified for admission to engineering school, but the issue would be negotiating advanced placement.

The future engineering student would develop normally enough. The time he spent with his Indian tutor between the ages of twelve and fourteen would be time that he would not be spending on the fringes of the playground, available for bullies to pick on, so he would have rather less in the way of traumatic experiences. The bullies would simply not be aware that he existed. From the ninth grade onwards, I don't know how the high school would choose to handle someone who was obviously overqualified for high-school math courses. I suppose there is a possibility that the student might wind up surreptitiously reading about differential equations while sitting in Algebra I.

A Further Note on Children and Engineering:

There have been some claims that laboratory science cannot be taught by distance-learning. I disagree in part. When I took Freshman Physics Lab, about thirty years ago, I recall using two obviously expensive but versatile pieces of equipment. One was a dual-trace oscilloscope. The other was a laser. We used both instruments over and over again, in various different experiments. The laser didn't do anything a modern ten dollar laser pointer would not do-- it was just bigger, heavier, and more expensive. With respect to the oscilloscope, computers are now fast enough that a cheap little interfacing box will do the work of a whole bunch of specialized oscilloscope-type lab instruments (logic analyzer, waveform generator, etc.). For the lesser items and paraphernalia, there is a firm, Thames & Kosmos, which makes "physics sets" (as in chemistry set). In terms of their prices, five hundred dollars is really a lot of money. All kinds of instruments have gotten cheaper. The great age of Modern Physics was circa 1900 (Rutherford, Einstein, & co.), and the classic experiments were performed with apparatus which is now cheap enough to be children's toys. If you can afford to provide your child with an Indian tutor, you can also afford to fit out a personal and private physics lab. Chemistry labs are a more difficult proposition, because they tend to involve hazardous materials. Physics experiments tend to work at low energy levels. You can demonstrate the laws of motion by launching marbles with a catapult instead of firing a 30-06 rifle. Chemistry, on the other hand tends to involve acids and combustible liquid hydrocarbons. Even the regular high-school chemistry class is losing its experimental component. A good computer simulation program may be as good as what is available in the school.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/chemistry_pr.html

The Real Purpose of College.

All complex societies need marriage marts. Marriage marts assemble suitable young people of the highest local social strata, from over a large area, and enable them to find spouses who are not from their immediate neighborhood, but who are, in essentials, acceptable to their families. This serves certain useful purposes-- it prevents inbreeding, both biological and cultural. In modern America, the marriage mart deals with employment as well, but this is an extension of its function. Very well, various people have observed that colleges are marriage marts (*). There is a standing joke about sending a girl off to college to get her MRS. Of course, there are various strata of marriage arrangements, going on side by side. One can make one kind of marriage in the fraternity/sorority scene, another kind between law school classmates. Rosalind Williams, who teaches humanities at MIT, has observed that MIT is where boy geniuses find business partners for their high-tech startups, ie. where the new Steve Jobs finds the new Steve Wozniak, etc.

(*) See, for example, John Finley Scott, "Sororities and the Husband Game," 1965; reprinted in James P. Spradley and David W. McCurdy, _Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology_, 1971

A marriage mart has to have some kind of organized activities which enable people to get to know each other without putting their cards of the table, without declaring their intentions or making commitments. Within limits, it doesn't matter what those activities are.

This extends to employers. Most employers do not want the kind of person which the college ideally seeks to produce, and could not tolerate such a person if they got one. The large employer wants someone of fairly mediocre academic and/or technical abilities, who will work within the system, a system which is designed to be operated by people of limited abilities. Someone like that will not have the ideas which are appropriate to top management, but top management has no desire to be superseded. The automaker has already decided what kind of automobiles it is going to build. It is not required that a car salesman know anything about engineering, nor about high-performance driving. What is wanted is a glad-handing type who enjoys going to parties, and has the gift of gab, approximately the kind of person a college fraternity produces.