The college conundrum: Camille Paglia on the $160,000 question: is college really worth it?

Interview, Sept, 2003 by Camille Paglia

INGRID SISCHY: September is when people go back to school. Even if one has been out of school for years, somehow in September there's a mood forever. In keeping with the season, I'd like to get your thoughts on college education in America, Many people assume that college is required to get ahead and have a career. What do you think? Is college really necessary in 2003?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: In a word, no! The U.S. media have been totally irresponsible in failing to pursue the scandal of skyrocketing college costs over the past 20 years. It's bankrupting middle-class families and forcing young people through a rigid structure that was created only after World War II. My 1960s' generation was far more rebellious about college as the alleged gateway to all future happiness. There's no rationale for this automatic mad funneling of people through such an expensive process--especially since it often proves culturally empty. If you're planning to be a surgeon or an aeronautical engineer (or a ceramicist or dancer, as at the University of the Arts, where I teach), of course you need technical foundation courses in those fields. But general liberal-arts education is no longer what it was, and has become a huge scam. Can anyone honestly say that humanities graduates from the elite schools, with their obscene price tags, are showing a higher level of creativity in the arts and letters or in popular culture? Absolutely not! In fact, we're seeing dwindling knowledge and declining skills.

IS: What's the average price per year of a college education today?

CP. Tuition in the Ivy League is around $28,000, with room and board averaging $8,000. This is without books, lab fees, or anything else. So that's $40,000 per year, A family putting two kids through four years of college is laying out hundreds of thousands of dollars.

IS: Why is it so expensive? Is it that star professors are demanding big salaries?

CP: At the elite schools, even entry-level assistant professors are highly paid. What's partly draining the budget is the bureaucracy of administrations. Since the '60s, there's been an incredible expansion and proliferation of administrative positions--deans, assistant deans, and their staffs. Administrators at large universities sometimes view faculty as a lesser order of beings, mere children with their petty ideological disputes. And in a crunch, administrators can liquidate whole programs and departments.

IS: What about tenure? Wasn't it intended to ensure the faculty academic freedom?

CP: Tenure, which guarantees a teacher lifetime employment, was originally designed to protect the faculties of state universities from political intrusion by conservative state governments. Unfortunately, tenure has led to the ossification of American education. The hiring, promotion, and tenure system has institutionalized sycophancy toward those in power. At the elite schools, furthermore, two published books are required for promotion even to an associate professorship.

IS: The old "publish or perish" idea.

CP: Right. Faculty should be professionally active, but this pressure to grind out useless books simply diverts energy from teaching.

IS: So why do parents and students keep putting up this kind of money?

CP: People are too servile toward brand names. When I was in college in the '60s, people were dropping out all the time--they'd go live in a commune, move to San Francisco, or travel in Europe or India. People's attitude was that you educated yourself. Yes, some of your learning happened in class, but just as much came from your own reading and bull sessions. Today every family should consider whether the money going for astronomical college fees wouldn't be better used to allow the child to travel the world or to give him or her a year or two off to pursue independent interests or just get a job. There should be a bigger break between high school and college because the college grind has horribly infiltrated the high school experience. It's all about prepping for the SATs and getting into the "best" school. The competition has so accelerated over the past 15 years that getting into elite colleges has taken control of people's lives. My generation didn't suffer this sickness. I went to a public university--the State University of New York at Binghamton--and got a superb education at a bargain-basement price. Boy, did my mind expand in college!

IS: I know a lot of kids in college right now who say they never see their teachers, only the graduate students who lead the courses.

CP: Harvard is notorious for that. At many large schools, a student's only contact with big-name teachers is in lecture halls where they read the same lecture they've been giving for 10 years. What's the point of that? Why not just put the damned lecture on the Web and let the students read it when they want? Smaller, residential campuses have more intimate classes, but what you get there is an oppressive, infantilizing, PC environment. Parents are paying for a beautiful, resort-like campus with all the amenities--everything to make the student feel it's just an extension of his or her middle-class living room. British universities have big lectures by famous dons, but it's up to the students to decide whether to go or not. And then they meet with a tutor every week to read aloud a paper they've prepared. Independent reading is the basis of education: You're expected to educate yourself--to go to the library and to learn how to debate and discuss.