Running head: THE END OF NATHAN HARDEN
The End of Nathan Harden
Mike Breakey
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THE END OF NATHAN HARDEN
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The End of Nathan Harden
The title of Nathan Harden’s article about the future of higher education, The End of the
University as We Know It, is certainly an attention grabber. Before thoroughly examining the
thesis of the article, I thought it appropriate to learn a bit more about the author. Part of the
reason to examine the author came from the fact that Harden uses little in the way of reliable
references in the article. Without many referenced facts or figures, I wanted to determine if the
author was biased, if he was promoting a hidden agenda, and develop a little insight into his
background and thus his theory.
A search of the name Nathan Harden revealed some interesting information. First, from
the Amazon book review page, it describes Harden as “a musician, writer, and commentator on
issues ranging from politics and culture to sexuality and the media” (Amazon, 2013, para. 1).
The Amazon review page was linked to the recent book written by Harden—Sex and God at
Yale: Porn, Political Correctness, and a Good Education Gone Bad. The book begins with one
of the first events of the fall semester—Freshman Screw. Harden writes, “You had better throw
out any ideas you have about self-respect and women’s equality out the window. You are in
Yale’s domain now, an elite domain with its own set of rules and expectations” (Harden, 2012, p.
4). The remainder of the book, as described by Harden himself, is simply a further description of
the events of Sex Week or topical anecdotes that further cultivate the topics from Sex Week
(Harden, 2012). This was not a great start in the search for the author’s bona fides.
Next stop on the trail of the author’s credentials was Nathan’s web page. Amusingly, the
descriptor of the web page lists him as author, musician, and cultural hound—whatever that
means. The limited information on the website did reveal a few of the publications he has
contributed to, along with his academic credentials. According to his site, Harden has
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…written for numerous publications, including National Review, The Weekly Standard,
The American Spectator, The New York Post, and The Washington Times. He is a regular
contributor to The Huffington Post, and he blogs about higher education for National
Review Online. Nathan graduated with a B.A. in Humanities from Yale in May of 2009
(Harden, 2011, para. 1).
To be fair, Harden does contribute to a mix of liberal and conservative sites, however
contributions to the National Review are not as surprising when it is understood that Christopher
Buckley wrote the introduction to Sex and God at Yale. Christopher Buckley is the son of the
National Review founder, William F. Buckley, who interestingly penned an erudite work in 1951
titled God & Man at Yale.
The search exposed an author who has written a single book that deliberately tries to
capitalize on the title of a previous scholarly work. The analogous yet salacious title is no
accident, nor is the inclusion of multiple pornographic anecdotes in Sex and God at Yale—sex
sells. One tale from the chapter 11, Defiant Desires, was apparently worth repeating in the
Foreword of the book, written by Christopher Buckley. The anecdote described a professor
describing a sexual fantasy that included the decapitation of babies and performing acts on their
dead bodies. Sex and God at Yale was not an insightful piece of academic work worthy of any
orientation to William F. Buckley’s 1951 tome but it did highlight the author’s tendency toward
the lurid and shocking.
Suddenly the sensational article about the imminent demise of American colleges, bereft
of any references, made more sense. The End of the University was not written to add to the
body of knowledge—it was written to provoke an emotional response. Although there are
several points worth pondering within the article, the concepts written by Harden must be taken
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with an understanding that provocation and not clarification was the inspiration. With a deeper
understanding of the author’s background and motivation, a look at several salient points from
the article remains a worthwhile exercise.
First, the idea that a shakeup is overdue in higher education—a point of constant
discussion in Higher Education Administration and Leadership class—is worthy of review.
What this seismic shift will do is yet to be determined, yet the idea that it will destroy the
colleges of today (as his title suggests) is missing several key points. While Harden notes,
“changes are threatening to many vested interests,” he ignores the resistance that will surely be
brought to bear if the vast changes he describes are attempted (Harden, 2013, para. 3). In fact,
The End of the University treats the unequivocal demise as a fait accompli.
Although a potential shakeup is certainly a possibility, the resistance to a free, online
college education will likely meet with opposition from those whose livelihood would be
threatened. The educational lobby, while not the most influential lobbying group in Washington,
is not apt to sit idly by as “campus(es)…become…obsolete, tens of thousands of
professors…lose their jobs…bachelor’s degrees...become increasingly irrelevant and ten years
from now Harvard…enroll(s) ten million students” (Harden, 2013, para. 1). In fact,
“contributions from the education industry generally come from the individuals associated with
the field [and] contributions… have consistently increased during the past two decades, with
significantly more cash donated during presidential election years” (LaRussa, 2010, para. 2). A
glimpse at the top 20 schools and their contributions to political parties in 2012 illustrate higher
educations’ involvement in the political process (Figure 1). Perhaps more relevant is a specific
look at the 2012 presidential campaign and the top contributors per candidate (Figures 2 and 3).
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A closer examination of the contributions reveals four of Barack Obama’s top 10 contributors
were universities.
Contributor
1. University of California
Amount
$3,269,915
$2,555,607
2. Harvard University
3. Stanford University
$2,388,033
$1,174,256
4. Columbia University
5. University of Texas
$1,029,502
$723,239
6. University of Pennsylvania
7. University of Washington
$694,286
8. University of Chicago
$689,100
9. University of Michigan
$674,628
10. New York University
$656,013
11. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
$655,647
$652,811
12. Cornell University
13. Georgetown University
$644,690
14. Northwestern University
$587,007
15. University of Maryland
$577,729
16. City University of New York
$571,094
$570,939
17. Yale University
18. University of Wisconsin
$531,102
19. University of Illinois
$528,022
20. Apollo Group
$525,902
Contributions to Democrats
Republicans
Outside Spending Groups
FIGURE 1: Top Political Contributors from Higher Education (2012)—Ivy League bolded
SOURCE: Open Secrets.com (2013).
A second salient point worth examining in reference to the future of colleges in America
is the monetary influence schools have away from the political process, though this monetary
influence probably would be brought to bear in the political realm if needed. Harden mentions
his opinion that “prestigious institutions, especially those few extremely well-endowed
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ones…will be in a position to dominate this virtual, global marketplace [while] all ranks below
the very top will engage…in an all-out war of survival” (Harden, 2013, para. 7). Those
unspecified top universities (he intimates Ivy League and later mentions Harvard and Yale)
apparently will sit atop the academic world while those below the top tier fight to the death in a
gladiatorial battle for academic survival.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
University of California
Microsoft Corp
Google Inc
US Government
Harvard University
Kaiser Permanente
Stanford University
Deloitte LLP
Columbia University
10. Time Warner
$1,212,245
$814,645
$801,770
$728,647
$668,368
$588,386
$512,356
$456,975
$455,309
$442,271
FIGURE 2: Top 10 Contributors to the campaign of Barack Obama (D) (2012)
SOURCE: Open Secrets.com (2013).
Missing from the description of this fight to the death is a list of school endowments and
thus the power they have in the battle for survival. The Ivy League had five of the top 10
schools listed in the 2011 catalog of school endowments, but schools like Notre Dame, Stanford
and even a state school, the University of Michigan, demonstrate deep enough pockets to resist
such a gladiatorial contest (Figure 4). Perhaps this is why the political contribution list (Figure
1) is dominated by large state universities—the Ivy League schools have the endowment funds to
fight for market share should the need arise. In addition, it is interesting that Deloitte LLP
contributed a large sum to both campaigns. Perhaps they were hedging their bets with both
candidates to shore up a position of influence regardless of the eventual winner.
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Another possible impediment in the sprint to low cost enrollment at the most prestigious
universities is the ideas of status and accreditation. Accreditation is noticeably absent from
Harden’s article yet perhaps holds one key to the acceptance and greater use of the massive open
online courses (MOOC). Dr. Keith Devlin, a teacher of a MOOC at Stanford University, offers a
unique perspective on the promise and problems with MOOCs. Devlin, who started a second
MOOC in March 2013 noted several differences in both the students and their purpose for taking
the class. He has noticed they are
typically much older than the traditional college population (median ages seem to be in
the mid-thirties) [and] a great many never intend to complete the course. Rather, their
goal is to sample, in order to get a general sense of a subject or topic. In other words,
they come looking for education. Pure and simple (Devlin, 2011, para. 6).
1. Goldman Sachs
2. Bank of America
3. Morgan Stanley
4. JPMorgan Chase & Co
5. Wells Fargo
6. Credit Suisse Group
7. Deloitte LLP
8. Kirkland & Ellis
9. Citigroup Inc
10. PricewaterhouseCoopers
$1,033,204
$1,013,402
$911,305
$834,096
$677,076
$643,120
$614,874
$520,541
$511,199
$459,400
FIGURE 3: Top 10 Contributors to the campaign of Mitt Romney (R) (2012)
SOURCE: Open Secrets.com (2013).
If a student signs up for a MOOC as an introduction to a topic or as a sampler, the issue
of accreditation does not arise. Given that the MOOC is often used to sample the topic, the 85%
dropout rate is not concerning to Devlin. In fact, “applying the traditional metrics of higher
education to MOOCs is entirely misleading. MOOCs are a very different kind of educational
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package, and they need different metrics—metrics that we do not yet know how to construct”
(Devlin, 2011, para 5).
Understanding the dynamics of MOOC enrollment versus completion undermines the
incomplete analysis of Harden. His statement that MIT has a class on electronics with 120,000
students is correct—yet incomplete. The MIT course on Circuits and Electronics is a robust
class with objectives, learning outcomes, a syllabus, required text, lectures, and several exams
(MIT Open Courseware, 2012). What makes the information meaningful is understanding what
Devlin has noted about MOOCs—that they are often used as an introduction and seldom
completed. Knowing that most students fail to complete the MOOC does not undermine the
value of the course, but it does debunk the 120,000 number Harden tries to use to shock the
reader into believing 120,000 students complete the course.
School name (state)
Harvard University (MA)
Yale University (CT)
Princeton University (NJ)
Stanford University (CA)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Columbia University (NY)
University of Michigan—Ann Arbor
University of Pennsylvania
University of Notre Dame (IN)
Duke University (NC)
FY 2011 Endowment
$32,012,729,000
$19,174,387,000
$17,162,603,000
$16,502,606,000
$9,712,628,000
$7,789,578,000
$7,725,307,000
$6,582,030,000
$6,383,344,000
$5,747,377,000
FIGURE 4: Colleges with Largest Financial Endowments—2011
SOURCE: Katy Hopkins, U. S. News (2012)
Furthermore, the idea that MOOCs “offer a full-blown interactive experience [where]
students can intermingle with faculty and with each other” is disingenuous (Harden, 2013, para.
10). A look at the Circuits and Electronics virtual classroom shows a remarkable number of
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questions that remain unanswered by other students or the professor (MIT Open Courseware,
2012). As a teacher of a basic research class, I shudder at the thought of grading even 1% of a
MOOC of 50,000 students. Either a teacher would be overwhelmed with 500 papers or the
quality of the feedback (perhaps a computer generated grammar check) would be irrelevant.
What is relevant, and what Harden’s incomplete criticism does do, is open a window
opportunity to comment on the importance of university leadership during this era of change and
the enduring importance of higher education. I think the real importance of the reflection
generated by Harden’s article is not to rush to judgment with incomplete facts, but to examine
the root cause behind higher education. In my opinion, one of the pieces missing in his writing is
the concept of improving the students qua citizens coming out of the educational pipeline.
Education, regardless of format, should do more than support topical job skills and must mean
more than a better resume—it must transform so it produces a more educated, responsible, and
aware population.
The idea of a more egalitarian and affordable system (perhaps with MOOCs as part of the
solution) is significant, but it is incomplete. To help round out the picture, it is instructive to
look back at a recent agent of change—the online college. To examine the last generation of
change and what it did to higher education, one place to start is the book Mission Forsaken: The
University of Phoenix Affair with Wall Street by John D. Murphy. John Murphy helped John
Sperling create the University of Phoenix (UPX) in 1976 and served as Senior Vice President for
Institutional Affairs and Academic Vice President for UPX. Murphy (2013) describes the
rationale behind University of Phoenix—to provide a route for non-traditional students to earn a
degree. As unremarkable as this may sound today, Murphy (2013) describes it as “an odyssey of
educational entrepreneurship in a sector of society with a congenital resistance to innovation and
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change” (p. 55). In a sense, Murphy echoes the similar ideas of Christensen and Eyring (2011)
when they rebuke universities for hanging on to outdated and outmoded ideas.
The success of UPX was (and still is) admired and detested by many in academia. I can
give a description of the various responses from those in academia when I tell them I work at
UPX. The reaction is consistently a mix of curiosity, interest, and disgust. Murphy relates the
same reactions while explaining the hardships involved in the struggle to create and maintain
something new—a university designed to “to serve working adult learners, and the diligence of
the hard political will necessary to protect and defend those efforts" (Market Wired, 2013, para.
1).
The UPX saga not only illustrates the resistance to change in higher education, it also
shows the positive and negative aspects of the for-profit model. Murphy (2013) describes the
book as a “cautionary tale of what can happen when the financial values of the corporate world
are applied to the provision of postsecondary education with an outmoded regulatory system" (p.
xviii). This did not occur immediately, and in fact, according to Murphy (2013) UPX suffered
none of the current ills until it abandon the founding principle of serving the adult learner (which
sounds remarkably similar to the altruistic concept of MOOCs described by Dr. Devlin).
Murphy’s point about mission abandonment and decline are evidenced in the charts showing
both declining enrollment numbers and the plummeting stock value of Apollo Group—ticker
symbol APOL (Figures 5 and 6).
The cautionary part of the UPX tale and the lesson that should resonate with educators is
the perversion of the UPX mission. The abandonment of the original mission occurred as Apollo
Group, the parent company that wholly owns UPX, went public. As Murphy relates it, UPX lost
its way when “stock valuations…eclipsed the founding mission of providing education solely for
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working adults” (p. 193). The quest for higher stock price drove the pursuit of more students and
thus the decision to eliminate admissions standards and incentivize enrollment numbers. This
practice has since been repealed due to reports of enrollment malfeasance, resulting in a $67.5
million dollar fine—though no admission of wrongdoing accompanied the payment (ABC News,
2009). Moreover, the money over morals approach that heralded the change in mission can be
seen by looking at the fines against UPX and the loan/retention/graduation rates of the students.
FIGURE 5: UPX Degreed Enrollment since the First Quarter of 2010
SOURCE: United States Securities and Exchange Commission (EDGAR) (2013)
From 1976 “until 1998, the University of Phoenix never received a …reprimand, censure,
or fine [but] between 1999 and 2013, …Apollo Group paid for or are liable for $242 million in
regulatory fines and whistleblower judgments” (Murphy, 2013, p. xiii). When the University of
Phoenix went public, the
…graduation rate stood near 65 %. National student loan default rate was 15%, while at
University of Phoenix it was 5%. After adopting a taxpayer-supported…open admissions
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policy, the graduation rate fell to approximately 33 percent. This never would have
happened when the employers of its working adult students underwrote some or all of the
cost of tuition (Market Wired, 2013, para. 8).
A quick look at the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) shows the dismal results
of the money over morals approach at UPX. The six year graduation rate for the 2003-2004
online UPX campus (I chose online as it is by far the largest enrollment with over 250,000
undergraduates) stands at 5% and the six year graduation rate for the 2005-2006 class stands at
6% (National Center for Education Statistics, 2013).
FIGURE 6: Apollo Group (APOL) 5 Year Stock Price (July 25, 2008 – July 22, 2013)
SOURCE: MSN Money
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What is most distressing is the meager completion rates—really the inability of students
of UPX to complete a degree program when viewed through the lens of who is paying the
ballooning tuition bill. If the students at UPX (or at any school) were failing—and doing so with
their money—it is plausible the concern over such poor retention and graduation rates would be
small. The trouble is UPX now has a 26.7% default rate while approximately 90% of tuition is
paid from federal taxpayer sources (National Center for Education Statistics, 2013). Beyond the
UPX example, the total US student loan debt in “2012 it was $966 billion (Murphy, 22013, p.
220). Worse yet, “Taxpayers are investing more than $30 billion a year into companies that
operate for-profit colleges [and]…among the 15 publicly traded for-profit college companies, the
total of these sources accounts for 86% of revenues” (US Senate on Health, Education, Labor,
and Pensions, 2012, para. 4). The mismatch between funds and results effectively illustrates the
schizophrenic relationship between the mission, the money, and the reason for higher education.
What has developed, and what Harden fails to mention, is higher education has
developed a bifurcated rationale. On one hand, President Obama continues to advocate
education as “an economic imperative that every family in America should be able to afford”
(Obama, 2012, para. 41). On the other hand, college students are “facing very dim employment
prospects, [and] will be struggling with college costs” while mass education and massive
educational aid has “become a kind of political football” (Reich, 2102, para. 4).
The problem is higher education has become a business and the funding of the business
promotes college as a veritable sampler platter of topical knowledge. Students with neither the
aptitude nor attitude to earn a college degree are enticed into a degree program that has little
chance of helping them reach their academic or economic goals. Student results and spiraling
costs be damned, colleges and universities continue unabated in an arms race mentality to entice
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students to attend. Continuous construction of expensive recreational facilities and the
proliferation of degree programs are manifestations of this approach. As one example, the
University of Tennessee, Knoxville offers 170 undergraduate majors in nine different colleges
(The University of Tennessee Knoxville, 2013).
Instead of leading schools to effectively (and frugally) meet their mission—a mission to
“move forward the frontiers of human knowledge and enrich and elevate the citizens of the state
of Tennessee, the nation, and the world,” college is being marketed as an easy path to greater
wealth (The University of Tennessee Knoxville, 2013, para. 1). The simple question of whether
or not the school is meeting its mission should start the evaluation process. Such an evaluation
might show the need to do less construction, offer fewer degree programs, rely less on federal
money (or continuous rate increases), more meticulously determine student capability, and rid
the nation of the concept of college for all.
The end of the university as we know it should start with a painstaking appraisal of the
mission and the ability to accomplish it. Perhaps Charles Murray, the author of several books
about the current secondary educational system, effectively sums up what is missing when he
describes the one word “…missing from these discussions: intelligence. Hardly anyone will
admit it, but education’s role in causing or solving any problem cannot be evaluated without
considering the underlying intellectual ability of the people being educated” (Murray, 2007, para.
2).
Personal experience with undergraduates tells me Murray is correct and that there is a
huge mismatch between the mission of college and the media’s portrayal of college. This
disconnect is aptly demonstrated in the jingle from an Education Connection commercial
“…when I get a degree I will make a bigger salary” (YouTube, 2010). I would rephrase the
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jingle to say if I earn a degree I might make a bigger salary—but that is not the point. Sadly, my
media career would likely end with such a statement. As egalitarian as the President may be, the
ability to educate all—specifically a four-year degree for all—is wasted effort. In fact, the more
the government meddles in higher education, the more the mission becomes making money over
educating the citizenry and this is where the end of the university as we know it should start.
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