Woody Hayes was head coach of The Ohio State Buckeyes football team from 1951 to 1978. During that time his teams won five national championships. Famous for his pithy quotes, one of my favorites is, “Only three things can happen when you pass and two of them are bad.”
I was fortunate to attend the first College Football Playoff National Championship game earlier this year in Arlington, Texas where the Buckeyes trounced the Oregon Ducks by a score of 42 to 20. Woody would have been happy with the defense and the play of the offensive line. Ezekiel Elliott’s two hundred forty-six yards rushing would have evoked fond memories of Heisman trophy winner, Howard “Hopalong” Cassady. However, the passing game would have had him tearing up his ball cap. Combined, the two quarterbacks threw sixty-one times. (In 1951 sixty-one passes would have been about par for the Buckeyes in a nine game season.) And, yes, some bad things happened—nineteen incompletions and two interceptions.
Coming home through the Dallas-Fort Worth airport I stopped to grab a BBQ sandwich before boarding the plane and joined in a conversation with a couple recent graduates of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette—Ragin’ Cajuns.
One was catching a plane to his new energy sector job in Houston, and the other was behind the counter doling out brisket, chips, and beer. (The sticker price of their respective college degrees was the same—about $100,000.) This is an example of the extremely disparate outcomes possible today regarding post-secondary education. One graduate had chosen a very marketable degree and one had not.
Since the Great Recession of 2008, three things can happen when you enroll in college and two of them are bad:
• Forty-four percent of enrollees drop out and are stigmatized in the job market. “College dropout” has become a negative filter.
• About half the graduates with bachelor’s degree end up underemployed or unemployed.
• The other half of graduates (27% of total enrollees) get what the Labor Department describes as a “good” job. This is not necessarily a well-paying job. It is a job consistent with their education. (The salaries range widely, for example, a social worker might make $25,000 annually while a petroleum engineer tops the scale at $93,000.)
College in America does not work the way it used to. Here is what has changed:
Supply vs. Demand
Today the popular belief is that college is for everyone. If community college is included in the tally, about seven in ten high school graduates cheerfully enroll in institutions of high learning every fall expecting the same result as of years ago. In this slowly recovering economy there are not nearly enough good jobs of the type upon which college graduates have depended, and there is a massive army of potential recruits.
Cost vs. Benefit
College costs have been escalating for years at a far greater rate than any other product or service in America. Today a bachelor’s degree at a state university costs twice the median family income. The long term return on investment for most four-year degrees is no longer compelling to a typical entering freshman.
Quality of Education
While the grade point averages have remained about the same, the quality of the education is eroding. The majority of instructors teaching at the university level are no longer tenure-track professors. The time spent in academic pursuits—attending class and studying—has dropped by a third in fifty years. Today college students spend less time in academic pursuits than high school students. It is quite possible to earn that BA without taking any demanding courses. College graduates are not as well prepared as in the past, and today’s prospective employers approach hiring with a degree of skepticism.
Skills Gained vs. Skills Demanded
There is a mismatch between skills gained and skills demanded in the workplace. Silicon Valley can’t hire people fast enough, and many job listings go wanting for two years or more while colleges and universities keep churning out more attorneys, archaeologists, and art historians.
Lastly, there is the issue of college loans. Seventy percent of students need them. (The average has ballooned to $33,000.) Twelve percent are in default according to the Department of Education. Those students whose loans are in default are in serious financial trouble. These loans cannot be discharged through bankruptcy. There are no reliable statistics on how many young people are financially hamstrung and unable to buy a home or save for retirement due to debt.
Maybe Woody overlooked one outcome—the completed pass that is fumbled by the receiver.