Where Lies the Value?

I find myself struggling to take seriously the near-instant and seemingly effortless undergraduate and graduate degrees available to people these days.

Attend class one night a week. Or work online and don't attend class at all.

Enjoy nine-week semesters.

Attend class the same night each week.

Just register once and have your whole program laid out for you.

Finish two years of undergraduate work in six to nine months.

Get a graduate degree in 18, 14, or even 12 months.

And these aren't just degrees from the University of Flagstaff (or whatever). Respectable (and often nationally renowned) universities offer these types of degree programs.

Putting pedagogy aside for a moment, I can't help but wonder how edifying such educational programs are for the students themselves.

Call me a traditionalist, but I'd argue that the value of a degree is (or rather should be) a function of how much sacrifice and work was involved in its attainment. The easier the degree is to get, the less valuable it is (or should be). After all, if a BA could be gotten by putting a quarter in a vending machine, then everyone would have one and it would have no value. It is the scarcity of the resource that makes it valuable. And it is the difficulty of attaining the resource that drives its scarcity.

So is a jiffy pop degree really worth anything? I mean, have you really earned a degree if you haven't had to:

• commit to rearranging your work schedule to attend class, worrying how business travel may screw you to the wall or how a change in a class’ exam schedule might conflict with a big meeting at work
• navigate the campus bookstore and registrar's office every semester, struggling to pick up books and identify in which room your class will meet
• deal with a sixteen-week semester stretching out before you with only three credits waiting at the end
• deal with 20 year old kids schlumping their way through a semester that you’re killing yourself to navigate
• sacrifice big, bloody chunks of your time away from your family. . . away from your life. . . to the gods of education
• work at it all for years (three, four, five or more) before hopefully graduating?

I hold no grudge against those who get their education from accelerated, on-line or non-traditional degree programs. I myself participate in evening school, which is a kind of non-traditional program in and of itself. I wish everyone a degree and a promotion. Two degrees, if it'll help.

I myself am not footing the bill for the lion’s share of my educational expenses, so I am perhaps missing out on the sacrificial benefit to be had from the financial struggle.

But I know that if I ever finish the degree I'm pursuing (which is continually in question), I'll enjoy a tremendous sense of accomplishment, looking back at the countless days, weeks, months and years spent in pursuit. And I'll look back over the likely seven or eight years of toil and struggle as being well worth it. I wonder about the jiffy-pop graduates.

I Don’t Think That Means What You Think It Means

Here in December of 2007, it is difficult not to hear and read about the burgeoning subprime crisis. This perfect fiscal subprime storm has led to startlingly high default rates on home mortgages. Subprime loans were issued back when the real estate market was fat, dumb and happy, and those subprime loans are now bearing rotten fruit.

Subprime, subprime, subprime!

It's semantics, I know, but it still bugs me. I’d guess that most folks believe that “subprime” refers to the interest rates of these loans. “Sub” means below, obviously. And “prime” clearly must refer to the mythical prime rate. So it must be that really low (subprime) loans were issued to people, getting them into loans they couldn’t afford once those rates adjusted, right?

Wrong. Within the mortgage industry, it is the borrower that the term “subprime” modifies. . . borrowers whose credit scores (generally below 620 or so) are so low, or whose debt-to-income ratios are so high as to make them unqualified to receive traditional loans at decent rates.

“Subprime” does not speak to the rates involved in the loans themselves. In a quirk of language, subprime loans are typically loans issued significantly above standard rates because the borrowers are unqualified for traditional, more favorable loans. Adjustable rates, balloon payments and other monkey business are common secondary characteristics of such loans.

Over time, media reports will continue to screw this up. Reports written by very knowledgeable financial experts and published in respectable outlets will be less than clear in the language they use. And fewer and fewer people will realize that “subprime” refers to the condition of the borrower and not to the loan rates themselves.