Written By Emmanuel Yaafi
The Obama administration commitment to see a USA with more college graduates than any other country in world caused uproar in some quarters. In fact, from President Obama’s point of view, by the year 2020, America should have more college graduates than any known country on the surface of the earth. As indicated the uproar caused as a result of producing more graduates prompted Miller Center of Public Affairs to organise a debate on the subject: Education and the Economy. The analysis made here is about the supply and demand relationship and its implications in the expansion of graduate production. The analysis is the perspective of a viewer of the debate. An attempt will be made to re –examine some of the concerns raised in ‘The Supply-Demand Bargain of Graduates’.
Let me throw more light on the subject and probably reduce the broadness of the subject as well. The core of the subject debated was that, to produce more graduated means more public (state) spending. Those argued practically from economics perspective thought that such a venture is a waste of time and resources of the public (state). In the capitalist economy like the US, job creation, to greater extent, is the business of the private sector. Listen to the debate about whether to tax the rich or not and you will fairly get more information about whose duty it is to create jobs. George Leef who argued against the idea of producing more graduates and does so from economic point of view said employers will not create jobs because there are more graduates. Stressing on this point, he said “supply does not create its own demand’. That is producing more graduates is not a guarantee that the graduates will be demanded. He further argued that more graduates will lead to “rigid credential inflation”. He pointed out that getting degrees will no longer be ones ability to learn since expansion of education to produce more graduates will also extend to more ‘unprepared, students. The result of all these in Leef’s own words is to ‘trash’ the qualification.
Let us look at some of the concerns raised by George Leef. Some of the concerns raised appear to fit well into the concerns raised in ‘The Supply-Demand Bargain of Graduates’ but from different angle. The issue of ‘supply does not create its own demand’ in education is very important to warrant further discussions. Let us look at the entry and exit points of university education. There is an apparent insatiability in the demand for higher education at the entry point. All sort of university education are being provided to meet the growing demands. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said at the exit point. At the exit point, once a student does not drop out from university he is bound to be supplied into the system whether there is demand or not. It appears that at the exit point, supply far exceeds demand and it is not about to be ceased or changed anytime soon. Therefore we have more graduates in the system than they are demanded. The result of this is the credentialisation. What it means is that increasingly, jobs which do not need graduates to do are increasingly being done by graduates. In the process, the graduates scare the non graduates who are ‘better equipped’ with necessary competences to do ‘some menial’ jobs. Again it calls into question the competencies or the quality of the graduates produced. The resultant effect is that degrees become worthless. A typical example is theSouth Korea case. Dr Terri Kim, a specialist in Comparative Higher Education at Brunel University, in the last quarter of 2011 presented a paper at Danish School of Education, Denmark. She elaborated on the credentialisation of the South Korean society – degree, everybody has one.
The continuous process of credentialisation and the resultant worthless degrees creates a new a function of supply and demand in the system. That is, the graduates become part of the system so new supply and demand relationships are formed. The numerous graduates, now the labour (to be employees) far exceed the number of jobs and the creators (employers) so the normative narrative changes. Instead of employers demanding the labour, the opposite happens. The labour is over supplied and therefore in abundance, seeking fewer jobs and making the jobs scare. Hence, labour becomes cheap and easily to be replaced or discarded. From, Professor Richard Vedder point of view and equally speaking against the expansion of graduate production, the public spending that will be made in the process of graduate production expansion will be a waste. This is because in the face of huge social security and health care problems, the public resources should not be used to produce graduates who will end up cutting trees.
The complexion of the argument from here changes because there is an introduction of efficiency. Klees (2008) defines efficiency as the application resources in the area that will yield better returns. The prudence of the state spending in the production of the graduates with next to nothing degrees is indicted. To be succinct, it is a colossal blunder to spend public resources to produces useless graduates. This line of argument moves from ridiculous to unacceptable if an individual obtains a loan to obtain a worthless degree since loans are to be repaid. So a worthless degree means the investment made as a result of the loan obtained to pay for the degree becomes a bad investment. But one may argue that to obtain a loan to get a worthless degree is entirely an individual decision and therefore responsible for it. It appears to be easy to blame the individual who made a decision to take a loan to obtain a worthless degree. But let us extend the blame a bit further to the managers of the economy which are the governments whose duty in this sense is to create conducive economic environment for graduates to flourish. The economic quagmire we have since 2008 can inhibit the likes of Albert Einstein. But the economic quagmire is as a result of the actions and inactions of the same institution Professor Vedder wants it to spend its resources to fix social security liabilities.
So far, the others who spoke in favour of the expansion have not been discussed. Mr Lomas speaking in favour of the expansion raised some important issues. Among them are two issues which are deemed appropriate to be discussed. The first issue was about ambition. He argued that not everybody who starts a university education will complete it and therefore most of the challenges discussed and raised by his opposite side are almost right. But he queried that because of these challenges, we should not be ambitious as people? He is of the view that mediocrity should be discarded and we as people should continue to push the limits. Dr Patrick Awuah said the goal should be perfection. So in the process of pursuing perfection we can at least achieve excellence. Lomas again said that setting the goal so low is what we do for others other than our own children. He said we tell our children the sky is the beginning while we tell others that they should aim just below the ceiling of their rooms. Again, he queried that because of social security liabilities should we ration education like the slave trade era when educating a particular race was a crime. He is of the view that funding is been used as tool to ration education. In reference to ambition, Margaret Spellings said that this was what President Bush meant when he said “the soft bigotry of lower expectation” when he was signing No Child Left Behind (NCLB) bill. But this bill is indeed a different game changer from its name which space and time will not permit us to examine. But to be brief here, NCLB by any stretch of imagination do not mitigate the problems. I think Miss Spelling reference to NCLB was merely in reference to the fact that, we should not allow financial constraints to limit our ambition as people. In conclusion what we want as individuals, as people, as a country will hugely decide what we want to do with our resources. A country that has prioritized education will find the resources to fund it. A country that has not prioritized education will find an excuse.
educationinthe21century 
Sir, I really appreciate the analysis you have made in this article. However, there is an important twist to the variables of this debate that policymakers are failing to touch on. The two elements of today’s world: globalization and technological advancement are important things that must be factored into this debate.
First of all, it is apparent that higher education is affected by the growth in information technology. Due to this, there is a lot of information readily available to anyone on almost any subject. Technology has made it possible for almost every form of information to be attained at the click of a mouse. The idea of globalization has also made tremendous additions to the proliferation of knowledge. Today, people from all over the world are shaping up a body of knowledge in almost all fields and this is readily available to almost anyone around the globe. Due to this, there is a major question about the sustainability of the existing educational systems and structures.
Now that a person can get access to every bit of information about almost anything, is it worth it to pay money for a four-year degree to learn in a university? The answer is an emphatic no! The evolution of the Internet means that any individual can get access to extensive information about the essentials of complete degree programs after a few days of meticulous searching of the Internet. And if an individual has a little insight, s/he can be as effective and efficient in using that information like another who spent four years studying that course.
Having said that, will it be appropriate to abolish university education? Absolutely not. It will be simplistic to close down some universities because they teach subjects that can be studied by surfing the books and journals online. However, one thing is clearly established; the face of higher education is bound to change. This is because information that was only available in a few university libraries are available in every home and on every mobile phone. This means that certain structures in higher learning will change.
With these issues raised, I sense that the time has come for the structures in higher education to be examined critically and modified where necessary. The current debate in this matter is not one where there will be a clear winner. Rather, the answer lies in the modification of the educational system.
If Obama’s target on getting the highest number of graduates is based on getting numerous Americans to spend four years in universities studying for Liberal Arts degrees, he should rethink. Most of the things that are studied in many courses can still be studied if the educational system is reconfigured. Modern systems like distance learning and online learning will benefit the world better. Just getting people to go through the traditional university system is not cost effective anymore. So there should be changes to the educational structures rather than taking a position on one of these extremes.
So I suggest that a compromise should be drawn within the two school of thoughts. This should lead to the creation of a new educational structure that ensures that more people are allowed to acquire knowledge and remain as productive as possible whilst they do so. I will therefore go for a model which keeps young people at work whilst they acquire knowledge through the assistance technological tools.
Within the lifelong learning larger scheme of things and especially from critical pedagogy perspective the entire education systems especially the so called formal education which, in most cases is defined by classrooms and a well-defined curriculum should be teared down for several reasons. For example Paul Freire talks of ‘banking education’ which simply means education which maintains the status quo. Again the injustice perpetrated by formal education is enough to shut down formal education. For example formal education is a tool to separate the best and the brightest from the disengaged and the disenchanted whose parents and to some extent themselves pay taxes which are used to fund education for the best and the brightest. Purely from lifelong learning point of view, what we know and stays with us are things that we have learnt ourselves irrespective of the settings. But to touch on more substantive issue ie the effect of ICT especially internet on learning, a reference will be made to “The University at a Cross Road”. It is a paper presented at UNESCO round table discussion in 2003 by the Brazilian minister of education where he claimed that degrees should have expiring dates. Why? because there are new developments, new information and new things to learn. These phenomena take place outside the purview of the of the ‘gate keepers’. The good thing is that the argument was made by a minister ie a politician. The bad news is that he was exercising what politicians do best – talk!!!. Do you think the problem is about compromise? No! In the time of ‘expertisesm’ where experts see themselves as doctors and therefore diagnose ailment and prescribe cure for the societal menace. But what we should not forget is that surfing the internet for information and to learn in the process is a form of education that needs the governments serious attention. Recognition and validation of such learning is very important. Certain competences are gained and certain actions can be carried out as a result. But the challenge is that how does the status quo accept something that was not obtained from one of its own? People have proven records of selling dog chains in Accra but can never become sales executives in a corporations in Ghana. With all the competences gain in salesmanship they will never be called for interview to proof their worth. Why, because they do not possess an A4 like paper with a university which states their degree. The challenge is the acceptance of the need to change rather than a compromise.