The Deseret News – J.J. Feinauer
“As tuition increases, more and more economists and public figures are calling for a more pragmatic approach to what it should mean to get a college degree. The president of the Association of American Universities, Hunter Rawlings, disagrees. “Most everyone now evaluates college in purely economic terms, thus reducing it to a commodity like a car or a house,” Rawlings, who is also the former president of Cornell University and the University of Iowa, wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post on June 9. But according to Rawlings, such assumptions “begin with a false assumption.” “Unlike a car, college requires the ‘buyer’ to do most of the work to obtain its value. The value of a degree depends more on the student’s input than on the college’s curriculum,” he argued. “I know this because I have seen excellent students get great educations at average colleges, and unmotivated students get poor educations at excellent colleges.” There are simply too many moving parts for a college education to be seen as a typical investment, Rawlings argued, and reducing it to such does no one — students especially — any favors.”(more)