What Do You Wanna Do? I Don’t Know, What Do You Wanna Do?

Below is my latest post for the CNJ ROAR, the newsletter from my chapter of the Penn State Alumni Association. This month's topic was what to do while visiting Penn State. As an alumnus, the list is a little different than it would be for an undergrad.

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We’ve all faced that discussion, whether we were sitting in our room at State, hanging out with friends back home, or even while trying to plan a date night. Since we’re back into Football Season, where being in the Top Ten is a season-long goal, we’ll pay homage by listing our Top 10 things do while visiting Penn State. Like the AP Top 25, this is a largely subjective list that’s built around a few objective criteria. Naturally, we welcome your personal favorites that we somehow omitted, with special citations for the best of what has passed from the Penn State scene (like the Train Station or Chicken Cosmo).

1. Enjoy ice cream at Berkey Creamery. Its new location is bigger, and some undergrads never even knew the old site.
2. Watch a football game at Beaver Stadium. Will it eventually become Paterno Field at Beaver Stadium, or Beaver Field at Paterno Stadium? And now that Michigan added more seats, will our stadium expand again?
3. Climb Mt. Nittany. Although it’s no longer visible from Beaver Stadium, it’s a dynamic icon.
4. Have grilled stickies at The Diner. Eating at The Diner after the bars closed is still a graduation requirement, right?
5. Have your photo taken while sitting on the Lion statue. It’s a busy place during home game weekends, but your camera is safe in the hands of the next group in line.
6. Buy something Blue & White. Whether you prefer the campus stores or the downtown merchants, none of us have enough Blue & White on our cars, in our offices, or in our wardrobes.
7. Attend something other than a football game. Penn State hosts lots of other events: the full NCAA sports program (3-time National Champion Women’s Volleyball, vocal supporters at men’s basketball, etc.), Thon, and Arts Festival are just a few available options.
8. Visit Wine Country. It’s Happy Valley, not Napa Valley, but Mount Nittany Vineyard & Winery in Centre Hall has a tasting room that’s open every day but Monday, and offers some nice selections.
9. Visit the H.O. Smith Botanic Gardens in The Arboretum at Penn State. One of the University’s new additions, located at Park Avenue and Bigler Road, the Arboretum is 370 beautiful acres.
10. Check out where you used to live. Maybe your spouse or kids have never seen the place, or maybe it’s time to put a brick and mortar punctuation mark to the stories you’ve been telling for years. Just be warned: where you lived, or your favorite place to eat, just might not be there any more.

Higher Ed Bubble: Coming Soon?

For the last couple of months, I've been working on blog posts for the local chapter of the Penn State Alumni Association. The post below was included in last month's newsletter, and was a topic I selected. The subject has been discussed all around the Internet, so I wanted to add my own thoughts, especially as it might impact PSU. Here's the post:

Over the last 15 or so years, we’ve become used to hearing terms like the “dot-com bubble” and the “real estate bubble.” You can find detailed definitions of these “bubbles” at Wikipedia, among other resources. At the core (and for the purposes of this post), a bubble exists where the price of X increases rapidly, to the point where that price cannot be sustained relative to other economic elements (think income).

Our question for today: are we in the midst of a Higher Education Bubble?

It’s a question being asked with increasing frequency. An internet search for “Higher Education Bubble” yields dozens of articles in places like the Wall Street Journal, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Forbes.com, and the Boston Herald. And after our experiences with the most recent bubble (real estate), we ought to learn the issues before the bubble bursts.

When Penn State sets its budget every summer, we’re always hearing about the amount of funding provided by the Commonwealth, along with its impact on the increase in tuition and fees. In effect, Pennsylvania is shielding the true cost of a Penn state education by providing a subsidy. The federal government, to this point, has also made student loan guarantees a relatively simple process. Again, this could be considered something akin to a subsidy. Of course, student loans carry their own issues; Penn State’s For the Future campaign states that upon graduation, a student will have an average loan debt amount in excess of $28,000. An estimated 74% of Penn state students receive financial assistance, mostly in the form of loans. (Source: For the Future, Summer 2010, pages 10-11). Are the state subsidies and federal loan guarantees driving demand to levels that the market would not naturally reach?

The increases in tuition and fees are undeniable. According to the College Board, “Published tuition and fees at public four-year colleges and universities rose at an average annual rate of 4.9% per year beyond general inflation from 1999-2000 to 2009-2010”. (Source: Trends in Higher Education Series, 2009). Over that same time period, the general inflation rate was under 3%. Has the price of a college education increased rapidly, compared to other economic elements? Have American household incomes increased at that same rate, over that same time?

Has the value of an undergraduate degree held up over time? Let’s consider that we’ve lost more than 8 million jobs during the current recession (Source: NASDAQ.com), and Vice President Biden recently stated that many of those jobs are not coming back. At the same time, schools like Penn State continue to graduate large numbers of students. So there’s a large number of people meeting the minimum requirements for most jobs (a Bachelor’s degree), and they’re competing for a shrinking number of open positions. Our experiences in the current recession suggest that, very often, the value of a degree has not help up.

Certainly, there are a lot of entities (like Penn State) and people (like us) who have a vested interest in there not being a burst bubble. Similar interests didn’t prevent previous bubbles from bursting.

Since this is supposed to be a simple blog post, I won’t delve into issues like what might happen if college becomes compulsory, or any of the political issues behind the changes to the student loan programs, or any of the reforms that a modern university might consider. Do you think that we are experiencing a bubble in higher education, and, if so, how can we help Penn State thrive through a period of uncertainty?