Mission drift 4.3: The scourge of human capital theory: The shadow research community and the promotion of pseudo-vocationalism

In my last posting, I pointed out the existence of ‘shadow research communities’ that conduct policy research, often bidding to conduct studies or write papers for government ministries like the HRSDC. Consistent with the privileging by the government of the discipline of economics and its pet approach, human capital theory, those in the shadow research community must conform to the parameters dictated by government tenders if they hope to be awarded contracts. Some researchers have formed companies or ‘Institutes’ whose livelihood depends on this source of government funding. One such institute is the Educational Policy Institute (EPI), whose mission is

to expand educational opportunity for low-income and other historically-underrepresented students through high-level research and analysis. By providing educational leaders and policymakers with the information required to make prudent programmatic and policy decisions, we believe that the doors of opportunity can be further opened for all students, resulting in an increase in the number of students prepared for, enrolled in, and completing postsecondary education.[i]

The EPI began in 2002 as a non-profit organization based in Virginia, but has ‘for-profit’ branches in Canada and Australia, and a ‘for-profit’ consulting firm in the US.[ii] Mr. Alex Usher, a self-styled educational consultant, heads the Canadian branch. He characterizes his branch as ‘a non-partisan think tank,’ but the above mission statement belies this claim. The EPI targets funding and carries out research on post-secondary ‘access’ and ‘retention,’ and is thus an advocacy organization. Mr. Usher, who has apparently never taught at a university,[iii] reviewed Ivory Tower Blues,[iv] bringing his views to our attention. His is perhaps one of the most curious reviews of our book because it simultaneously acknowledges the problems we identify and dismisses their gravity.

Usher achieves this dissonant view, where two contradictory claims are simultaneously held in his mind (what George Orwell called ‘double think’), by adopting human capital logic and language, which has now been stretched in so many ways as to appear to its advocates to cover all circumstances. For example, he argues that we should just get used to credentialism, that there are no problems with the youth labour market, and that it is no big concern that universities are devolving into high schools. In other words, he not only accepts the lowering of higher education, but he seems to celebrate it. Rather than addressing this decline in higher education, he advocates keeping everyone in school for as long as we can, regardless of how poor the quality of education is and how disengaged the students are. And, he expressed these views while holding on to a blind faith that their ‘skills’ will find a place in the economy.

This sort of reaction to Ivory Tower Blues is classic human-capital orthodoxy, shored up by Usher’s dogmatic claim that ‘there is very little good information’ supporting alternative positions like ours (in spite of wide array of excellent evidence we provide). Most telling is Usher’s claim that the youth labour market is healthy because youth unemployment has not increased in the past few decades relative to adults, staying at twice the rate.

While this rate-comparison is factual, his interpretation is ill informed. He fails to consider that the rate has stayed as such because large numbers of young people have sought refuge in post-secondary institutions, not all of whom are rationally seeking to invest in applied skills, but because the alternatives are unpalatable. A good proportion of these reluctant students are disengaged from their studies, as the empirical evidence clearly shows (and Usher appears to accept this evidence). Thus, the problem with Usher’s argument is that if those who are disengaged from their university studies and as a result not rationally enhancing their skills—up to one half of those now attending—were to drop out immediately, the youth unemployment rate would double to over 25 per cent of those aged 15-24.[v] The public would see this as an intolerable situation and policy makers would be concerned about threats to social stability of having so many young people ‘roaming the streets.’

Usher also claims that salaries for university graduates should have declined if there were a glut of them, but he fails to acknowledge that youth salaries in general have declined by 20-30 per cent over the past few decades, while those of university graduates have been stagnant, such that the better earning power of graduates is relative to non-graduates of the same age-range, and not to older workers.[vi] He also does not mention the fact that a significant proportion of graduates take lower paying jobs as part of a downward cascading effect[vii] displacing workers with less education, including those low-skilled jobs, as identified in my last posting with respect to an HRSDC report.

Finally, Mr. Usher claims that we miss

two rather obvious points that, first, recent graduates often take time to find ways to use their skills properly and, second, that one of the ways that skills spread throughout an economy is by people with higher levels of education taking on jobs that previously did not require such levels.

For a human-capital theory devotee, these points may be obvious, but they are not to others.

On the first point, he fails to consider that students who are disengaged while attending university would pick up few skills to eventually use ‘properly,’ exposing his blind faith in schooling (i.e., that mere attendance will inculcate skills, independent of student effort).

On the second point, he ignores the obvious point that those graduates who drifted through university putting out a minimal effort would not have many skills value-added by their university experience to ‘spread throughout an economy.’ He also apparently ignores the fact but that even engaged students who eventually find themselves underemployed after graduation, in say menial clerical jobs, could not reasonably apply many of their skills to these jobs. How many critical-thinking or writing skills could be applied to the job of barista or store clerk, for example?

We can see that at the heart of his criticisms is a failure to distinguish between liberal arts and vocationally oriented degrees, and an assumption that both will have the same integration-potentials into the labour force. Consequently, he is in effect promoting a form of pseudo-vocationalism, as if all that is done at university is job training.

Usher completes his logically inconsistent review by saying that professors just have to get used to universities being big, with an emphasis on efficiency and ‘productivity,’ and that it is the fault of universities themselves for allowing ‘the undergraduate experience to massify to the point of becoming the new high school.’ He continues by claiming that universities did not figure out how to accommodate unprepared students, so ‘as a result we have a lot of unhappy professors out there, teaching unengaged students.’[viii] With this statement he reveals that he is able simultaneously to sustain two logically inconsistent views in his mind, and in this case still believe that he is doing a public service by promoting ‘access and retention.’ Apparently he cares not about the quality of the schools into which he advocates herding young people.

It is mind boggling to me that Usher would focus blame on universities entirely for their own decline. Universities are being pushed into this lowering of higher education to become the ‘new high school,’ especially in jurisdictions that have suffered serious declines in funding like Ontario, but where government policies promote ‘university for all’ on the basis of research produced by Usher and his ilk. He simply adds insult to injury by blaming those inside the system for problems he contributes to from the outside!

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[i] Education Policy Institute, http://www.educationalpolicy.org/aboutEPI/ourmission.html (accessed 29 Nov. 2009).

[ii] Education Policy Institute, http://www.educationalpolicy.org/aboutEPI/whatisepi.html, (accessed 29 Nov. 2009).

[iii] Alex Usher, e-mail correspondence with Côté, 17 Dec. 2007.

[iv] Alex Usher, ‘Campus Navel Gazing Two Insider Books Ponder the Future of the University,’ Literary Review of Canada (December 2007), http://reviewcanada.ca/reviews/2007/12/01/campus-navel-gazing/ (accessed 29 Nov. 2009).

[v] These are pre-recession based estimates. If we use current, recession-based estimates the figure is higher. Based on the denominator of some 4.4 million people in this age group, of whom almost one million are in university, if the approximately 50% of university students who are disengaged suddenly sought jobs, this half million person influx into the labour market would more than double the number registered as unemployed (some 437,800 people at the end of 2009). When added to 15.9% for this age group already registered as unemployed, some 30% of young Canadians would then be registered as unemployed; see Statistics Canada, Labour Force Information November 8 to 14, 2009 (Ottawa: Author, 2009), 23.

[vi] Côté and Allahar, Critical Youth Studies, 49–51.

[vii] Ivory Tower Blues, 171–4.

[viii] Usher, ‘Campus Navel Gazing,’ 2.