were not many graduates and when the expanding economy desperately required hundreds of thousands of managers and easily trained white-collar workers—have generally been blessed with stable employment, decent incomes, and middle-class lives, at least in the leading industrial nations.
It is important to note, however, the qualification “on average.” The equation Learning = Earning is not universally true. Graduates in the fine arts do not make more money than unionized heavy-duty mechanics or workers in the oilfields, and many other similar comparisons could be made. Ask the 25 percent of retail workers or the 15 percent of taxi drivers in the United States who held college degrees in 2010.[17] The American Bureau of Labor Statistics gives a surprising estimate of the number of other “low-skill” jobs held by college graduates: 1 in 6 bartenders, 1 in 4 amusement park attendants, and 1 in 5 telemarketers all have at least one degree.
Some of this has carried forward into the 2010s. Graduates in fields in high demand continue to enjoy wage premiums and diverse opportunities for work, while the prospects for those pursuing general degrees and study in fields disconnected from the workforce (Film Studies, anyone?) have diminished in recent years. Nor are degrees from all colleges worth the same in the workforce. Contrast the contemporary career prospects of a Yale graduate in economics or finance or a Harvard graduate in law on the one hand, with those of someone with a Bachelor of Science in Biology from North Arizona University. Or those of an engineer from the National University of Singapore, a globally elite institution, with those of a Bachelor of History from University of Wisconsin-Parkside, a fine open-access college that makes a real effort to assist students from less-prosperous backgrounds. This part of the university equation has not filtered down to the consciousness of the general public, where the belief that a college or university degree—any degree—offers a major career boost remains illogically strong.
Some of the enthusiasm for college and university rests with the erosion of other opportunities. Imagine being a high school graduate in Flint, Michigan, or Oshawa, Ontario, in 1955. Automotive manufacturers had a huge hunger for hard-working young men—although not many women—at that time. A young man in Grade 10 or 11 faced a choice: accept a high-wage factory job with good union-inspired benefits or invest four years in a degree. Many opted for the former and, until the 1990s, could be confident that they had made the right economic decision. Leap forward fifty years. Similar high school students in these now post-industrial cities can see the employment devastation and industrial wasteland around them. Few employers are offering high-wage, secure employment to high school graduates. The local industrial option has faded dramatically in appeal in contrast to the promise that a degree appears to offer. With the division of employment into low-wage service work and diminished industrial work on the one hand, and well-paid employment for professionals and the technologically skilled on the other, the appeal of a university education is now evident.
Attitudes to work have also shifted, with strong manifestations of this change in the developing world. While romantics love to idealize the lives of coal miners, factory workers, and farmers, the reality is these are hard, often dirty, and frequently dangerous jobs. For generations, people have sought easier lives, adopting new technologies that removed the more difficult elements of pre-industrial and industrial labour. The glorification of office work and the declining enthusiasm for outdoor and physical labour have convinced parents the world over to invest heavily in their children’s education.
The dreams of university do not play out equally. In the West, college or university education has become a rite of passage, something parents plan and save for throughout their children’s youth. In other nations, however, getting into a degree-granting institution is no real accomplishment; entrance standards have fallen to derisory levels at many public and some private institutions. In richer countries, getting into the “right” institution—Oxford rather than the University of Arts London, Stanford over Clark Atlanta University of Georgia, University of Toronto over Algoma University—is the real struggle. Many families spend tens of thousands of dollars in trying to game the admissions system in order to secure a coveted spot in an elite institution. But still young people go to universities, even those of low and dubious abilities, in ever-increasing numbers.
Nowhere is the mystique of the Dream Factory more firmly entrenched than in the developing world, even though the local institutions, even the elite ones, are markedly inferior to the best universities elsewhere. Families spend enormous sums on prestigious local preparatory schools, often English-language and typically internationally-branded, in the hope that this will help their sons and daughters win admission to Oxford or Stanford or MIT. They then hand over large amounts of money to agents, some of whom are of dubious quality, who help children prepare for international admissions processes. They are met by hundreds of college and university recruiters, desperate for the high-fee-paying international students they increasingly rely on to pay their institutions’ bills.
The international-student recruitment process has turned into a high-stakes dating game. The students—and their parents—have their eyes on the elite institutions and the preferred countries (the USA, UK, Australia, Canada, Germany and New Zealand, but China and Japan are increasingly attractive as well). There are family dreams and a great deal of money at stake—an international student will, over four years, pay more than US$200,000 in tuition at a top-ten American school, £40,000 to £140,000 in the UK, AUS$120,000 in Australia and as much as CDN$140,000 in Canada, depending on the program. But there is no lack of students. China sends over 275,000 students per year to the United States, representing over 30 percent of the international student total. India is in second place, at about 12 percent.
While rich families can afford the price of attending a Dream Factory—each year Harvard, Oxford, and the Sorbonne welcome dozens of the children from the world’s wealthiest families—middle-class and working-class families often mortgage the future of the extended family to make attendance possible. Recruiting agents, frequently paid by both the families and the recruiting institutions, try to align interests, abilities, and admission standards. The dependence on a single country can lead to questionable behaviour at the institutional level. One American school created a real stir when it was revealed that the university was adjusting entrance grades and taking extraordinary steps to ensure that the students stayed on campus, primarily to ensure a steady flow of international-student cash. One can only imagine the educational and financial calculus of international families as they balance savings, a child’s academic record, the admission standards of thousands of overseas institutions, the educational and career interests of the student, and the family’s strategy for migration and/or employment.
But as parents and young people began vigorously pursuing a limited number of places at the very best universities, other institutions saw an opportunity, expanding to meet a seemingly inexhaustible demand. Aggressive as well as prestigious institutions, particularly from the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom, opened campuses overseas. New York University brought its high-quality, high-cost liberal-arts education to Dubai and Singapore. Monash opened campuses in Malaysia and South Africa. James Cook University, a rising but little-known institution in Queensland that focuses on tropical areas, has campuses in Cairns, Townsville, and Brisbane, and overseas facilities in Singapore. George Mason University in Virginia has a campus in Songdo, South Korea. Some of these have foundered, including the University of Waterloo’s effort in Dubai and some costly experiments by British universities in China.
Profiting from the Dream
But even with a few faltering steps, the trajectory remained the same: students from around the world were clamoring for higher education. Universities salivated at the possibilities, domestically because this justified rapid expansion, and internationally because the high tuition paid in most nations underpinned the increasingly precarious financial situation on campuses.
Governments loved the expansion as well. The arrival of thousands of international students, many of them well-heeled, did more than expand the university enrolments. The students spent money on everything from housing and food to cars and entertainment—and more than a little on alcohol—boosting
