Challenging Dina Titus on Education

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As part of Women’s History Month in March, Congresswoman Alice, aka “Dina”, Titus came to campus to speak on how we can improve academic success for women. Although I was unable to attend the meeting, I have a few things I would like to say to her and to you. I object to the premise and the proposals she brought, and here’s why.

First of all, she comes to a forum predicated on the premise that women are neither participant nor successful in college. If you look at the statistical demographics, you discover that her premise is flawed. Not only do women make up a majority of students in all major Nevada institutions of higher education but they also graduate in higher numbers than their male counterparts. If she comes in increase those numbers, that’s fine, but the supposition that most will infer from the premise is that the student body is mostly male as are most of the graduates. This is quite frankly not the case.

The following graph illustrates a summary of statistics I gathered in advance of her visit. Within one percentage point, the Department of Education, the US News and World Report College ranking as well as the College Board (ACT/SAT entrance examinations) rating of colleges as well as the Nevada Policy Research Institute as well as Scholarships.com agree.

	UNR	UNLV	NSC	CSN
% Female Enrollment	53	55	75	55
Retention Rate	75	76	54
Graduation Rate	55 (48)	42 (36)	22 (sum)	12 (8)
Transfer Rate				37
FT Rate	81	72	36	26

Retention rate is defined as the percentage of students who return for a second year. Graduation rate is defined as the percentage of students who complete a degree in 4-6 years. FT rate is the percentage of students enrolled full time. Finally, 52.8% of women graduate compared with 42.7% of men. A cursory look at the data shows us that women outnumber men at all institutions surveyed. NSC’s rate is skewed because it has only been open for ten years. The statistics show that women are more successful in college than men.

If we look at NSC, it tells us an even bigger story, which gets at the heart of my biggest argument with Mrs. Titus. She will likely argue like Congressman Horsford that we need more funding, more student loans, and the like for education. Look at NSC, and it tells you everything you need to know. Why are so many WOMEN at NSC (72% of the students)? NSC specializes in health care education, something that everyone living in Nevada is told offers jobs including some very lucrative ones. Students go to NSC so they can get into nursing, physicians assistant training, and sometimes medical school, hence the overwhelming majority of female students. I guess that fully 80% of my students are female, and I guess 75% of my students are headed into health care by their own admission. It’s a career field that actually has jobs when they finish. What good are loans and buildings and all that other quesquilia if there are no jobs when you graduate? Even more upsetting to me is the notion that, although my students know there are jobs, very few of them intend to remain in Nevada when they graduate either.

The rest of the details as to why education languishes in Nevada are not in the numbers. They require you to be in the trenches, and as a former UNLV professor, Mrs. Titus should know full well what the real problem is. Nevada has no opportunities for graduates. This is a state that neither recognizes nor rewards people for scholastic achievement. Why would you earn a college degree when you can earn more than I do as a professor by bussing tables, serving drinks, or dealing blackjack? I have students who drive Lamborghinis, live in 3000 square foot homes, and hobnob with Steve Wynn, Steve Jobs, and hordes of other celebrities. I drive a Saturn, live in an old neighborhood and hobnob with students in the classroom. Like I mentioned to Mr. Horsford during his visit to laughter from the assemblage, being a chemistry professor is not sexy. When people at parties hear that's what I do, they turn to other people, desperate for a change of topic and conversational partner.

Many of Nevada’s top high school students usually leave the state for college. Whether they leave immediately or after doing their first two years of core general education credits, they are actively encouraged to leave. Before you call me on this, I will tell you that I graduated Valedictorian from high school in Las Vegas. I was encouraged to leave for college by advisors and teachers and family members and almost everyone else because they knew two things- the name of the school on my diploma can make me look good and where they can place me can make them look good. I think the administrators view it as a badge of honor that they essentially deplete the state of its best students so they can say they did a good job as educators. Many of my classmates attended prestigious schools such as Harvard, UC Santa Barbara, and Michigan State. They were also neither white nor male as I am, and white males are relatively rare in the programs I attended except for the medical school hopefuls. Nevada ends up with sub par students because if you can get Harvard on the diploma as the granting institution it looks better on job applications than my curriculum vitae. I remember the Dean at UNR telling me that I had the highest GRE score of any student they had accepted. Instead, the students who go into our colleges are largely either average students (and there’s nothing wrong with that since on average half the people are below average) or foreign nationals who intend to leave the state. So, graduating 55% of your average students is actually pretty impressive.

For those stellar students like myself who stay in Nevada, there is nothing for them. I remember the department chair at UNLV told my sister that if she wanted a job after graduation she should not have attended college in Nevada. My brother also ended up out of state doing something completely unrelated to his educational pursuits. I am the only member of my family who is working in Nevada doing what he learned to do in school. What annoys me even more about this is why I came back to Clark County. I returned to teach science or math in high school. I have no idea why the county school district never contacted any of my references. What kind of a message does that send to your best students when you go after foreigners or less accomplished students to be your K-12 teachers especially when you consider how loudly they complain that they can’t find qualified teachers and how our students aren't competitive. Our students do not receive the best teachers we can find for the pay, and our best students leave because Nevada shows by how it treats them that it doesn’t care about them. They are a means rather than an end.

Politicians talk about money as a way to convince you that they care about your children. Money for them is the actual end. Some proponents of higher education argue that higher education ‘investment’ adds value to the economy. They never come prepared with information to validate that claim. Mr. Horsford was woefully unprepared to answer my challenges when he visited, and I'm not actually sure he understood half of what I said. According to NPRI, despite spending enough per student at UNR to place it in the top 25 of 2981 schools ranked its graduates are far less successful than those graduated in Utah, which ranks far lower on that scale. Although expenditures for education CAN add value, it does not necessarily follow that it will or that it must. It will depend on what the people do when they graduate. Right now, they leave. Even if we are investing in education, which I don't think is true, the people who reap the benefits of that investment live elsewhere.

Most politicians talk about money for education as if throwing money at it makes things work. Try that next time your car breaks down- just throw money at it. Loans don’t help if they don’t have a way to pay them off, and default rates are on the rise as students continue to rack up more and more debt. My students are paying today more than I paid in graduate school ten years ago. Money is not the problem; college costs are. They continue to pay more money to get an education that is worth less because there are no jobs that don't involve selling fries. According to the statistics for Nevada, 77% of students at CSN do not receive pell grants, which indicates that most students at CSN are not in financial hardship. More money for grants and loans isn’t the answer. Opportunity after they graduate is.

What Nevada actually needs is partnerships with industry and commerce. When I challenged Mr. Horsford on this, he told me in essence that supply creates demand, that if we graduate students then companies will relocate here, which is a canard of highest degree. Why would companies do that when they are already located near colleges that are producing better or at least more prestigious students? If supply creates its own demand, who is buying all the broken lightbulbs, Romney for president shirts, Tickle Me Elmo dolls, and scrap paper? While I was at UNR, Boeing tried to partner with UNR to establish an aerospace engineering program, but UNR refused to pony up 50% of the cost and so Boeing built its facility in Washington. There is no evidence that Nevada institutions are interested in job placement. They take our money, give us a piece of paper with B.S. on it, and wish us luck.

If they would let me and hire me full time, I propose the following plan. Rather than join a bunch of committees and all that hogwash, instead of spending time on research that benefits the institution over the students, in lieu of mentoring clubs or teams that bring in dollars but do not produce graduates, I would go out into the community. I would meet with them and set up opportunities and infrastructure to partner our students with industry. They agree to take students as interns without having to pay, and we agree to alter our teaching paradigm and curriculum according to feedback from employers so as to provide students with the things they will immediately use. That way dozens or hundreds of Nevada graduates would have actual hands on practical experience when they graduate, which satisfies the number one complaint of the hiring process. Students need experience to get a job, but they need a job to get experience, so we give that to them and hold them accountable. There are organizations that do this already, but few of them are in Nevada, and even fewer of those hire Nevada students. We have a titanium smelter, an iron company, a dynamite manufacturer, military contractors, repair shops, medical facilities galore, ad infinitum. In fact, CSN's most productive programs are those that prepare people for and partner with industries like HVAC, truck driving, and the like. That’s our opportunity to offer a niche, but it doesn’t involve the politicians and make them look good, so they ignore it. I don’t care who gets the gorram credit; I came here to help students, and the students know it.

Nevada’s college problem is a problem of culture. Demographically, all the minority groups on which they focus are doing just fine relative to each other as far as statistics evince. The problem is that this state doesn’t recognize or reward people for their scholastic achievement. Our best students often leave before college or transfer as soon as they can. Our best graduates usually leave the state because there are no jobs. If you want people to do well in college, you begin with the end in mind. The end of a college education is to prepare you to contribute to the workforce. Consequently, you need a workforce that benefits from educated people and employers who reward people for their ability to contribute to solving problems. Consequently, you need to prepare people for the workforce by teaching them to work, which is precisely what the current crop of politicians is trying to avoid. They are rewarding people to avoid work, and the people of Nevada know it and want their free handouts. Nothing great was ever earned without sacrifice, and I am willing to fall on my sword for the students. Are the legislators? We'll see.