How I Learned by Mail
David and Mark have written about the costs of getting a college education in today’s America. From personal experience, I think one big solution to many of these problems will ultimately be in combining traditional schools with technology to create competition and eliminate much of the vast waste of modern higher education.
About a hundred years ago, I was in my early 20’s and I didn’t have a college degree. I decided to fix that, and since I had no money, I looked into all the options. In the end, I graduated from the University of Iowa in under four years with GPA and LSAT scores high enough to get me into 3 top-100 law schools. I did this all while working full-time, and I finished college with no debt whatsoever. More importantly, I believe I received a stellar education which served me very well in law school and today as a lawyer. Here’s how I did it.
Through the mail.
After testing out of many of my initial courses, I found the University of Iowa. Like some other big-name schools, Iowa had a long-established distance program where students were sent a syllabus, told which books to buy, given vast write-up materials in place of lectures, and were administered assignments and tests to be completed remotely. I know what you’re thinking, but no: the tests were sent to a proxy (like a librarian at your local public branch) who monitors the student during the exam and returns it him/herself through the mail, making it impossible to cheat. Within some limits, students largely worked at their own pace.
I paid an entirely reasonable tuition (close to in-state), which I was able to finance through my then-meager salary. Still, because of the significantly lower costs of delivery, I’m sure ole’ Iowa made more than a few bucks off of me.
My coursework was demanding; informal polls at the time showed I was doing more schoolwork than my friends taking the traditional school route ever did. But all that time was concentrated. No going to and from class, no listening to graduate assistants blab, no wasting time over material I’d already mastered. Also, because it required a lot of self-direction, I was forced to take a more active role in deciphering what this essay on feminism meant or how to decline that Latin noun, rather than just parrot the prof. I count many of those early-morning and late-night hours trying to work out why, say, Rome fell as some of the most enriching and intellectually challenging experiences of my life.
There were, naturally, some drawbacks, and not just the lack of the rich social experience college traditionally imbues. And no, it wasn’t four years at Yale. But I found most of my professors were very open to responding via email and phone to questions I had. Further, most of my assignments and exams were returned with corrections and comments, which enabled me to, you know, learn. All this while I was experiencing the lessons of the grownup world working at a law firm from 8 to 5.
To this day, I’ve literally never set foot in the state of Iowa. Instead, the University of Iowa competed for, and won, my education dollar after I thoroughly explored the marketplace of public and private, local and distance, found the best product at the fairest price, and made the most rational decision I could. Imagine the market forces if all big state schools provided and promoted such an option, and experimented with competing technologies to deliver the best product? The result would be the same it always is when market forces work: some goofy failures, some glittering successes, but ultimately lower costs, more efficiency, and more flexibility in delivering quality education.
$100 in campaign donations to the first congressman who sponsors a bill requiring big schools that receive federal funds to provide good degrees through correspondence.
