Are Global Trends Affecting
University Degree Values?

“It is risky to invest in a U.S. Degree
as its value could diminish even further...” 

Is it possible that the real value of a university degree, even the one you are contemplating, is being adversely affected by global geo-political trends? Is it as simple as you have been told? That is, regardless of little trends, your degree will put you at the top of the lifetime earnings chart compared to those that choose not to get theirs?

It may indeed be time to take a fresh look. What if the fundamentals behind the value of your chosen degree have been quietly eroded for the last decade? According to Leap/E2020, a prestige European think tank, the long range view or forecast clearly indicates that, and they don't mince words when they say, “risky to invest” in any degree from a university in the United States. They go on to state, “if you like the sub prime debacle, you will love the coming degree crisis...” (1)

This makes some sense. University degree values follow trends. Put simply, a Masters degree from Boise State U. is not even on the same planet as one from Harvard or Yale, and the same goes for a graduate degree from a university in some poverty stricken undeveloped country. They just don't compare. A degree granted by a university where wealth and prestige are focused will enjoy a similar prestige. Degree values follow trends.

What are the trends? After 1945 a new world order emerged that was dominated by the two super powers, United States and USSR. Likewise, two academic super powers reigned over the rest of academia with U.S. Universities dominant in the west and Soviet universities dominant in the Soviet bloc countries. By the end of the 80's decade, significant change began to assert itself in the European Community which ultimately began to put an end to the unrivaled dominance of the two super powers and the parallel bifurcated academic hegemony.

Two unrelated events ushered in this change. They were the almost unnoticed Erasmus Inter-academic Programme and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The international value of college degrees from the disintegrating Soviet geo-political region became worth almost nothing.

According to an Erasmus analysis, in the decade from the mid 80's to the mid 90's, the number of European students studying abroad, that went to the U.S., dropped from 90% to barely 10%. (2) Meanwhile, the post Berlin Wall U.S. seemed headed for single hyper-mega power status, giving the U.S. academic community a short virtual monopoly on wealth flowing in from students originating from Latin American, Asian, Russian, and Arabic countries.

U.S. universities quickly became complacent with de facto educational quality being largely abdicated to power hungry U.S. recognized accrediting agencies and tenured professors who all too gladly do their bidding. These agencies became bigger than life in their influence over academic institutions with devastating consequences, as noted by a host of prominent educational critics, one of whom characterizes U.S. universities as vast centers of waste, ruled by an oligarchic iron hand ... arrogant .... with overpaid and under worked professors, and referring to a U.S. university education (the product of intense hyper-governing Accreditation Agencies), as an out and out scam against taxpayers and students alike. (3)

By 2006 however, global foreign student dynamics had changed dramatically. European countries , members of the EU, hosted more than twice as many foreign students as the United States (1.2 million versus 560,000) (4) with Europe's growth paralleling U.S. Losses. (5) According to UNESCO statistics for 2006, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, and UK represented half of the world's top student destinations. (6) Between 1999 and 2005, Japan's foreign student contingent increased 108% and China's increased 213% versus 17% in the U.S. (7) But perhaps the most telling indicator of the educational and cultural bankruptcy in the U.S. is the fascinating trend of human mobility from Latin America to the U.S. with the worker element continuing its pattern of going to the United States, while students going to the U.S. is in serious decline. (8) And on the flip side of the coin, U.S. students are on the move away from U.S. Institutions, with more obtaining their MBA degree abroad than ever before. (9)

Falling demand yields falling university degree values, and loss of wealth and prestige also yields falling values. Degree values increase where real wealth and attendant prestige go, and real wealth has been leaving the citadel of prestige and wealth in the west, the U.S. Prestige and real wealth, in recent years, has been transferring internationally to such top sophisticated global financial centers as Panama, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Dubai at an unimaginable rate.(10) The devaluation of national currency ultimately drives capital wealth out of a region. The U.S. Dollar has lost 95% of its value, or purchasing power, since 1913 when the current central banking system was imposed on the dollar.

The incalculable cultural, moral, financial, and political consequences of the globally unpopular U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the repressive legal restrictions and psychological objections against accessing the United States due to its so-called 'war on terror', and the catastrophic long term financial difficulties unfolding in the U.S. continue to erode the underlying value of university degrees from the U.S.

Or, to put it in the words of a prominent European think tank publication, relied on by millions of readers every month in six languages and 130 countries, “the ongoing changes entail a complete dislocation of hierarchies established fifty years ago.....the collapse of the world order created after 1945 affects first and foremost the establishments and values related to the U.S., currently dissolving under our eyes.”(11)

With these mega changes as a backdrop and the emergence of the internet as an institution, Marco Polo International University's multi-national/cultural faculty, student body, administration, classic Oxbridge tutorial and Socratic learning methodologies, international language capability, global network connections beginning to be established (so valuable to alumni), low student resource requirements, and student-friendly support position MPIU as potentially one of the leading universities of the future. 

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NOTES:

1.) Excerpt, GAEB No. 18, October, 2007
2.) Erasmus student mobility study '87/'88 to '04/'05
3.) ProfScam: Professors and the Demise of Higher Education
4.) Institute of International Education, Atlas of Student Mobility
5.) MSNBC, August, 2006
6.) UNESCO on global mobility
7.) American Council on Education, outlook for foreign students in the U.S.
8.) Excerpt, GAEB No. 18, October, 2007
9.) Source: USA Today, 06, June, 2007
10.) Stories From the Desk of a Bullion Banker, author, Philip Judge
11.) Excerpt, GAEB No. 18, October, 2007