Apodaca: Rethinking higher education

In the last few weeks I’ve examined some of the most visible issues in higher education, including rising tuition and student loan debt, doubts about the real worth of brand-name colleges and the perception that only certain degrees are valued in the jobs market.

Amid this discussion, a strain of contrarianism has emerged to question whether college degrees are really as important as we’ve long assumed. More young people are going to college than ever, but increasingly questions are being raised about just how much bang graduates will get for their higher-education bucks.

Among the skeptics is Peter Cappelli, a management professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, whose new book “Will College Pay Off? A Guide to the Most Important Financial Decision You’ll Ever Make” points out that a college degree is no guarantee of greater earnings, and argues that some people would be better off forgoing college altogether.

PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel has also famously offered a few selected young people $100,000 a year for two years to skip college and instead pursue their entrepreneurial ideas.

Meanwhile, many employers have been complaining that too many college graduates are lacking skills needed in the modern business world. This so-called “skills gap” has reportedly been revealed in studies indicating that companies struggle to fill open positions — particularly for higher-paid jobs — because candidates are wanting in everything from technical ability to squishier qualities such as the ability to think critically.

But amid all this talk about whether college is all it’s cracked up to be, there’s also increasing discussion about changing the college experience to better reflect today’s reality and tomorrow’s potential. It’s too soon to tell whether this marks the beginning of an evolutionary shift that will change the nature of higher education, but at least it indicates that many people are thinking about ways to make college more relevant, as well as more affordable.

Last fall, for instance, Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a bill that created a pilot program to test the idea that community colleges could play a bigger role in filling workforce needs.

The law would allow some of the state’s 112 community colleges to award bachelor’s degrees in fields not offered by the Cal State University or UC systems, but which are in high-demand areas that typically require four-year degrees, such as dental hygiene, and industrial and health care technology.

Another idea that’s been getting more attention lately is to offer some bachelor’s degree programs that can be earned in three years instead of four. The proposal was floated again late last year by Johns Hopkins University professor Paul Weinstein, who wrote that a three-year degree would logically confer a 25% savings over four-year programs, which averaged $35,572 at public universities in 2013.

Among the supporters of the three-year degree is, once again, our own Gov. Brown, who has said he’d like for our state schools to explore fast-track academic programs. Backers of the idea say that an added benefit would be that schools would be able to accept more students, although publicizing that feature could prove problematic at colleges hesitant to compromise their hard-won efforts to appear exclusive.

Other concepts floating around involve finding more ways for college education to include real-world experiences by, for example, requiring students work as paid or unpaid interns or participate in shorter-term job-shadowing or externship programs.

Some other ideas are a bit further out there, including the suggestion offered by a few skeptics of humanities education that colleges should consider cutting entire departments — art history is a favorite target of the hypothetical executioner — that can’t prove their worth in terms of job placement and salaries.

Still other fringe ideas are starting to get some notice. Take the outside-the-box thinking on display at Robert Morris University, a commuter school in downtown Chicago which is the first U.S. college to make video gaming a varsity sport. Don’t laugh. Some players on its “e-sports” team receive hefty scholarships, sponsors are lining up to fund the team, and other schools are reportedly set to start their own video gaming teams.

What does this have to do with post-graduate job prospects? Perhaps more than you might think, and more than many college football teams can offer. Robert Morris President Michael Volt has been quoted saying that gamers learn the same teamwork and discipline lessons that athletes and other scholarship students like dancers and artists receive. They also excel in communication and leadership, he says. Not without coincidence, perhaps, these are some of the very traits that employers claim are in short supply.

Where will it all lead? Are we witnessing a fundamental shift in the way we think about higher education? Is the college experience set for radical change? Or are all these ideas just a fleeting response to market conditions, and if the economy continues to improve we’ll stop fretting about whether college as we know it is really worth the trouble?

Who knows? But there’s at least a chance that some of these ideas might stick and college will, in some respects, be a different experience than what we’ve taken for granted for many years.

PATRICE APODACA is a former Newport-Mesa public school parent and former Los Angeles Times staff writer. She lives in Newport Beach.