stories that we didn't get to in this hour. that's 11:00 eastern time tonight. right now we're going to turn our attention to another major issue in this country, the price tag of higher education. we're going to explore very basic question. is college worth the cost? it's the subject of a new cnn film "ivory tower" which starts right now. cnn films presented by volkswagen. isn't it time for german engineering? ♪ ♪ come down come down from your ivory tower ♪ ♪ don't keep us so far apart

>> i've always felt when i step on to a college campus mel and alcoholy in the air. if you're a teacher, you arrive every fall semester for the new year and you know that you've gotten a year older, but the students are the same age as they always were. they keep replenishing themselves. ♪ come down from your ivory tower ♪ >> college is a way to preserve cultural memory. it is an effort to cheat death, so it's a kind of struggle against time and mortality. ♪ so cold in your ivory tower >> the united states has managed to provide a post secondary education to a larger percentage of it population than any society in history. but a lot of forces are converging at the present moment

to create anxiety. is college overrated? i'm saying it's a myth. >> it's become a prevention i am. >> has college turned too expensive? >> students are going to default. >> any parent who trace to pay for their child's education is feeling sticker shock and access and completion of college are more challenging in our time. >> of all the time bombs set to explode, student loan debt in this country has reached $1 trillion. >> you may see a tsunami of student loan defaults. >> there are problems in all the sectors of higher education. and it's a perfectly fair expectation for students and their families who want to know when they leave college they will have some skills someone will be able to compensate them for. >> a lot of people can college degrees wait tables, cleaning toilets -- >> nearly half of all students are showing no significant gains in learning. >> but there's an apocalyptic

dimension to this as well, and that is the idea that the very concept of the institution of higher learning is about to be broken. and only a very small handful of colleges will survive intact on the other side of this tidal wave. >> we're at the point people are saying maybe you don't have to go to college. >> is college worth it? >> there have been moments in human history those who said the future will look a lot different very soon have been right. this might be one of them. ♪

this is the john harvard statue. now people come from all over the world to take pictures with this statue. >> in education there are these powerful social forces at work where people just imitate what other people are doing without reflecting on why they're doing it, things like how do you get into the right college? how does your kid get on the right track? college has been sold and oversold as the key to a better future. and something has gone very wrong with it over the last few decades. >> higher educations are the privilege for a very long time of being a black box. they created this prestige and mystique and it, but we've never really examined the ingredients on the box. >> we need to really rethink

what are the specific things people are learning and why are they valuable? >> welcome class of 2016. you may have acceptsed that some of us are expecting you to save the world. preferably by the time you graduate. but just remember a key part of any success is the part of you that is willing to fail. we at harvard believe the best kind of education for undergraduates is liberal arts education, and that planes a broad education across the fields of human inquiry. we aren't educating students for first jobs. we want them to think and question for a lifetime.

technology increasingly is something that every educated person should be familiar with in the 21st century. we have an introductory computer science course known as cs-50, the largest undergraduate course on campus. >> everyone on campus knows what cs-50 is. it's did he haefinitely a cours cult following. >> i think some of it is related to the whole facebook and mark zuckerberg being at harvard. that's what's happening, people are growing up and starting their own companies and creating their own websites and doing all this amazing stuff with technology. i think cs-50 represents that. >> today we begin our exploration of the fundamentals of computer science and the art of programming. you will have this very practical skill set that you can then take back to all sorts of

fields and he realize it is not so important where you end up relative to your classmates in this class but where you by semester's end in week 11 wind up this very day. >> sometimes it can be intimidating because there are plenty of people who have just more preparation. a lot of times it's really easy to say how in the world can i do this because i can't understand everything right away. college is a completely different environment than what i was used to. my path has been a little bit rough. i come from a pretty modest background.

when i entered ninth grade the summer before, i decided not to join a gang. they retaliated against my entire family, shooting at my home. because of my path, where i come from, i'm that much more driven. i remember those times, it just makes me all the more great ful for the things i do have now. before i came here, i hadn't had a bed for over a year. i come into my door, i, legit, jumped on my bed. that was something that meant a lot to me. it's a real blessing, just being here alone has already changed my family dynamic. >> i was always told in order to get ahead as a family, each generation has to do better. mom, how are we going to pay for college? what happens if i get in and i can't pay for it? i said, trust me, god will make a way.

>> he's going to be a star. >> when we got on harvard's campus, i was just like, my baby is at harvard. >> the first american college, harvard college, was a child of the university of cambridge in england. the puritans had come over to new england in the early 1630s and after they settled the basi basics, they started a college. in that sense the college was an offshoot of the church. the lecture so central to college education, is really a kind of modern version of the sermon. it was a commitment to the idea that students could be

transformed to lead lives of meaning and purpose. >> harvard is the source of dna for almost all of high er education in america. it laid out the model that a university needs to emulate in order to get better resources, better professions, better students. as harvard passed that dna down to everyone else, it created a race. >> when the colonial colleges started to become universities, and when brand-new institutions were founded as universities, you begin to see a tension developing between the mission to educate young people and the competition for prestige the. to outbuild your rivals.

american colleges are driven by the pursuit of prestige, and the way you get prestige is that you get the highest ranking, which expands your market and allows you to charge more. >> so in order to go up the ladder, everybody has to keep adding more programs and more facilities at a faster rate than the competitors. >> this really was the most grandiose vision of what a university could be, that it was a place of higher learning. it was a place of research. it covered every single discipline under the sun and there was no end to its expansion. >> and that became the model. you had to integrate doing your research and needed to provide the housing, the classrooms, all the food that they needed, and the facilities that are required in order to play in the game.

and that's a tough game to keep playing. >> the system of elite residential higher education that americans assembled over the course of the last centuries is extraordinarily effective. nobody disputes that. but it's also extraordinarily inefficient in terms of the resources that are expended to produce these spectacular places. >> higher education in america has been very successful for centuries but now things are changing because the scale and the cost is enormous. we have a product that is so expensive that a lot of people can't pay for it and they have to go into debt, and it just isn't viable. >> the rise in student tuition

is unsustainable. we cannot continue to charge significantly more year after year after year without running into some kind of a brick wall. >> college tuition has increased more than any other good or service in the entire u.s. economy since 1978. >> we're in an environment where we're cutting spending for higher education. the states have essentially walked away. >> they have this great thing in college and universities called tuition and it's been a great release valve as preparations have gone down, tuitions has gone up. >> we've lost $100 million in funding, and the board has replaced one out of every four of those dollars with tuition. far more of the cost of education is born by the student. student loans are an important part of the equation, too.

>> the availability of student loans to pay for college makes families less sensitive to the price. makes colleges less likely to compete on the price. >> all of the competition has been we are better than we used to be, and we're better than you. >> one offers an amenity and they all have to offer the amenity. they're adding the climbing walls and the plasma screen tvs. >> we're getting to the point where we're going to have a swimming pool in every room. >> they have pools with tanning ledges, tanning beds. a student tells us, i can take a five-hour bubble bath and no one will complain. >> there's a massive construction boom on u.s. colleges and universities today. it's an arms race, if you will, in higher education. >> it's a feeding frenzy to have a better student center, a bigger football stadium. sometimes it can be grotesque.

>> what we've really seen colleges have lost their way about who they are and what they are and have turned into these large businesses that have structures around them. they're mini cities. families do desire a lot of the amenities that colleges provide, the proverbial rock wall. to sustain those colleges, they have to borrow morme money, pay more tuition. you give momentum to this notion of the student is customer when you charge them so much money for their education. >> we tend to focus a lot on student debt but over the last decade institution themselves, colleges and universities doubled the amount of debt that they took on. and, in fact, we've seen more people be hired that never stepped foot in a classroom, and that's where a the lot of the rising cost of college has come. >> administrations seem often to be the tail wagging the dog. some of our leading presidents

can be quite shameless in the size of their compensation. >> we're now starting to question what we're buying. are you really buying a better, higher quality education? >> the fact that college aged kids are having some fun, that's not really the problem. the problem is institutions are creating these party pathways through college and take their money but don't ask anything of them academically. in fact, just give them beer and circuses. the holiday season is here, which means it's time for the volkswagen sign-then-drive event. for practically just your signature, you could drive home for the holidays in a german-engineered volkswagen.

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it used to be you'd get to a public university, it wouldn't cost very much to go there. the university ofc california used to have no tuition. the tuitions costses in arizona used to be near zero. we need to get back to the point where it's not a huge economic barrier that you have to get over to gain access to a world class university education. as a public university our responsibility is to take a broad cross section of talent from around our society, move it forward with world class learning experiences at the lowest possible cost. a lot of people would say that's not possible. we say it needs to be possible.

>> asu was ranked as one of the top public research universities. it also has another -- >> party school. we laugh about the party school thing. we literally laugh about it. our model for learning is the cambridge or oxford or the kid on the east coast huddled around their lamp light in the dark winter nights. you live in a place with bright sunshine and palm trees and beautiful weather, people think you can't be too serious but the whole party school thing is just bogus. >> it's the party school. come on. >> what's not to love? >> this is a big school and, of course, people party and drink and get crazy and all that stuff, but you don't have to. >> they say that asu is one of the top party schools according to "playboy" or whatever.

the average student comes to get drunk out of their minds. >> in 2004 we started looking at the party scene, large mid tier state universities and it didn't fit with what the majority of students actually need to get out of college. >> the fact college aged kids are having some fun, that's not really the problem. the problem is institutions are creating these party pathways through college and take their money but don't ask anything of them academically. in fact, just give them bear and circuses. in had this moment of declining state support, students who can't pay full out-of-state tuition without seeking financial aid are very important for the university. you've got to cater to the out-of-state less studious

students who want to party. >> we know how to party. we all know how to party. ♪ >> student from out of state pick the school because of the social life, big-time athletics, the greek system, the living. >> the view is like one of these living complexes. they have these pool parties every so often where everyone just goes and gets wasted or high or whatever and then they just start that's fights in the pool. >> students romanticize staying

out like at this private apartment complex where you hang out by the pool and smoke cigars when eye teally you should be focusing on your skalg and gcho getting a diploma. >> 36% of the kids in our study say they studied less than five hours per week, less than an hour a day, full-time college students. half the kids in our study said they didn't have a single class where they wrote more than 20 pages. we are confronting a situation in this country where for large numbers of students they are not doing much of anything academically. >> there's a lot of distractions here and there's no one holding your hand. some people are not ready for the college level. they fail classes or they withdraw or drop classes midway through because they're not doing well in them and they get

discouraged and drop out and don't have the motivation to continue. i mentor freshmen. try to give them tips. give them a way to study more efficiently, give them ways to do their homework in a better method. >> a couple classes because i missed them and didn't do my homework. >> it's easy to fall back in that trap. keep your mind you have to graduate to be successful. that kind of mind-set. >> many of these actors in higher education do not have an interest in promoting academic rigor and student learning. they're focused on something else. faculty today are increasingly rewarded in terms of promotion ten year compensation by their research productivity and scholarship. a focus on teaching can get in the way of one's research and scholarship.

and when these institutions assess teaching, they do it with course evaluation. at the end of the class students are given a consumer satisfaction survey. how much did you like the class? would you recommend this class to a friend? you're incentivizing the faculty not to be rigorous but lenient with grades because the only measures the institutions are paying attention to are the students happy as consumers? at the same time the number of full-time faculty in this country is in sharp decline. being replace d by part tame adjunct instructors. many have limited resources. institutions invest in other things thinking simply as a business. but they are nonprofits. they're accountable to the public, to fulfilling their mission.

>> it's perfectly appropriate we shane a strong late on universities and we demand better of them. >> we should be outraged by the abuses and distortions. but we do not want to erase the history of higher education and say these places are not about the formation of character or discovery. >> there are some colleges that have tried to go to the far end of the spectrum in terms of the intensity of the experience. deep springs college where students make a two-year commitment to, in effect, drop out of the world. >> the mission of deep springs college is to provide a free education to young men in preparation for lives of service to humanity. that's accomplished through what

are called the three pillars, and those are self-governance and academics and labor. and we live in this small community and we spend half of our time in class and spend the other half of our time working either on the ranch or in some way for the community. in committee meetings throughout the week we exercise self-governance which is taking responsibility for the community. we choose what classes we're going to take together. >> political theory. >> i think there will be something boring about going in-depth under one school thought very init tensely. >> through the education we are, like, putting ourselves through a grinder of some sort. >> i care so little for the idea of going to college. it was like deep springs or nothing. it's a place that demands of you pretty constantly.

and i lake that because i think if i'd gone to another college i would have become self-absorbed and narcissistic. the main attraction of deep springs for me was of self-governance, having to compromise with people and put myself in other people's positions. i don't think that's something natural for us. that has to be taught. it has to be the result of an education. >> the college classroom is perhaps the best rehearsal space for democracy. students learn to speak with civility, listen to one another with respect, and, most of all, they learn that you can actually walk into a room with one point of view and walk out with another. >> you need to have a common identity as citizens because it creates the bonds of affection. we are not simply sons or brothers, students or doctors,

but also citizens. >> why are we talking about the state at all? expression of the individual through the state? i don't feel that. it's because you're treated like a person already. >> what's defined as personhood has previously been exactly the mode in which we have kept, you know, entire races of people outside of the city. why are we talking about the state when, like, it's definition of personhood isn't good enough here but you can read against that argument effectively? >> i agree. but sometimes i think the best way to bring it into the new day is to transgress him. >> students actually have a lot to learn from each other. but what i think of as the most transformative events are really at the end of the day one-on-one experience with a teacher who looks you in the eye. >> i had a public school experience, saw lots of race i am, lots of sexism, got beat up,

got in fights. teachers can't do -- families can't do --. >> every time that i come in here and i say what do you think about this, do you want to change that's assignments, how do you like these readings? i'm trying to give you opportunities for agency so i'm not treating you as any old students. the purpose of this place is for you to create what you want here, right, and the problem is that for to you get what you want you have to cooperate with other people which means trying to figure out a way to communicate your anger without being antagonistic. two and a half hours of hagel. take a half-hour break, another hour and a half. that's what i have to do. >> even at deep springs seems to become more and are more obsolete or more and more of some kind of idyllic fancy. there's something there, and everybody feels it, having been through it.

this school stands for something. >> because of america's status as a country that's always reaching for higher and higher ambition and growth in the 19th secentury, we started to have ts idea that the university education could be a benefit to absolute ly everyone. that we should be able to all have the learning that we need to have self-respect, to be able to support ourselves. and also to be able to be full citizens. that idea really culminated in the moral act in 1860s. >> in the middle of the civil war in 1862 congress of the united states amazingly enough found focus and attention to pass the morrill act the land grant that became the great state universities. >> the federal government provided for the expansion of this dream of higher education at an unprecedented scale.

this has never happened a before in any human society, that we'd have higher learning coast to coast and it wouldn't just be for the nobility. senator morrill believed in it even for slaves, creating the historically black colleges and universities. >> institutions arose at a time when we had racial segregation and we had gender segregation to ensure that black americans and female americans could get a higher education. >> spelman college was founded less than 20 years after the end of slavery with the idea of creating educational opportunity for women who had had none. a place where young women can say this place was built for me. >> i am a testimony. every spelman student is a

testimony. a testimony of slavery they had themselves been denied. educati education. education. >> as it had been prophesied. >> one of the major things i think you get from being a young black student at a historically black kol you get to have those conversations about race and about gender, how the two fit together and how that affects what you're thinking, how you're feeling. >> when you're in a place for four years, there's people who look like you and they're achieving, it does do something for your own confidence. so really is space you can grow as a person. >> i went to the windsor school in boston.

it's predominantly white. coming from a minority experience to a majority experience, i think it forces me to find an identity other than the obvious. you know, at my high school, who is amir? she's the black girl. here i have to really figure it out. there are so many other intelligent black women here. i want three other people to bring the rest of the suitcases out here. >> college being a place of mental growth, simultaneously can be a place of spiritual growth because the two really go hand-in-hand. ♪ glory >> my sense of self-is stronger and it's helped cultivate who i am. ♪ ♪ children

>> i do think you can get that experience without going to college. you can travel the wrld and get that experience. you can merely migrate from your hometown and get that experience. but college is a place with where that all comes together in one. >> historically black colleges are very powerful. they have a strong connection between the students, the alumni, and the other fellow historically black colleges. but for me, in it particular, i didn't apply to many hbcus. i've been around black people my entire life. i went to a school that was more than like 90% african-american. i didn't know how to interact with white people and i was afraid. the biggest thing i think that i've been able to pick up while being at harvard is the ability to connect with people from all different walks of life. i don't want to just impact my

community, i want to impact a larger community. >> all of these institutions have made immense contributions to the history of our democracy. and if you cannot have a democracy without an educated citizenry, you want to see as many citizens as possible get as much education as possible. >> the president makes in excess of $700,000 as total compensation. a school with 1,000 students in tight financial times, one would have thought there would have been some proportionality. >> i believe the president of harvard makes $889,000. and she's overseeing 12,000 faculty, 21,000 students, and a $30 billion endowment. >> she doesn't have a fraction of the problem we have. not a fraction of the problems we have. in the country. we operate just like a city, and that takes a lot of energy. we use natural gas throughout the airport - for heating the entire terminal,

generating electricity on-site, and fueling hundreds of vehicles. we're very focused on reducing our environmental impact. and natural gas is a big part of that commitment.

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the philanthropists at the guilded age gave us the idea as a basic human right. peter cooper was this industrialist who believed in education is as free as water and air. he founded the cooper union, school of industrial arts and design in new york city with the idea that it would be available to people no matter what their

background to study useful and practical arts. but to date the cooper union is one of the last examples of a he free higher education in the country. >> a full scholarship for every enrolled student is the current mission statement of cooper union. >> peter cooper wanted the school to be accessible to the working class, to women, to people of color. i come from the lower middle class family. may parents told me about cooper, and when i found out, i was obsessed. i didn't even think about going anywhere else. >> nowadays so much is against this 19th century model of a free education. ideologically, financially, it's ancient.

>> when john shepherd came into office, he announced to the cooper community that we are running a large deficit in that tuition for the first time in 154 years would be on the table. the current administration is trying to say that the education as a right is not something that we should be focusing on. >> being free, the model is extremely complicated. you lack at different statements and you can see an extraordinarily large deficit. i think peter cooper would have wanted us if we had to talk about tuition to be able to talk about it. >> we all acknowledge that we're in a financial strait right now but the administration and the

board fail to understand how tuition will destroy the school. >> the administration did -- >> the administration -- >> must publicly -- >> must publicly affirm -- >> colleges commitment to free education. >> college's commitment to free education. >> the president has come from tuition charging colleges and he thinks that we should become like other colleges covered by normal kinds of words like sustainability. >> i'm here before you because the very survival of this institution is at stake. we do not have a sustainable budget. >> if you want free education, how are you going to structure it? i believe it's not compatible with small class size, higher interaction be and providing good compensation to people and i believe in providing good compensation. >> the president makes in excess of $700,000 as total

compensation. at a school of only 1,000 students in tight financial times. one would have thought there would have been some proportionality. >> i believe the president of harvard makes $889,000 and she's overseeing 12,000 faculty, 21,000 students, and a $30 billion endowment. >> she doesn't have a fraction of the problem we have. not a fraction of problems we have. >> apparently we are the harvard of ashton place. >> i don't think that the model of free education doesn't work. there's all sorts of things that got us into this mess and it wasn't the cost of educating the students.

>> most of higher education believes in growth at all costses, growing their way out of difficulty. and that becomes rather problematic when you are building a building at about $1,000 a square foot which is more than a luxury hotel. it's possible to have downsized as cooper union has done in 150 years of ups and downs in the market. but that was not the decision that was made. >> do you think it was wise to invest in hedge funds? and to use the money borrowed in the $175 million loan for that purpose? >> i'm not an investment person. i'm good at budgets but i'm not

an investment person. were theyries can can i decisions? well, you know, one can ask if they were or not, but there is no question that loan is a, you know, challenge for the institution to pay back. >> cooper union is faced with a mortgage payment of $10 million a year. it's terrible irony that an institution that was supposed to get people out of debt gets into that kind of debt itself. >> the idea cooper union would think about charging tuition really seemed like such a huge betrayal and a bellwether of where education is. students are not seen as having a right to their education, and institutions sort of feel free to continue to raise the price. what's happening to higher

education in this country? why is it seen as the province of the rich and the rich alone? people are ignoring all of the functions that education had a served throughout our history as a public good. >> certain economic truths have become self-evident. among these the right to a good education. >> right after the second world war, the g.i. bill was passed, which made it possible for men who would never have been allowed to walk onto a college campus except perhaps as members of the custodial staff or as delivery boys to actually walk through the gates as. >> over 02 million veterans took advantage of the g.i. bill. this was an opportunity that was free given by the government, and it made a difference to the american middle class. >> that expansion of the franchise of higher education was really so impressive, and it led directly to the higher education act of 1965 creating the federal student aid programs. >> this law means that a high school senior can apply to any

college and not be turned away because his family is poor. [ applause ] >> but the rug was pulled out from under students in the 1970s. we shifted from seeing education as a public good to seeing it exclusively as a private good. conservative governors, especially governor reagan of california, had really run on the idea higher education of a wasteful way to spend taxpayer money. governor reagan actually said the state should not subsidize intellectual curiosity and he ran for president later on a promise to disband the department of education. >> certain advisers started to say that anything of a private advantage should be paid for. >> the word free is one of the most misused words. we speak of free education.

he heducation isn't free. it costs money. >> if this is something that is going to be good for individuals to get a job and earn more money they should finance it and make the investment themselves. >> we need to keep government on the sidelines. let the people develop their own skills, solve their own problems. >> we stopped expanding the franchise of higher education, graduation rates stopped rising and access for the poor to higher education started going down. in the 1970s a pell grant was more than in the 1970s, a pell grant was more than enough to pay for tuition at an average state institution. but today, a pell grant pays for a fraction of tuition. this led to the growth of the student loan industry which ended up being the largest source of money for all tuition. the student loan program was never intended to be this large.

the student debt crisis coupled with the rise intuition rates over the past 30 years, it's just a perfect storm. it is a nightmare. >> we are the students! >> it is like a subprime mortgage broker that ripped you off and talked you into buying a house you couldn't afford. education in some ways is even more insidious than housing. better menu at red lobster! with more of what you love! try our newest wood-grilled combination! maine lobster, extra jumbo shrimp, and salmon! so hurry in! and sea food differently. [ male announcer ] over time, you've come to realize... [ starter ] ready! [ starting gun goes off ] [ male announcer ] it's less of a race... yeah! [ male announcer ] and more of a journey. keep going strong. and as you look for a medicare supplement insurance plan... expect the same kind of commitment

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we just hit an awful milestone, our nation's combined student loan debt has now hit $1 trillion. it is now larger than credit card debt in this country. the average american student now graduates more than $25,000 in debt. >> i grew up in a low income household. i was told to work hard and follow your dreams. it will pay off. and if you need to go into educational debt to achieve those dreams so be it. a couple months after i graduated collectors started calling. i told them i could not pay. even with a masters i couldn't got a job cleaning toilets at a

local hotel. i was on food stamps. i was living off mostly beans and rice. 20 years ago, we said all the kids who aren't going to college are being the victims. now it is actually turning out that a lot of the kids who are going to college are the victims. like a subprime mortgage broker that represented you off and talked you into buying a house you couldn't afford. education, in some ways is more insidious than housing. >> there actually isn't the same safety valve in the student loan market as in the mortgage market. there is no such thing as foreclosure or bankruptcy. >> over half of loans today are either in deferment or default. and when you default on your student loans, interest is higher than the principal. so you see very commonly things

like original balances in the tens and twenty thousand of dollars ballooning into hundred of thousand of dollars. >> starting off $78,000. ending up at $106,000 in interest alone. >> you're going to be saddled with that debt. that ballooning balance until the day that you die. >> that's the kind of garbage our government is playing with our young people. >> the government will make $184 billion in profits. over the next ten years. all of those profits made off the backs of our kids who are frying to get an education. i think this whole system stinks. >> what do we want? education! what do we want? education? >> what do we want? >> education. >> when do we want it? >> now!

>> as an individual eissue. >> once you hit $50,000 in debt, you need to pause, and take a look at the value of the education you are getting. you don't want to incur debt that stops you from investing in family formation, houses, cars and children down the road. >> the value of my education is priceless. but the value of my education is also not $140,000 in debt. if i do ever have gifts, my private loans will be directly passed to them even if i die. it is just siphoning my dreams away. and -- i feel bad talking about any dreams that i have these days because there is all this talk that -- that, generation y is so entitled and selfish. just from wanting the opportunities that their parents had. >> a lot of the older generations that criticizee millenials group in a time where you could go to state university and pay your way through with

summer jobs. the money is not there. i will not graduate into a cushy job. and everything i was told about the way the world works, turns out not to be the case. >> the student debt crisis coupled with the rise intuition rates over the past 30 years, just a perfect storm. it is a nightmare. >> we are the students! >> we are the students! >> after 18 months of intense analysis, the board of trustees, voted to charge tuition for all undergraduates, entered beginning with the class of 2014. right after the announcement was made, i speoke to him, he was waving his hands, yelling, cutting his hand off. right outside of the school there was a lot of grieving. people were angry. you could feel this chaotic

energy. it kind of felt like at any moment something could happen. the moments right before an action starts are the most exciting also scary. it was a long planning session. >> they can do that. they are doing it. >> we need to move forward. >> we didn't know what to do. people were look we haike we ha something. let's go into the president's office. we are just going to do it. we went in, 30 or so people, or more. >> the secretary tried to say don't go in there. but, you know, there was 40 of us. jean wasn't there. >> we the students of the cooper

union for the advancement of science and art can no longer uphold the direction our college has taken under the leadership. by moving no confidence today, join us in keeping cooper union free to all. >> i do have a statement to read to you. first let me say i would rather you just leave. students and others currently engaged in a sit-in in the president's suite are trespassing. we are going to give a one-hour period for any one to leave. any one remaining on the 7th floor after that one-hour period, will be subject to disciplinary action. >> at some point they're going to have to try to remove us. >> my foot's in the door?

my hand's in the door. you're endangering students. my hand is in the door! [ indiscernible ] >> the security guard is on the other side of the glass. there is you and three other men -- >> there is a very bad situation in the lobby. and the police have been called. i have removed the additional security guard. the police are also standing down. five, four, three, two, one! >> for many of us it was the first time being in the president's office. we have like this red light that we show to say we are occupying the space.

it is like being in a submarine. it is like a shared experience. it is hard to sleep because there was all this energy. there is some physicality of having to be there, actually having to abstain from your normal life. and that's very powerful. it's, space of the action is also this great opportunity to have no one imposing structures on us. this is really -- not asking permission and unapologetic. we are not sorry. >> the entire school does not have any confidence in your ability to lead cooper union i

people have no confidence, it means that no you are not going to be able to regain that trust. because there is none left. >> you know it is a little simplistic to say that you don't do this. you don't do that. i am on the board. i was firmly for no tuition. the numbers are what they are. however they got there, that's where they are now. can i finish? can i finish? >> i would like the tone of this whole discussion to cool down a little bit. it is clear to all of that this moment is different than anything that has come before. we haven't been to this point. all right. and i think we need to let go of some of the old dialogue. because we're in a new, place right now. what we need to do, quite simply is realize this moment in the country with a frill yun dotril in student debt, all models of higher education as a business

is failing. this is a moment for the school to be the vision of what education can been this country. just as it was the vision 150 years ago. it was part of a radical capitalist vision. it is rooted in turn of century idea about humanity. and it as idea that is incredibly contemporary and urgent. all right. to effectively lead us, you need to realize the moment you are in and the position you are in. it its an historic position. it is an hiss t an historic mom. a big step that you came here to meet with us. we need a leap, not a gamble. [ applause ] [ cheers and applause ] >> universities are clearly at a

crisis point. we have had runaway cost inflation, this is not what either of the kids or the parents signed up for. >> for years, we have been saying, college is a great investment no matter what. and now people are starting to ask -- really, really tough questions about the role that colleges play in american society, the authority, their moral high ground. moody is saying that college might not be worth the cost. the rating agency says the high cost of college plus growing public doubts about the value of a babachelor's degree has cause it to revise down its outlook on the sector to negative. >> there is going to be a collapse. one way or another there is going to be a crisis. it gets to the point where the price of a degree is so high that people don't want to pay for it anymore. >> this is not what most colleges want to talk about. they want to pretend education that is something that is nonfinancial. an end in itself. these are very noble ideals.

they deon't make sense when people are taking on $100 ,000, $200,000 in debt. >> you won't find a more firm believer in liberal arts than the guy holding the microphone. when you start college that's the time to discover what you love to do. it might be theater and it my be neuroscience and religion. whatever it is, now's the time. when you have the chance to experiment. when you have the chance to open yourself up to new things. when you can discover who you are, who you might become. yes? >> what you just said is terrifically exciting. remind me when i went back to school. but the truth is, many of us are about to lay out a whole lot of money to you. tell me one thing, is my daughter going to have a job and she is not going to come back home after it is done? >> is your daughter going to

have a job and not come back home? i can't tell you that. although, the time to be defensive about education is not now. this is the time to be aggressive about a broadly based, intensely personal, and intensively practical form of education. whatever school you go to. and it is expensive. i know it. i don't have to tiell you parens here. >> we are definitely ensconced in this view there is only one way to go to college. that's the -- the four-year, private school, where your kids live in dorms with their friends and have all their meals taken carry of and some one cleaning the bathroom. i am stressed about the college search to come. >> everyone, if you look directly that way.

that is the new one world trade building they're building. >> all the parents i know they're like their kids college search managers. >> welcome. as you can see, a very massive building. altogether there are nine libraries in the nyu family. 6 million volumes as well. >> i want this for my kids, it's just too bad it costs $60,000 a year. it really does cost $60,000 a year. >> student life here on the nyu campus. we have two athletic facilities to go to. pools. rock climbing wall. squash board in one. so you are really into fitness. >> it takes a real shift to consider something different when our kids are on this path towards a college degree. >> going to college has become a way to avoid thinking about the future. what are you going to do with your life? i don't know. i will just get another degree. and instead of getting one credential after another on some

sort of track, i think it is very important to think about if you didn't go to college, what would you do instead? >> peter teal, man who founded pay pal, is offering 24 college students $100,000 if they drop out of school and start their own business. when you think of hacking, the first thing is hacking a co ini. hacking your college education, i might go to college, i might not. if you want to challenge yourself to not go to college or challenge yourself to go to college and get the most out of college. you have to reflect on what it

is you are big. what it is your parents are buying. the idea that you will go to keg parties for four years sound cool. when you think about what parents pay for, what they're paying for is for you not to be left behind in the information economy. right. >> people say, well, dale, aren't you ruining people's lives. encouraging them to take a risk and not go to college. i think it is much risky r ier go to college and take on $20,000 of debt a year, have miserable job prospects when you get out start repaying the debt. that seems look a high risk. >> when you look at higher education, what you realize is what you are paying for is this mythical, large, bundle of -- things that you are supposed to get. so i am here to give you a -- framework to look at -- what types of services you could be accessing that could either supplement or kind of replace going to college. so i have unbundled college into three parts. engaging with content you are supposed to learn. so it could be through a

lecture, transferring content to you. then there is the affiliate network. enduring relationships with people that are going to look out for you that will help you find opportunities. and, the third is credential, accepted value, which is a piece of paper. that, kind of certifies that you have met some minimum level of competency. when i want to school there was no way to access the services that higher education provided. easily and freely. or cheaply on the internet. it turns out now you kind of can. >> what do you see, you know in a world in which degrees don't matter so much, but where people say, hey i am a dropout. not that you are -- >> i won't say first off that i will drop out of school. they will look and say you have experience. >> as i was paying for college, i real ied early on it was too expensive. i need work experience. life experience. get out of college and start my own path. >> 4,000 schools right now.

in a couple years that number is going to get depleted. only colleges that will matteren the future are prestigious, ivy league colleges that have made a name for themselves. >> my mom didn't go to college. my dad is definitely a person who has benefited well from college. they thought i was crazy. they're look what is this? a whole bunch of kids coming to san francisco who all don't want to go to college. they thought it was more like a cult. >> there is a change coming. there has to be a change coming. the four-year, undergraduate, residential experience is the gold standard. small classes. lots of intimate contact. how do we create as close to that ideal as we can, while reducing cost? technology has to be part of that solution. a big part of it. get ready for some german engineered holiday excitement.

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>> a friend of mine told me there is an education hacker house. you have to meet the people. i was also interested in the future of education. >> i had no idea there was a whole community of people that were passionate about the future of knowledge and learning.

we have had hackers come in, sleep on bunkbeds. working on apps, meet-ups in the backyard. variety of startups working out of this house. it is a community of people that believes that we don't need to rely on traditional schools or institutions. there is no longer a great value proposition in paying $200,000 for a degree, particularly not at an ivy league school. >> i didn't want to go to college because of the cost in terms of time and money. and i -- i thought this would be an excellent place to get the college equivalent. because i get the academics living with start-ups entrepreneurs and living with tech people. it forces me to grow up. we have to do your own dishes, cook yourself. deal with rent. all that kind of stuff. >> silicone valley, we don't, you know care about accolades or experience even. we care about skills. as you know things progress, degrees will matter less and less. you shouldn't have to have $200,000 or $200,000 of debt in order to learn a lot.

be really talented and show the world what your skills are capable of doing. >> i dropped out of college to start working on facebook full time out here. i later talked to my mom about it. she knew i was going to drop out of college. >> there are a lot of very successful entrepreneurs, or mul multimillionai multimillionaires, we have had billionaires that didn't go to college. in fact i would say today, given the internet, and the ease with which you can become self-educated, there is more reasons than ever not to have to go. >> truthfully that is very bad advice. because, those people were all exceptions to the rule. they made it in spite of a system, an apparatus that said they wouldn't. the safest bet by far is to go to college.

>> it is focused on a small subset of people that will do fantastic even without a college credential. i think it is a much more difficult question, what one does for people from -- from, you know, average backgrounds, less advantaged backgrounds. i didn't have answers for it. >> many intellectuals are saying it would be better if some people don't go to college at all. i think that's an assault on democracy. and it is an attempt to keep people in their place. and, ready enforce social inequality. education should foster social mobility. and the possibility of equal tee. >> there is no. >> you have got to be crazy to not intentionally get a college degree if you have a choice. if the college education is a college education and not training in one particular little field you learn how to learn. so that can open up new things

in your life. long after college. part of our responsibility as educators is to help inspire students to connect with problems in the world. because well are leaving them with a lot of problems. i think they know that actually. they want to engage. we have three demands. that he steps down as president. that the -- the board and the administration publicly affirm the mission statement including free tuition. and the third is to have more -- democratic governance. now i know this has been a

difficult time for the cooper union community. there is anger. there is disappointment over the tuition issue. but the debate you are having really isn't about whether education is free. it's really a debate about who can and who is willing to pay for it. there is nothing really free in life. please join me in welcoming the president of the cooper union. it is with awe and humility that i stand before you to honor our students. to our graduating students, congratulations. you have distinguished yourselves beyond imagination. you have distinguished yourselves.

[ applause ] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ i would look you all to assist me, please. in filling this hall with our voices. mike check. mike check. hope. hope is everything. hope is everything. to do a dull thing with hope will never be preferable to doing a dangerous thing with hope.

>> there is a change coming. there has to be a change coming. the four-year undergraduate residential experience is the gold standard. small classes, lots of intimate contact. how do we create as close to that ideal as we can, while reducing cost. technology has to be part of that solution. a big part of it. some people, including the president of stanford university, uses a metaphor of a tsunami, believe that moocs, massive open online courses are going to transform american

higher education, indeed higher education around the world beyond recognition and sweep away everything that we associate with colleges like this one. the mooc revolution began when daphne koller had come to me a number of years ago. she talked about a way of teaching differently with online technology. then recruited sebastian thrun to try experiments. >> welcome to the on line introduction to artificial intelligence. i will be teaching this class at stanford and online. i'm really excited about this. >> sebastian said let's open this course to everybody in the world. there was a bit of chaos, i must say. there was also some real excitement particularly when hundreds of thousand of students started initially indicating interest. >> we had an opportunity to really change the access that hundreds of thousands or millions of people had to an

education that they would never otherwise have been able to get. >> there is a red pill and blue pill. you can take the blue pill. go back to your class and lecture 20 students. i have taken the red pill and seen wonderland. having done this i can't teach at stanford again. >> these professors who took part in moocs, lost stanford their rival on the east coast is edx. >> one of harvard's first courses in the edx initiative debuted this past monday. turns out we had a few more students show up on monday than we initially expected. edx has 100,000 people following along at home. >> all of these platforms are using short videos, interactive questions, online chat sessions, robo grading to translate

courses created at the world's top universities into version that can and are being taken by millions around the globe absolutely for free. >> one of the reasons we are experimenting with online education to see if the technology can actually increase access to high quality education. i don't know what people will learn. that's the most important question. to me this is an interactive medium that empowers the student very much like a video game. so we ask the question is there a different way to teach, and students to find out by themselves how to solve problems. >> let me come back to one piece of this code that need a little more explanation. that's this call. >> the way i am teaching is different, i am doing it under the camera oppose to in the classroom. most of what they see is hand. hand, evidently humanize it for the students more than if they were looking at white boards.

that is literally all they're going to see. so as far as they know i am a robot. >> they certainly, and, we are controversial. because we take the focus away from the professor and put the focus back on the student. >> ha-ha-ha. >> does it really make sense to have 500 professors and 500 different universities, each teaching in a very similar way. or take the rock star and put him here and let him spend ten times as much time. maybe that rock star could do a little bit better job for the students. >> not on the last -- try that again. for instance. >> what is happening to higher education is not good for america, it's not good for the young people. this huge cost structure part of the marketization of so many things in our society. where does it get out of hand? i think it is getting out of hand right now.

i don't want to see tuition go up. but i don't know that i can convince my colleagues here at the state capital to provide more money. so we have how to look at ways of changing the design. >> in 2012, i get this e-mail message saying, hey, my name is governor brown. we should talk. >> i was reading "the new york times" sunday. i saw his name. found his e-mail. i e-mailed him. he called me back. very soon there after. >> i spent an hour on the phone. governor said to me. look you have been focused on bringing high end, stanford level education to the world. but realize the disaster in california its not that, it is really the lower level where lots of kids are left behind. >> from the beginning, california has been a place of pioneers and scoundrels and bold people. the californian state university system is a part of that lineage. >> california pioneered the best

public education system in the world. they saw higher education as the ticket to a better life for people in california. and to a better economy. when you think about what california has contributed to the american economy you can trace so much back to its higher education system. >> there was a tiered system t with the community colleges. state colleges. and the great research universities. a system that virtually guaranteed college education to every high school graduate in the state of california. the vision of clark kerr would provide instruction at all leve levels, and students could move upward through it. >> california prospers in large part from the fact that it provides ready opportunity for all citizens to secure education appropriate for their interest and ability. >> the california system is still a model for the rest of the nation.

the problem now is that as the state has pulled back on its financial commitment to the systems, the ideal there is really under, under threat. >> the idea of a public college, that is publicly funded an accessible is under attack. so really creating hierarchies where the students who can afford it, work with teachers. have one-on-one face time with faculty. students who can't afford it. well, we'll go on youtube. oh, i love game night. ooh, it's a house and a car! so far, you're horrible at this, flo. yeah, no talent for drawing, flo. house! car! oh, raise the roof! no one?

remember when we used to raise the roof, diane? oh, quiet, richard, i'm trying to make sense of flo's terrible drawing. i'll draw the pants off that thing. oh, oh, hats on hamburgers! dancing! drive-in movie theater! home and auto. lamp! squares. stupid, dumb. lines. [ alarm rings ] no! home and auto bundle from progressive. saves you money. yay, game night, so much fun.

>> over 16% of the students at cal state get out in four years. and the long year stay, the more you spend. so this is a big huge problem with student debt approaching $1 trillion. >> our students are very hard work. many of them are first generation to college. more than 50% of our students need to take remedial courses. but with the increasing budget cuts, we are unable to offer remedial math both sa semesters. it could be a living laboratory

for students to test new material. >> today, san jose state will sigh a partnership, our aim to focus like a laser on entry level classes for college credit. that's the key. for college credit. >> my colleagues were shocked. san jose state wanted me involved at all, with udacity. >> licensing our education to a outside vendor that is a start up. i wouldn't hire a startup to do a bathroom remodel in my house. >> what's happening in california is crisis management tactics, public funding is droog up. they need to offer more courses for less money. and putting a class on the internet seems like the easiest way. whether or not it is the best way. whether or not people who are standing to profit should be making this decision. i haven't heard much honest conversation about that. we are giving taxpayer money to

private business. >> well are ready for the first question. >> how is udacity being paid? and how much? >> we haven't, we can't disclose the amount, i'm sorry. >> if we are going to spend money why give it to udacity, why not hire people to teach classes. >> the idea of a public college, publicly funded, accessible is under attack. we are creating hierarchies where the students who can afford it work with teachers, one-on-one face time with faculty. students who can't afford it, well, we'll go on youtube. the results, the udacity courses are i think profound. >> the data is outrageous. the pass rate in elementary statistics from udacity, 50.5%. college algebra.

25.4%. entry level math, 23.8%. that is downright scary. what we want is a -- silver bullet. what we want is a magic pill. well there isn't, unfortunately. and certainly not udacity. >> whoops, we blew it. they didn't learn the material. couldn't succeed in next level classes. oh, well. >> retention rates and pass rates on online courses are lower than face to face. just because you can bring a horse to water but you can't make them drink. by the same token students have to have that discipline, motivation, and persistence. >> you could also say that you have to have a teacher to bring those qualities out. >> and we did attempt to do that with online mentors. >> you will be seeing a lot of our hand throughout the course. we thought we would show you our faces too so you could get to know us better.

>> the students who need the most attention, who are least confident, about their abilities as learners, there is a lot of evidence that those students don't learn very much from moocs. so i am not quite prepared to give up on the california vision of clark kerr and turn it over to the silicone valley and say -- on ward and upward and rescue us from this morass. >> i have so much more work to do. it is stupid. what's that? >> oh, that --

>> i am sitting here. like, all right. this is just too much. i started to wonder. am i going to be able to finish. am i going to be able to do this. i just have to leverage wlut i ha -- i just have to leverage what i have. you already have ten people in your class you can connect with and work with and collaborate with. look at this. computer science class. that could be entirely taught online and is to a large extent. but still look at how many people are in this hall who need help. they need help in person. that's why they're here. >> could you walk me through that. i don't know what that means. >> so when you see square bracket that usually means -- >> there should be more commas. >> by doing this? this wards off one of those attacks we started talking about briefly.

a sequel injection attack. >> students require can stand engagement on my part, on the teaching staff's part. most of us are up all hours of the night. we have 24/7 coverage. students ask questions any hour. get answers on the minute. you are on the right track. and you get the whole thing working. then plug in additional data that-up need. >> you can't at lest right now, replace a teacher with an awe tom n automaton, or robot. >> this is not -- >> we are not going to replace that kind of learning. of students working together on projects that involved being there physically. >> how do we put these things together. the face to face and the opportunities of the online and how can we -- come up with hybrid models? >> well should tap into the idealism of young people.

and provoke students to think for themselves to. think critically about the way so sigh tee society is put together. america has been all about critical thinking. that's how we became america. >> i support the occupation! >> i support the occupation! >> i support the mission statement! >> i support the mission statement! >> i support the notion of free, accessible education for all! >> i support the notion of free, accessible education for all!

>> community colleges are the most flexible institutions we have. they are the most open to alternative curriculums, because they have always had to scramble to educate the less advantaged kids in america. >> what we need to accomplish today is to take a look at these lectures, and if you have any questions or problems today is kind of the day to address those. the model here is to teach the

classroom. what that means is to have the lecture content be outside of the class. students have a m.i.t. professor doing video lectures. and they watch that at home. when they have completed a look chur th -- lecture they come in here, work in small groups, talk to each other. they're encouraged to talk to each other. using hands on, problem solving skills. critical thinking. >> the character function will call up any character that has an asqi vcii value. eliminating the large lecture. there is an opportunity for the faculty member spend their time helping those students who are struggling. >> testing it now. making sure it is working. >> it works. >> how are we doing over here? >> we have to do something to keep students engaged for them to learn. this is our job. this is what we are here for.

>> well are in experimental mode. we have no choice but to go very fast. experimentation will produce success and failure. we need to learn to live with that. technology is the hope for many young people who otherwise won't be able to afford the education they need. i think there is a tendency to romanticize the top tier ivy league schools. what is important is to have the personal will to follow through on one's ideas and to spend their time to actually be empassioned about the things that they're working on. i feel that, that its a much more important dialogue to have with yourself. >> this is where i spent ape decent amount of my life. one of the toughest neighborhoods in cleveland. it's been tough juthis semester.

i'm not doing particularly when in many of my classes. i started to question, maybe i am not cut out to be here the i just had to slack myself back to reality. wait, dawg, you are doing everything in your power to do well. and if i dropped out of harvard, i am back where i started. i haven't actually, bettered myself at all. i want to better myself. >> as a young man. i say he could have been a drug addict, he could have ran the streets, could have been a hoodlum. you wanted to make something out of life. that's what i am so proud of. everybody look at you and say he from ohio, in cleveland, he is in college trying to make something out of himself. you have people out there trying to discourage you. you can't let that happen.happe. >> a shame, kids don't realize they can position themselves to take advantage of the opportunities. there is just so much. >> all right. i will see you later. >> i love you, hon.

>> i do too. >> as a kid you had wild fant seeps and dreams about what you wanted to do when you got older. but what people consider a normal life from where i come from is to leave school and go get a job in a factory. you get caught in the cycle of poverty, caught in that ghetto, almost. that's like the life to you. you don't know anything better. college is the place where you figure out that there is something better. it is finally over. i survive the challenge that is cs 50. the more campuses one visits. the more one discovers that -- that the diversity of -- of america's college students is mind-boggling. and -- everywhere i go -- i meet students who give me hope for

the future of our country. it has been and will continue to be a challenge to keep the doors of college open to provide the best edge kaeucation to as manye as possible. not everybody is going to want it. not everybody will be able to take good advantage of more education. but, let's not assume that college has outlived its usefulness. let's not assume it is inevitable that public support for institutions of higher learning has to just continue to decline. there are other choice that can be made. what kind of society do we want to be. we should tap into the idealism, to think about, critically how society is put together. america has been all about critical thinking. that's how we became america.

i support the occupation. i support the mission statement. i support the notion of free accessible education for all. this is one of the longest student occupations in american history. everyone i know has given so much of their time and energy trying to save our school. it is very tiringp and it feels very much uphill. there is -- there is so much other work that need to be done.

it is really tragic the only solution is to charge tuition. tuition was not the end of an air rachlt er era, it was the beginning of a campaign. it might take a long time to see the world that i want to live in. but anytime some one says you can't do that, it's like, a little trigger goes off in my head. i'm like, but you can. welcome to this extended live edition of 360. breaking news from ferguson, missouri in the case that led to the death of a teenager. an outcry on the streets, grand jury proceedings, expected to wrap up as soon as tomorrow deciding whether officer darren wilson should be charged in the death of michael brown.

regardless of what the grand jury decide. darren wilson may not be returning to the police force. negotiations are underway for darren wilson to resign. our justice correspondent, evan perez, joins us with the latest. you are hearing this from your sources what are they saying? >> that's right. that's right. anderson. we are hearing from sources that darren wilson is in the final stages of negotiations under which he would resign. now, you know he wants to make clear he told people close to him that, you know he wants to make clear he its not admitting fault for anything. he doesn't believe he has done anything wrong, but he is doing this mostly because he feels it would be good not only for the community but also for his fellow officers. andersen. >> there had been a report, based on what the ferguson police said, he would return to duty if the grand jury did not choose to indiet him. that i think surprised a lot of people. in a relatively small community. relatively small police force like ferguson, the idea