The Next Crisis: Higher Education

The financial firms were first, now it's the automakers. We hear estimates of anywhere from 1 million to 3 million jobs at stake, and other industries are lined up to make their own claims about their importance to the long-term health of the economy. President-elect Obama has responded forcefully, unveiling a plan to put up to 2.5 million workers on the federal payroll by January of 2011, putting them to work on infrastructure and energy-related projects. These are terrific steps - the appointment of Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary is another - but in the course of these discussion it's time we focused on yet a different danger that is involved in this general economic crisis. I am referring to the danger to America's system and tradition of higher education.

Let's start with some background. There are three historical trends that combined to create a situation that on the verge of instability even before the current crisis began. First, the ever-expanding (yet still inadequate) access to higher education; second, an almost 30-year pattern of rising expenses and costs being shifted from public funding to students and their families; and third, a rapidly approaching point at which rising costs outstripping families' ability to pay, threatens the continued viability of the syste. At stake is the risk that we will lose one of the miracles of post-World War II America, the expanding access to higher education for middle and low-income families. Don't worry; the families that could really afford to choose a college based on the quality of the omelet chef in the dorm are not likely to find themselves suddenly resorting to fish sticks. But the truth is that those families are not, ultimately, the ones on whom we should be focusing our attentions.

The historical trend of expanding participation in higher education is longstanding. Consider the following percentages of Americans over the age of 25 who had at least a bachelor's degree in different decades. 1940: 4.6%; 1950: 6.2%; 1960: 7.7%; 1970:10.7%; 1980: 16.2%; 1990: 20.3%; 2000: 24.4%;. In 2007, the number was 27.5% (another 7.4% held associate degrees, and 19.5% more had some college education.) The 27.5% figure breaks down into 28.2% of males and 26.8% of females, as compared with 26.1% of men and 22.9% of women in 2000. The 2000 figure of 24.4% is further broken down by race : among Americans over the age of 25 27.0% of Whites, 14.3% of African-Americans and 10.4% of non-white Hispanics had college degrees.

These numbers represent some outstanding successes, particularly in the progress of women. The numbers in the most recent years are even more striking if we focus on Americans age 25-29. In 2007, 29.6% of these young adults had at least a bachelor's degree: 33.0% of women and 26.3% of men. Breaking those 2007 numbers down by race we find that the advantage of women over men crosses racial categories. Among Whites, 39.2% of women and 31.9% of men had college degrees; among African-Americans the numbers were 20.0% for women, 18.9% for men; ; among non-White Hispanics the figures were 15.4% of women and 8.6% of men. Between 1960 and 2005 the number of Americans enrolled in college went from 3.75 million to 17 million. Total expenditures on higher education (in constant 2007 dollars) went from $40 billion in 1960 to $360 billion in 2005.

As is well known by now, higher education correlates strongly with earning power. In 2007, 6.7% of Americans with a college or graduate degree were below the poverty line, compared with 18.9% of those who had not completed college. The median income for Americans over 25 who had at a bachelor's degree was $46,805; it was $61,287 for someone with a graduate or professional degree . . . and $26,894 for someone who had never attended college. So on the one hand, the story is one of ever-increasing access, with ever-increasing rewards. On the other hand, it remains the case that only around half of Americans ever attend college (54.5% in 2007), and just under a quarter receive a degree (27.5%, as noted above). As a matter of competition with other nations, moreover, America is losing its edge. While it remains the case that we rank second (after Canada) in total percentage of adults with college degrees, in the 25-29 cohort we slip to seventh, and when rates of college completion are calculated the U.S. comes in at 17th.

A closer look reveals the distribution of these avenues of opportunity along several dimensions. First, most students do not attend the super-expensive (and sometimes super-rich) institutions that get most of the press attention. Out of 17.5 million college students in 2008, 75% were at public institutions. Data from 2006-2007 breaks down in more detail: out of 15.1 million college students that year, 6.95 million attend public 4-year colleges; 4.3 million attend private 4-year colleges; 6.225 million are at public 2-year colleges and 293,000 are at private 2-year schools. 65% of students at four-year colleges attend institutions whose tuition and fees is less than $9,000 per year; for 56% of students, that figure is below $6,000. Only 5% of students in 4-year colleges attend schools whose tuition and fees is more than $33,000.

The distribution of colleges is, predictably, similar. Of the 4,314 colleges in the U.S., 643 are public 4-year institutions, 1,986 are private 4-year colleges; 1,045 are public 2-year institutions, and 640 are private 2-year institutions. 500 of these universities serve more than 10,000 students; there are 495 that have between 5,000 and 10,000 students; 1,560 have between 1,000 and 5,000 students; and 1,707 have fewer than 1,000 students. A lot of these schools are not highly selective. Among all 4-year colleges, fully 30% accept at least 90% of applicants, including schools that list no admission criteria at all. Another 21% accept between 75% and 90% of applicants. Among all 2-year colleges, 86.2% accept 90% or more of applicants.

Not selective does not necessarily mean not expensive. The average tuition and fees for a year at a public 4-year school is $5,585. At a public 2-year school the figure is $2,017. For a private four-year college, the average cost of tuition and fees is $20,492. But tuition and fees are only part of the story. The average total cost of a public 4-year college in 2007 was $12,805; for a private 4-year college the figure was $20,492. Those costs had been rising steadily for decades, well ahead of the general rate of inflation: since 1992 the CPI has risen 48%, tuition and fees (on average) have risen 175%. Moreover, starting with the recession of the early 1980s, more and more of the burden of meeting those costs has been shifted to families as states and localities move toward politically popular low-tax policies and expenditures on things like prisons, Medicare, and primary and secondary education continued to rise. As a result, the average college graduate in 2007 had $20,098 in debt, compared with $18,976 the year before and $9,250 in 1993. In 2007 2/3 of graduating students carried educational debt, compared with fewer than half in 1993. In 2004 (I could not find more current data) the average student loan amount just for that year - not counting PLUS loans - was $5,816; the average PLUS loan runs $9,019.06.

Put another way, in 2004 the average student got 43.66% of their budget from loans of one kind or another; the average student need above and beyond the Expected Family Contribution in 2004 was $9,247. Those numbers, of course, have only gone up. To see them another way, consider the percentage of an average family's income that it costs for one member of the family to attend a public 4-year college. In Ohio, that figure is 42%; New Jersey, 37%; Washington, 31%; Illinois, 35%. For the poorest decile nationally, the average cost of attending a public 4-year college would be 55% of family income, as compared with 39% of family income in 2000. And aid is not keeping pace: since 2000, 28 states have seen tuition rise faster than the provision of aid. For many graduates, the prospects appear less and less attractive. A report by strategic advisors to the debt collection industry describes a "perfect storm": high student loans, weak employment prospects, and upwards of 10% of students already relying on credit cards to meet educational expenses.

In other words, in 2007 America had a greater number of people in college, and a greater number of college graduates, than at any time in our history, and a greater pay-off in subsequent earnings. Higher education had become a burgeoning industry with multiple elements, including highly profitable private schools - not all of them particularly academically demanding - and an extensive system of public higher education. The cost of that accomplishment has been a huge debt burden on students and their families, however. College graduates are accumulating more debt than ever before, and as costs are increasingly beyond the means of families to pay there have already been signs of a downturn in participation and completion rates. In 16 states, the educational attainment level for young adults (25-29) was already lower than that for adults in general (ages 25-65); these states included Florida, California, and Texas. In a 2006 "National Report Card on Education" from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, no state got a grade of A or B for affordability, and 43 states received grades of F. Moreover, at best the successes of previous decades had only partly opened the doors of opportunity. In 2007, only 18.4% of Americans who complete 9th grade to on to graduate college, compared with 38.8% who enroll in college at some point. Today, more than 50% of entering college students will fail to graduate in less than 150% of "normal" time.

Now for the really bad news. As the financial crisis has progressed, colleges and universities are starting to feel the pain of cratering state budgets, the collapse of the private student loan market (part of which was due to some singularly ill-advised government interventions in past years), and declining endowments all in a period of rising enrollments and parents whose houses and stock holdings will no longer contribute nearly as much as they might have before to the cost of an education. How bad is it? We are only just beginning to see the signs: hiring freezes at a dozen universities including Cornell and Brown; enrollment limits in the Cal State system, and threats of the same for the U of C schools; tuition spikes and support cuts around the country. All of this, moreover, comes on the heels of declining state investment in higher education and political frustration with rising tuitions.

Again, a few figures help tell these multiple stories. It is estimated that across the country, endowments will drop as much as 30% over the coming year. Endowments account for a portion of college income; for most schools state funding is a much more important factor. In 1984 4.1% of state spending went to higher education; in 2008 that figure had dropped to 1.8%. This took place, of course, against a backdrop of an ever-increasing student population. The University of Wisconsin system, to take one example, has seen a 21% decline in state contributions between 2001 and 2007, measured in 2001-adjusted dollars, including 5 consecutive years of declining contribution. (In unadjusted dollars, expenditures went up from 1.04 billion to 1.05 billion in the same period.) Extending the period, from 1997-2007 there was a decline in adjusted spending of 4%. In 2008 the amount increased to $1,271,724,000, including $101.5 million in spending on student aid. Nonetheless, in 1974, taxpayer contributions to the UW system accounted for 52% of its costs; in 2008 that figure was 25%. Governor Doyle has recently announced a $5.4 billion shortfall in the state budget; the consequences of this fact for the state's funding of higher education can only be imagined. Cuts in state support for public university systems have been announced or threatened in Massachusetts (5%), Arizona (4% this year, 5% next year), Pennsylvania, California, Hawaii, and New York.

Worse, even before the current crisis, the brunt of declining funding was being felt where it will do the most harm: at the community college level. In 2007-2008, out of 28 states that employ funding formulas, 18 had community college systems that were not fully funding. Across the period from 2006 to 2008 state and local funding for community colleges fell 5.2%; funding for regional state colleges fell 3.7% in the same period, while funding for flagship campuses fell only 1.8%. In the coming year, fully half the states anticipate reductions in funding for community colleges, with those cuts concentrated in the areas of vocational, occupational, and technical education. Meanwhile, the pressure on the 2-year and community colleges is only increasing; as private and even public 4-year colleges become increasingly unaffordable. more and more students look to these less-expensive alternatives. In 8 states flagship colleges have already capped enrollments, and more such caps are expected.

Where is this all going? Absent federal intervention, for students the situation is dire. There is an assumption that demand for higher education is inelastic, and relatively speaking that has been shown to be true. But even before the current crisis, the system was showing signs of unsustainable strain. The combination of students who can no longer afford student loans - or simply can no longer find them - declining values of endowments, and declining state and local tax revenues, will close the opportunity for college education for large numbers of young Americans. This goes beyond economics, it would have sociological consequences. Access to college education is the one genuine avenue for economic advancement as well as a basic requirement for a globally competitive economy.

On the supply side, among the colleges one can predict that smaller private schools and outlying branches of public colleges that depend on public funding, bonds, and student loans to provide their revenue are at risk. Half a dozen New England colleges closed in the 1990s; the numbers this time could be much, much greater. The trend in recent years has been to staff classes with large numbers of adjuncts and non-tenure track instructors. They will be the first to go, but beyond that colleges have to think about new ways to achieve economic efficiency.

Some of these changes might actually be beneficial, despite the pain with which they will be accompanied. For example, the increase in college staffs over the past decade, for example, has been concentrated in an ever-larger administrative sector, and there have been recent trends toward expensive investments in sports programs, dining services, and dormitories. In some ways, perhaps, streamlining the operations of colleges and universities to concentrate on their core missions might be beneficial, and even the loss of some small, non-selective private schools might be ultimately good for the system. But we can also expect to see other things: larger classes, heavier teaching loads, leaner and very much meaner operations.

But what is most likely to be the immediate effect is simply the loss of access to higher education, and particularly the loss of access to the kind of training and education that carries the promise of lifting the working poor into the working and middle classes, just when those opportunities are needed the most. To prevent this from happening, to secure the continued vitality of America's system of public higher education, is essential if we are to retain what is left of the promise of opportunity that has become so tattered in the past two decades. (Furthermore, this is the worst possible time to allow the community colleges and the public 2-years and the smaller public 4-years to fail for another reason; in all the talk of creating 2.5 million jobs in infrastructure repair, we have not heard nearly enough about job training and, more generally, vocational and technical education. That will be the subject for another post.) President Obama is right to be concerned that the failure of the automobile industry could have ripple effects that would cause lasting harm to the American economy. But that is nothing compared to the harm - or, more precisely, the lost opportunity - that would be incurred if the new administration fails to act to save our system of public post-secondary education. We have probably seen the peak, the Golden Age, of higher education in this country for the rest of our lifetimes. Now it is up to this generation of leaders to preserve the essentials of the system for the generations to come.

Comments

[argyle]

Sure, but to get a degree in anything worth studying in college is to learn what it means to be irrelevant outside of the University system.

Educating a workforce past high school is fine but it shouldn't be combined with learning for learning's sake.

[paixa3]

Yes, too many publish or parish professors have NEVER really worked in their fields at all....and they sure as h@ll NOT scholars, not intellectuals.

What a doomed system.

[MagisterLudi]

I almost chocked on my herbal tea. Professors are neither scholars nor intellectuals?!
I wonder what Einstein and Feynman would've said about it.

"Publish and parish?" Parish? I doubt you have the first idea what that concept means.

"What a doomed system"--- You obviously suffer from severe form of underexposure to this system. Too bad.

[zendrivr]

I think you meant "publish or perish." Also, did you mean to say that someone who "works" in a particular field (I am assuming that you don't consider teaching work) qualifies as an intellectual and a scholar or was this just a non sequitur?

[WilliePilgrim]

No talk about improving the educational system to identify more and more people who are unsuited for college, despite their and their parent's protests, and would be happier and find more fullfilling work in a trade. Too bad. Professionals in the Trades and even craftsmen are making great money with great satisfaction. The illusion of college education being the magical doorway is a flimsy one and only adds to the dissappointment that so many educated individuals experience.

[KillTheMessenger]

Well, craftsmen, good luck in the brave new world. You will need it.

[MagisterLudi]

I agree Pilgrim,
In many countries high school students unsuited for academic work are given an honorable option of becoming educated blue collar workers or artisans and continuing their education in trade school.
In former Communist counties, 10th grade student can transfer to a trade school and receive an equivalent of technical AA diploma after 4 years of intense study.
US needs this system also, badly.

[slemay]

In the 1950s, you could still learn in high school what you needed to know to prosper in the local economy. Now you need more to keep from falling further behind in knowledge, and falling behind at an accelerating rate.

Part of the problem is that we fail to take care of basic education by the high school level, so a large portion of new college students end up in remedial programs. It's a lot less expensive tto teach kids to read before the professors ever see them.

We need a well-educated workforce, along with a network of well-maintained infrastructure, if we hope to recover and prosper economically. Today, that education must come from the university level. Somehow, we need to pay for it.

[newpotusplease]

tenured professors at Cal State and UC are feeling no pain

they get to supplement their income with all sorts of perks

zero interest home loans

and on and on

considered par for the course

taxpayers are in the dark about all of it

it is the next great scandal to be aired out in public, hopefully

or perhaps people are apathetic

[slemay]

In my field, the Cal-State and UC systems cannot compete for faculty nationally. They pay the national market rate, but the cost of living is much higher than in, say, Mississippi. But the Cal-State schools pay about the same rate as the Mississippi schools.

In Starkville, MS, I can buy a nice, middle class house on a one acre lot for less than $200k. What will that get you in San Luis Obispo or Fullerton?

So if you were offered two jobs as a business professor at $100,000 for nine months, one in Starkville, MS, and one in California, from a purely economic standpoint, which is better?

I interviewed with Cal State schools years ago. They tried to offer me a higher rank than I deserved so they could create a more competitive package. I turned them down for Northern Illinois University, which paid more and had better benefits, so I didn't need zero interest home loans.

Those 'sweeteners' are the only way the Cal State schools can get faculty at all. Get real.

[KillTheMessenger]

Agreed. And even so most professors could make twice the money for half the amount of work in any corporation worth mentioning.

[MagisterLudi]

What a seriously deluded opinion. I went to school for 9 years and then put in several years "freeway teaching" as an adjunct. All that while learning English.
Then I went through rigorous tenure process which included licking every boot at the department 10 times over while teaching full load and trying to get some papers published and concerts performed. Wwhile making less $ than a third rate plumber. And I am STILL only an Assistant Professor!
I respect what you "blue-collars" do. You should reciprocate... or do like the fish.

"This ain't workin, that's the way you do it
Money for nothin' and your chicks for free."

[Zeje]

Don't worry. You're doing. COunt up all your vacations- - a month a Christmas, three months during the summer, SPring break, Easter break, etc, etc, etc.
My professor just last week was complaining because she has to teach three classes -- 9 hours. Yes, I know, she has to write a syllabus, grade papers, prepare for class. She wants to teach two classes in the fall, and one class in the spring -- and earn over $100,000. The faculty have no idea of reality.

[drifely]

Considering the ease of access to information, networking, visual and audio linking in our time, the cost in time, money, and inconvenience of a brick and mortar based education seems foolishly extravagant, especially at the undergraduate level. The corporate consciousness that has invaded higher academia the past few decades has rendered it as full of bloated administrative ticks as the world of business, and it should be subject to the same scrutiny and fumigating as the financial and auto industries are overdue for. Many undergrads haven't the intellectual curiosity necessary and should be in trade schools where they could learn to do something useful, leaving more resources for those who can put them better to use.

[KillTheMessenger]

Did you ever have a really good teacher? One doubts it, given your fondness for remote learning.

So what "craft" would you recommend to a young person without intellectual curiosity?

:-)

[OB-GYN]

Good article. Our house montra remains bachelors and graduate degree should be our teens goal. First up is two years hence: state university vs Ivy if admitted. I'm hoping to refinance if mortgage rates drop significantly due to the bailouts, as her college saving account and my retirement both took a great hit. I feel the most for less fortunate families, and hope Obama will keep his word on recognition of educational needs. We'd have to be an idiot nation not to grab the known balls (science, mathematics, engineering, business management, environment, inventions) which work and not run with them.

[Zeje]

Tuition should be free to those who qualify -- good grades good scores on SATs. So our young people don't graduate college loaded with debt. European families don't have this problem -- nor do Europeans have the problem of access to health care. And they have a subsided transportation system. I"m trying to say that many of the stresses that come with unemployment or under employment could be alleviated if we subsidized people -- instead of the banks.

[cedavis]

This is a nice thorough piece that gets to the heart of the problem. America has been borrowing too much from the future to pay for education.

When I wrote my book, "Beating the College Bubble", I considered these problems from the eyes of the future students. Should they go to community colleges? Or skip college altogether? There's no right answer for everyone, except perhaps consuming much less than the last generation.

It will be fascinating to see how universities react. They could cut costs dramatically and also cut tuition. That would allow them to keep attracting the best students. Or they could keep sailing along as they have in the past and let in dumber but richer kids. It's an interesting game.

-C. Davis
http://www.edububble.com

[KillTheMessenger]

Having seen the programs offered by community colleges I would have to say that they are a waste of time. Two years of community college knowledge is, at best, worth the first two months of the first semester of a typical European university program (and much of it is already contained in high school education, anyway).

If someone can't handle the intellectually outright lame introductory classes of American universities, they simply do not belong there.

[Zeje]

That's not entirely true. I've seen some wonderful community colleges. A young person can spend two years at a community college -- get into the honors program, take the best teachers, and get a scholarship to transfer to a good four year college. I've seen this happen many, many, many times.

[KillTheMessenger]

That the number of people with bachelor degrees is rising is pretty unimportant in a world where nothing below a masters degree counts for professional education. I would find the numbers for holders of masters degrees and higher way more enlightening.

Also two year programs need to be phased out and replaced with four year programs with a much larger content of applied knowledge and on the job training. Do we want our future computer scientist to flip burgers during their spare time to pay their bills or do we want them in internships at Google?

We need to make education absolutely free. There is an enormous price to our future attached to each student loan. Students need their heads free for learning, instead we make them worry about how they are going to pay their loans back.

[tomas0808]

Bingo. I don't care how they do it, a huge new gas tax, whatever, education and healthcare should be free and provided by the state. Making those two thing a private business has been a screaming success (not)

[MagisterLudi]

Student loan joke ( Steven Wright)
Hiking in the middle of a desert a student approaches a phone booth. Suddenly phone rings
-Hello is this Mr. Wright?
-Yes he replies.
-This i the loan officer from your alma mater. We would like to know what you did with all the student loan $ you got.
-Well, replied Wright, Me and my pal invested it in RD on a suitcase-sized nuke.. and ah... we would REALLY appreciate if you stop calling us! Ever!! Again!!!

[Zeje]

Kill, more than 50% of all college students are now enrolled in community college. To me, they are the most innovative of all higher education institutions. All the new ideas are coming from community colleges. (I work in a four year institution, but used to work in a community college.)

[KillTheMessenger]

"Kill, more than 50% of all college students are now enrolled in community college."

And it shows. It's part of the problem. We treat our kids as if they are dumb and need to go slow. They don't. They need to go faster and harder. THEY can handle it.

"All the new ideas are coming from community colleges. "

New ideas in what? Certainly not in physical sciences and life sciences.

[enochsmoky]

Just like the UAW in the auto industry, the tenured professors have priced themselves out of the market. Most teach only about 10 hours a week and expect $100,000 a year, great pensions, vacations, health benefits and free or reduced tuition for their kids. The gravy train is over for everyone in the U.S. and the real economy does not care if you are the smartest drone on campus.

[KillTheMessenger]

In many countries academic teachers are better paid than in the US and they enjoy much better perks. A typical academic teacher might find themselves teaching six to ten hours a week, researching ten to twenty and spending 40 hours writing grants for himself and his students.

The real economy indeed cares about how smart researchers are. Enormous numbers of industrial patents originate from academic work, especially in life sciences. There is no bandwidth and no funding available in industry for the kinds of basic research that is required for these inventions.

But I think we have just identified the source for our problems: it's people like you who have opinions without knowledge.

[PATina]

Agreed. It's so funny that people denigrate a professor for making $100,000 a year (or an auto worker making $60,000 a year) ... but have no problems spending hundreds of dollars to watch a multi millionaire dribble a ball down a court.

I have nothing against professional athletes... but WE need to get our priorities in order. I would much rather have someone make 7 figures for imparting knowledge and information... than have someone make that much for entertainment.

[Zeje]

I have worked in academia for decades as an administrator and as a faculty member. There are some great full-time professors -- but most are not hard working. They complain constantly. They are not usually open to any new ideas. Also, it really annoys me the way professors complain, not only about all their hours (they won't come in more than two, at most three days a week), but about the students. They never think (it seems) about how to teach better -- they only berate the students.

[OB-GYN]

My spouse holds a Ph.D, and has taught in a medical school for 30 years. He works a full 40 plus hours per week, pays high health care due to his family, has no pension but some matching funds for 401k or whatever and yes there is reduced tuition, which 3 or 4 kids have declined (kids don't like to go where dad is usually, unless they have few good options). For this he makes in the range you mention.

There has been no gravy train for this tenured professor for 30 years. He works hard now, he did at the beginning and he's only gotten better in lectures with age.He's never once taken a sick day, and never the full annual vacation time. His classes are packed, the day before Thanksgiving break with enthusiastic students, wanting to hear and learn. We all benefit if the system works right. It's not reasonable to make such generalizations; what would you deprive tenured professors from given this scenerio?

[FearlessFreep]

Part of the problem is that the tenure system favors professors who publish stuff over those who are merely good teachers.

[MagisterLudi]

"the tenure system favors professors who publish..."

Not so much in "teaching" universities ( like State U's) but certainly in top tier schools.

[KillTheMessenger]

You assume that one can be a good teacher without publishing. That is simply not true. One can only teach well what one truly knows. In science one can not truly know anything without researching it 24/7. And one can not successfully research without publishing peer reviewed papers. That's how scientists get feedback about their results and inspiration from other scientists. It's either all or nothing.

Science is simply not like high school. Not even close.

[MagisterLudi]

American universities suffer the same malaise as the corporations.
For decades now higher ed institutions gamed the system by sub-contracting many of the undergrad classes to adjunct faculty and grad. students. While raising administrative salaries through the roof.
So when Mr. Mainstreet think his Johnny is getting superior education at some marquee U., in actuality Johnny' s subjected to tender mercies of some overworked and harassed grad. student (been there, done that).
Combine that with severe grade inflation and viola-- third rate ed.

[ebo64]

Been there and done that myself (grad asst and adjunct).

In these floundering economic times, I find it disheartening to hear how many parents are struggling to pay tuition for their children to attend college. If they only knew what type of "education" most universities offer, then they might consider a better investment for their hard-earned money.

[KillTheMessenger]

Teaching students is part of the education of grad students. If you did a poor job about it and you did not try your best to help and motivate those students to succeed, you cut yourself short. Worse, you did not even understand what you were supposed to do FOR YOURSELF.