Will the US get away from the idea that everybody must go to college?

IMO, Americans have had this idea for far too long. I think that when I graduated from college, early 1970's, there were more college graduates than there were jobs for them.

Especially nowadays when so many finish college with enormous debt...and end up in a McJob because so many of the "good" jobs are gone. I don't blame anyone in this situation for being bitter.

There's nothing wrong with going to college, but it's not for everybody, and I wish Americans would get away from that fool idea.

As a liberal education, maybe. We have gotten away from that idea. That's why we have so many ignoramuses, even those who graduated.

We could develop specific career schools rather than using college for it.

Also find another way to have a minor league for the NFL.

There's an intrinsic value in learning how to think and use your mind to solve problems in new ways - that's what I got out of college more than specific vocational knowledge. This is what's known as a liberal education.

There should be more vocational and apprentice opportunities for people who want that experience.

Maybe we should have different expectations for what we want / get / need out of education.

...highly-skilled professionals enrich a society and strengthen a country economically and technologically. It also gives opportunity to individuals to pursue dreams- rather than working to pick fruit, or plow fields, or servicing machines which create things, etc. There's nothing wrong with picking fruit or those other things but this country's history is filled with yearning prose of those who wanted greater and were denied it.

  I say make college affordable for everyone or subsidize it. If you can keep getting good grades, the government should pay for however far you can go.

  Your call to change focus away from college is puzzling to me. We are already a nation addicted to gadgets that most of us have no idea of the workings or design of.

PB

I agree with you, but in order to fend off knee-jerk responses from the right, I would rephrase "the government should pay" to "we should collectively pay". Whenever the "government pays", it is we, through our taxes, who are paying; government serves merely as the intermediary and administrator.

What you are saying is that there is intrinsic net societal benefit to provide a college education to all ciizens capable of getting the grades, regardless of any individual's ability to pay. Likewise there is intrinsic net societal benefit to providing healthcare to all citizens capable of breath, regardless of any individual's ability to pay (just wanted to get that one in there!). Therefore, we should use our democratic institutions to fund and administer access to college and healthcare, because in the end we all benefit. Truly a case of rising tide lifting all boats.

Modern governmental institutions have become tools that redirect benefits to active constituencies while socializing costs. Unfortunately, in Republican hands, this means redirecting benefits to the corporate elite, the top 0.5% of our socio-economic pyramid. Democrats do this too, but with us the opportunity and possibility is there to direct at least some benefis to wider constituencies found further down the hierarchy.

PB

No one should be denied an education because of financial situation. But it should be made really difficult academically for people to get into university. You're right, not everyone belongs there. Some should be streamed towards business schools or technical colleges, and those institutions should be considered the equal of universities.

nt

A good solid college education is not a bad thing no matter what you end up doing with your life. But this doesn't mean you should end up in debt to do it.

I 100% agree that college isn't for everyone.

The problem is, America's economic climate pretty much leaves the average 18 year old with not much of an option after school. Jobs that used to pay a sustainable wage and good benefits such as manufacturing, automotive, industrial, steel, etc. are no longer there, and if they are, they pay half to 1/3 of what they used to pay. They all went to Mexico, Malaysia, China, etc. You only need so many plumbers, electricians, handymen and carpenters before it becomes odd-job side income because the market is simply too saturated.

Things aren't looking real well on the white collar side either. Any more, the MBA is soon going to become last year's bachelor's (which is now about as relevant as yesteryear's HS degree). Not everyone wants the no-life career of doctor or lawyer no matter how much it makes; some of us just want to work, make a living and that's it.

For many middle management/analyst jobs, an "MBA preferred" listing is becoming more and more prevelant. With all of this pressure to get one, everyone imprisons themselves in a mountain of debt in an attempt to "be special" and to "set themselves apart", when all that really happens is that NO one is. When will the time happen that an MBA is no longer a ticket to a higher salary, but a requirement . . . merely to remain employable? It's coming sooner than people think.

I wish I could believe the phrase "Do what you love, the money will follow" . . . but too often, what we "love" is nothing more than a crapshoot when it comes to whether that will pay your bills or not.

There are too many students who are in college only because their parents told them that they have to go. They're just marking time, and they're the students responsible for most of the binge drinking and vandalism problems on campus.

If I were Education Czarina, I'd limit college to students who had a distinct academic interest. To any student who didn't have the faintest idea what he or she wanted to major in, I'd say, "Go work for a few years until you figure it out."

Instead of college for all, I'd offer more options for education and training starting at age 16. Somebody who's an academic wash out might become an excellent worker at a skilled trade, and frankly, the world doesn't need more "college graduates" who graduate as ignorant as rocks.

By the way, administered properly, this would not lead to increased racial or class stratification. A George W. Bush type would not get in, due to a lack of academic interests, but a poor student who came and said, "I've always wanted to be a doctor, and I've always enjoyed my science classes at school," would.

Colleges today are too cluttered up with students who are there only because their parents can afford the tuition.

you act as if all people are rational actors.

you cease pushing the go to college line and both students and teachers and counselors will stop pushing it too.

so that AA or Hispanic kid who has the talent but struggles in a lower level school gives up because no one is pushing him to keep trying and get to college.

When you lower your dreams, you almost by definition lower what you end up obtaining.

There are PLENTY of "technical colleges", trade schools and whatnot for anyone who wants it.

But the fact that kids are "ignorant as rocks" after graduating college? Well, that applies to most kids and I suspect your elders at the time, at least one of them, thought it applied to you.

I was one of the intellectually curious type, and I have been like that since early child.

In my ideal world, teachers would seek out the African-American and Hispanic and poor white kids who showed academic talent and steer them that way.

Academic college would be free, but the requirements for admission would be strict: no dumb rich kids need apply.

As hard as it is to say, we DO live in a world with different classes from surgeons and nuclear physicists at the top to shit-shovelers at the bottom. I enjoy watching the Discovery program 'Dirty Jobs' as he shows how those shit-shoveling jobs make modern life possible and somebody has to do them. Those type of jobs may be the only ones open to people who can't cut it at the more elite ones, but in a just society, all work should be valued, not just that at the top.

When you say "go work for a few years until you figure it out", you aren't closing the door permanently on people. The welcome mat will still be out later when their interest has been sparked and they will be able to make more out of it.

Doop-dee-doop

Eleven years of teaching affluent middle-class kids who would skip class for a whole week because it was Rush Week or who would cheat blatantly came close to turning me into a Maoist on the subject of higher education.

I believe that part of the problem with our economy is that we're turning out droves of Business Administration graduates who go straight from affluent suburb to a lackadaisical college career to entry-level management. They may know all the standard accounting practices and numerical formulas, but they have no practical experience in actually producing a product or interacting with working class people. Lay off 5,000 production workers? It's easy when you don't know any personally.

Given a choice, I'd rather take some smart person from the shop floor who has figured out what management is doing wrong, put him/her through a quick course in accounting and management practices, and let him/her run the department.

The dumb rich kids are taking up space that could be more profitably put to use by some bright and ambitious kids from poor families.

Here in Minnesota, it has been noted that because the state has cut aid to our higher education system, the current student body at the U of M is far more affluent than in previous generations. Forty years ago, full-time tuition at the U of M cost 100 x the minimum wage per term. It now costs 600 x the minimum wage. The inevitable result is more dumb rich kids and fewer poor but bright and ambitious kids.

I disagree with some of the other sentiments. First and foremost, many skilled trades are not good job choices for academic washouts. That sentiment is also too similar to the view that the trades are somehow inferior pursuits. I agree that more options for training in the trades in high school and beyond. Vocational programs in high school aren't keeping pace with the skills needed in today's economy.

That poor student who wants to be a doctor? She may have enjoyed science classes but unless her secondary education was above average she's probably looking at remedial course work to bring her up to the standards needed for a pre-med program. Add that to the long time without generated a professional income and many of the poor students simply shift to more modest goals like RN or PA programs. The upside of that is there are many very bright, capable nurses and physician's assistants, but it's a shame that they won't be able to translate those careers into full credentials as an M.D.


I think that some of the best college students are those who arrive without a distinct academic interest but with a strong desire for more education. The lower college years should be a time to get a broad exposure to different discipline with a view to moving to a focused interested by the end of the sophomore year.

Disclosure here: I went to a private college on full scholarship. I had no clue what I wanted to be when I grew up. Both my parents were surprised that I could even think about going to college, never mind a small and challenging academic program out of state. It just wasn't on their radar. All they wanted was for us yo graduate from high school, get jobs, and be happy. I arrived on campus with the vague sense that I had to pick a major that would translate into an immediate career -- it didn't matter what. I was fortunate to have an admissions counselor who helped me navigate the choices. In the end I majored in what I loved. I leveraged the rest of my academic coursework into an entry level position in the field where I've spent my career.

and channeled into AP courses or something similar. It's a scandal that not every high school in the country offers challenging courses--it's one of the downsides of local control.

One of the worst things that can happen to a bright student is to have no intellectual challenges.

The THEORY is that the presence of bright students in a class inspires the rest. However, if there aren't enough bright students to change the culture of the classroom (each group of students has its own mini-culture), mixed classes merely hold the bright students back. Some play dumb in order to fit in.

I ran into several graduates of non-challenging urban and rural (especially rural) high schools during my teaching career. They had been able to coast through high school, and they were stunned to find that college offered courses that couldn't be mastered through a half hour of speed reading before the test.

That's just a beginning. As you have observed, schools that are mediocre aren't good places to acquire solid study and research skills. One could imagine a boarding school system to remove talented kids to more academically supportive environments but that would often come at the cost of the student's existing social and emotional supports. Once in college, the level of support needs to extend far beyond making sure the tuition and room and board are paid. The simple reality is that they often need sizable stipends or jobs to help make ends meet. The former requires a greater commitment of funds than is generally available now; the latter requires some mentoring to help find a balance between job and schooling. Too often such transitional supports are not considered or unfunded. It's no surprise to me that many talented kids from low income families don't make it in college. Even those who persevere and graduate are starting off with a disadvantage because there isn't financial support from parents to help with apartment deposits, furnishings, and a car.

I'd now like to go back to the topic of the academic washouts and the trades. There are fewer apprentice programs now than thirty years ago. The new route to many skilled trades is a 1 or 2 year program in an accredited postsecondary school. These programs aren't just the Joe's Pretty Diploma mills of old. Many are in public community colleges and have prerequisites like high school algebra. The programs aren't for dummies or lazy Ws. Other trades require completion of a series of industry training modules and licensing -- again, not something for the Ws of the world.

I've known lots of smart, talented, academically minded kids who had difficulty choosing a major because they had a wide variety of interests, and couldn't pick just one.

they have TOO MANY interests. They're usually delightful students.

I'm talking about the numerous ones who have no interests except what is currently being played up in the pop culture.

"incoming" machinists, welders, commercial electricians, etc. Good jobs that have relatively low starting pay, but really good pay after you get the experience and skills. I know from experience that a person with good skills in these areas can make as much or more than a lot of college graduates. Yet, very few "kids" are interested in these jobs. I think it is a (false) perception that such jobs are menial, don't require intelligence, and are low paying. But none of these perceptions are true.

on edit: because someone posted an opinion above that contradicts me, here is an article backing up my stance:
(i also know this from direct experience)
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20080121-0505-usa-manufacturing-hamill.html

in some of the trades, like plumbing, AC repair, etc. What they need is a 2 year trade school degree with a lot of accounting electives so that when they get ready to start their own shop, they'll know the ins and outs of keeping an eye on the money.

4 years of college prepares a kid for a middle management job and most won't go any higher. The age at which middle managers are either slated for higher management or weeded out as too old is dropping, so their longevity making a good wage is limited. In addition, they will have much larger student loans to pay off.

A smart kid with a trade who starts his own shop will be much better off in the long run, with no early retirement staring him in the face just when his own kids are deciding whether it will be college or trade school.

And neither is a college education. College not only teaches you useful trade school, but how to think and learn. I would have been financially better off had I never gone college and graduate school, but my life would have been far less richer experience.

I have a master's in English and, at 29, make $30K and owe more than $40,000. Totally pointless.

Degrees are for rich kids and people who need a higher education to do their job - doctors, engineers, architects, nurses, etc. I had no business getting into so much debt for a "useless" degree, though it did make me a more interesting and well-rounded person (I hope).

I would prefer more free/affordable vocational training. I wish I had either done a science subject or trained in a trade and set up my own independent business.

A bachelor's degree for a receptionist job? Do you really need a B.A. or B.S. to answer the freakin TELEPHONE, for crying out loud?

<rant>

Not everyone is college material. There is no shame in plying a trade, and we are doing our young people an incredible disservice by telling them that being a plumber or a bricklayer is somehow "less than." I've got students who are functionally literate, but not much more than that. These kids have no business being in college ... yet. If they really want to go, they need to get their literacy (and frequently their math) skills up. They can go to a community college, which is much cheaper anyway, take care of any remedial work they need to do, get their general university requirements out of the way, then transfer for the final two years where they do "major" stuff when they're ready. They will be much better prepared, have a better understanding of how to do college, and serve themselves better in the long run.

But I don't blame them for their situation. I blame my university -- and others like it -- for having such astonishingly low admission standards that students get in, struggle, and flunk out. I blame the attempts to hide the students' unpreparedness by dumbing down courses in order to keep butts in seats, and to keep tuition dollars pouring in -- that kind of dishonesty with someone about their skills and abilities is going to end up crushing them when they enter the job market unprepared. I blame the trend of demanding college degrees for jobs that should have no requirement for one. We are throwing these kids to the wolves, and it makes me angry.

Personally, I've long held the position that people going to 4-year colleges should have to learn a trade as part of their degree. Aside from having a backup, it would help with the look-down-the-nose-at-labor attitude that so many so-called educated people seem to carry around with them.

</rant>

...of course we're all called "administrative associates" nowdays - and people, including me, get offended when higher-ups refer to us as "secretaries" (granted, I do a lot more than answer phones and make copies, but, still...).

This job was advertised as requiring a BA and 5 years experience. I have a BA (ironically enough, from the same university I now work at), and a master's. So, anyone applying for this entry-level admin job had to compete with me - and my postgraduate degree. Fact is, I feel incredibly privileged to have a 9-5 job with decent benefits, AT ALL.

With just a high school diploma, you're fucked.

I'd been doing the same type of job during high school and for all of my summers in college, but the big corporation would only hire folks with a college degree. In the late 1960's/early 1970's my mom did admin work in admissions and records with a high school diploma and two years of "secretarial school." I'd think doing departmental work would take a lot more "insider" knowledge due to the general weirdness that is a university -- anyone worth their salt knows that the admins know more about how the university bureaucracy (and concomitant politics) works than anyone else employed there -- and that being degreed would be a big help in doing that kind of work well (although it should pay a LOT more than it does).

The experience thing is a good point, though. I remember looking for work when I was first starting out (I took thirteen years off between undergrad and grad school), and that was always the double-whammy: you had to have experience to get a job, but no one would hire you to let you get that experience.

You know, this goes a lot deeper than college. American businesses really need to rethink their hiring practices. A high school diploma used to be a piece of paper that let employers know that you were essentially trainable and could follow directions. Then businesses decided that colleges should do the training on the trainee's nickel, rather than training people themselves, then the Bachelor's degree became the Certificate of Essential Trainability.

Sigh.

Wake me up in 2009, would ya?

that promotes a healthier society because people are better equipped to make choices/decisions in all aspects of their life. Better equipped to combat the power aspirations of government.

While a person doesn't need a degree to learn how to think, the foundation of education should be the promotion of learning - and being/staying informed - for its own sake.

You shouldn't have to - afford - being educated. Such a barrier denies people an equal chance.

Education shouldn't be a status symbol - it should be the norm. For the good of the whole

College isn't for everyone - but let the determining factor be choice and not the manufactured barriers set up by the promotion of class as a means to divide people.

Many people seem to think that you are only educated in school in your youth and when it's over- Miller time and football. That is why we are in this sorry state/Country.

It is not about learning or education. It is about making money. Money is the goal. We don't need wisdom or enlightenment. We need materialism. We need things.

The origin of the myth that everybody must go to college is the factual reality that high schools don't teach any more. A high school diploma does not guarantee literacy, basic math ability, or anything else. It is merely a marker of time spent in an educational system that has lost its way. The only actual life skill taught at high schools is driver education, and that is an elective.

Primary and secondary education has become a social stage in society, the place where 6 to 18 year olds spend their days, socialize, and as an aside, are presented some facts about the world around them. Real learning has been palmed off to college, trade school, or the military, and the difference is striking. Children quickly learn how to do as little as possible to coast through public school, and the first time many are challenged is when they arrive in a real learning setting, where the material is covered until they demonstrate that they understand it and can put it into practice.

For many common jobs which require licensing, such as cosmetologist or plumber, there is no good reason why children cannot start learning the material at age 14 and end up graduating high school at 18 with the skills required of these professions. But high schools continue to live in some type of "college prep" fantasy world, where they attempt to stuff U.S. history and algebra into unreceptive minds. Their failure to motivate the student beforehand results in predictably dismal results, with student postponing their learning of a subject until later in life, when something kindles the spark. Later, when the Civil War reenactment bug has bitten, a 'D' student in history will be able to able to explain the strategy behind Sherman's march to the sea. Later, when actual real money is involved, a 'D' student in algebra sitting at the poker table will be able to calculate in his head the probability of pairing the board to hit a full house on the river. When students are suitably motivated, it is impossible to prevent the learning that will take place.

Learning is a very private matter that each person takes at his own speed. Grouping people by age into sets of 30 to present material off a syllabus is a foolish way to try to initiate learning. More attention should be paid to the personal interests of the student and less to how the whole group can do on a set of standard multiple choice questions. Personalized one-on-one tutoring can be more effective in the long run if it helps the student to get to where he can pursue the education he wants instead of passively receive what is taught.

It is a correct observation that college is not for everyone. College is not for those who have trouble dealing with abstractions and do better in practical application of a concrete knowledge base. For those people, high schools are needed that can expose them to that knowledge base (e.g., what every cosmetologist or electrician or plumber needs to know) and offer supervised experience in the field. That way, when they are 18 and about to graduate, they WILL have the credentials to start a career. If later on, they do want to further their education, more power to them, they should be encouraged to try continuing education courses offered by a college.

I'm the first to agree that history, generally, is taught badly, as a patriotic propaganda exercise and as a series of facts to memorize rather than what it really is: stories about what people did in the past. Memorizing facts which, if truly necessary for some application other than the artifice of passing a test, could be quickly looked up, is why people hate history. But I have yet to meet a human walking this earth who doesn't think stories about other people is interesting.

But more fundamentally: our school systems are dropping the ball when it comes to teaching kids the basic skills they need to be citizens. Honest, well-taught, American History is an important part of citizenship skills. If you don't know the fundamentals of US history, then the issues of today seem to arise ex nihilo, and tired old mistakes (trickle down economics, anyone? How about Vietnam-on-the-Oasis?) seem like brand new ideas worth trying.

The exact details of Sherman's strategy, though interesting to me and to many other history buffs, isn't a fundamental for citizenship. But understanding the Civil War is essential. Contemporary political maps showing public opinion on virtually anything inevitably show the divisions lining up along the fault lines of the Civil War (and to a lesser extent the migration patterns from the postwar South). If you don't know what happened then, you won't know what's happening now. And if you don't know what's happening now, you have no control over it.

But schools don't teach that kind of history (at least not schools that don't have "University" as a part of their name).

Public schools have somehow evolved to the point where the excitement of learning is extinguished in every subject while not imparting anything that needs to be widely known to the citizens. They take a 6-year old who loves to listen to stories, is very curious about the world about him, likes to draw and paint and color, and 10 or 12 years later they produce a drop-out who won't or can't read, won't ask questions for fear of looking stupid, and thinks being artistic is effeminate.

I wasn't saying there is no point in teaching U.S. history; there is no point in teaching U.S. history to a room full of children who just see it as busy work to be done with as little effort as possible. Unless their innate curiosity has been aroused, readings and films and term papers and essays are going to be gone like spit in a hot skillet. You are right that the more it can be made like interesting stories about what people did in the past, the more it is likely to stick. A field trip to a local historic site will be remembered much longer than "read the chapter about our local historic site and write a 3 page paper on it".

Public schools should cease to be institutions where curricula is dispensed to minds of differing degrees of receptivity and should instead be a resource to help children explore more about their world. Less assigned schoolwork and homework and more guided offerings designed to whet the appetite. Public schools could kill the popularity of Harry Potter if they were to assign it as required reading with a 12-page theme.

The grading system is another facet of the educational system that works against real learning. It is designed to praise about 5% of the students, tell another 20% that they are not working up to their potential and write off 75% as average or worse. With those kind of numbers, it's no wonder that most people are not positively reinforced. The pass/fail of the motor vehicle department has it beat in this regard. Everyone with a driver's license thinks they are the best driver out on the road, even if they barely squeaked by on the last test they took. There is a place for more pass/fail certificate type teaching in the public school system. People would sour on taking karate pretty quickly if they were graded with C's and B's, but instead, they have a series of pass/fail grades to get different color belts and every time they get to a higher color, they receive positive reinforcement for an accomplishment. Why can't math teachers do the same thing? (Actually, they do out in the real world if you are in QA and want to learn about Six Sigma.)

In high school history classes were just like Oak said: boring, memorizing dates, names, battles. I took a history course my first quarter in college and it opened a whole new world. It was about people and how they lived. Not just the famous ones, but people of color, women, the "common folk". Although I had liked history before, I much preferred this class over the ones that just taught about dates and Presidents and Generals.

However, I believe that higher education should be free and open. Anyone who wants to pursue a liberal education should be able to do so, not necessarily as a career requirement, but for personal knowledge and enrichment.

look the reason people go to school is because we do not have a diverse economy, period! And while a vast majority of people are more than intelligent enough to succeed in school many would rather not deal with it, problem is what choice do they have.

You either take a shot at a good career or relegate yourself to McJob. And while many who may go to school come out unable to land the job of their dreams at *least* they tried and were not pigonholed into a lower rung of the economic scale..

College is not the problem. How we FUND COLLEGE is the problem.

and they have a well-developed system of vocational education at the high school level. For example, one of my cousins wanted to be a nursery school teacher/daycare worker. She was going to a school that combined academic work in child development and psychology with practical experience taking care of different ages of children from infancy on up.

This system has two advantages: Students study something they're really interested in that will prepare them for a needed job, and the country has, for one thing, well-trained workers in all sorts of areas.

So why don't more people in Germany go to the university?

Is it because they were weeded out in the 5th grade, then again in the 9th?

It's a wonderful experience for young adults, many of whom get their first real shot at independently organizing their lives there.

are shamed into going when their heart isn't in it...yet or ever! Back in the '70's and '80's
many without college earned more than those who did go and earn a degree! Not everyone is suited
for a college degree. Who would fix all our broken appliances, houses and cars, if everyone went? ;)
And just because a kid chooses not to go right out of high school doesn't mean they won't change
their mind later on sometime. Things and people change.