Posted on 03/16/2018 4:38:19 AM PDT by reaganaut1
Legislators in New Mexico are pushing a bill that would make students apply to at least one college while they are still juniors in high school. This legislation reflects the powerful belief that college should be the norm for students after they graduate from high school.
That belief, however, is mistaken and this bill, should it become law, will have bad effects (not to mention that it takes Nanny State thinking to a new level). As we read in the Albuquerque Journal, the bill in question has bipartisan support and was approved by a committee of the state House of Representatives on February 1.
House Bill 23 is co-sponsored by Republican Nate Gentry, the House minority leader, and Democratic senator Daniel Ivey-Soto. Their bill provides that all high school juniors in the state would have to apply to at least one college unless they can show officials that they have made other plans for their lives after graduation: military service, a vocational work program, an apprenticeship, or an internship. (Merely intending to look for a job after graduation will not do.) Students’ parents and their high school guidance counselors would have to give their approval to such alternative plans.
The lawmakers are worried about the fact that fewer students in New Mexico are going to college. This USA Today piece about the bill informs us that “The measure was drafted with the aim of reversing declines in college enrollment across the state, which fell nearly 14 percent from 155,065 enrolled students in 2010 to 133,830 in 2016.”
But so what if college enrollments have been declining?
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
I have a better idea, provide summer school opportunities for college curriculum available to high school students so that students can graduate high school with an associate’s degree in General Studies. If so desired. Or summer vo-tech opportunities.
Hell, I'm 65 and retired from 2 careers - and I still have no idea of what I want to be when I grow up.....my answer to them in HS wold have been, "Work a few jobs here and there and wait until the pressure gets so bad I have to make an actual decision."
Got a Bachelor's degree 15 years before I retired from my second career and it did zero towards making me better at the job I was doing because I was doing it for 12 years before I got the degree to "enhance my credentials". Once I discovered how little the degree actually meant, I opted to not waste time going with the Master's program.
So who is going to pay the application fees ? The school ? Or will it be all minority/”special classes” ( i.e everyone except white males ) are exempt ?
All school enrollments are declining.... people are having fewer kids these days.
What difference does it make? certain students get into college based on their non-White privilege, and have their test scores raised because of it.
Just cut to the chase and force them to take out student loans that go to affirmative action perfessers whether they actually go to college or not.
Different times trebb. I was a Coast Guard stew burner for a hitch, that learned me. Went into the trades and college, cobbled an EE then back to sea. If... I had to do it all over again in today’s climate I really do not know... but I would have taken high school much more seriously and perhaps opened up some scholarship opportunities
The greatest failure of education today is that students are unprepared for college. I doubt high schools expose students to somethings as simple as a syllabus, let alone endorsing STEM curricula. VoTech has languished in the present day, music, etc... physical ed should be strength and flexibility focused with a 4 year requirement. Students are rarely challenged. It needs to change.
“The measure was drafted with the aim of reversing declines in college enrollment across the state, which fell nearly 14 percent from 155,065 enrolled students in 2010 to 133,830 in 2016.”
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Perhaps enrollment fell because college costs have reached the point where a student is not likely to recoup their expense thru getting a better job as a result of a college degree. Of course it takes an especially obtuse and ignorant legislature to float a solution of forcing students to apply to “fix” the problem.
Next, the legislature might be so bold as to force them to go to college or face a tax penalty. Force them to buy a product. I know. No legislature would ever go to such an absurd extreme as to force... Oh wait. Obamacare.
What? They aren’t getting indoctrinated enough in high school?
One of the problems with this country is the lack of education in our youth. Indoctrination, yeah, they are getting plenty of that from K through 12 nd then on to college, but education? Nope!
I tried to read the text of the bill at the link provided but I didn’t see a penalty for not complying, and this editorial author didn’t even mention the subject.
The most important question is : Or what?
I work at a univ. and LOTS of freshmen students need remedial courses JUST to begin a college curriculum...
By now a 4 year undergraduate education is the new HS diploma.
We have some real numbskulls around here who couldn't find their own asses with a map... and they are ‘college students’
This is just the Left PLAYING OFFENSE. While we nitpick this idea, their goal of removing men from college continues unabated - with men now at 40% and dropping.
Big “Ed” would never allow that.
I went to a high school that pushed college prep almost exclusively. If you weren’t college bound, you didn’t matter much. High school was a total ripoff.
Why junior year? This was always a senior year thing.
But forcing it? I smell a kickback.
Draft them all at 18. Three mandatory years of deprograming in the military.
Absolute stupidity leads to absolute tyranny.
If less and less students are getting overpriced educations from leftist professors, there will be less and less Democrats, and academia will be losing political clout and their undeserved status.
Forcing people to do virtually anything, like buying health insurance, is a bad idea.
JoMa
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