Send Fewer Students to College (College is the wrong choice for many students)

Marcus A. Winters says we should “send more students to college.” He is responding, in part, to my NR piece making the opposite case. My argument is that when 40 percent of college students fail to graduate in six years, and when about a quarter of employed college graduates have jobs that don’t require degrees, it’s obvious we’re pushing too many kids into higher education.

Winters essentially (though not explicitly) concedes that now is not the time to ship more kids off to postsecondary institutions. He notes Charles Murray’s documentation of the fact that lots of today’s high-school graduates are not ready for college-level work. Winters disagrees, however, when Murray says there is very little we can do to change this.

I also objected when I reviewed Murray’s Real Education. I pointed out some research showing that high-quality teachers can improve student outcomes, suggesting that we can make a little bit of progress. Winters takes this line of thought much farther, making essentially an anti-Murray case: Schools are so powerful that, with the right reforms, they can significantly narrow, or even close, achievement gaps between various racial and income groups. He points to a study of New York City charter schools — which found that charter schools increase scores significantly relative to New York City public schools — as well as to the aforementioned teacher-quality research. Reforms like these, he implies, will lift almost everyone above the college-ready threshold, thus eliminating the ability-based objection to sending all high-school graduates to college.

Inner-city charter schools and teacher-quality initiatives are promising and deserve greater implementation, but I’m highly skeptical that they will prove to be the panacea Winters is looking for. In the past few decades, there have been countless initially promising solutions to this problem, none of which ended up doing much to help. I’d be surprised, albeit delighted, if these reforms more than marginally increased the proportion of high-school graduates who are college-ready. And that’s assuming teachers’ unions don’t kill them before they’re implemented.

The New York City study in particular isn’t as promising as Winters makes it out to be. For one thing, it involved exactly the kind of students that even Murray admits can benefit from better education: inner-city kids stuck in truly awful schools. What about all the kids who go to schools that appear perfectly fine, but who still aren’t college-ready when they graduate?

On the easy standardized-test questions Murray highlights, one of which Winters quotes, about half of eighth-graders don’t know the answers. Certainly, fewer than half of American children go to schools so bad that they’d be radically better off in charter schools. Winters seems unwilling to believe so many people could be so dull; I appreciate Winters’s faith that virtually all of humanity can learn complicated academic material, but I’m afraid I don’t share it.

Further, all the kids in the study had parents who cared enough to apply to charter schools (the control-group public-school kids had applied to charter schools but were denied by lottery). The change from a terrible public school to a charter school might not have as big an effect for kids whose parents don’t pressure them to take advantage of the new opportunities. Not to mention that one benefit of charter schools is that students get away from poorly behaved peers. If the program expanded so that everyone went to charter schools, these bad apples would come along with the others, and this advantage would weaken.

And even if all these studies’ results hold true across the board, and even if all levels of government work together to implement the reforms Winters envisions, it will be years before we see significant results. Only then can this analysis influence our policies regarding sending more kids to college. Until that point, we’re stuck figuring out what to do with the kids who graduate from the secondary schools we have now — and for many of those kids, college isn’t working.

Winters argues that in addition to being able to get more kids into college, we need to. Why? Because, he says, our economy has a strong, unmet demand for educated workers. He uses as evidence the fact that the “college wage premium” (the degree to which college graduates out-earn high-school graduates) has increased over the past few decades. The economic logic seems sound — if the price is going up and the supply is staying about the same, the demand is probably increasing. From this, it follows that if we can use public policy to increase the supply of college-educated workers, we should seriously consider doing so.

But if there’s such a high demand for college-educated workers, then why, even before the economy crashed, were 25 percent of college graduates in their 20s working at jobs that didn’t require degrees? (The proportion of graduates who utilize their degrees rises, by a few percentage points, until about age 32, but levels off thereafter.) As I pointed out in NR, people who graduate but don’t utilize their degrees get essentially no “college wage premium,” especially once you factor in the debt they’ve accrued and the years of work they missed while attending college.

A big part of the reason is that “college-educated workers” are not interchangeable. The college wage premium, and fluctuations therein, vary substantially by field of study. In other words, the economy doesn’t need more generic college graduates — and in fact refuses to hire many of them. Rather, it needs highly capable people in certain fields. It would probably be better to encourage students acquiring useless majors to switch to these lucrative fields than to send more kids to college across the board.

After all, when you send more kids to college, you’re scraping closer to the bottom of the college-eligibility barrel. The new kids will be less able and motivated, on average, than the ones who are already in college — and thus even more likely to drop out before finishing and to wind up in jobs that don’t utilize their degrees if they do finish.

Winters also takes the existence of the college wage premium to mean that students “acquir[e] knowledge and skills that employers prize.” This is fair enough when it comes to chemists and engineers; in cases such as these, a degree certifies that the student has learned a lot about the specific field in which he’ll work. But when it comes to less demanding fields, employers often use a degree as a simple screening mechanism: They figure that if an applicant is smart enough to graduate, he’s smart enough to learn the job. This is why, on career websites such as Monster.com, job-seekers frequently come across listings that require four-year degrees but do not mention specific majors. (I’m doubtful that the “social skills” Winters says people learn in college are strong enough to justify employers’ completely refusing to consider non-grads.) In these cases, certification programs could replace degrees, saving students time and money.

As I said in my NR piece, today’s youth are trapped in a lengthy, expensive weeding-out process. About 60 percent of them attempt college; of these, about 40 percent fail to graduate within six years; of those who do graduate and find jobs, about a quarter work in non-degree-utilizing positions. If Winters’s proposal — reforms in secondary education that, unlike most previous reforms in secondary education, actually work — is carried out, that will significantly alter this landscape. I’m hoping for that day to come, but until it does, too many kids are going to college.

Winters argues that in addition to being able to get more kids into college, we need to. Why? Because, he says, our economy has a strong, unmet demand for educated workers.

But these would be fake educated workers. Employers are seeing too many of those coming out of college already.

“I can’t imagine a PhD in English going into Industry like a Chemistry or Electrical Engineering PhD could.”

....about their only chance is in business writing/editing...like manuals, guide books, policies, directives ect.

"Higher education, in its gross inefficiency, soaring costs and wired-in lack of market forces rigor, is poorly designed for almost EVERYONE."

There is no doubt that Higher Education has not quicly adapted with technological and market forces.

When a university researcher has to fork over 50% of incoming grant money to pay for overhead and other "services", you know there's a problem.

I had a chance to see several essays that began, “I am writng about______________ because _________ ___________”. Not everyone will be a gifted writer, but this opening is pretty lame!

Why oh why do people think that government schools are a solution for anything? Take the initiative: "do it" yourself.

I hear what you are saying and my son and husband do have a whole shop thing going on in our garage. I steer clear of it because I know my limitations and I value my fingers! LOL

My son has been making skateboards for his friends for years and now wants to start shaping surfboards.

I'm just saying they have to be in school for so many hours, I would be nice if they were taught something useful.

You can see the rot, when you have to read most of the pieces produced by "average" management in America today or graduate students.
While, I am not a professional writer, I do know the 8 parts of speech and that subjects should agree with verbs every now and then

I wish that corporate America, would instead of looking for diversity, sought excellence instead but I know better.

Higher education isn’t all about “job skills”. It is also strongly related to producing a “whole man”.

Ha! You're as old-fashioned as I am! :) We still remember when there was a recognized difference between education (as in "the life of the mind") and vocational training!

He uses as evidence the fact that the “college wage premium”(. . .) has increased over the past few decades.

I read an article years ago that argued that the "college wage premium" was highly misleading, since the really high-earning college grads were those with graduate or professional degrees. Yes, they're college grads, but I don't think anyone studied the wage difference between those who had only up to high school and those who had nothing beyond a Bachelor's.

For many, college is a waste of time.

A good education is essential to the continued functioning of our Nation. Ignorant citizens have given us the mess we now enjoy.

We still remember when there was a recognized difference between education (as in "the life of the mind") and vocational training!

That is exactly what I am talking about! People went to college and narrowed their focus so much that those institutions became vocational schools on steroids. The real reason to go to a university is to become a gentleman. All of our Founding Fathers were very well educated, and look at what they were capable of doing. We are all "trade educated", and look at what we've done to the Nation they built!

There isn't a statesman in Congress right now; otherwise, the lot of them would know how to take care of ALL of their constituents, not just the ones who voted for them. I credit that situation to lack of a proper education ... whether they went to college or not.

Kids learn responsibility by being given real responsibility. Much of what you did as a young man is now illegal or restricted to this generation of young people.

We are raising sissies and it seems intentional. 7/10 black kids will never know a father. PCness drives out any attempt to extend oneself beyond the ruling paradigm.

It is stifling, but I don’t see an easy way out for any American.

Kids cannot get drivers licenses, are limited to all kinds of kid activities by law, and how do we expect them to become adults by 18?

They sure do know how to have all kinds of degrading sex though and that old white men destroyed the Garden of Eden Earth used to be.

Isn’t ignorance the unstated goal of government education? That’s the 900 pound gorilla. It sucks a ton of money, time and effort out of what should be a good thing - education.

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