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.

We ought to re-think our approach to education and careers. I really like vocational education or apprentice programs. Yes, there are some things which are best learned by sitting in classrooms, or spending hours at the library. But most people don't get (and would not want) that kind of job.

I don’t think that inner city charter schools themselves are what is causing better student performance. For the most part, the families with children who choose charter schools are already the types of people who value an education, and the charter school provides a good education without the distractions present in inner city public schools.

Send fewer kids to college... RIGHT that’s the ticket... NOT! Translation = Obamessiah and his evil OVERLORDS need millions of new “slaves” to labor their lives away as SERFS within the new Amerikka they are building. While they themselves live and rule over us as kings and queens.

I have two earned doctorates, so I have nothing against higher education; however, I see college kids go to college more as a right of passage than to obtain an education. The vast majority of these students major in subjects in which there is no demand in the “real world.” Not only that, but many of them assume huge indebtedness. It would be far, far better for most of these students to go to a vocational school and learn a trade of some sorts. If you can read and use the Internet, you can learn just about anything you want without ever having to enroll in a university. Higher education for the majority of students is a terrible waste of time and money.

why, even before the economy crashed, were 25 percent of college graduates in their 20s working at jobs that didn’t require degrees?

What kinds of degrees did those 25% of college grads have? English Literature? Women's Studies? Urban Studies? Most other liberal arts majors?

Academia needs to stop glamorizing and legitimizing degrees like these, and they need to start focusing on degrees that will make us stronger and more competitive from an economic sense.

I'm not saying that all liberal arts classes are worthless; many of them should be kept, as they have their purpose. If a student has the desire and financial resources to take a lot of these liberal arts classes however, that's up to the student. Don't pursue a degree in Medieval French, and then expect to be overwhelmed with six-figure job offers when you enter the jopb market.

Yes, and they have essentially removed the Shop programs from the high schools, at least here in California. There is little VoTek training available to kids, and many are well-suited to hands-on work and run screaming from the theoretical academic nonsense that passes for education today.

“Higher education, in its gross inefficiency, soaring costs and wired-in lack of market forces rigor, is poorly designed for almost EVERYONE.”
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True, and all of it will not compensate for squandering the K-12 opportunity along with the lack of real world experience for sub-teens and teenagers. I could probably write a book about the experiences young people used to have prior to finishing high school, experiences unavailable to most today. A youth spent of the farm along with a good public high school education, followed by a hitch in the military taught lessons that no college can offer.

I see college kids go to college more as a right of passage than to obtain an education.

BUMP!

That describes me. My "knowledge" gained from college has been of little use in my life. Full disclosure: my major was English. Because when I went to college in the 60s, majoring in English was the thing to do.

“....time was a person with no college could get a good paying blue collar job...there’s just not as many of those any more.”
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There aren’t many good paying jobs for anyone any more. There are millions of college graduates who are grasping at straws andd ready to take any job, even at minimum wage. I can show you some who would be better off now had they spent their college years working in a convenience store or a fast food place.

Higher education is a wonderful thing but to fantasize about sending everyone to school until they are well into their twenties is absurd.

Colleges and Universities have become profit driven, hence, why they continually seek to enroll as many students as they can, even if it means lowering or fudging admission requirements.

Furthermore, with the increased enrollments comes increased drop-out rates (hence why colleges and universities have increasingly created and/or utilized retention departments or agencies) and those who extend their graduation times past the 4-year mark.

Many colleges are the wrong choice for everyone.
The problem is the junk thought presented by many professors.
Just consider the current occupant of the White House certified by Columbia and Harvard Law.
Or is that certifiable?

The Fabian Socialist, Alinskyite, and Frankfurt School revolution currently
being waged from the White House upon Americans was certified
by the pseudo-elitism of the universities claiming Olympic status for American education.

That is a problem that will not be going away any time soon.

I could probably write a book about the experiences young people used to have prior to finishing high school

Before I finished High School, I had a paper route, worked for a lawn maintenance company, worked in the mail room of a tax preparation company, and worked in a gas station. I was a Boy Scout patrol Leader, backpacked the Sierra Madres, played Little League Baseball, Pop Warner Football, high school water polo, and was on a swim team. I went target shooting with my own .22 rifle, shot skeet with a friend, rode dirt bikes in Mexico, SCUBA dived, speared fish, recorded 8mm underwater movies with an underwater camera I built myself, fished fresh water, salt water, and deep sea, trained in Kenpo Karate, learned classical piano, and played keyboard in a local rock band.

I'm in California too in a very ‘prestigious’ school district and while there is no shortage of AP and Honor's classes, my middle of the road 10th grader doesn't have wood shop anymore. Sad really, but I told him, instead of going to college and paying for the tuition, which even at CSUN will run $20K, I would pay for him to start a business. He will need to write the business plan as if I were an investor. His school actually has an entrepreneurial after school club where kids can learn this aspect of business. It's hands on, but not for credit which is fine because he's not going to college! And we don't care! I already put two through expensive colleges and one is working two minimum wage jobs and interning for free.
We all need to rethink the college route for kids.

Hear! Hear!

EVERYONE, including future Wall Street Investment Bankers, neurosurgeons, and Ivy League attorneys could benefit from a summer spent as a short order cook, carpenter’s apprentice, or with the experiences you mentioned.

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