Posted on 06/14/2010 6:16:41 AM PDT by Cardhu
There's good news and bad news in a new report from the Institute for Higher Education Policy. The good news: an increasing number of low-income young adults are going to college these days. The bad news: many of those low-income students remain in poverty after they graduate.
The report (pdf) found that 47 percent of young adults whose total household income was near or below the federal poverty level were enrolled in an institute of higher education in 2008, a healthy five percent increase from 2000, and another 11 percent had earned a degree. However, about one in ten of those students “failed to immediately transcend the poverty threshold.” In other words, they passed college but college failed them.
The introduction to the report quotes President Obama's State of the Union Address from January: "[I]n the 21st century, the best anti-poverty program around is a world-class education." Apparently, and unfortunately, things don't appear to be that cut-and-dry for many impoverished young adults. Although higher education opportunities are expanding for poor populations, outcomes are not getting any better. Which raises the question: what good is a college education without a positive outcome?
There are a lot of surprising statistics in the report that are begging for explanation. (White low-income students are twice as likely as African Americans and Hispanics to remain poor after graduation? Really?) Future reports in the series, which is being funded by the Gates Foundation, will examine educational aspirations, academic preparation, movement in and between schools, and financial aid and debt burdens among low-income young adults to give all of us a better understanding of what's going on here so we can try and address the problem(s).
Even for young adults not coming from low-income backgrounds, college is expensive and may not be worth it in this economy. If we don't start improving educational outcomes for poor students, college might start to seem like a worthless pursuit for everyone – and I don't think that's a road any of us want the country to go down. Gregory S. Kienzl, director of research and evaluation at IHEP, summed it up best: "If you have a degree, you should no longer be poor."
I went on a field trip Saturday and there was a young woman in the group. She has some kind of biology degree but is in bad shape because she can’t live alone and in the manner she wants. Not poverty but the electric bill is a problem
I agree. That would be morally right to do, in my opinion. However, you would not be able to do that in the US. Mediocre students come in all colors, and so a certain percentage of the mediocre students would be black. WHAM! As soon as anyone tells a mediocre black student that they should rethink their desire for a college degree, it's time for a lawsuit.
Therefore, you cannot tell a very mediocre student halfway that he/she will have a hard time to proceed.
It actually does carry one guarantee... that you will be an indentured servant to the student loan industry for the rest of your life.
I am living proof that a college degree is not a guarantee of prosperity. I work a second job and NEED to.
I remember those days long ago - you couldn’t get a job unless you had experience and you couldn’t get experience unless you could get a job.
Insurance, Telephone and Consulting companies were the way to get a foot in the door.
It also helps a great deal to be a minority. They don't even need the ambition, just the skin color.
I think there is a niche for majors like French Art, Medieval History or Philosophy, whatever - but only for kids who come from families so wealthy that their parents never care whether the kid makes over $30K a year or so. And that’s a pretty small niche. They need not worry because they’ll get what “The Millionaire Next Door” called economic outpatient care, either from their parents or by marrying into it. So yeah, might it be delightful to get a degree in French Art? Yes, if I don’t have to worry about a paycheck...
I wanted to take photography for the same reason, but the class had out of pocket costs. So I took ceramics instead - that certainly enlightened my “learning experience”. I scored the 3 credits for graduation, which was all that class provided. Oh, and even though the class was ceramics, as useless as t*ts on a bull, the ‘professor’ was a flaming lib. Talk about adding insult to injury.
This topic seems to be coming up a lot in recent days. I wonder why?
Oh, and your answer is spot on, and has been hammered in again and again in the threads here. I wonder why these Libs writing pieces like this don’t get it?
The bottom line is that our education system has become geared towards shoving everyone through “college”, when really only +/- 15% can really benefit from what most of us would consider a real college education. Vocation / tech schooling and trade apprenticeships have been vastly under-emphasized in our system, and it is not serving us well.
“Education” as now practiced in this country, has nothing to do with the level of wealth attained in a lifetime. Extracting and verbalizing the intellectual content of a number of facts assembled by others over many lifetimes of experience, does not translate into the totally different skill set that goes into persuading your fellow human beings to give you money. Now, people give other people money, for a variety of reasons, because they are afraid of that person, and surrender up the cash to buy a little personal time during which they are “safe” from the bullying; or it may be a feeling of pity or remorse over some past inequity; or even because one person has so much admiration for the performance and capable talents of another, that the cash is gladly handed over.
Or the recipient of the funds may have made something so clever, so useful, that others clamor for the RIGHT to give their reserve of stored value to the innovator, that they may enjoy the fruits of that cleverness.
Book learning is unrelated to shrewd merchandising or manipulation. Willingness to accrue treasure, the drive to be wealthy, is a trait learned at an early age, and is as much a part of culture, as the feigned or real inability to employ money, cash flow, in a useful and provident manner, the desire to remain impoverished. Either rich or poor is a matter of attitude, not of any inherently unequal treatment by the economic system.
People will let you have about as much money as they think you should have. Pleasing personalities get more money than unpleasant people.
And if you're a total moron -> climate scientist!
You are right. Often the morally right thing is not the popular thing. As long as those false knights of morality (or knights of false morality?), known by their fierce anti-racist and feminist stances, wield their swords, there’s not an inkling of a chance to intervene when a student is harming him/herself by trodding on in an unsuitable field.
You know: I hate those gratuitous ‘minority heroes’ with a vengeance, because they do so much harm in the name of equality. ‘Equal opportunities’ certainly does not imply: everyone should study at the same level, and get the same income as the others.
Oh yes: Allan Bloom wrote brilliantly about the damage that mandatory percentual quotes for different races and sexes do. E.g. he depicts a situation he himself experienced at Chicago University: black students not being able to mix with the others, isolating themselves as a group (at dinner, for instance) and being wary all of the time. Why? Because they felt insulted by being the beneficients of the quote rules, and also by being given on the average better markings then their white counterparts - no professor ever would want to being seen as too critical of a black person’s achievements, see?
You forgot Foreign Film....of which one of my relatives has one...from U.C. Berkley. And now lives at home with parents...while unemployed.
A good attitude and willingness to work gets you a job. A degree helps that a lot.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE - BUSINESS
JUNE 12, 2010
Is a college degree still worth it?
As U.S. employment patterns evolve, a diploma is no longer a guarantee of a better job and higher pay.
Story:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/la-fi-jobs-educate-20100612,0,2232768.story
In Europe, where the State pays for the well qualified students, they make sure they get value for money.
Whereas, in a for profit education system it is simply a numbers game, wheel ‘em in, the bottom line is profit. That approach inevitably brings with it all the ills that you have described.
The other lib class was Impressionist Art so it worked out very well. She’s an amateur artist and enjoyed the class.
No proselytizing by that prof.
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