Obama to Call for Better Graduation Rates (60% of Americans to get college degrees)

New York Times ^ | August 9, 2010 | SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

[reaganaut1]

President Obama on Monday will renew his call for the United States to lead the world in college graduation rates by 2020, an ambitious goal that senior administration officials say will require 60 percent of all young Americans to possess a college degree, up from 40 percent today.

The United States gave up its spot as the world leader in college graduation rates about 10 years ago, as students in countries like South Korea, Canada and Russia began to surpass their American counterparts. Now the United States ranks 12th among 36 developed nations; a report by the College Board last month warned that the gap threatens to undermine American competitiveness.

Mr. Obama, who shares that view, used his State of the Union address in January to call for the United States to resume its spot as the world leader in graduation rates. He will travel to Austin, Texas, on Monday to reiterate his education plan in a speech at the University of Texas there.

“We’re flatlined, where other countries have passed us by,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Sunday, during a conference call with reporters to preview the president’s remarks. Mr. Duncan called the 2010 goal “the North Star for all our educational efforts.”

Mr. Obama’s trip to Texas will pair policy with politics; before delivering his education speech, he will headline a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee in Austin. After the speech, he will make a quick trip to Dallas to raise money for Democratic Senate candidates.

And the speech itself will have a political edge; advisers to Mr. Obama say he will use it to remind Americans that, with just a few exceptions, Republicans voted overwhelmingly against legislation adopted by Congress earlier this year to revamp the student loan program

[wintertime]

The college degree will be worthless.

[ecomcon]

Staggering chart. 5 times the inflation adjusted dollars and ZERO improvement.

Any teachers out there want to defend this?

[1951Boomer]

You’re right. The only way to get to 60% is to dumb it down even more than it HAS been.

[hal ogen]

What sheer idiocy! About 30% of high school grads go on to earn college degrees (even with the current grade inflation and dumbing-down). About 1% earn a graduate degree. Given that 50% of people have an IQ of 100 or less, given that about 30% of people don’t graduate from high school and given that about 3% of college graduates have an IQ of 100 or less, just what are these pie-in-the-sky politicians and other do-gooders thinking? Idiocy...sheer idiocy!

[MNJohnnie]

Plus it means happy days for the teachers unions.

Excellent point. Also check out who gives tons of money to Leftist political candidates like Barack Hussein Obama. Number 3 on donors list? People in "Education". This is just a nice little bribe to his big donors paid for by the Taxpayers

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/indus.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638

[Dasaji]

There - YOU hit the nail on the head. This isn’t about making sure the majority of future subjects are educated...it’s about hooking the majority of future subjects into debt slavery before they are even out of the gate.

AND - FedGov now gets to pocket the interest spread on these loans.

[Vendome]

We are flatlined because most people are preordained for stupidity.

Take me for instance. I left High School, in the 10th grade, after being asked to write one more paper about something I had done in past grades.

In fact, in the 9th grade, I turned in a paper I had written in the 3rd grade, for which I had received an A+, at that time. I received an A and was a little miffed at the teachers explanation as to why I didn’t get the double credit.

But I was getting irritated with school and thought he was an idiot.

In the 8th grade I turned in a paper discussing the causes of the civil war and resolution of civil rights up and until the 1964 decision.

Got into an argument with the teacher about Dred Scott and a few other things, my Mom dropped me off the next day with Encyclopedias, books and some magazine which I had used for research. (I had done a short essay in the 5th grade on the same subject and went all out with this paper including timelines, on a graph about 3 feet long. My dad worked at Burroughs so we always plenty of paper)

This moron didn’t even understand Dred Scott, 13th or 14th amendment, in general, much less in context.

So comes the 10th grade and I don’t remember the teacher but I turned in the same paper. I could that as the teacher from 3 years earlier hadn’t put any idiotic remarks on it.

Got an A and rave reviews about how well it had been research and Blah, Blah.

I was pissed that I had been asked to the same work as before and didn’t feel I was learning.

I mean, if I could turn in work from years earlier and receive high marks.... Again, why am I wasting my time here?

I had only one problem in school and couldn’t make heads or tails of Algebra. Well, sort of.

Seems I could use the formulas that were actually useful in real life, like FIFO and some others but had no use for the theory part.

I asked my teacher, in mechanical drafting, what my problem seemed to be.

He said some people will only use what is practical and discard the rest. He didn’t have a problem with my inability as I was using some of the formulas in drafting.

I quit high school two months later, thinking what a bunch of idiots.

So now it comes years later and I find myself teaching guys with pedigrees how to write letters and proposals. Dumber than hell people and I have no idea how they go through college.

Then again, that is like most people in college. Just dumb.

Why? Social progression. Not important that you learn but the emphasis is on pushing you to the next class and graduating you. Dumb or not and in most cases ... dumb.

[Vendome]

OH, and a follow up.

Most people excel at being stupid and feel better for being ignorant.

My observation.

[oldironsides]

Improving graduation rates and improving high schools would mean a change in inner city leadership. Getting rid of stupid corrupt Democrats is impossible as they have the high school drop outs voting for them. It serves a purpose to have bad schools. It keeps the low achievers voting for Democrats. Keep in mind that Obama brought in Mr Duncan from Chicago for a leadership in education. How did Mr Duncan leave Chicago schools? Obama, Burris, Jarrett and Axelrode all have a hand in Chicago schools and they took the same thought process to Washington. They care about themselves and not anyone else.

[csmusaret]

Here is another....

[Soothesayer]

Get an expensive student loan and then never get a job...yea that’ll work out great.

[MNJohnnie]

It also involves a complete change in mindset of the current crop of "Civil Rights" leaders. Instead of playing victim, they would have to preach self reliance and a serious suspicious of the the political class.

Ain't going to do that. Paymasters in the Democrat Party will not let them. What do Black leaders expect to happen when they spend all their time for decades telling black youths "the white man has designed a system to screw you over, you got no chance at all. You got to vote Democrats so they can protect you from "the man".

The problems in the black community were created by, and maintained by, the current leadership for political reasons.

Black "leaders" know they got to keep the average black on the political plantation voting for the neo Slavecrats in the Democrat party if I want their slice of the taxpayer paid for pork pie. The "civil rights" leadership are "house niggers" who sell their souls to the corrupt neo slavecrats in the Democrat party leadership for a slice of the taxpayer slush funds.

[OldPossum]

Regarding: “Change the curricula to prepare the students for productive work” you do understand that college is not trade school, don’t you? I see it possibly becoming akin to trade school, but hopefully, that won’t happen.

[Graybeard58]

My air conditioner repairman doesn't have a degree and he just earned $115 for 30 minutes work. By the way, I offered him $100 cash and would not ask for a receipt but he wouldn't do it - seems that I ran into an honest man.

[AD from SpringBay]

I sense a lowering of standards on the horizon.

Go visit your local community college and you will see it is much closer than the horizon. Colleges are businesses and certain administrators in every college view the students as customers and so they should be catered to. And no one ever asks why a college sophomore is still unable to write a complete sentence, do simple algebra, or explain the concept of checks and balances as it relates to the federal government.

[magellan]

Trying to get 60% of Americans to graduate from college would be a fool's errand even if the country were 100% white, but as the Hispanic proportion of the population rises, it becomes even more absurd. Charles Murray has estimated that one needs an IQ of about 115 (about 1 standard deviation above average) to really study at the college level (studying calculus, for example, or writing coherent, documented, 20-page term papers).

That is a great point. By definition, only half the population can have an IQ above 100. To send 60% means sending those with an IQ of 96 or above. If 40% of the population is in college, that means everyone with a 104 IQ or better is in college. Still well short of 115, which explains why college has been "dumbed down" over the years.

This will force it to be dumbed down more.

[traditional1]

We have black student HIGH SCHOOL graduation rates of about 50%, in most studies of the issue, and now we're going to hand the NEA more taxpayer money under the guise of "educating" more at the college level? This is purely a Union-payback scheme, just as the billions just voted to "police, fire, and local authorities" is just another funneling of fly-over country tax dollars to the Democrat-controlled cesspools of State and Local governments that are full of "The Great Society" product....

The SEIU, AFSCME, NEA, UAW, and all the other Labor Unions are getting paid back for their 100's of millions of dollars they invested in the wealth-redistributor-Party campaigns.

No more, no less.

Again; follow the money.

[G Larry]

“productive work” does NOT mean trade school!

It means cut the crap with:
psych
sociology
sports med
100 different language classes

It means focus on:
reading
writing
math
history
actual science vs. propaganda

[OneWingedShark]

I wouldn’t be surprised to find that your graph isn’t the whole story and that those ‘scores’ are adjusted to the curriculum used... meaning there very well could be a NEGATIVE correlation on college-tuition cost and competence/ability in the subjects shown.

[supremedoctrine]

MY MY Obama has some grandiose , yet thoroughly impractical
and counterproductive “plans”!!!
What we need is NOT more college graduates, since college is already easy enough, misdirected enough, and dumbed-down enough for almost anybody to get through.’
We need more mechanics, roofers, carpenters,truckdrivers, etc. , who are
independent, and not tied to unions.
We need a WHOLE lot of things that a healthy incentivized economy would allow to come into being, and NOT a hidden-agenda, dead-end dedication to bolstering the mystique
of “Higher Education”, which would only further tie education at all levels to the agencies government already controls and wants to keep controlling (with YOUR money).