Posted on 02/20/2015 11:25:52 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
The pundit class is raising questions about whether Scott Walker’s lack of a college degree disqualifies him from being America’s 45th president. This is what educators call a “teachable moment,” because the issue goes much deeper than Governor Walker’s biography. Of course a college credential shouldn’t be a prerequisite for the presidency, but that’s also true for many jobs that today require a degree even when it’s not really necessary. That’s a big problem.
Many American leaders are obsessed with college as the path to economic opportunity. President Obama, for instance, wants America to lead the world in college graduates by 2020. But he’s hardly alone. Philanthropists, scholars, business leaders, and other members of the meritocratic elite have been banging the “college for all” — or at least “college for almost all” — drum for the better part of a decade.
Yet despite their own blue-ribbon educations, these leaders are making a classic rookie blunder: They mistake correlation for causation. They point to study after study showing that Americans with college degrees do significantly better on a wide range of indicators: income, marriage, health, happiness, you name it. But they assume that it’s something about college itself that makes the difference, some alchemy at their alma mater that turns gangly 18-year-olds into twentysomething masters of the universe.
Sure, college can be a great experience, and many individuals gain important knowledge, skills, insights, and contacts there. It’s also a prerequisite for most graduate and professional schools. All of that can help to build the “human capital” that enables people to get good-paying jobs and then excel at them.
But much of the college advantage can be explained by “selection bias” — the differences between those who tend to complete college and those who don’t. The dirty little secret of college is that it tends to bestow a credential on those who are already most likely to succeed. To use another term from Statistics 101, it’s “instrumental variables” that explain why college grads do better: their reading and math abilities; their social skills; their wealth. If people with these underlying advantages did something with their time other than go to college — like start a business or serve in the military — they would still outperform their peers over the long term.
Furthermore, research tells us how college students do “on average” against their peers without degrees. But those averages can mask a lot of variation. As Andrew Kelly succinctly put it in a recent paper for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, “on average ≠ always.” He cites a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York that found that the lowest-paid quartile of college graduates earns little more than average high-school graduates do; that’s been so since the 1970s. Which helps to explain all of those college-educated Starbucks baristas.
Back to Governor Walker. Our challenge as his prospective employer isn’t to determine whether presidents “on average” do better with a college degree than without one. It’s to consider Walker’s particular case. Does he have the knowledge and skills to do the job? What’s his track record in similar positions? We might conclude that his executive experience and legislative skills are quite solid but that his foreign-policy knowledge is a bit of a question mark. That’s the case with various of the successful GOP governors who are running for president. What matters isn’t whether they finished college 30 or 40 years ago, but how they’ve been performing in recent years, what kinds of advisers they are associating with, and what that implies for their potential success as president.
Unfortunately, millions of Americans don’t have this same opportunity to make their case to prospective employers, because their lack of a degree locks them out of the recruitment process altogether. While there are indeed some jobs that require the knowledge and skills gained in college, surely receptionists and photographers are not among them. Employers use college degrees as a proxy for smarts, perseverance, and other valuable skills. But this shortcut unwittingly excludes many talented people from their prospective hiring pool. This is especially unfair since it’s people who come from modest means (such as Walker) who are most likely to be disadvantaged by this type of credentialism. As Charles Murray has argued persuasively, a much better system would be one in which employers “rely more on direct evidence about what the job candidate knows, less on where it was learned or how long it took.”
Scott Walker may or may not be the best candidate for president. But there’s little doubt that he should be in the candidate pool. The same goes for millions of his non-college-educated peers who want a shot at a good job. We should give them a chance.
— Michael J. Petrilli is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a leading education-policy think tank. He is also a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
Have you seen the billion dollar endowment funds many colleges are sitting on?
And Obama wants us to now foot the bill for a 2-year free college education to extend the time until you can't go out and find a job. He also wants to play Santa Clause and forgive the $1.16 Trillion student loan debt - taxpayer funded relief.
Years ago a 1st to 8th grade education imparted a LOT of knowledge.
Now pre-K to 12th grade is so filled with things other than reading, writing and arithmetic (and remedial class in your first year of college is required for many in......reading, writing and math).
But the unions protect their teachers - Gov. Scott Walker could tell you stories about the 5 month union siege of the Wisconsin state capitol in 2011.
I don’t have one...and I teach Music theory at the College Level, and prepare people for auditions and entrance exams!
(I am self-taught and self-employed)
harvard law scumbag says $9 trillion debt is unpatriotic!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kuTG19Cu_Q
A bachelor’s degree from many colleges and universities is hardly worth the trouble it took to get it. And when it comes to training a young person to analyze and think for themselves, it is often several steps in the wrong direction.
Sometimes, common sense and an “I get it” mind set can help you succeed. Not saying that I posses either, I worked my way up from a labor grade 7 mechanic to a supervisor, test conductor, and eventually a field propulsion engineer and worked for the same employer for 36 years. Boy did I fool them. :>}
But then again, the education of those who did graduate with a BA was equal to getting a PhD today.
I have never understood why many companies need a college degree, hell even most police agencies today require degrees.
Last thing we need is college seen as a badge of maturity
One should feel ashamed to depend on parents until age 30 going to college.
Cruz graduated cum laude from Princeton, and then magna cum laude from Harvard Law, and few people in the world have better educational credentials, and he is also intelligent and skilled enough to do the job. While Cruz actually earned the same law credential that Obama was awarded as an affirmative action gesture, I won't hold that superficial similarity against Cruz.
At this level, the credentials are irrelevant.
I read that many HR departments don’t verify that a diploma is legitimate. So put down anything and give it a shot.
Then you are an idiot, regardless of your qualifications or education. Commies are smarter, don't you know.
They read (and read and read) and they were educated!
And many spoke some Latin!
Can Hillsdale college give him an honorary? Would that be delicious?
They were so well-educated that we can not possibly imagine it correctly.
I honestly believe in street smarts vs book smarts. I know plenty of people who have degrees but wouldn’t be able to cut it in a sales position or others that involve customer interaction. Super smart on paper but not people persons. You can’t teach personality.
Hank Johnson,the “Guam might tip over” guy has a college degree——and a law degree.
Scary stuff !
.
Benjamin Franklin attended Boston Latin school but he was prevented from going on to college through lack of funds. But that did not stop him from forming a philosophical society called the Junto which allowed everyone who had an interest in all things philosophical to get together and discuss stuff.
George Washington was a member as well as most of the founders. Washington read from Plutarch and the Greek and Roman military leaders in Latin.
In those days, the mark of an educated person was their ability to use Latin.
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