Posted on 08/08/2017 5:34:19 AM PDT by SJackson
August is the month when parents bid farewell to not only their college-bound youngsters but also a sizable chunk of cash for tuition. More than 18 million students attend our more than 4,300 degree-granting institutions. A question parents, their college-bound youngsters and taxpayers should ask: Is college worth it?
Let's look at some of the numbers. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, "when considering all first-time undergraduates, studies have found anywhere from 28 percent to 40 percent of students enroll in at least one remedial course. When looking at only community college students, several studies have found remediation rates surpassing 50 percent." Only 25 percent of students who took the ACT in 2012 met the test's readiness benchmarks in all four subjects (English, reading, math and science). Just 5 percent of black students and 13 percent of Hispanic students met the readiness benchmarks in all four subjects. The NCSL report says, "A U.S. Department of Education study found that 58 percent of students who do not require remediation earn a bachelor's degree, compared to only 17 percent of students enrolled in remedial reading and 27 percent of students enrolled in remedial math."
The fact of business is that colleges admit a far greater number of students than those who test as being college-ready. Why should students be admitted to college when they are not capable of academic performance at the college level? Admitting such students gets the nation's high schools off the hook. The nation's high schools can continue to deliver grossly fraudulent education — namely, issue diplomas that attest that students can read, write and compute at a 12th-grade level when they may not be able to perform at even an eighth- or ninth-grade level.
You say, "Hold it, Williams. No college would admit a student who couldn't perform at an eighth- or ninth-grade level." During a recent University of North Carolina scandal, a learning specialist hired to help athletes found that during the period from 2004 to 2012, 60 percent of the 183 members of the football and basketball teams read between fourth- and eighth-grade levels. About 10 percent read below a third-grade level. These were students with high-school diplomas and admitted to UNC. And it's not likely that UNC is the only university engaging in such gross fraud.
. Many students who manage to graduate don't have a lot to show for their time and money. New York University professor Richard Arum, co-author of "Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses," says that his study shows that more than a third of students showed no improvement in critical thinking skills after four years at a university. That observation is confirmed by the many employers who complain that lots of recent graduates cannot seem to write an email that will not embarrass the company. In 1970, only 11 percent of adult Americans held college degrees. These degree holders were viewed as the nation's best and brightest. Today, over 30 percent hold college degrees, with a significant portion of these graduates not demonstrably smarter or more disciplined than the average American. Declining academic standards and grade inflation tend to confirm employer perceptions that college degrees say little about job readiness.
What happens to many of these ill-prepared college graduates? If they manage to become employed in the first place, their employment has little to do with their degree. One estimate is that 1 in 3 college graduates have a job historically performed by those with a high-school diploma or the equivalent. According to Richard Vedder, who is a professor of economics at Ohio University and the director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, we had 115,000 janitors, 16,000 parking lot attendants, 83,000 bartenders and about 35,000 taxi drivers with bachelor's degrees in 2012.
The bottom line is that college is not for everyone. There is absolutely no shame in a youngster's graduating from high school and learning a trade. Doing so might earn him much more money than many of his peers who attend college.
later
Couldn’t disagree more about an English degree being worthless.
A degree such as that prepares you for one job: a graduate student in a Master's of Women's Studies program!
Yes...this.
Make them compete for college loans based on a national college qualifying exam. Do not let the federal government operate the program in any way.
Despicable.
That is sad. We truly are doomed.
Depends on the liability, though, doesn’t it? Which has lower premiums: insurance for lawsuits from idiots or insurance for wrongful death?
Student loans are what colleges feed on.
I also worked three part-time jobs to pay for my tuition, which was $145 per semester. My best paying job of the three, paid $0.95 an hour. Tells you how old I am....
I also earned my BS in business administration in three years instead of four, the first member of my high school graduating class to finish college.
I had a great working career, working at many and varied jobs in different fields, including the military. I am retired now and live on a farm in the country, raising beef cattle.
My college degree didn't open doors. It was an education for my life that was to follow.
Glad WW is still out there working and sharing his wisdom. He always spoke of this and having spent a decade in Switzerland their system makes SO MUCH SENSE. At around 14 their kids are put in a track toward the career they both want and are suited for. Higher academic study is only for certain kids, and most kids want a career. There is no shame. Every career you can think of has serious scholastic internships, where half the day is in a classroom, the other half in the work environment. Even shop workers have certificates. There are few incompetent people (according to their system) in jobs because every kid becomes skilled.
What is going to be worth it for my son who got his AA at a reasonably priced CA community college and is now transferring to a 4 year university, IS THE AMAZING INTERNSHIPS. In his chosen field, these internships are KEY to getting a good job after he graduates. You can’t have access to these killer internships without being enrolled in such a university full time. College edu will be worth it for him just to get in those doors (if he makes himself indispensable enough).
I'd put the blame on Affirmative Action and the colleges. High school students will accomplish as much as is required to reach their goals. As a teacher and as a tutor and SAT math prepper, I was amazed how savvy students were about knowing the standards they had to reach. Unless the goal was unrealistic, they usually did. If the standards were lowered for them, they tended not to reach their full potential.
Colleges and universities want a higher caliber of students? Return to standards that indicate a desire, aptitude, and level of accomplishment that indicate they're prepared.
Another issue is reframing what an education is. So many students would be better served by high-skills job training. I wonder how many are even given information about those options.
For the most part, higher education is a scam to keep extreme leftists employed while keeping the average American from moving up the job ladder without having a piece of paper.
Yep.
And the trades.
Can’t WAIT for the bridges to start falling.
Absolutely correct. If you need remedial courses you shouldn't be in college. If 83% of those who need remedial reading and 73% who need remedial math, never graduate why not abolish all remedial courses and save the students and the general population huge amounts of time and more importantly , money.
Community college is an excellent option for completing basic college work and possibly discovering what you really want to do. My 5th child will start at our local CC this fall, and the 6th will go next year. I don’t give a freep if it sounds “low-brow”: as my mother says, “Do we know these people? Do we care what they think about us?”
Big with community college, though, is making sure credits will transfer to a 4 year school if needed.
Yes, that’s true. My children have worked directly with admissions people in the universities where they want to transfer, in order to make sure their credits are good.
A former boss - a liberal do-gooder - was mentoring an inner city HS student and would eventually pay for her to go to college. Linda was insisting that this girl attend her alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania. Nicole was a good student, but her decent grades at Benjamin Franklin High School would be the equivalent to Cees and Dees at a suburban Blue Ribbon school. Her formalized test scores, including SAT, were lackluster too.
I repeatedly told Linda that she was setting Nicole up for failure. Yes, she would be admitted to Penn but she would struggle out of the gate and probably never complete her degree. We talked about this often. Linda laid off the pressure and Nicole decided to go to a state “teachers college” (Shippensburg U.) and graduated with a decent GPA. She’s now a teacher back in Philadelphia, making a difference in her community.
Good story.
Thanks for sharing with us
Common sense prevailed, the young lady took on a challenge appropriate to her abilities and succeeded.
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