Posted on 03/22/2019 4:25:31 AM PDT by Kaslin
Now that we've all had a good airing of grievances about elite colleges and their attendant injustices, let's get some perspective.
While the numbers of high school graduates heading off to college has increased in recent years, the percentages graduating with a four-year degree have not increased much. Many students, especially those who are the first in their families to attend college, drop out before receiving a degree. (They cannot drop out of student loan payments though.)
Data from the Lumina Foundation show that among Americans aged 25-64, 52.4 percent have no more than a high school diploma (though 15.4 percent of them attended college for a while). An additional 5.2 percent received a certificate of some kind, and 9.2 percent obtained an associate's degree. What most people think of when you say "college," is a four-year institution. Only 21.1 percent received BA degrees, and another 12.2 percent also earned graduate degrees. Adding the last two categories brings the fraction of Americans with college or graduate degrees to just over one-third.
While most of the conversation in the past week has focused on highly selective colleges like Yale and Penn, it's important to remember that only a small number of America's colleges are selective. As FiveThirtyEight has reported, more than 75 percent of undergrads attend colleges that accept at least half of all applicants. The number who attend selective colleges -- i.e. schools that accept 25 percent or fewer -- is just 4 percent. And those colleges in the very top tier, which reject 90 percent or more, can be counted on your fingers and toes. You can probably guess most of them. (Though not all. On this U.S. News list, Pomona College came in at No. 11, and the Minerva Schools at Keck Graduate Institute came in first.) Less than 1 percent of college students attend these elite schools.
Most students attend commuter schools, which tend to be community colleges. Even among those at four-year institutions, almost 25 percent attend part time. Half of college students are also working, not getting plastered at frat parties.
There's a healthy debate in policy circles about whether our current cultural preoccupation with college for all is a good thing. Some people who are funneled toward college might be a better fit for vocational training, apprenticeships or other life paths. And while there is no doubt about the association between college completion and higher income, there is uncertainty about the causal relationship.
Rather than gnash our collective teeth about whether Jason or Jessica can get into MIT, we might want to focus on all students, those who are headed for college and those who are not. Every student in elementary and high school should be learning about the "success sequence." The phrase was introduced by Isabel Sawhill and Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution and has lately been reinforced with a study by W. Bradford Wilcox and Wendy Wang of the Institute for Family Studies.
What they've found is that students have it within their power to virtually guarantee a middle- or upper-class income if they follow three steps. Those three basics are 1) finish high school, 2) get a full-time job and 3) get married before having children. Young people who follow all three steps have only a 3 percent likelihood of living in poverty when they reach young adulthood. Eighty-six percent of millennials who put marriage first had incomes in the middle or upper third, compared with 53 percent who had children before marriage. The success sequence works for those born into poverty, too. Seventy-one percent of millennials who grew up in the bottom third of the income distribution were in the middle or upper third by young adulthood if they followed the three steps. Among African-Americans, 76 percent who followed the success sequence achieved the middle class or above, and among Hispanics, the percentage was 81 percent.
With all of the emphasis on a tiny sliver of the top 1 percent of students, most young people can get the impression that they are doomed to a lesser life. In fact, avoiding a few pitfalls like dropping out of high school, having a baby out of wedlock or failing to find employment is a ticket to success.
There's a bias among writer types to pay attention to Princeton and Columbia. But that's not really where the action is in helping most Americans.
That’s about what I told my poor daughter when she was stressing about whether she would get admitted to a state school—her private school “college counselor” was asininedly sowing doubt. Honey look, if you want to go there and we can pay the tuition, you’ll get admitted. Which she of course was and is now about to graduate.
For most it is simply day care with sex and alcohol. No need for the government to subsidize it. Subsidizing it just drives up the price faster than inflation.
Or look at trade school as well.
And people, listen. We need to get the state out of our marriages. Have a marriage ceremony without a license. Please.
Whirlwind: Here's $250,000. Selectively enroll MY child.
Yup
It made sense to keep kids in school longer when the employment rate was higher.
Kept them from runnin’ the streets!
The Minerva Schools is essentially a scholarship for a tiny, for-profit, venture-funded Silicon Valley-type thing done under the Claremont Colleges. So of course lots of applicants and able students.
Still interesting, however, as to how they apply online seminars and weave in MOOCs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minerva_Schools_at_KGI
I have a renter who has $200,000 of school debt. She has a masters in art education. She got a job in the highest paid art teacher’s venue, New York. The payments on her school loans took half her paycheck. She said she was unable to live in New York on the remainder, so she quit. She is doing something I didn’t know existed, she spends the day listing ads for Amazon products on Facebook accounts. When somebody clicks on it she gets a payment. When somebody buys something she gets a percentage. Although she pays taxes on the income there is no doubt in my mind that, eventually, the government will be able to garnish virtually all non-cash income to repay those loans. Also, when she “retires” the government will garnish her social security payments.
Mona the Never Trumper Prissy Uptight Lady chimes in. Undoubtedly, she sent her crumb crunchers to the best schools possible.
So if the number of high school graduates attending college has increased, and the percentage graduating with four-year degrees has increased only a little, that still means an increase in the number of college graduates.
I work at a university so I will pull rank on you. The Computer Science/Business IT, Accounting and Engineering programs are brutal. Our largest school is the College of Business and half the grads are IT/Programming.
We don’t offer Underwater Basket Weaving majors. Even Theater majors graduate knowing how to do carpentry because they have to take Set Building.
If you want a “relaxed” college career, there are schools for that. Most of them are private colleges.
A friend of mine said that his son, who is taking over his one-man plumbing business, will be a multi-millionair within just a few years. He said he will be make it by being a plumber, not because of his college degree.
The cost of attending some of these elite schools is $300K or more for a 4 year degree. I didn’t realize it was that high at USC.
Even many of the not-so-bright students figured out that student loan interest rates are much lower than credit cards. Party on!
We went to Oklahoma State University 1969 - 1973. Graudated on time with our degrees. I PAID MY OWN WAY.
Husband was a Chemical Engineer for over 40 years. They didn’t learn gobbledy gook back then, they learned science, math - like calculus, physics, thermodynamics, differential equations, (he hated biochemistry). You couldn’t get professors to change your grade, etc. I missed a Drawing Class for a week, in hospital - doctor almost killed me with penicillin - fatal allergy to that. My drawing teacher lowered my grade from an A to a B. Said “you missed a week of class” no matter I was almost dead, in a hospital. Rules were Rules back then.
Our daughter was at UT. She screwed up one semester, bad grades. She convinced an adviser that it was because she broke up with her fiance. He wasn’t her “fiance” and she dumped him. She already had a new boyfriend and didn’t care a whit about the old one. They let her erase all her grades for that entire semester. Of Course, she wasn’t paying, we were. We should have made her drop out or pay her own way after that episode!
Brother in law went to OSU also and got his degree and certification in Veterinary science. He wouldn’t have put up with any of the nonsense colleges are teaching today. He was a great vet!
Well, well...... rational sanity
Let’s hear now from the FReeper education bashers who being uneducated bash all colleges
bfl
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