Posted on 05/29/2012 4:08:47 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The college-for-all crusade has outlived its usefulness. Time to ditch it. Like the crusade to make all Americans homeowners, it's now doing more harm than good. It looms as the largest mistake in educational policy since World War II, even though higher education's expansion also ranks as one of America's great postwar triumphs.
Consider. In 1940, fewer than 5 percent of Americans had a college degree. Going to college was "a privilege reserved for the brightest or the most affluent" high-school graduates, wrote Diane Ravitch in her history of U.S. education, "The Troubled Crusade." No more. At last count, roughly 40 percent of Americans had some sort of college degree: about 30 percent a bachelor's degree from a four-year institution; the rest associate degrees from community colleges.
Starting with the GI Bill in 1944, governments at all levels promoted college. From 1947 to 1980, enrollments jumped from 2.3 million to 12.1 million. In the 1940s, private colleges and universities accounted for about half. By the 1980s, state schools - offering heavily subsidized tuitions - represented nearly four-fifths. Aside from a democratic impulse, the surge reflected "the shift in the occupational structure to professional, technical, clerical and managerial work," noted Ravitch. The economy demanded higher skills; college led to better-paying jobs.
College became the ticket to the middle class, the be-all-and-end-all of K-12 education. If you didn't go to college, you'd failed. Improving "access" - having more students go to college - drove public policy.
We overdid it. The obsessive faith in college has backfired.
For starters, we've dumbed down college. The easiest way to enroll and retain more students is to lower requirements. Even so, dropout rates are high; at four-year schools, fewer than 60 percent of freshmen graduate within six years. Many others aren't learning much.
In a recent book, "Academically Adrift," sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa report that 45 percent of college students hadn't significantly improved their critical thinking and writing skills after two years; after four years, the proportion was still 36 percent. Their study was based on a test taken by 2,400 students at 24 schools requiring them to synthesize and evaluate a block of facts. The authors blame the poor results on lax academic standards. Surveyed, one-third of the same students said that they studied alone five or fewer hours a week; half said they had no course the prior semester requiring 20 pages of writing.
Still, most of these students finished college, though many are debt-ridden. Persistence counts. The larger - and overlooked - consequence of the college obsession is to undermine high schools. The primacy of the college-prep track marginalizes millions of students for whom it's disconnected from "real life" and unrelated to their needs. School bores and bothers them. Teaching them is hard, because they're not motivated. But they also make teaching the rest harder. Their disaffection and periodic disruptions drain teachers' time and energy. The climate for learning is poisoned.
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Jackson community college now has dorms.
We need to bring back manufacturing.
We also need to stop pretending you can change IQ with schooling.
You are absolutely correct. For the last 9-1/2 years, I have driven to and from work along the same route. There is a steel fabricting plant on the way that has had the same sign out front for that entire time “Now Hiring - Welders.” We don’t need more art history majors, English majors, etc. We need plumbers, carpenters, mechanics, welders, etc.
Probably the single best speech I’ve seen on what America really needs came from Mike Rowe of “Dirty Jobs”. We don’t need butts at desks, we need diggers, drillers, drivers, and builders.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2650612/posts
Less college, more vocational training and more apprenticeships. There is good money to be made in plumbing, electrical work, welding, etc.
Well, that’s an issue right there.
Many middle class parents push their kids to go to college, because they want to see them work in an office with a computer. They don’t want to see them do any sort of manual labor, even if some of those laboring jobs pay more than the desk job with a computer.
There’s anecdotal evidence that many of the “dirty” jobs in this country are now being done by people who were not born in this country. It seems a paradox that we have millions of ghetto youth and other low skilled people, who allegedly can’t get jobs. Yet we import millions to do various low skilled but needed jobs.
No. 50% of the population has an IQ of 100 or less.
There’s anecdotal evidence that many of the “dirty” jobs in this country are now being done by people who were not born in this country. It seems a paradox that we have millions of ghetto youth and other low skilled people, who allegedly can’t get jobs. Yet we import millions to do various low skilled but needed jobs.
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I beleive that is some of the regulation and PC is cut back, companies will take the time to train the kids they need. But who is going to give a black kid a chance if they cannot fire him if he doesnt work out.
That was basically what The Bell Curve was about. We may, by truly massive early intervention, be able to raise IQ by 2 to 4 points, but not more.
The intervention required to make even this minor difference is not really practical to accomplish, even leaving its cost out of the issue.
This issue of what do we do with the "less than bright" is at the root core of most of our social problems. Yet 15 years after TBC we still insist on pretending the issue doesn't exist.
I don’t believe that’s exactly correct either.
Since 100 is in the center of the bell curve, by definition, it will be the most common score.
Therefore 100 or less will be something more than exactly 50%, just as 100 and above will be. May 51% or 53%.
But I really do think this is nitpicking.
Recently read an article about how in the next decade probably millions of jobs as drivers (bus, truck, cab, etc.) will permanently disappear. The article was upbeat, pointing out that the displaced drivers could get jobs creating apps for Iphone and Ipad.
Studiously ignoring the rather glaring fact that someone with an IQ of 80 or 90 can function quite well as a driver, but is probably quite incapable of the creativity necessary to write apps.
Trying to increase the number of students who attend college just inflates the number who don't really belong there--no aptitude for real learning and not interested in studying.
“They want Socialism ,and kids who think the way their Socialist Professors do.”
First & foremost, they want customers to buy a product that is falling in value as the jobs go overseas anyway. Any job that can command a decent salary is already being re-worked so that you can either send it to Asia or bring Asians here to do it.
College today is for suckers, unless you really know why you are going.
I agree. The college for all mentality was briefly abandoned in my state in the 1970's for encouraging VOC/Tech courses. Then in stepped the every ones going to college policy makers and added college bound courses.
There are some students who simply are NEVER going to grasp subjects like Algebra or Geometry. It doesn't mean they are dumb or stupid it means they learn differently in a more practical way. I was one of those students.
In my senior year I did not attend high school. I was working for a company at 40 plus hours per week. That is the way it should be. I'm not knocking college. If a person has the tallent GOD love them go for it. But the everyone goes to college policies are bankrupting school systems and taxpayers. It is also have a huge negative affect on ones who could better spend the time wasted in advanced courses learning several trades. I encourage any kid today not going too college to learn several different trades. It will serve you well to do so.
This drives home my point about advanced classes and the everyone goes to college policy. I took a VOC/TECH course after my Navy service actually it was my second one. Yet again in came the advanced Math push even in those classes. The Math instructor insisted I had to have a pencil and paper on the job to be able to properly position an extension ladder aaginst a structure and he was dead serious. I looked at him and said here is what I will do. I position it at the tip of my feet on a sure and stable footing. I extend my arms straight out holding the sides of the ladder. If I can do that then the ladder is properly and safely placed. If I take out a pencil and paper to set a ladder I would be fired. I could not get him to grasp that simple time and industry honored concept anymore than he could get me to grasp advanced math.
Those jobs are secure for decades too come. Our nation is no where close to developing any type of system to replace them. Having the technology does not mean something is economically practical. Rails as far as local mass transportation are only functional in larger cities or heavilly populated areas and then are very limited at that. Trucks? LOL I see no rail tracks going down each road. Everthing we buy ships on a truck. Trucking is the quickest way short of airlift to move products point to point at desired destination even transporting coast to coast. The technology and the upfront R&D cost of a driverless nation will be cost prohibitive for decades to come.
Back in my early childhood {late 1950's-1960's} the "thinkers" believed that by the turn of the century {the year 2000} personal air travel vehicles or personal vessels would be the way people got to wherever they wanted to go.
The writer of that article obviously lives in Libbyland where common sense is the pennies a person uses to pay sales tax LOL.
BTW what did the Philosophy Doctorate Graduate say to his professor four years after graduation?
"Would you like Fries and a large drink with that"?
ok that’s important but if you don’t have people that can think straight, you have a mell of a hess.
If that were so our nation would not be in the trouble we are today. The Origins of Political Correctness A very revealing essay by Bill Lind about what has happened in our colleges & universities as well as embedded into our government.
Thanks for the link.
Everyone should read that article.
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