College Isn't For Everyone

In his first address to Congress after being sworn in as President of the United States, President Obama laid out an aggressive progressive agenda for increasing the number of Americans with college degrees over the next ten years. "We will provide the support necessary for you to complete college and meet a new goal," he promised Americans, "by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world."

President Obama's goal here completely misdiagnoses what ails our higher education system. A culture that encourages and a government that and subsidizes higher education has driven up costs, pushed underqualified students into institutions that they’re not ready for, propped up a student debt bubble and hurt the quality of our higher educational institutions.

What’s odd about the President’s agenda is that he recognizes some of these problems. In that same 2009 speech to Congress, he acknowledged that “we have one of the highest high school dropout rates of any industrialized nation. And half of the students who begin college never finish.”

Modern American postsecondary education is thought of as a “bundled” model: everything comes included and nothing is severable: professors, brick-and-mortar buildings, books, testing, certification and so on. But in an economy where so many recent graduates are saddled with student debt and can’t find jobs with the skills they’ve acquired, it might be time to rethink the way the system works for everyone.

Traditional bundled models of higher education – this includes both two- and four-year programs - will be beneficial to the students who are prepared for the academic rigor and willing to make financial plans in order to not overstretch themselves. What’s important is academic preparedness and choosing a course of study, including the level of degree, that is right for a student. The bundled model isn’t for everyone, and it’s increasingly not for the students who are borderline college applicants.

The Census Bureau’s 2011 survey found that the median bachelor’s degree recipient will earn 85% more over the course of their careers than the median high school graduate. Associate’s degree holders will earn 38% more. These figures vary by course of study - engineers benefit from the greatest wage premium, while those who studied humanities or other liberal arts benefit the least - but the benefits are nonetheless there.

Government policy isn’t encouraging more average postsecondary candidates to go to college, though. Those students would likely go on their own. Government policy encourages the marginal students, those who might not be eligible for merit-based scholarships, or might stretch themselves to fit in at a school beyond their academic reach. It’s creating a generation of tragedy.

An average four-year college graduate from the class of 1993 would graduate with $9,450 in student loan debt. The average bachelor’s recipient in 2012 graduated with $29,400 in debt - an increase of over 300%, according to the Institute for College Access and Success. What’s worse are those who drop-out of college with high debt burdens; they don’t get the benefit of the college wage premium and are still saddled with massive debt that came along with their attempt at a college degree.

"It's tragic," says Corie Whalen, spokesperson for free market youth advocacy group Generation Opportunity. “You have these 18-year-olds who don’t know what they want to do, so they go to school. I’m 26, and I have a lot of friends, people my age and slightly younger, who end up dropping out of school, maybe to take a job. ... They’re in this kind of black hole where they’re stuck.”

A 2005 study from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education found that 20 percent of all students who borrow to go to college are unable to complete their degree, and the median college dropout had incurred $10,000 in student loans, with nothing to show for it. The study found that a quarter of debt-saddled college dropouts would default on their loans.

In the post-2008 crash economy, jobs are increasingly becoming available that require training other than a traditional four-year college education. While two-thirds of young Americans enroll in traditional colleges, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in 2012 that only one-third of jobs in the American economy require postsecondary education.

Moreover, BLS found, “The most new jobs from 2012 to 2022 are projected to be in occupations that typically can be entered with a high school diploma. ... Apprenticeship occupations are projected to grow the fastest during the 2012-2022 decade.”

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than half of graduates who have bachelor’s degrees in communications, liberal arts, and business go on to jobs in which a bachelor’s degree is not required.

With a glut of jobs that don’t require a degree, the perils that befall debt-addled dropouts who have overstretched themselves to go, and the ever-rising cost of attending college, why are people enrolling in four-year colleges at record rates?

The answer: government policy. American government at all levels subsidizes higher education more than any other country, and our culture, including our political leaders, portray a traditional college education as mandatory for success in life.

“We know it’s harder to find a job today without some higher education,” President Obama said in December 2013, “so we’ve helped more students go to college with grants and loans that go farther than before. We’ve made it more practical to repay those loans. And today, more students are graduating from college than ever before.”

Sadly, in an era of unprecedented dropout rates, skyrocketing tuition, and mounting debt burdens, President Obama wants more people going to college.

The role that government policy has played in sending more people to college is undeniable. Rather than focus on fixing our K-12 education system to better prepare those students who complete high school but are unprepared for college, policies have pushed more high school grads into schools that they’re academically incapable of handling at prices they can’t afford, leading to our current dropout and debt predicament.

The number of incentives used by the federal government to push students toward college continue to increase. There’s the Stafford Loan program run by the federal government that helps students pay for college, and which has been used time and again for political gamesmanship, as seen in the 2013 debate over keeping interest rates on those loans artificially low. There’s the Pell Grant program, a college financing mechanism provided by the federal government that does not have to be repaid and for which total spending has doubled under President Obama. And that’s not to mention tax deductions run by the IRS for everything from tuition to books to student loan interest.

David Wilezol, fellow at the Claremont Institute, says there are important reforms to be made to the method of federal financing of higher education that can vastly improve educational outcomes. “It would be good to put some harder standards in place to get loans and also, to look at what the student is studying,” Wilezol tells Townhall. “There’s going to be a higher return on investment and a better salary if you’re in computer science or chemistry than if you’re in sociology or English… I don’t think it’s wise for the country to subsidize humanities or social science disciplines as heavily as they’ve done.”

Some of these programs are, on net, good policy. There are a lot of students who should be going to college and do need the help. The sum total of the federal government’s intervention in higher education, however, is to encourage too many students to go to college and to subsidize the massive tuition increases we’ve seen.

Four-year colleges are the easiest culprit to point to here, and Obama has pushed for increased utilization of community colleges and associates’ programs to alleviate the crisis in higher education. Andrew Kelly, director of the Center on Higher Education Reform at the American Enterprise Institute, tells Townhall that’s not the right policy solution.

“One of the things you usually hear in this debate is that community colleges are a better option because they’re cheaper, which they almost always are, to the consumer, out-of-pocket… But the completion rates at those colleges are often very low. It’s cheap to the consumer but it’s really expensive to the taxpayer on a per-outcome basis.”

Community colleges are often seen as an easy alternative to traditional four-year bachelor’s programs because, in addition to being cheaper, there’s already an infrastructure built outside of the traditional four-year program. The argument goes that all we need is a cultural shift to push two-year programs into respectability to make them a cheap, viable higher education alternative.

Kelly disagrees with that. “The problem with community colleges is that, simply, their outcomes up to now are far from where we need them to be if we want to have an efficient system of human capital for those types of students that would be better served in two-year programs.” Community colleges aren’t the targeted programs they should be.

Like bachelor’s programs, many community colleges encourage experimentation from students, allowing them to spend time taking broad-based courses that don’t contribute a whole lot to their educational goals. “There’s an emerging thinking,” Kelly says, “that students in the two-year sector need more structured programs that give them a starting point, an endpoint, and a clear mapping from where you start to where you finish.”

Many of the failures of America’s higher education system stem from the belief in the all-inclusive bundled model. It’s clear that in America’s economy, both now and the near future, the bundled model of higher education isn’t necessarily the one that will best serve new workers. Unfortunately, we’re moving at a glacial pace toward accepting the kinds of higher education reform that we need and government has been loathe to disincentivize the traditional model.

Accreditation is overseen by the U.S. Department of Education, which bestows private agencies with the authority to accredit either institutional or specialized categories to schools or programs, respectively. The private accrediting agencies have standards for accreditation which have been approved by the DoE for what it takes to become an accredited program.

The lure of accreditation for higher ed institutions is access to financial aid. A program has to be accredited to receive any form of federal financial aid, both for the school itself and the students. While the accreditation process wasn’t invented to serve as a gatekeeper to financial aid, in the modern higher ed system that’s what accreditation really is.

What accreditation does is create a high barrier to entry for innovative methods of higher education that incumbent schools are desperate to protect. We think of postsecondary schools as public-good nonprofits that care only for the best for their students, but they’re businesses like any other and they want to protect their favored status. The Center for Responsive Politics found that education lobbying in Washington, D.C. has topped $100 million in three of the past four years, with millions spent by big school systems like the University of Texas and the University of California alone. As a result, the bundled model is just about the only one on offer for students who can’t pay their own way.

Accreditation was never meant to be the main way that the government would decide which schools students would be incentivized to attend. A reform of the accreditation system might allow a wider variety of education systems to address what American students need. Accreditation, of some form or another, wouldn’t necessarily go away. It would merely give new, innovative education startups the chance to compete for the same higher-ed taxpayer dollars that currently are monopolized by bundlededucation providers.

What the higher education system might need is a good dose of the free market. The incentives are all aligned to send students to traditional educational models that are failing both students and taxpayers. It’s the approach that scholars like AEI’s Kelly emphasize. “If you’re a higher education provider and you have some early outcomes to suggest that students are well served, and you are inexpensive and students can afford to pay with a little help from federal or state governments. Why shouldn’t we embrace that?

Small reforms have already begun to push the higher education system toward innovation. Under the Bush administration, accreditation reform, for the first time, allowed the possibility for programs that offered the majority of their courses online to become accredited. It’s why we’ve seen the rise of programs like Strayer University and Western Governors University. These are majority-online, but they also move away from the traditional model of providing credit merely for time invested.

The innovative move in higher education right now is away from credit-hours and toward skills testing. In addition to accredited institutions like Western Governors University, Kelly points to programs like Degreed and Accredible that allow students to gather a sum total of their schooling, their training, and their learned skills to fuse into a comprehensive package, which Degreed calls “Degree Equivalents,” that provide an alternative method to the certificates awarded by bundled postsecondary education.

The higher education models that best serve students may also not exist yet. The beauty of opening up the higher education system to competition and choice is that forms of study may arise that would never be thought up by technocratic education gatekeepers. To an extent, this would be opening up the criticism that taxpayer dollars would be spent on education experiments that might not actually serve individual students as well as the current bundled model does. The status quo, though, is completely failing the students that are most vulnerable.

Millions of students push themselves to the limit every year to take on debt to attend academically intense college programs. For some of them, the current system serves them well. Even so, there are hundreds of thousands of young Americans who have become victims of the college-or-bust mindset, dropping out with mountains of debt and nothing to show for it. Many who complete college will find themselves with a humanities degree that they were promised would open up a world of opportunity, only to find themselves in the unemployment line because the skills they learned in a liberal arts college don’t fit with the jobs that America can provide today.

There may not be any silver bullet to solve the problems that overextended students and college debt pose to America’s youth today. But they deserve better. And Washington politicians ought to tell them the truth and take action on the policy options that could do real good in reforming the status quo.

The Census Bureau’s 2011 survey found that the median bachelor’s degree recipient will earn 85% more over the course of their careers than the median high school graduate.

That’s because college is largely associated with higher intelligence. It’s likely that much of the difference is not because of the college training, but because those who are destined for higher pay choose college.

My question for colleges is: “What is the cost per square foot on your most recent classroom additions, and dorms?”

And then: “WHY does someone seeking to learn about literature, engineering, or law need that kind of opulent facility?”

(The answer is that they are focusing on the federal student loan money, and have to look good to attract the ‘marks’).

I’d suggest that when the classroom cost per square foot is 2-10x that of the building the job will be in, and the dorm cost per foot is 2-10x the grad’s first apartment, something is wrong.

Unfortunately our community college is trying to become another unneeded 4 year school and they’re behaving like one. The first thing she has to do is take an orientation course so she can learn to juggle college and social life. She’s nearly 50 years old and hasn’t had or needed a social life in decades. The orientation course requires several school specific books that will cost hundreds of dollars.

Yep. No exceptions. It’s a racket.

And wait until graduation, and you’ll get such pomp and circumstance you’d think you were at Yale! I think the administrators are really doing it for their own egos.

There is also a trend to remove the “Community” from the name, so it becomes East Podunk College.

I am not surprised by the abysmal percentage of NYC high school "grads" (only deemed "grads" by the most blatant hand-waving over real requirements and skills obtained) who are not college-ready: 77.9% last year. This is a reflection of the horrific behavior allowed in classrooms because the administration does not support their teachers. Referrals to the dean for bad behaviors are often ignored and the kid is immediately returned to the classroom with a triumphant grin upon their face. The kid has NO interest in learning and therefore amuses himself by disrupting and destroying any chance the rest of the kids have for learning. This is also a reflection of the intense pressure on teachers to pass kids who absolutely should not pass. You hear in teachers' lounges the sadness and regret of having to pass kids who barely even show up to class, or face letters of reprimand from administration or harassment or even termination. To be a "team player", you have to play along with the administration's fraud with numbers. Thus, you have gazillions of "grads" whose diploma is not worth the paper it's printed on. They are not ready for college, not without spending their first several years of college taking non-credit "remedial courses" at great taxpayer-subsidized expense, which are simply repeats of the high school work they neglected and failed. Think of the seats being taken up by this sort of "student" at our colleges.

High school students are pushed and pushed that the only way to go is to go to college. Posters reflecting this philosophy are all over every classroom and hallway. We all know that this is not the case, that excellent and honorable livings can be made in the "trades". Heck, I bet most of my repairpeople make a lot more than I do!

A lot of the reason that students are pushed into college--whether they are suited for it, whether that's what they want--has to do with the civil rights movement and the mindset of misguided (is there any other kind?) libs. Students were formerly tracked in schools according to tests and to their prior school achievement records. Those consistently not doing well in academic subjects such as chemistry were tracked into lower-level courses such as "Science Survey" and shop or similar courses. When they graduated, they could either go directly to work in the trades or were well-prepared to enter a trade school and get up and running to working in a short time. But along come the libs shouting "NO!!! Most of the students in the shop track are minorities! It's discrimination! Everyone MUST go to college, whether they're suited for it or not! Whether they want it or not!"

This, plus the colleges' greed for tuition, is how you came to stuffing college classrooms with students who really should not be there, who are just taking seats better occupied by serious students.

I remember when I was in grad school that I faced the prospect of having to go to a different university to take several courses not offered where I got my degree because so many of their seats, instructors, and resources were being taken up by REMEDIAL CLASSES. So, I asked them, which is a better bet to use your resources on? Socially promoted high school "grads" who are merely repeating high school courses labeled "college courses" or students who have legitimately gotten into undergrad college, graduated, passed stiff graduate entry exams and now seek to take graduate classes? They saw my point and I got the classes I needed at the same university after all.

It was like this with college in 1980 when I graduated HS and I'm sure it's no different today. If you had parents who could afford tuition (and perhaps a small endowment), your dumb kid got in no matter what. However, you could be one of the smartest kids in your class but if you didn't come from money and weren't good enough at basketball or football to get a scholarship, you were pretty much on your own.

My two kids did not qualify for FAFSA (Federal Student Aid) form because I make too much money. Yet I don't make enough to send them to a big-name college. So only one of them went (engineering degree) at a state university that I was 100% responsible for paying for and the other one went the technical school route, as I did.

I guess on the bright side, none of them had to pay back loans and they both have pretty decent jobs.

Here’s the problem: everyone at birth is given a certain percentage of “fast twitch” and “slow twitch” muscles. If you do not have a certain threshold of these “fast twitch” muscles you cannot be a baseball hitter. I happen to have very good depth perception and this enabled me to see the baseball well but I lacked the high complement of fast twitch muscles to enable me to get the bat around in time to hit it. Therefore, I could have spent every waking hour practicing and I would never achieve any level of proficiency at batting. And, no, I could not have been a pitcher, either. Same reason.

On another note, I vividly recall the words of the chairman of the engineering department at a major university. He noted that maybe 15 percent of the students at his school had the aptitude to handle the higher math to succeed in his school’s engineering curriculum.

The emphasis is well-placed; there is strong belief that mathematical abilities are in-born, i.e., there is a certain place in the brain which enables people to handle “high math” and if it’s not there, it’s simply not there (one cannot create a “talent” and that’s what it is). Therefore, if a person who lacks this ability wants to be an engineer, he can work his or her little head off and never be able to successfully graduate from an engineering school. If this were not so, then you could take anyone off the street at random and with enough coaching and self-motivation make him or her a nuclear physicist. No, it doesn’t work that way and one would be extremely naive to believe otherwise.

But, some folks on FR really believe in the “little engine that could.” Evidently, they believe in fairy tales.

In my experience teaching at CC level, it is the best deal for those planning for a Bachelor degree, to get the Core Courses (First 2 yrs College) for a 4 yr degree needed to accomplish their goals...examples are Criminal Justice for pre law/State agency hierarchy/Sheriff or Educator etc, Bachelor of Nursing, or History Professor for finishing last two years at a Religious or Private University without liberalism.

The savings on those first two years will help keep them out of student loan debt. Some careers must have a 4 year degree, and we want those conservatives in charge... not at lower ranks of business/colleges/legal agencies or military etc.

Plus Community College offers several programs for trade certification and career paths... like EMT, CJ training for police officers, electricians, plumbers, auto mechanics and RNs. We should be pushing students to find a career suited to their intellect and gifts....not everyone is suited to 4-8 years of college.

If you do not have a certain threshold of these “fast twitch” muscles you cannot be a baseball hitter.

Really? Because I see kids playing baseball all the time. In fact I see entire grades playing. Are these high percentages of “fast twitch” muscles so common that every kid in school has them?

And yeah there are some that are better then others and some that are real good but they can all hit and throw a ball.

there is strong belief that mathematical abilities are in-born, i.e., there is a certain place in the brain which enables people to handle “high math” and if it’s not there, it’s simply not there

Quite frankly I find people who try to push that kind of belief are the kind who have a desperate need to believe that they are "special". Whenever it is shown, as it often is, that they are not "special" and that Joe Blow can do what they do if he is willing to put in the effort they have screaming temper-tantrums.

But, some folks on FR really believe in the “little engine that could.”

And some people on FR believe in the "Only special people can do higher math" myth.

It is rather sad really.

Everything is relative, my dear. Yes, you see amateurs playing baseball. The players are facing mediocre (at best) pitchers. It’s when they are up against someone who can throw a ball 90 miles per hour and faster and is able to mix his pitches, i.e., introduce sliders, curve balls, change-ups, etc., that the demand for extra quick reflexes—that is to say, the need for the fast twitch muscles—comes into play.

So, what you’re seeing are unskilled kids playing against their peers. Proves nothing. And besides, you’re talking about sandlot baseball and I thought we were discussing aspirations to play the major leagues. No comparison, none at all.

As to your comments on mathematical abilities, I get the intimation that you are suggesting that I’m speaking from a position of someone who fancies himself skilled in math. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have two bachelors degrees, one in political science (I wanted to be a lawyer...that fell through) and economics, but I realized that I did not have the mathematical abilities to obtain a graduate degree in that subject. OTOH, I stand in awe of those who can do advanced math (I have a grand nephew who is getting a PhD in engineering next month; he is truly a genius at math).

If you want to direct your scorn to those who feel that they are above the grimy crowd, look at the engineers on FR. They are your target, if that’s your aim.

They do have a point, though. Very few people can do higher mathematics and if you choose to believe it’s just a matter of effort, you need to look into it more (talk to a mathematics or engineering professor). It’s a talent and one cannot do things for which he or she does not have the talent; otherwise, we could all be famous singers and actors if we just applied ourselves, according to your point of view. Effort counts but there are limitations imposed by innate ability.

I’ve said all I’m capable of saying. You obviously don’t agree, and that’s fine.

Regards.

You have to understand that the insert process for the desire to change the name of these institutions.

I will give you a couple of local examples

Community College of the Finger Lakes, it was changed by the locals to Community College For Losers

Monroe Community College was Monroe Comedy College

Onondaga Community College became Only Chance College. I attended here as an undergrad before going to Cornell. I will never forget one day I go into the can. While on the throne someone had scratched into the stall above the toilet paper roll...OCC diplomas. Take one.

The possibilities nationwide are beyond comprehension. The problem for these facilities is that they were named by politicians. When naming things, politicians are sooo stupid and never plan for how things will get twisted in general usage.

But nearly all of the community colleges have gotten mission creep and fancied themselves as a stepping stone to a four year institution. Which is what I used it for, and never graduated from the CC, just took the pile of transferable credits and went on with my academic career. Saved me and my parents a bucket of cash, but the overall graduation rate for the CC was probably not good, as my degree completion did not reflect in their stats although it should have because without the CC would have never made it to where I ended up.

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