Today, amazingly, a majority of the students whom colleges admit are grossly underprepared. Only 23 percent of the 1.3 million high-school graduates of 2007 who took the ACT examination were ready for college-level work in the core subjects of English, math, reading, and science.
Perhaps more surprising, even those high-school students who are fully qualified to attend college are increasingly unlikely to derive enough benefit to justify the often six-figure cost and four to six years (or more) it takes to graduate. Research suggests that more than 40 percent of freshmen at four-year institutions do not graduate in six years.
Scholastic decline is connected to the financial, social and moral decline in our culture. Divorce, abuse, adultery, addiction (to behaviors, substances, media) are taking their toll on our children. When their lives are disordered, disrupted, distracted and insecure, they cannot concentrate and learn.
We, in this country, need a separation of education and state.
Don
#1 Yes that’s right! The idea that you can “educate” those whose characters have not been morally developed is a recent invention. You need only read a Platonic dialogue to see how ancient the repudiation of such a view is.
Better yet, read Proverbs.
My suspicion is that figures concerning liftime earnings of college graduates are highly skewed in favor of students who get degrees in a few highly lucrative fields, such as some of the engineering concentrations, and those who go on to complete professional programs in law, medicine, dentistry, business, etc., after college. I would be interested in knowing the lifetime average earnings of college graduates if you were to factor out, say those graduates with degrees in the top five highest paying majors, and those graduates who also have professional degrees. I believe that much of the vaunted lifetime advantage among college graduates would disappear.
There are, simply, way too many people in college. And even those who have received degrees in the liberal arts have a very shallow level of learning.
We are the only nation that crassly ties education to economic earnings.
One source of the problem is the faculty that has institutionalized grade inflation. The universal biases of the far left wing faculty have damaged academic performance, especially in the arts and humanities.
This slackness, this failure of acadmic principle and self-discipline have worked their way into public schools as well, and so we have seen, over the last thirty years, the elevation of “self esteem” as superior to work and performance. Again, in public school, the atteempt has been made to paste over these failures by making AP course mandatory on one high school record. The result is an enormous increase in the number of students taking AP courses and a correspondent weakening of the substance of such courses, as faculty refuse to fail those who should never have been there in the first place. Larry
#4 — I agree. It does make sense that those with a Bachelor of Science in an engineering field make more then someone with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. This make perfect sense to me. I must pat myself on the back for choosing the former and not the latter. 🙂
rob k (#5) is exactly right. There simply is too much of an expectation that everyone should go to a four-year college and earn (?) a bachelor’s degree. There are no doubt many reasons, not all of them related, for this; including a societal denigration of the trades, academic snobbery (in part tied up in class snobbery), the disappearance of apprenticeships (perhaps better than a BFA, or even some business degrees?), and a lack of grounding in the humanities and liberal arts in high schools (this at the same time that students in many systems are driven to take as many AP courses as they can cram into four years of high school). What we need is a robust system of high schools that teach students how to begin to think and to appreciate learning – there is no reason that a non-university educated tradesman cannot enjoy the riches of literature, music and all the liberal arts, universities and four-year degree-granting colleges, community colleges, trade schools and formal (and informal) apprenticeships that would better prepare young adults for those jobs and professions for which they have the greatest aptitudes and in which they are most interested.
Just yesterday my wife was reading the plaints of a college guidance counselor who has seen too many students, manifestly unprepared for university work (lower tier of their high school graduating classes academically), who come to the end of four years with $80000 in student debt still lacking 40-50 hours of credit work to graduate in their chosen majors, whom he guides into other academic venues, knowing that they will live long under the burden of that student debt without that (no doubt skewed) “greater earning power” of the college graduate. And this is to say nothing of their misery for four years, feeling they would have admitted defeat and been failures had they but admitted early on, “This is not for me.”
The usual mantra that a college education increases future earnings, never mentions that the increased debt burden, together with the increased taxes results in lower net income for most people.
Most people (including the so called high earners like physicians – who are also the high debtors) would do better in blue collar trades:
Plumber, electrician, welding, etc.
We have been sold a bill of goods by the education establishment and by the media
As a former adjunct professor, I can vouch that this is unethical and similar to the housing mess. We “sell” students the idea that they can “invest” in themselves with student loans that will be no problem to pay back, because, of course, they will earn more with the degree. Many are now graduating with degrees that are not in demand or do not pay well. Many would have been better off getting into a skilled trade or medical support field.
I should have been more clear in #1 – THE PARENTS’ “Divorce/S (the turmoil created by often multiple divorces or non-marriage live-in relationships), abuse, adultery, addiction (to behaviors, substances, media) are taking their toll on our children. When CHILDRENS’ lives are disordered, disrupted, distracted and insecure, they cannot concentrate and learn.”
Addiction, adultery and/or abuse in one generation is passed along to the next. It is said that an alcoholic parent affects seven or more generations…unless the Church and Jesus Christ intervene.
When my dad was growing up, the High School Diploma was the magic document that insured a good job. When he was working, it was the AA degree, and he went to school nights to secure that degree. Later he dutifully went through to earn his Bachelors, when promotions demanded it.
Now, when I graduated from college, the BA which he so proudly (and rightfully so) held meant little for me. Jobs were just not available for someone holding a BA. I had to earn a Masters degree in order to break out of the ‘just above poverty’ wage level, and now hold TWO masters, as one was not enough for employment consideration in the Library and academic field.
Education, like everything else, seems to be a victim of a type of inflation.
Jim Elliott <><
[i]Education, like everything else, seems to be a victim of a type of inflation.[/i]
When the government sets out to give everybody a college degree, then college degrees will be worth proportionately less.
Don Gander is right: education must be separated from the state.
Job advertisements do not ask how much work was required of an applicant in getting their degree.
They just require:
“qualified applicants must posess a Masters Degree in ___________ to be considered”.
I know. I’ve been looking at a LOT of job descriptions in the last two months. 😉
And let’s not forget that some very popular degreed persons received their degrees via mail-order-diploma-mills, and yet seem to enjoy trememdous success just by having the letters after the name (e.g., “Dr.” John Gray, author of “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus”).
The BA or even the BS has been oversold. Overlooked and snobbishly considered lower class by many is the trade school. Yet, there are many high paying, secure jobs in the trades. Many young people are much better adapted to pursuing this kind of education/training than becoming English Lit or PoliSci graduates. It is a tragedy that trade schools have been downplayed and phased out in many cases.
i wonder if the fact that we are requiring children to forgo their childhoods in order to have more ‘rigor’ in our educational system might have anything to do with what we are seeing at the other end? major push for all young children to attend preschool; full-day kindergarten; loss of recess in order to have time for important course work; often teaching at above grade level…i wonder…if we don’t allow kids to experience the needed growth from “just being kids”, are they missing essential building blocks needed for more mature behavior later on? kids aren’t small adults…they’re children… what happens when the educational system (and parents) choose to skip that fact?
no. 9 – Todd – Thx. You expanded on my post no. 5 so well, Hope I could have expressed it as well as you did.
#18. The reason the trade schools are less and less important iis that America is no longer an economy of production, but an economy of service providers. We don’t make things, we manipulate things, a very different world.
And Writingmom, one painful reason for the intensification of the academic performance and public achievement is t hat the parents are aiming their kids at prestigious colleges and universities. One MAY go to Harvard for an education, but it is at least as common to choose Harvard for its social connections. We are watching even now the creation of a powerful class system, at the head of which are the Alphas, who stay with and among themselves as if they form a gated community. This increasingly isolates the Betas and Gammas who are seen as a kind of Untouchable, the sort of people who go to trade schools. See again the last chapter in The Bell Curve wherein the authors discuss the growing confluence of wealth, brains and academics, and its creation of a ruling class. Parents want their kids in that class, not because they will get rich (although they may) but precisely because it is Upper Class. Go to a big high school. Watch the kids, and you will see the rigid divisions between the Alphas and the Gammas, in the dress, the speech patterns, the social networks, and the dominance behavior. Larry
Chiming in a bit late…
LibraryJim #13: I can truly relate to this, and so could one of my siblings. In high school in the ’80’s, we were led to believe that that college degree, be it an Associates, or better yet a BA or BS would be that open sesame to unlimited earning potential. We bought into that idea.
However, despite the fact that we both performed very well academically and were blessed with well rounded educations, neither of us were able to obtain positions in our chosen fields. I did go back for further education and am still paying student loans, but to no avail. It is not for lack of trying.
#21. The reason that American is no longer an economy of production but an economy of service providers (rapidly going out of business) is because of regulation and litigation.
Here in the midwest there is an incredible physician shortage. Folks with Medicaid are essentially shut out of the market, and folks with Medicare lose their physicians daily, as the internists and family physicians go out of business and become hospitalists and urgent care doctors. With hospitals closing and firing staff, there are many physicians looking for jobs. However even those physicians who don’t have “geographical restrictions” preventing them from working in the area by their last hospital or practice can’t just “hang up a shingle”.
In the last Depression, a physician could hang up a shingle and charge a low price for services. There are many physicians (my sister among them) who would love to hang up a shingle and work out of our home, charging, say 10-20 dollars an hour. This would be affordable to most people, needed by many people and fair to the physician. However thanks to lawyers and regulators it is necessary to maintain 24/7 coverage for emergencies, it is necessary to have precise medical records which must be stored for 7 years, it is necessary to have licenses, and it is necessary to have malpractice insurance. Not counting the cost of training this comes to about 100,000. If you wish to have a nurse/receptionist to take care of the incessant phone calls the cost increases to 160,000, and with medical education loans the cost increases to 200,000. (In the previous Depression, the majority of physicians around had few loans because the Flexner reforms had not affected them. They were trained by a 7 year apprenticeship system. This apprenticeship system was shut down by the US government and training given to the universities instead over the protests of the physicians.
My sister would love to work out of our home. There is no shortage of elderly and poor people who could use a cheap doc. Thanks to lawyers, bureaucrats, and the university banking complex she will likely be living a hundred miles away during the week, and I and the children will see her on weekends.
And the elderly and poor will continue to go without care, or go deeply into debt to pay for care.
This can never be fixed. It would require agreeing on what College is for.
#24 Currently what college is for is a licensing mechanism for a variety of trades, that ensures that most people enter their working years sufficiently laden with debt that they can ONLY work in a regulated (and thus taxed) industry.
There are plenty of folks who would be glad to hang out a shingle and offer to fix cars at low wage, build homes at low wage, grow and sell food, adapt bicycles into gasoline powered motor bikes etc. Folks can be pretty creative and we could get through this Depression pretty comfortably if we permitted to be creative.
However if we did, the income could not be taxed. This is really the only convincing reason for regulation. It ensures, not just some artificial “quality” which is to some extent in the eye of the beholder, but also insures that the worker in question bills high enough that the government gets a cut, the various state, guild and other parasitic “regulators” get their cut, and of course making sure that the lawyers have an ample supply of work. This ensures that the billing, and therefore the start up costs are sufficiently high that a loan is needed, ensuring the good health of the financiers.
We will be able to fix this problem when the majority of Congress is NOT lawyers and bankers. Until then I agree this can never be fixed.
Clueless,
Behold the future if ‘universal health care’ becomes a reality! Medicaid and Medicare have bankrupt our medical profession, and universal health care will take it down even further. Look at Hawai’i, just rescinded their universal children’s health care because it was bankrupting that state. Everyone who previously was paying for health care for their children dropped it to go on the state system.
Tennesee also recinded Tenn Care because it was bankrupting the state. California may need to do likewise.
However when obamacare (?obamacaid?) comes in the cure for the bankrupcy of the state will be “obvious”. They won’t get rid of the regulation, litigation or costs. Instead they will mandate “evidence based guidelines” that will scientifically prove that older, sicker patients don’t get well as fast or as completely as younger healthier patients, (“Duh”) and therefore to treat them consitutes fraud and abuse. Those guidelines are already being prepared and discussed in academia.
The US’s secondary education system is broken. Our high school graduates are behind most other first world countries. Our college system is where we as a nation catch up. I went to a college with a 95% second year return rate and a four year graduation rate of 88%. So I did not witness the carnage described first hand. I think parents and students need to have a realistic understanding of what they are capable of – spend the first year at a community college or jr college and then go on to a four year university. The affirmative action programs prevalent at universities also tend to place a percentage of students in environments where based upon their prior performance they are not well equipped to compete. IE an ivy league student there because of diversity may perform badly while he or she would of done great at a first tier state school. I always take the position that it is better to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond.
One profession not mentioned that does require a college degree and provides a stable middle class income (and a nice retirement package) is teaching it may not be sexy but it is dependable. The inflation comments are spot on – the BA is today what a high school degree was worth in the 1960’s.