Should we (the US) reconsider universal college education?

Great Debates
1

I’m an engineer. Through my job, I volunteer one day a month at a local middle school: I give talks showing applications of the math topics the teachers are covering. (Part of my motivation is that when I was in junior high, I didn’t understand how math could be anything other than a dull, useless drudgery, and I wish I could go back in a time machine and show my 14-year old self that it’s useful and actually fun).

I really enjoy it when the kids are interested, which is most of the time. But about one quarter of them really don’t seem like they’re ever going to get anything out of academic topics.

It’s hard not to wonder if everyone would be better off if these kids were steered into more vocational topics by the time they’re, say, 15 or 16, similarly to the European system.

I know we have a vocational education system, but unlike in Britain, where you have to do well enough on standardized tests to get admitted to college, pretty much anyone who wants to can go to college in the US.

If we set our sights on everyone getting a college education, it would seem that lowered standards are inevitible: my brother is a math professor, and he laments that he has to cover things that should have been taught in hgh school. He believes that a big part of the ‘universal education’ mantra is colleges wanting to make more money – fifty years ago, students who weren’t academically prepared didn’t get into college; today, they get in, and after paying tuition for a year or two, weed themselves out. (I would imagine that a similar loss or ‘turf’ by the secondary educational system would impede any changes that resulted in preparing fewer students for college).

One definite upside to easy access to college: people who dick around in high school can wise up and go to college later, when they’re more prepared. I know, because I am just such a person: I didn’t graduate until I was 26, and would probably never have gone to college in a system like the Brits’.

I get the impression that a lot of parents place an intangible value on having their kids go to college and graduate, even if it’s not the best fit for the kid. If true, I wish such parents would reconsider: I’m childless, but if I had the choice between a child who squeaked through college and didn’t do much with it, and a child who didn’t go to college but made a decent living as a locksmith or mechanic, I’d take the latter.

It still appears that workers with college degrees earn more than those without. But this doesn’t rule out the possibility that some people with degrees would have done better pursuing other career paths.

This week, I shared my thoughts with one of the teachers whose class I visit, and was surprised to learn that she agreed with me. I welcome all opinions, but would especially value those of teachers.

I apologize if something close to this topic has been covered - my searches turned up nothing that sounded like it.

2

Can you clarify what the debate is? Do you want manditory college?

3

I’m asking if we would be better off as a society with a smaller percentage of the population going to college (my rambling must have obfuscated this).

And, if this were desired, on the means of achieving it (apportioning less money for higher education and more to vo-tech ed, raising college admission standards, etc).

4

Yeah, I pretty much agree with you. I think we’ve put too much value on college–so that everyone has to go whether they are suited to it, or need it, or not–and we’ve stretched out education far beyond what is necessary for most people. If our schools were shorter (and more rigorous and practical), plenty of people could finish sooner and go on to become perfectly successful locksmiths without having to be bored and strugging first.

OTOH, I also agree that a system which feeds kids into a track young, and then makes it difficult to go to college later on, has some problems. My brother, for example, spent all of high school skateboarding and playing guitar. He’s now finishing a Ph.D. program and is the most intellectual one in the family.

So there is definitely a need for the ability to turn around and choose a different path; that would have to be built in. But on the whole, I do think that we stretch out education unnecessarily–we make it long and thin, so to speak, and expect too many people to go to college when it’s really not needed–we could have a system that teaches much more at a younger age and lets people out into the world, where they often want to be.

5

One other thing to consider is that a lot of kids who have no business being in college rack up a lot of debt while going to college for a year or so. They drop classes, barely pass a couple, fail a few and then find themselves in deep in debt paying for an education they didn’t really want in the first place.

6

College is no nothing more than a way to buy a better paying job because a long time ago a bunch of people decided to bar entrance to the club unless you gave up a minimum of 4 years of your life and 6 years of real earning power to waste time sitting with your thumb up your butt in classes that will never, ever benefit you in any way, shape or form.

I’d say give me a real job anytime except that college grads, all of them smarter and more sophisticated than I :rolleyes: , can reasonably expect to make many times more than I will without a degree. So I have to waste my time and labor through abject unhappiness and terminal ennui so that I can hopefully sometime in the future get a job that will allow me to raise my son in something other than poverty.

7

If the question is* could * we do this, I think as thing stand now no. Airman Doors hits it pretty well – you need it the way you needed a HS diploma in 1939 it was the ticket punch to join the club. That would have to change.

Further though America in 2006, for all intents and purposes is a post-Industrial Service based economy. I don’t think there are enough “vocational jobs” out there for the middle class to opt for them en masse. Could you get Middle Managers, Sales Reps and dental hygienists buy into Junior and Princess joining the Plumber aprentices, carpenter union and brick-layer guild at 16-17? You could but it would be a real cultural shift…

If the Question really is "Is it desirable?” I would say no (depending on what exactly you mean by vocational training). I think we should be pushing young people into the best position to live in the economy they will find in 10, 20, 30, 40 years. That is not an economy that is going to reward the traditional vocational skills. Education and the probable white collar work experience that it will bring and teh flexibility all that usually brings is the best shot for the vast majority of kids.

8

Britain isn’t a good comparison for you to use. The trend has been incessant expansion of higher education, with the ridiculous ‘target’ of 50% of school leavers going to university. And universities are free to admit whoever they choose, and the minimum qualifications are set by the institutions themselves. As a result, the worst and least-popular places have very low standards indeed for prospective students.

9

Well, of the people I went to high school with, one of the wealthiest is the one who became a plumber. Granted, we didn’t produce a whole lot of hot-shot dot-commers or doctors or…anything much, actually, but the plumber’s wife was the one who came in with a huge rock on her finger (not trying to be mean there, I knew her for years and she’s very nice and I’m glad they’re doing well!).

10

I work at a private liberal arts college, and I see this all the time. A substantial minority of our students, IMO, don’t need to be in college, at least at this point in their lives. Heaven knows, they don’t seem to get much out of it. However, for their well-off, liberal* parents, it would be very shaming for their child to go to vocational school, join the military, or spend a few years working crummy jobs until s/he realizes that s/he does want that degree. It’s too bad, because that’s exactly what these students could use.

*Not saying that this is exclusive to liberals, just that most of our students’ parents seem to be very liberal. Maybe there’s a correlation, maybe there’s not.

11

Well, had you worked in a conservative arts college…

12

The only time I can remember agreeing with Newt Gingrich was when he referred to the last two years of high school as ‘subsidized dating’ in making this assertion.

I couldn’t agree more – the hope that your child will occupy a higher station in life than your own is a fundamental part of being an American.

I’m not sure of this – as you say, it depends a lot on where the shifting boundary is between vocational training and education (and between white collar and other work). E.g., auto mechanics today learn how to use digital equipment that would have stumped previous generations of mechanics. I have advanced degrees in engineering and use advanced mathematics daily in my job, but am very thankful that I know a competent, trustworthy mechanic. There will always be a market for people who can fix things.

Gorilla Man, I haven’t been to Britain in close to two decades – thank you for the updated info.

burundi, if I’ve seen anything correlate with aversion to low-station careers for one’s children, it’s with income and education level – people who do well expect their children to do better.

13

There is no college universal “system”. There is complex network of technical and vocational schools, community colleges, state and private universities and graduate level programs of varying degrees of prestige and quality.

This “system” for lack of a better term already veers kids into their tracks by the time they graduated high school. If you’ve showed an aptitude for academics, you generally go off to college, hopefully figuring out what you want to do with yourself once you graduate. If, while in high school, you feel that higher education isn’t for you, you go off and learn a trade at vocational school.

It sounds like what people have a problem with is that kids who come from parents with some money have the ability to float through four years of college with no clear idea of what they want to study or do with themselves once they graduate.

14

A bit of subjective data from the field:

I teach at three different colleges (a community college, a Cal State, and a UC) and a good number of students at all three institutions are the kinds of students that the OP is suggesting: only there because they have to be, or because their parents made them go. They’re the ones who drop after a week or two, or turn in a bunch of poorly thought-out work, or skip a bunch of classes (and then expect me to get 'em up to speed on what they missed :rolleyes: ). I’d far rather have some motivated students who have a reason for being in my classroom. Often, that means older, “non-traditional,” students. They may not always be the brightest, but they’re the most driven. “I hafta” is a piss-poor motive to do anything, but usually that’s all my traditional freshmen can bring to the class.

15

It’s more that with the way our educational system works, a lot of kids are set up to do that; that’s just the way the world works to them. In fact, I think we could compress high school and make a lot of kids much happier by letting them do something useful with the time they spend in school and then go out and earn a living as they want to. Others are suited to college and more intellectual pursuits, and want better college educations that haven’t been watered down so that anyone can take them. Instead, we wind up with a lot of ‘floater’ kids that don’t decide anything and go to college because they can’t think of anything else to do, because the world expects everyone to go to college–which isn’t necessary at all.

16

For God’s sake, yes.

I have always believed that American kids are increasingly going to college just because “they’re supposed to.”

Let me elaborate. I went to a high school in Southern Indiana where the student body was a mixture of wealthy middle-class children of professionals and kids who lived on farms and studied auto repair and shop trades. I was friends with people from both of these groups, and got to know a lot of guys who could install wiring in a house or restore a '69 Mustang, but didn’t give a damn about college.

Four years later, I’m in college. I’m wondering what the hell I’m going to do with a degree in history, how I’m going to make a living, and meanwhile some of my friends from high school are already making 15 dollars an hour working skilled construction jobs.

“Don’t worry,” I told myself. “15 dollars an hour seems like a lot now, but think about how much money you can make with a college degree!”

More and more, I’m thinking that it’s not that simple. Take a look at the classified ads sometime. “Paint Coating Inspector Wanted.” “Skilled HVAC installer wanted.” These jobs can pay good money - 20 dollars or more per hour - and there is definitely potential to move up and start your own business once you have the experience. There’s no shame in these jobs. These people will always be needed - as long as we keep on building houses and driving cars, there is going to be a place for these vocational students, and now that the average American has absolutely no idea how to fix his own wiring, heating, plumbing, or car, they are very much in demand.

And you won’t learn how to do this at a traditional college. Trade schools and community colleges are the places to go.

These blue-collar occupations seem lowly and unfulfilling to you? Think again. With good trainging and years of experience in a skilled trade, you can make a small fortune for yourself. I was looking at a $200,000 Maybach for sale on Ebay a few weeks ago - the winning bidder was a plumbing contractor.

My parents drilled into my head the idea that I needed to be in college, and here I am and I’m unfulfilled and confused. I’m seriously considering transferring to community college and studying a skilled trade.

17

In the UK at least I think we are suffering the effects of a typically brain-dead bit of government decision-making. Some bright spark looked at the earnings numbers and said.
“Wow! University graduates earn double what everyone else does. If the others had a degree, they would all earn twice as much too. Lets make sure everyone has a piece of paper saying they are university material, and then as if by magic everyone will be prosperous and middle class.”

Needless to say, cause and effect were a little more complicated than that, and penis is now resulting.

18

It all depends on whether you regard university as a means to a better job or a useful experience for its own ends. Those three years at uni provide the potential for self-development and learning of social, interpersonal and transferable skills. Therefore the increase to the target of 50% is not necessarily the signalling of the end, any more than the year on year increase in GCSE and A Level results. It’s no longer about what you know, but how you can find out and how to explain your findings to others.

The real problem comes from increasing anxiety from past graduates and employers who fear the value of a degree must go down if more people have them. This is ridiculous, and every university in the UK abides by national standards that mean that all graduates reach a threshold level of skills in the areas I noted above. Some, of course, exceed this threshold by some margin - so the ‘piece of paper’ you receive does not tell the whole story. That’s no bad thing either - but certainly better than an increasingly uneducated and unskilled workforce.

19

Maybe people should get the idea of the millionare pumber out of their head. The average salary for a plumber is about $50,000. So forget those dreams of graduating from voca school and driving around fixing sinks in your Mercedes Benz. To make the big money you need to have your own contracting business and have a bunch of plumbers working for you. So in other words, it’s just like any other business.

Even if you don’t plan on becoming a lawyer or engineer, there are other advantages to going to college. I recall a thread where some blue-collar guy was asking how to become more “couth”. Well, four years of hanging out with intelligent, ambitious people who are in the process of educating themselves is a good start.
If college isn’t for you, you always have the option of dropping out and picking up a trade. My junior year roomate became an electrician after graduation (he was a lazy and piss-poor college student).
Even if you want to deliver pizzas for a living, I am of the opinnion that more education is better than less.

20

I think it’s really sad that vocational tech has declined so much here. There used to be a school just down the road from my house that had not just plumbing and auto repair and stuff, but also cooking, hotel management, that sort of thing. Now, I’m the first to push education for general human enrichment, but I don’t think basically forcing people into it is the way to go - college is the new high school in terms of getting jobs, and that’s just silly. If you’d be a good locksmith, we should be helping you do that instead of basically forcing you to go to college.

And, you know, I have a masters’ degree and a professional job and I’d love, and I mean LOVE, to make $50,000. That’s a damned good salary for anybody in most parts of the country. I mean, my plumber loses all of his in alimony and child support, but he pulls in plenty.