Ending The Myth of College for All
Sociologist David Labaree described three competing goals in American education: preparing citizens, enabling individual advancement, and training workers. Schooling should serve all three; currently we achieve none of them well. We need a new approach. Below I focus on training workers. In subsequent essays I will address preparing citizens and enabling individual advancement.
With fewer and fewer low-skilled jobs available, workers who can think critically are seen as ever-more critical for our economy. A B.A. allegedly signals such a worker. This myth undergirds the mantra of “College for All.”
Source: US Dep’t of Education, 2018
In fact, 60% of Americans, the vast majority of whom are employed, don’t hold a BA. (see table). And according to two recent analyses, a quarter to a third of the jobs held by college grads don’t require one either. Nor will 72% of the fastest-growing jobs in the decade to 2029 according to the BLS. During the economic expansion from 2011 to 2019 college enrollment actually fell by 11%. These data belie the notion that to grow our 21st century economy more college grads are needed. The myth of college for all arises from many mistaken beliefs but three of them are key. One is academic, the other economic, the final is ethical.
The academic myth is that college uniquely gives kids skills (often summarized as ‘critical thinking’) that employers value. While college students generally get smarter in their area of academic concentration, evidence for knowledge transfer across domains is spotty despite decades of study. One large study determined that 36% of students don’t demonstrate any significant improvement in learning over four years of college. Many students don’t even want to be there – at least not for the learning part – and this is hardly a new phenomenon. A 2003 study by the US Department of Education revealed “mind-numbing ignorance” among college grads, according to one professor. Another notes that 19% of adults who either graduated or attended at least some college believed that the Earth was at the center of the solar system, or did not know. Research has long suggested that what employers really value about colleges is the signal that the grad is hard-working, conformist, and can get along with other people pretty well.
Source: NAEP Data Explorer
Employers might discount what colleges formally teach knowing that most students are not prepared for more learning after high school. Last year 63% of them scored below proficient on the 12th grade reading portion of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (“NAEP”). As seen in the graph to the right, the average child of a college graduate - presumably the most academically advantaged cohort - was barely a proficient reader in 1992 and is less proficient today. Math scores tell the same story: today’s average 12th grader whose parents attended college isn’t proficient in math.
Some see inadequate funding as the main reason high school grads can’t read or add very well, but between 1980 and 2016 spending on k-12 education rose by 135%. Per capita it rose 90% (both in constant dollars). Vouchers, charters, and CTE programs are innovative responses, but work on the margins, boosting a small number of students onto the college prep path. I believe effective curriculum could help but the Common Core, justified as it was, gained little traction. We need to do a far more effective job of teaching kids the basics in k-12, but four years of college instruction won’t fix that.
Economics: Regardless of what college students learn, a separate argument concerns what they will earn. The lifetime earnings of the average college grad outweigh the cost of attending, but this is likely because college grads are, a priori more likely to succeed than those who don’t enroll or subsequently drop out. A combination of factors including prior preparation, genetics, and family history likely explains the differences in success: not what they actually learned in college. A 2014 study of one Florida college suggested college completion benefits marginal students, but a different analysis of national data suggests the wages of 25% of college grads are no higher than those with just high school diplomas.
NYC Subway, Nov 4, 2020
While a sheepskin generates a premium for some students this does not not mean all benefit from a BA. The student who borrows for tuition to only get a marginal job on graduation and work a second shift to pay off her loans does not make a wise decision. Nor do the 40% of enrollees who drop out. Broadly forgiving college debt would be a handout to (mostly) rich people but kids who never earned a BA owe about one third of total outstanding loans. Colleges and employers might not care about them, but we should.
Ethical considerations underlie the final myth. Policies favoring college attendance are designed, generally, by Americans who possess college degrees: lawyers, economists, engineers, and policy analysts. These elites benefit from what Isabel Wilkerson describes as “a fixed and embedded ranking of human value that sets the presumed supremacy of one group against the presumed inferiority of other groups…” This caste, as she calls it, “is about respect, authority and assumptions of competence — who is accorded these and who is not.”
Having benefited from this winnowing by caste, policy makers may struggle to imagine an equally fulfilling path that doesn’t run through the Quad. Even if they could, denying access to this high status to others seems unfair. A decade ago one professor predicted that “a bloated elite class, with too few elite jobs to go around; declining living standards among the general population; and a government that can’t cover its financial positions,”would lead to increased political polarization. One response to this could be to recognize that regardless of their education level, all workers deserve a presumption of moral equality. Policies encouraging most students to attend college might seem equitable, but they do not form a well-trained workforce, and may even harm our country. Denying dignity to the majority who will not obtain a college degree is immoral.
The path to prosperity cannot be a single track through college. Whether students attend Amherst, their local community college, or go straight to work, the idea that obtaining a BA is the only meaningful way to contribute to society is false and pernicious.
We need a more nuanced, inclusive approach to secondary and tertiary education. These solutions will be developed locally, in response to community needs. As the battle over the Common Core shows, federal education mandates have limited impact. Successful programs will vary from place to place, but a few common elements will be seen. I sketch out some below.
First, kids need to learn to read and do basic math before they turn 18. Our k-12 systems have to be held to account for that task, if nothing else. Second, programs that help young people mature and develop soft skills, are (generally) far more valuable than than any knowledge of Schiller’s poems or Newton’s Laws kids might learn in traditional college. Successful participation in communal live/work programs could help young people signal the skills employers want, but at much lower cost. A third element will be strong symbiotic relationships between these programs and local employers who can directly determine the specific skills they need. Employers will benefit from competitively priced labor in exchange for giving valuable real-world experience. The last element would be the use of technology to offer compelling academic content regardless of the student’s location or stage in life.
Would-be demagogues exploit the divide between the haves and the have-nots to partisan ends. The disaffected and disengaged deserve meaningful education and work that offers them the chance to think critically, engage with literature and participate in the lives of their communities as they see fit. I will explore how we might better prepare citizens and empower individual advancement in future posts.
