Is Getting a College Degree Overrated? Some want us to think so, and that’s a dangerous thing
by Andrés T. Tapia -
So here’s the case of those saying that we may be counterproductively making too much of college for young people: the New York Times recently reported that the Department of Education projects that no more than half of those who began a four-year bachelor’s degree program in the fall of 2006 will get that degree within six years.
The solution? According to economists Richard K. Vedder of Ohio University and Robert I. Lerman of American University, political scientist Charles Murray, and Northwestern education professor James E. Rosenbaum, some students should skip college altogether, opting for intensive, short-term vocational and career training through expanded high school programs and corporate apprenticeships. They cite projections that of the 30 jobs predicted to grow at the fastest rate, only 7 require college degrees.
Given that there is a direct correlation between level of education and earning potential the recommendation immediately raises a yellow flag. And when we look at the demographics of who is not completing college, we see that it is disproportionately weighted by African-American and Latino students.
Disparate impact, anyone?
Some economists believe so. Tony Carnevale, Senior Fellow at the National Center on Education and the Economy and Morton Schapiro, an economist and the president of Northwestern University, suggest that dissuading more students from going to college amounts to educational redlining, since they also note that many of the students who drop out of college are black or non-white Hispanics.
Initially I felt conflicted by this Times report. Clearly the message of discouraging some students from pursuing college is going to track minorities who, because they lack connections to the world of postsecondary education, have the hardest time getting into college and graduating. This would be problematic not only from a social justice and social policy perspective, but it would further reduce the pool of diverse talent for salaried, managerial, and leadership jobs.
But if given the choice between these students learning a trade than having nothing, of course I want to see them learn a trade rather than perpetuate the permanent underclass.
In the two weeks since reading the article, however, the smoke has cleared (and according to Times author Jacques Steinberg, it generated a lot of heated responses). First of all, the data suggesting that college is not profitable for the students in question is inconclusive at best. Data from both the Department of Labor and Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce suggest that, for most students, even an elongated college experience is worth the expense in terms of future opportunities.
In her blog on AACU’s (Association of American Colleges and Universities) website, higher education diversity expert Dr. Debra Humphreys adds to these concerns that the U.S. economy will actually be short college-educated workers in the coming years the ramifications of the Department of Labor statistic that today’s college graduates will hold about 10 to 14 jobs by the time they are 38 years old. “Because of this fact,” she writes, “I am particularly worried about tracking some students into very narrow training programs that may prepare them for an initial job, but not for success over the long term.”
Indeed. Humphreys goes on to make a compelling case for turning the question about graduation rates around:
Many students start college, but don’t graduate. This, indeed, is a big problem, but it does not logically follow that all those students who didn’t graduate shouldn’t have pursued a college degree in the first place because our system . . . didn’t do what was necessary to help them succeed in a college program. I’m sure [students] share some of the blame for not graduating—but not all the blame. . . . The arguments about whether every single student needs to go to college are just diversions that distract from the more important issues—getting more students better prepared for success in college, increasing college graduation rates, and, finally, making sure that all college graduates actually have the skills and abilities they need. [emphasis added]
When all the data has been analyzed, one thing is clear: students who do not learn the analytical skills that a college education has the best chance of providing will be at a significant disadvantage when it comes to making and responding to important arguments about policy — the very skill that all the college-educated people quoted in this post have in common.
Tracking tendencies are alive and well, and we must resist them!
If we fail to deliver the benefits of a broad-based higher education to more students, businesses will not only suffer the loss of a diverse talent pool, but the democratic process itself will become that much more impoverished and false.
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