Right Diagnosis, Wrong Cure
by rrusczyk, Jul 12, 2009, 7:08 PM
Atlantic Monthly has an article this month on 15 ways to fix the world. One of them is tell the truth about college.
Here's their argument:
Yes, the stats on people not completing school are depressing, and the (dubious) stat on what they learn there is not much better. But I'm not convinced that the government stepping in on colleges is the answer. Because I'm not even convinced that college is the root of the problems this article cites.
First of all, why do so many people not make it through college? My bet: because they're either not interested in going or not prepared to go in the first place. The former is a failing of our educational and social systems to offer viably acceptable alternatives to going straight into college after high school. The latter is a failure not of our colleges, but of our high schools and middle schools. American universities dominate any international rankings. Our high schools and middle schools don't fare so well.
Here's the truth I'd like to hear told about colleges: College, as defined by the traditional liberal arts education, is not for everyone. I'm not saying, "skip school." College is probably a right choice for nearly all AoPS students due to the selection bias of students on this site. But it isn't a key to success in a great many disciplines. It's particularly not essential that the education come right after high school. I think a lot of people would be better served going out and getting a real job and maturing a bit before college. Perhaps this would give them more focus in their studies, and allow them to make better choices about what they'll study. (Part of the genius of the American system of higher education is that there are so many on-ramps to higher education.) Or perhaps they'll find a profession that doesn't require higher education. (I have used very little of what I learned at Princeton in any of my careers.) Either of these -- returning to college more mature or learning that college is unnecessary -- is a fine outcome. But both will require a significant change, both socially and educationally, to become more widespread.
I don't expect many politicians to take up this banner, of course, but I suspect more than a few educators (at least, those who overlook the fact that "everyone should go to college" is very good for college's bottom lines, particularly when endowments and tax receipts are suffering) agree with me. That parenthetical comment raises another societal good that would come from offering and encouraging more routes to post-high school personal development: by routing more people into better options for them, the option of a classical liberal arts education will become cheaper for those for whom that is a good choice. The massive subsidies of education through loan programs at a federal level drive up tuition at schools. That's what subsidies do. Direct those subsidies to a broader range of personal development options for poor people, and you'll curb the tuition inflation at universities to some degree, and do a better job matching people with careers.
I've long argued that you should only go to grad school if you know exactly why you are going. I don't yet think the same is true of college -- college is still the best default choice for most people (I think, but not as strongly as I used to). But I think my view of college is heavily colored by the types of people I interact with regularly -- those for whom college is clearly a right choice. And I think my view of college is heavily colored by the lack of alternatives.
What might those alternatives be? I'm not sure. Some already exist: learn a trade. But these are not socially acceptable (or even really made clearly available) to a lot of students. My mother-in-law taught in a special school as part of the Albuquerque school system that offered all sorts of specialized classes to students whose schools couldn't possibly support them. Some of these were AP science classes, but others were schools like pilot training, beauty school, nursing, etc. Imagine if more high school students had these sorts of options -- how would that be worse for them than giving them an education they don't want or need, and saddling them with a mountain of debt in college?
Yes, I know the stats on "income for people with a college degree versus those without." My question: how much of that is due to a lack of alternatives? Why is college such an important income filter? Could there be better ones? Maybe the answer is no, but it's a question that should get a lot more attention than it does.
So, yeah, let's tell the truth about college: Maybe it shouldn't be as important as it's made out to be.
Here's their argument:
Quote:
America’s parents and politicians obsess over getting kids to go to college. But the delivery of a decent education, once the kids are on campus, is at least as large a challenge. Only about half of all college entrants earn degrees within six years. And many who do aren’t learning much: one study indicates, for instance, that only 38 percent of graduating college students can successfully compare the viewpoints of two newspaper editorials.
The conventional wisdom is that you get what you pay for—that the larger the price tag, the better the product. But that’s not true in higher education. Tuition has been skyrocketing for years, with little evidence that education has improved. Universities typically favor research and publishing over teaching. And influential college rankings like the one published by U.S. News & World Report measure mostly wealth and status (alumni giving rates, school reputation, incoming students’ SAT scores); they reveal next to nothing about what students learn.
We need to shed more light on how well colleges are educating their students—to help prospective students make better decisions, and to exert pressure on the whole system to provide better value for money.
Reliable measures of the quality of undergraduate teaching already exist. The National Survey of Student Engagement gathers data on factors proven to correlate with learning—things like the number of books and lengthy papers assigned in courses. (The organization reports little relationship between having a prominent brand name and teaching students well.) The Collegiate Learning Assessment tests students’ critical thinking and measures progress over a college career.
But the nonprofits that administer the CLA and NSSE can’t report their findings publicly. Colleges and universities participate voluntarily and have control over the distribution of results. Many are loath to put them on public display, because reputation doesn’t necessarily align with results.
The Obama administration could be a catalyst for change. The stimulus package includes $30 billion in tuition aid, at a time when colleges are starving for money. That gives the government leverage—it should push for systematic public information on the quality of undergraduate learning, school by school. This would not only serve students; over time, it would improve the quality of our workforce and the prospects for our entire economy.
The conventional wisdom is that you get what you pay for—that the larger the price tag, the better the product. But that’s not true in higher education. Tuition has been skyrocketing for years, with little evidence that education has improved. Universities typically favor research and publishing over teaching. And influential college rankings like the one published by U.S. News & World Report measure mostly wealth and status (alumni giving rates, school reputation, incoming students’ SAT scores); they reveal next to nothing about what students learn.
We need to shed more light on how well colleges are educating their students—to help prospective students make better decisions, and to exert pressure on the whole system to provide better value for money.
Reliable measures of the quality of undergraduate teaching already exist. The National Survey of Student Engagement gathers data on factors proven to correlate with learning—things like the number of books and lengthy papers assigned in courses. (The organization reports little relationship between having a prominent brand name and teaching students well.) The Collegiate Learning Assessment tests students’ critical thinking and measures progress over a college career.
But the nonprofits that administer the CLA and NSSE can’t report their findings publicly. Colleges and universities participate voluntarily and have control over the distribution of results. Many are loath to put them on public display, because reputation doesn’t necessarily align with results.
The Obama administration could be a catalyst for change. The stimulus package includes $30 billion in tuition aid, at a time when colleges are starving for money. That gives the government leverage—it should push for systematic public information on the quality of undergraduate learning, school by school. This would not only serve students; over time, it would improve the quality of our workforce and the prospects for our entire economy.
Yes, the stats on people not completing school are depressing, and the (dubious) stat on what they learn there is not much better. But I'm not convinced that the government stepping in on colleges is the answer. Because I'm not even convinced that college is the root of the problems this article cites.
First of all, why do so many people not make it through college? My bet: because they're either not interested in going or not prepared to go in the first place. The former is a failing of our educational and social systems to offer viably acceptable alternatives to going straight into college after high school. The latter is a failure not of our colleges, but of our high schools and middle schools. American universities dominate any international rankings. Our high schools and middle schools don't fare so well.
Here's the truth I'd like to hear told about colleges: College, as defined by the traditional liberal arts education, is not for everyone. I'm not saying, "skip school." College is probably a right choice for nearly all AoPS students due to the selection bias of students on this site. But it isn't a key to success in a great many disciplines. It's particularly not essential that the education come right after high school. I think a lot of people would be better served going out and getting a real job and maturing a bit before college. Perhaps this would give them more focus in their studies, and allow them to make better choices about what they'll study. (Part of the genius of the American system of higher education is that there are so many on-ramps to higher education.) Or perhaps they'll find a profession that doesn't require higher education. (I have used very little of what I learned at Princeton in any of my careers.) Either of these -- returning to college more mature or learning that college is unnecessary -- is a fine outcome. But both will require a significant change, both socially and educationally, to become more widespread.
I don't expect many politicians to take up this banner, of course, but I suspect more than a few educators (at least, those who overlook the fact that "everyone should go to college" is very good for college's bottom lines, particularly when endowments and tax receipts are suffering) agree with me. That parenthetical comment raises another societal good that would come from offering and encouraging more routes to post-high school personal development: by routing more people into better options for them, the option of a classical liberal arts education will become cheaper for those for whom that is a good choice. The massive subsidies of education through loan programs at a federal level drive up tuition at schools. That's what subsidies do. Direct those subsidies to a broader range of personal development options for poor people, and you'll curb the tuition inflation at universities to some degree, and do a better job matching people with careers.
I've long argued that you should only go to grad school if you know exactly why you are going. I don't yet think the same is true of college -- college is still the best default choice for most people (I think, but not as strongly as I used to). But I think my view of college is heavily colored by the types of people I interact with regularly -- those for whom college is clearly a right choice. And I think my view of college is heavily colored by the lack of alternatives.
What might those alternatives be? I'm not sure. Some already exist: learn a trade. But these are not socially acceptable (or even really made clearly available) to a lot of students. My mother-in-law taught in a special school as part of the Albuquerque school system that offered all sorts of specialized classes to students whose schools couldn't possibly support them. Some of these were AP science classes, but others were schools like pilot training, beauty school, nursing, etc. Imagine if more high school students had these sorts of options -- how would that be worse for them than giving them an education they don't want or need, and saddling them with a mountain of debt in college?
Yes, I know the stats on "income for people with a college degree versus those without." My question: how much of that is due to a lack of alternatives? Why is college such an important income filter? Could there be better ones? Maybe the answer is no, but it's a question that should get a lot more attention than it does.
So, yeah, let's tell the truth about college: Maybe it shouldn't be as important as it's made out to be.
February 2012
January 2012