The corporate reformers like to say that everyone must go to college if they want to have good jobs in the future.
Now, let me be clear that I love education and I think everyone should get as much education as they want and should keep on getting better educated all their life. Thanks to the Internet, the means of self-education are easy and inexpensive.
But I don’t think that college-for-all is a reasonable goal. There are many young people who don’t want to go to college; they shouldn’t be forced by social pressure to do so. College changes if it is turned into a higher level of compulsory education. It becomes like high school or even junior high school if unwilling and unready students are pushed into college.
And the very claim that the jobs of the future require a college education is not true.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, most of the jobs that will open up in the next few years do not require a B.A. In fact, only about 25% do. The other 75% do not. They need on-the-job training.
http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2009/11/art5full.pdf
Look at Table 3 on page 88. Look specifically at the next to last column, “Total job openings due to growth and replacement needs, 2008–18”. You will see that approximately 23% of all job openings require a bachelor’s degree or more (adding up the numbers for the bachelor’s degree line, and those above it). Approximately 67% require a high school degree OR LESS.
For illustrations of occupations that will have the most openings, look at Table 5, beginning on p.93. Be sure to focus on the numeric column, not the percentage column. (An occupation with very few members can have a very large percentage growth with relatively few openings, so this percentage column is misleading.)
So, yes, we should be preparing students for a variety of vocations and let them know that it is honorable to build a house, to install plumbing and electricity. And we should do that as we fulfill the basic function of public education, which is to prepare them to vote, to serve on juries, to be the citizens who sustain our democracy into the future.
By the way, top-ranked Finland has an excellent program of technical and vocational education in high school; about 40% of its students choose this track, and they can change at any time.
So, yes, go to college if you want to learn more. Take a degree in ancient Greek or philosophy or archeaology or sociology or whatever interests you. Don’t go to college to get a job. Go to college to learn.
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Hi Diane,
This story exemplifies a man’s desire to go to college to learn rather than for increasing earning power. Learning for learning sake is what drove this eastern European immigrant to clean the camps by day and study all night. An interesting part of the interview happens when the interviewer asks him what will he “do” to make a living with a degree in the classics? He gently chides her for prioritizing college as a means to increase earning power.
Ivy League Janitor: ‘I’m Still Wearing The Gown’ http://www.npr.org/2012/05/17/152942667/janitor-cleans-up-gets-ivy-league-diploma?ps=cprs
Hi Diane,
This story exemplifies a man’s desire to go to college to learn rather than for increasing earning power. Learning for learning sake is what drove this eastern European immigrant to clean the camps by day and study all night. An interesting part of the interview happens when the interviewer asks him what will he “do” to make a living with a degree in the classics? He gently chides her for prioritizing college as a means to increase earning power.
Ivy League Janitor: ‘I’m Still Wearing The Gown’ http://www.npr.org/2012/05/17/152942667/janitor-cleans-up-gets-ivy-league-diploma?ps=cprs
Is it possible to change our cultural ethos of education as a training ground for finance?
What they are saying is that students will need additional education to be employable, not necessarily to earn a BA. The trades require an apprenticeship. A high school diploma is not enough to get a good job.
How does more testing encourage that?
Districts starved of funds for quality career-vocational-technical education.
All of the top private colleges are populated almost exclusively by students who were forced by social pressure to go to college. That’s what happens to upper middle class kids. And it hasn’t: ruined Harvard yet.
Germany also has an excellent track-type of educational system through which highly-skilled and certified craftspeople enter the workforce. One of the outcomes I experienced living there, was a much higher overall quality and consistency of these types of services than in the U.S..
Interestingly, I rarely read any mention of what appears to be the huge role the US DoD plays in vocational training of young people. I would love to see some stats on it.
But “college for all” be defined downward. For a lot of good reasons.
It now just means post-secondary training and education.
Of course, “college for all” is a name for this policy/goal that is quite attractive to the powerful. They don’t have to pay attention to any of the reasons why it is dumb (if taken literally) or a fiction (if the policies are actually examined).
It’s asinine how corporate ed-reformers bemoan the lack of graduates’ job skills yet promote a pared down, canned approach to education that not only offers an anemic educational experience but ignores technical and vocational tracks, the very areas that would prepare students for the fastest growing segment of the job market.
I think that the slogan “college for all” pretty clearly does not mean a liberal arts education for all, nor di I believe that “college for all” means that all people must go to college. From my perspective as a community college teacher, it is pretty obvious that most decently-paying jobs nowadays require some post-secondary education, be it certificates, terminal associate degrees, transfer AA or AS degrees, or bachelor’s degrees. In any case, while I agree with most of Dr. Ravitch’s critique of educational “reform,” I don’t think you add credibility by equating the idea of accessibility to college with getting a degree in ancient Greek or anthropology. A degree in radiological technology will do just fine!
If this “college for all” thing doesn’t keep working, what are all the universities going to rely upon for their cashflow? The alumni license plate and sweater industries, if no others, need people to keep getting those B.A.s. Have a heart!
I have been reading “Finnish Lessons” and, while we may not want to become Finland, we could learn a heck of a lot from them about education.
As I pointed out earlier, “college for all” really means “some post-secondary education for all”, NOT “a liberal arts degree for all” – and it doesn’t mean that every person MUST go to college, but that the k-12 curriculum should prepare all students for getting the post-secondary education (e.g. AA & AS degrees, certificates or transfer to 4-year colleges) that they can use to get a well-paying job. The colleges whose cash flow High Arka is worrying about will still get their students no matter what, but replacing community colleges with high school voc-tech programs will only take place in some alternate universe.
David, who’s calling for the elimination of community colleges? Community colleges and robust vo-tech programs can co-exist. For example, see here: http://www.franklinctc.com/cms/manager/templates/fc/academics_sub.aspx?a=78&z=9
You cited an excellent case – which supports my point. The Early College movement is aimed at encouraging more students to use their time in high school to earn post-secondary credits, or in some cases to graduate with both a high school diploma and an associates degree. I think this is a good thing, as I assume you do also.
To the extent that there is a “college for all” movement, this is the kind of thing that they are promoting, not the idea that all students should be pushed to liberal arts degrees, as Dr. Ravitch’s crude parody suggests (and it pains me to characterize it thus, since I really do admire her critique of many aspects of the ‘education reform’ movement)
David, you and I agree on what “college for all” should actually entail. I think Diane does, too.
As a high school teacher, I’ve seen kids who struggle academically or who derive no real joy from a traditional school setting reluctantly pursue four-year degrees because they’re under the impression that that’s what they’re supposed to do. Perhaps guidance counselors can open kids’ eyes to a wider range of possibilities, but I don’t think that’s the heart of the issue.
I’ve heard corporate reformers and politicians define “college for all” the same way you and I define it–offering a K-12 education that prepares students for some form of post-secondary training or schooling. The problem is–and what I think is Diane’s point–is that the policies they push (standardized testing until students’ noses bleed, Common Core standards, etc.) do little, if anything, to develop skills that pertain to technical and vocational fields. The ELA Common Core, for instance, slants heavily toward preparing kids for pursuing four-year degrees.
Given the stakes attached to testing and the carrots offered by RTTT, states are willing to throw millions upon millions of dollars at textbook publishers, testing companies, etc. to implement new reforms, leaving a shrinking amount of funds for technical and vocational programs. The district where I teach in TN has no district-wide vo-tech program, and the only classes my school offers in those areas are a few culinary arts and cosmetology electives.
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It’s so unfortunate that our government does not pay attention to it’s own labor statistics and instead listens to corporate leaders to guide education policy, when those are the very people who outsource to Chinese slaves, pay unlivable wages, detest unions and are not very likely to hire hords of college graduates.
We should not be leading kids to believe that college is the only pathway to success when 40% of college grads are underemployed, 54% of new grads are unemployed (and return home to live with their parents), and there is already a glut of college degrees in this country. We need to support multiple Pathways to Prosperity, including more Career & Tech Ed (CTE) programs beginning in high school, as they have in countries like Finland.
Duncan’s recent plan will support CTE for a paltry 500,000 secondary education students –which is a 50% increase over current practices, demonstrating how few of the 14.5 millions students in public high schools currently have access to CTE. However, that plan still has a college focus, as it’s about creating “Career Academies, programs offered in high school that combine college curricula with a career emphasis, such as healthcare or engineering.” This does not appear to target students who are at-risk and unlikely to be ready to tackle “college curricula” in high school. The <a href="http://bit.ly/Jxgwwx" Perkins Program of Study Design Plan" makes no mention of aligning with college certificate programs that typically focus on just one career area, so the need for “college curricula” at the secondary level is nebulous at best, and it’s difficult to see how students not seeking to go to college will be able to receive CTE in high school through this program. Requiring all US kids to follow a college prep curriculum and go to college ignores students who are most likely to drop out, when they could be encouraged to stay in school by being engaged in learning an honorable trade of their choice, without the expectation that they continue on to college.
Education is the pathway to enlightenment; it is not necessarily the path to economic prosperity, especially today, as college degrees no longer guarantee a “cushy middle class life-style”. I can personally attest to this, as I have 3 degrees and am ABD on the 4th, with decades of experience in my area of education, and I’m considered to be the “highly educated working poor”. (I’ve never had an opportunity to join a teacher’s union.) On the other hand, my neighbor is a high school educated tradesman in the housing industry who, despite the current economy, earned more in a two month project this past winter than I grossed over the last 4 years combined. Sometimes, I wish I’d been able to learn a trade in high school, so I could fall back on that in times of economic distress. However, at the time, in my community, people who studied trades and didn’t prepare to go to college were looked down upon, as our DoE appears to be doing today. So, instead, I am saddled with years of college debt for all my degrees, in a career that I love and find very rewarding instrinsically, but which has limited lucrative job opportunites –as with many others who have college degrees and are underemployed.
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