too much college?
Via Arnold Kling, Inside Higher Education ran an article written by Marty Nemko, long time student adviser. The article reports recent research that suggests that much of college is waste. Facts: If you graduated in the bottom 40% of your high school class, there’s only a 33% chance you’ll graduate from college. There’s also a fair amount of evidence that people learn or retain little from college and many people enter jobs where you don’t need anything you learned in college. To top it all off, many folks don’t graduate and leave with substantial student debt.
These facts aren’t huge secrets, especially to education specialists and college instructors. So why do people insist on more college when the evidence suggests that it is a massively wasteful activity for many types of students? Why ask academically weak students to acquire huge debts for education that they don’t want or need? A few guesses:
- First, many people think that education magically transforms people. It doesn’t. College classes weed people based on ability much more often than they make people academically stronger.
- Second, we imagine legions of deserving young people from poor families who can’t afford college. There are many people who fall in this category (my mother, for one), but subsidizing or encouraging weak students to consume more education is not the solution to that problem. Instead, we should make every effort to recruit strong students from families of all income levels.
- Third, we imagine education is the key to economic security, but it’s not the degree that makes you more valuable. It’s what you learn. Survey after survey shows that people in technical, competitive areas do better than most liberal arts fields. So there is no point in encouraging weak students to enter college, major in areas with weak job prospects, and make only a little more than high school graduates while paying off huge debts.
- Fourth, we often imagine that all colleges are like elite schools where well prepared students take fairly demaning courses. The truth is that the majority of the 2000+ comprehensive institutions of higher education teach fairly basic stuff, often to students of marginal skill.
College is a form of advanced education that’s designed for people who need or want to consume topics in the humanities and sciences. As a society, we have a strong interest in making sure any capable student has access to this great resource, regardless of family background. However, treating college education as a one size fits all economic improvement plan is a recipe for wasting people’s time and money.
[...] by an article by Marty Nemko, a student advisor, in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Fabio Rojas discusses the issue and concludes: College is a form of advanced education that’s designed for people who need or [...]
College at Jacob Christensen
1 May 08 at 12:39 pm
Bravo, Fabio. Don’t forget public-choice factors as well. Those 2000+ institutions of higher learning employ thousands of faculty and administrators with a strong interest in perpetuating the myth. And of course the opion-makers in society — Hayek’s “second-hand dealers in ideas” — are more closely connected to the higher-ed establishment than the typical voter and taxpayer.
Higher education is a rent-seeking industry like any other. Indeed, probably only agriculture has been more successful, historically, at acquiring resources and privilege far beyond that justified by marginal productivity.
Peter Klein
1 May 08 at 4:50 pm
Make that “opinion-makers.”
Peter Klein
1 May 08 at 4:51 pm
Good point, Peter. I think that we faculty have an obvious stake in the system, but it’s worth thinking about why the public supports the system.
fabiorojas
1 May 08 at 5:13 pm
Indeed, probably only agriculture has been more successful, historically, at acquiring resources and privilege far beyond that justified by marginal productivity.
it’s worth thinking about why the public supports the system.
The Stanford Institutionalists agree on both points, I think.
Kieran
1 May 08 at 5:15 pm
I think that the main thing college does is indicate to employers that you show up, more or less regularly, over a long period of time. Skills? not so much. Knowledge? yeah, actually, no. Showing up and doing most of what you’re told? Yep. If I’m an employer, that’s good info to have about someone. And if I’m someone, it’s good to be able to show. Then again, I could just get and keep a job for a long time. But then I wouldn’t get to go to parties.
shakha
1 May 08 at 5:56 pm
If Heckman is to be believed, less than 8% of American’s have college attendance choices meaningfully affected by financial factors.
Isaac
1 May 08 at 7:29 pm
Isaac: Can’t be a large factor - ed school and econ lit show that finances only matter after students have sorted on SAT and geopgraphy.
fabiorojas
1 May 08 at 8:45 pm
As someone who went to a four-year institution as an undergrad and majored in a professional field (my program was an accelerated professional program in architecture) I think that the technical/liberal arts divide is an important one to make. I learned valuable skills as an architecture major that, had I chosen that profession, would have been invaluable and impractical without college training. Granted, I probably didn’t need a four-year institution to teach me all of the skills that I learned. And, apprenticeship is an important component since there is only so much you can learn in a classroom setting. This is why it surprises me to hear people claim that they should not be graded on their writing in college courses — one of the primary skills that is incredibly valuable on the job market is the ability to communicate your ideas clearly.
The fascination for me among middle-class people is that the four-year college is our norm (I count myself firmly in that camp - I’m not trying to “other” anyone) of college. In fact, community colleges with appropriate funding and two-year degrees probably offer people in working classes more than the one-size-fits-all four-year liberal arts degree. A huge part of the problem is that most four-year institutions are so elitist that they don’t recognize transfer credits from community colleges because those classes are somehow not “on the same level” as four-year classes. This is despite the fact that class sizes can often be smaller and, with the rise of an increasingly contingent faculty corps that patch together work from three or four local institutions to pay the bills, be taught by the exact same teachers.
Of course, Fabio leaves out the fact that the cost of education is, I think, precisely one of its primary functions. If people are sorted to some degree on skill, there is another component that being able to afford college also grants one privileges with wider and more privileged social networks as well as having a marker of distinction by graduating from a four-year university, the more prestigious–and more expensive–the better.
Mike3550
1 May 08 at 11:44 pm
I more or less agree with everything in this post. BUT, if our pre-k through 12th grade education system was of higher quality, many more students would be able to benefit from traditional four year college degrees. I’m unconvinced that there are major social losses associated with encouraging people to attend college.
Michael Bishop
2 May 08 at 4:14 am
[...] If you don’t have the G, grab a shovel? 3 05 2008 Or some other tool…advises fabio: [...]
If you don’t have the G, grab a shovel? « mmbs blog
4 May 08 at 4:09 am
1. Put more money into public schools
2. Improve College education
Nowadays we need educated people, you should know the statistics about it. Claiming that we need less college students is, (sorry) ignorant. No society can afford to loose it’s assets.
Carie
8 May 08 at 9:36 pm