Why aren't More People Going to College?

Charles Murray had some interesting comments in What's Wrong With Vocational School ? In general, I agree with his assertion that a minority of American high-school students are prepared for a four-year program focused on developing their "advanced analytic skills".

One way or another, they just don't have what it takes. Either they just aren't smart enough, or they don't have the motivation, or they don't have the preparation. This becomes a substantial problem when large swarths of our society have developed the perception that American kids should go to college straight out of high-school. In high school, I knew a number of kids who didn't really want to continue at school (and consequently wasted much of their tuition money and time), but had a sense that they needed to get that degree. Likewise, I met more  of this type of kid at college, even though it was a rather selective school. As a college instructor, I've seen a number of kids who pretty obviously didn't want to be in my class; consequently, I hated teaching them.

From these experiences, I'm strongly opposed to the idea that everyone should be enabled to attend a four-year college. I'd greatly prefer to expand our system of Community Colleges and Vocational Schools.

The big message here is that our Bachelor's degree system is pretty good as it is...we don't need to expand it. We may want to refine it a bit (I'd favor increased admission standards at public universities and increasing merit-based financial aid), but attempts to improve education in America should really focus on the lower levels.

P.S. REad the math panel report . 

"You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was
made a man." --Frederick Douglas

A pertinent post by Megan McArdle .

I do not object to the teacher's unions because they have a union. I object to the teacher's unions because teachers are among the competing interests that run low-income school districts for the benefit of the various interest groups, rather than the children....

I do not say that they are malicious, though certainly in many cases the union clearly recognizes that they are benefiting their members at the expense of the children. But more of it is that the entrenched institutional arrangements, many of them enshrined in union contracts, are extraordinarily impervious to change. When an entire system has grown up around union arrangements, tweaking any substantial part of it threatens to throw the whole system into disarray.

Unions also give teachers power to resist changes that make their jobs less fun. I think the teachers genuinely believe that these changes are bad; but I also think that they strenuously resist learning anything to the contrary. There is really good evidence for the benefits of direct instruction in teaching disadvantaged children. But direct instruction moves the teacher into being more of a technician and less of a creative professional.

But it's more than that. In New York, the principal's union resisted an attempt to attract the system's top principals to failing schools by giving them a substantial bonus payment in the tens of thousands of dollars. The union vetoed this because the extra pay wouldn't accrue pension. Huh? It was entirely voluntary, the system couldn't afford pension payments, and the principals would have gotten an extra $25 grand or so. But no dice. Any change threatens the union, because it puts the delicate balance of power between all the competing interest groups in play.

Liberals rejoinder that it isn't the unions--it's the funding/poor kids/infrastructure/class size/textbooks. This sort of thing is hard to disprove conclusively, of course. But here's a data point: New Orleans smashes it's teachers union; test scores rise dramatically, even though it's still ministering to poor kids testing substantially below grade level.

That's quite a bit to chew on and I agree with her.