Graduation doesn’t guarantee a good job, but it sure makes a BUNCH of career opportunities possible. The hospitality industry- not into elite degrees. But the difference between a management training program for someone with a BA (from anywhere) at a theme park company, major hotel chain, restaurant chain, etc. vs. working your way up from washing dishes to snag- after 8 years of slogging it out as an hourly worker- you just cannot compare. I have colleagues who run recruiting for large, well known companies in that industry and having a BA? It’s the ticket in.
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No one has ever suggested in this thread to deny anyone the opportunity of a college education if s/he is academically and mentally prepared.
Is it too easy to graduate from college, even though many students without financial issues still fail to do so? Yes. According to MyMajors.com, there’re over 1,800 college majors, vastly more than there use to be. They aren’t just new innovative new areas worth 4-6 years of students’ time. Many of them waste education resources and they don’t benefit the students, their families, or the society. In fact, we do all of them a disservice.
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Your questions reveal a lot about your mindset on this issue. I do not see anyone else asking similar questions; everyone else is focused on efficient methods of remediation or other techniques, such as gap years, to improve the social preparedness of kids, or strengthening the K12 system to ensure greater academic preparation.
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It depends on their majors and the colleges. Some of them simply don’t provide these students the career opportunities you’re talking about.
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Precisely. Fine for majors in accounting, finance, or hospitality. For others, not so much. There are plenty of applicants in those fields.
A surprising percentage of graduates regret attending college, particularly if they incurred debt in doing so. Of course, it is possible they would regret other options pursued as well.
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Yet making college harder and eliminating all the majors you don’t approve of would deny many students “the opportunity of a college education” even if, under current requirements, they are “academically and mentally prepared.” Likewise regarding your suggestion that we reallocate educational resources from college to high schools.
You’ve repeatedly alluded to all these useless majors, but the only specific major I recall you mentioning is Gender Studies. Is that one of the majors to which you allude? What are the others?
So you would hand everyone who doesn’t drop out a college diploma in some major? Isn’t that what makes a high school diploma much less valuable and relevant today? Rampant degree inflation (on top of rampant grade inflation) may make everyone feel good for a little while, but how does it ultimately help anyone or the society? Do we then all need to go to graduate schools to remedy what we didn’t learn but should have learned in college (if they can be made to do so)? What keeps us from doing the same thing to the graduate schools? Then what?
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UNC at 20k undergrads is quite a bit smaller than UT Austin at about 41k undergrads.
The other obvious difference is that UNC chooses their students from a highly qualified applicant pool, whereas 75% of each incoming class at UT Austin is reserved for the top 6% of students from each public HS which ranks. That is how some students get in who are less prepared for college (those who attended relatively under resourced HSs), and what precipitated the need for some focus on these students with UT Austin/Dr Laude’s program highlighted in the article above.
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I don’t think it’s that different.
UNC at 20K undergrads vs UT Austin at 41k undergrads is on par with each state’s population. NC=10,551,162. TX=29,527,941.
82% of students at UNC are from NC high schools all over the state. UNC makes a concerted effort to offer spots to kids in high schools in all 100 counties. The word in NC is that a NC kid from a less represented county high school stands a better chance than a kid from an affluent school like Green Hope High in Cary that produces tons of 4.0+ students with 35+ on the ACT. UNC does not only want an incoming class from the best performing high schools in the state. They have a mandate to be the state’s university and want kids from all over the state.
On UNC’s website it says: “Students hail from 94 NC COUNTIES. 36% of all NC students are from rural counties.” There are 100 counties in the state, so that’s pretty good representation. 36% of transfer students went to a NC Community College. (There is an articulation agreement between all NC community colleges and all the UNC system schools and there is a specific pathway to UNC called “C-step”.) 19% are the first generation to graduate from college in their families. As far as rank UNC’s website says: 12% — 1st or 2nd, 42% — top 10 students, 74% — top 10 percent, 92% — top 20 percent.
Maybe North Carolina high schools are more equitable all around than Texas high schools and we have less high poverty high schools? Equity was certainly our goal for decades since integration in the 1970s, but it has been slipping in recent decades with newcomers from other states wanting “neighborhood schools” (aka white schools with no bussing) and getting elected to the school boards (don’t get me started).
To be clear, most of the kids at UNC are North Carolinians who went to public high school. There are OOS kids, but by law no more than 18% and some private school kids, but that’s not a huge amount. It’s correct that UNC is not obligated to grant admission to the top 7% of NC high school students like Texas is, but 74% are in the top 10 percent, and 92% are in the top 20 percent. So that means that 18% of UNC’s incoming class are in the top 20%-10% of their high school class and 26% are less than top 10%; 8% are 30% or less.
Check out some of the job fairs and job postings for the roles I’m talking about. The qualifications are often “Bachelor’s degree and a drug test”. And huge debates going on right now in HR about how to manage the states which have legalized cannabis…especially for companies which have operations all over the country (and the world- as we’ve seen with tragic consequences in Russia). So by next year many observers believe the “BA and a drug test” will LITERALLY become BA required, and the drug test will be screening for heroin.
Rental car companies- great career opportunities. I suggest this path all the time to the young kids I know in real life who graduate with a Bachelor’s in “business” and are stuck. They aren’t interested- they think that a BA in business means they’ll be running Nike or Spotify. But these training programs will take a kid who has managed to finish college, start them off at a small regional airport learning the ropes, promote them as quickly as they can, until they are firmly on the ladder for managerial roles.
Are the jobs glamorous? No. Are they better than bagging groceries… or driving for Uber… or doing another job which is open to a HS grad with no college and zero career path? 100%. An ambitious new grad will learn to manage a team, manage a budget, prepare monthly and quarterly reports, troubleshoot, understand the economics of a relatively complicated operation (starting small, then getting bigger territories). Not a bad outcome.
Why is Gender Studies the bete noire? Why not pick on Recreation Management, Travel and Tourism, Human Resources… the true “useless” majors? At least Gender Studies will require a student to write a thesis of some kind which will require using primary and secondary research sources, use statistical tools to analyze the data, etc.
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Hertz will take those with a high school diploma. Avis accepts an AA degree with 2 years of work experience.
At least some hospitality industry companies, such as Hilton, prefer those with a hospitality degree, just as some HR openings prefer an HR degree. Our parks department does prefer a recreation management degree for its hires, and runs an award winning program of over 200 classes.
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This is exactly the type of “degree inflation” I was talking about. If passing a drug test is on the same level as a bachelor’s degree, we’ve got some serious problems in this country.
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The class rank rule requires auto admission to UT Austin of those not otherwise considered college-ready, and results in a huge disparity in student ability, far more than in other states’ top flagships. The top quartile at UT has SAT scores of over 1500; the bottom quartile was below 1100. So thousands of students in both groups. Few schools have a 400 point disparity between quartiles.
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I can’t solve the problems of this country. But I can help guide young people onto career paths that provide advancement, have benefits, etc.
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That’s a good point.
Maybe the real problem is with inequity in public schools? I really don’t know much about Texas public schools so not sure at all that is what is driving this, but again it seems like NYTimes left out crucial details about that.
I’m glad UTexas came up with a plan to help these top 7% in their high school class, but struggling at UTexas kids.
The schools at the border, in particular, struggle with massive transient populations and have enormous challenges. At some points there are 60k new arrivals per month, many of them school age
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My nephew had some sort of Rec/Enviro degree and got into a training program with Avis in the SE; he’s now making bank and living in a $1m+ home.
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To what extent does doing the jobs in question actually require either the general skills and knowledge indicated by a BA/BS (over an AA/AS, HS diploma, or work experience) or skills and knowledge from any major or course work that an employer may specify?
This isn’t accurate.
- Using the 2019-20 (pre-covid) CDS, the lower quartile UT Austin cutoff was 1240 (not “below 1100”) and the upper quartile cutoff was 1470, so a difference of 230 points. Not a “400 point disparity.”
- For comparison, the lower quartile UNC cutoff was 1300 and the upper quartile cutoff was 1470, so a difference of 170 points. A difference, but not a drastic difference.
Further, it is inaccurate to claim that UT Austin is admitting students who are “not otherwise college ready.” These are kids who have not only finished in the top 7% of their class, they have also met a number of other requirements under Texas regulations (including the “Distinguished Level of Achievement” requirements) which go beyond what is required to graduate from high school. The various requirements are convoluted and not really on-topic here, but under Texas law, these students are are college ready, and under the current Texas approach, they are graduating at a high higher rate than they previously were.
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There are zero actual skills required.
Finishing college (for the companies that ask for a BA) or an AA vs. HS–
1- make a plan and follow through
2-Show up consistently, do assignments and hand them in
3-Demonstrate basic literacy and numeracy (can read a 12 page report and summarize; can evaluate a pie or bar chart and understand what it says; understand that if your payroll expenses are up 12% last month but volume is up 75% vs. plan that’s a good thing; payroll up 12% but volume down 20% is a bad thing), etc.
4- Ask for feedback (i.e. grades, comments on a paper) and redirect accordingly.
We aren’t talking anything exotic. But for all the folks (and they are numerous) who claim that it is elitist to require a BA or AA vs. just a HS diploma- try meeting your hiring targets in some challenging parts of the country by JUST interviewing HS grads.
I used to work for a company which had a very basic literacy skills test for ALL employees. There was a harder version for management track roles. You would cry sometimes flipping through the tests.
So no- a BA is no guarantee. But it does help narrow the funnel a bit to candidates who are more likely to possess basic management training skills.
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