Are we sending too many unprepared/underprepared students to college?

Parents Forum
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During COVID-19, many in lower paid service jobs like restaurants and food service looked for and retrained for other (better) jobs while on the extended unemployment benefits. This has resulted in market pay levels of $15+ per hour in many areas for those lower paid service jobs that now have a shortage of workers willing to work at the former lower pay levels. I.e. the former political slogan of a $15 per hour minimum wage is now market reality in many places. The higher pay levels are also a factor driving inflation that so many here complain about (one of the few cases where an economic disruption has resulted in some redistribution down the economic ladder).

Of course, $15 per hour comes out to about $30,000 per year at full time (which many of those jobs are not), and $30,000 per year is hardly a great level of pay (even though it may be higher than $15,000 or $20,000 per year that the lower paid service jobs paid before if one could get full time out of them). However, that may put further pressure on colleges, since $30,000 per year is comparable to the pay levels that graduates in some majors find after graduation.

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I stand corrected. However, as you write - $25,000 is still not enough to actually live off of anywhere in the USA, that is, if a person wants to sleep under a roof with running water, electricity, and gas, eat every day, have a mobile phone (without which it is impossible to hold a job), have healthcare, wear clothes in a decent state or repair, and be able to get to one’s job.

Moreover, somebody who is making $25,000 is paying rent month to month, and, if they are sick, lose their job, or have an unexpected expense, the either need to live a month without eating or be evicted for not paying rent.

However, that is not the point, the point is that these the salaries that are available for people without college degrees or training in the professions. These are the salaries for people who do not attend college or learn a professions and instead go to work in the service industry

The point is that it is virtually impossible to work in the service industry without a college degree and live comfortably.

That is without mentioning just how hellish almost all low-level jobs in the service industry are.

That is true, but there are far more promotion and salary increase possibilities for college graduates.

The median salary for college graduates between the ages of 25 and 35 in 2020, was $61,130
The median salary for people who graduated high school but did not have a college degree was $36,560.

BTW, the median salary for a high school graduate who did not attend college in 1995 was $35,170. That is equivalent to $59,727 in today’s money.

So yes, people who graduated high school in in the 1990s or earlier. When YOU graduated high school, it was possible to live comfortably without a college degree. But please internalize that it is not the case these days.

These days, you need to attend college in order to get the same salary that a person with only a high school diploma could get in the 1990s.

PS. I’m older - I graduate high school in the early 1980s…

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12 courses of 49 quarter units, according to https://gender.ucla.edu/undergraduate/major/ .

https://catalog.registrar.ucla.edu/Policies-and-Regulations/Academic-Policies/Grades says that “Students may enroll in one course each term on a P/NP basis (two courses if they have not elected the P/NP option in the preceding term).” So a student may take at most 2 units every 2 quarters of those 1 unit P/NP-only Fiat Lux seminars, if they choose to use their allowed P/NP courses on them. I.e. at most 12 units out of 180 total units if they graduate in 12 quarters.

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Of course, that obscures considerable variation in each category. College graduates in journalism and biology are likely to find much different levels of pay than those in engineering and CS. Non-college workers in the skilled trades (that have their own post-high-school education and training) do much better than those in lower skill (lower pay) jobs.

Your link Median annual earnings of full-time year-round workers 25 to 34 years old and full-time year-round workers as a percentage of the labor force, by sex, race/ethnicity, and educational attainment: Selected years, 1995 through 2020 indicates that median pay levels for age 25-34 were flat to barely increasing from 1995 to 2020 (adjusted for inflation). Bachelor’s degree (without higher degree) at +13% and less than high school at +11% were the only levels that increased more than 10% over that time. Inflation adjusted per capita personal income in the US has gone up by much more than 13% over those years, suggesting that the gains of economic growth during that period have been mostly gone somewhere other than those in the early labor class.

Also, while those of age 25-34 with bachelor’s degrees had +13% in pay in 2020 versus 1995, they also started with +41% in student loan debt in 2020 versus 1995.

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Um, this is really getting off point, but couldn’t resist respsonding with some facts. The median per capita income is $35k. 43% of the US have incomes <$25k. Either these folks are all homeless and living under freeway overpasses, or they are living with a roof over their heads and have running water. (Hint: more than one worker making $25k can live under teh same roof.)

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Part of the confusion here may be the way you are using the term “service industry”. Please refer to this nice short article on Indeed for what jobs are included in the “service industry”. You certainly can make a living at many of these jobs. College degree not necessary.

You can make a living working retail (maybe that’s what you meant?) without a college degree too. My '19 worked for Starbucks for a year and half and had many co-workers/partners who worked there full time. There was a lot of turnover, too, but many of the employees had been there for years. You can still work your way up in that company too.

My brother-in-law and my sister-in-law and her husband did not go to college. They all have their own homes and have raised families. Some of their kids went to college and some didn’t.

My oldest is going to community college right now part time and has a nice 2 bedroom apartment with a roommate. Worked at Starbucks for the year and a half and has now started a new job as a vet tech. No college required. We do not help with paying the rent. We do help with the community college because I always said “if you want to go back to school we’ll help pay for it.”

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I understood. Setting aside the issues you may have with gender studies as a major and/or UCLA’s graduation requirements, and setting aside that (as @ucbalumnus pointed out) your depiction isn’t entirely accurate, and hopefully moving toward the more fundamental issue . . .

Given that we are discussing a subset of courses (fiat lux and extra free electives) that don’t count toward major requirements or major electives, and don’t count toward general education requirements, what is it about these fiat lux courses the lead you to believe that “by taking them some of these students could receive a lower quality education?”

Is it that a parent in another thread thought the courses had a light workload? Is it that they are mandatory pass/fail? Is it that they are offered in a wide range of topics, as determined by the interests of the members of the faculty senate that lead the courses?

In other words, let’s assume some students decide to take four one credit fiat lux courses instead of one four credit free elective not related to their major, general education requirements, or other graduation requirements (other than credit) . . . What is it about taking four one credit discussion seminars lead by faculty senators passionate in the course subject that would lead you to conclude that these students were getting “a lower quality education?”

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Not sure if my point was clear, which boils down to: many students who attend college have debts afterwards (whether they got a degree or dropped out), and cannot find gainful employment afterwards in their field. Either immediately, or for a few years afterwards. They end up in a service industry job because it is employment. Wouldn’t have needed the degree to work a service industry job. The degree is usually intended to lead to a stable, gainful career.

I don’t disagree with any of your points, @MWolf. My comment stated “a job that doesn’t pay enough” while covering the loans or the basics. If there was an assumption that I don’t know how these workers are living, that would be erroneous.

I have a degree, and a trade (something I do with my hands) that has been more lucrative than my field of study. My first paid job was in retail at age 16. I have gone back to retail part-time a few times in my life (bought a house, needed the employee discount for furniture; ditto a second time when a kid came on the scene). I have ridden public transit to work as much as driven on my own in the past. Because my trade is project-based, as is the work in my field of study, I kept my foot in retail for 20 years sporadically.

There are more people on this planet than fully-financed long-term careers.

For students, the greatest need is teaching the basics in reading comprehension, written and spoken communication, and numeric literacy. Universally, these are skills that young children require in order to thrive as adults, at any life stage. By college, if they are behind, it’s an uphill battle.

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It appears many students are choosing to forgo college all together.

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Absolutely this, 100%. If we aren’t ensuring the basics are sticking with students we are failing them.

There are so many stories of students passed on to the next grade even though they are struggling/failing to learn. In my opinion, our efforts and money would be much better spent focusing on those issues and getting more students better prepared for life after HS graduation whether they are ultimately entering the workforce directly or attending college. Not everyone goes to college so attaining a HS diploma should actually mean you have been properly educated and prepared for what lies next in life either way.

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Just like many (most?) of us who are insufficiently self-motivated and would surely like to be paid well while doing less work if given the option, at least some (perhaps many?) of the students would surely like to be awarded a college degree while doing less work if given the option. A quality college education starts with a student being challenged, voluntarily or not. If s/he purposely took classes to avoid any challenging work (as it seems to be the purpose of that linked thread), wouldn’t s/he be getting a lower quality education? You don’t consider mere attendance to be challenging, do you?

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But then the question is, are the ones foregoing college the ones who are unready for college, or those for whom college is otherwise not a good fit for them and their goals, versus those foregoing college for other reasons such as the (real or perceived) up-front financial barriers or perceptions of college that may not be especially applicable to whether it is a good fit for them and their goals?

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A quality college education starts with a student being interested and engaged. That, in part, is what UCLA is trying to accomplish with their fiat lux freshman honors seminars. Freshman (and a few non-freshman) at a huge state supported university have the opportunity to participate in honors discussion seminars lead by distinguished professors who are passionate about discrete topics. How cool is that?

And frankly, I’m smiling at the idea that a UCLA freshman would sign up for Igor Pak’s fiat lux course on Combinatorial Sequences because the student thought it was the easiest way to get a degree without doing much work. I have no idea whether that particular course would meet your definition of “challenging” or not, but it sounds like it would provide a tremendous educational opportunity for anyone lucky enough to be part of those discussions. Obviously, such courses cannot be as “challenging" as upper division courses on the same topic but that is a feature of these seminars, not a flaw.

Even if a student chose the one credit freshman honors discussion seminar because they thought it would be relatively easy, the student wouldn’t necessarily be getting a lower quality education. Harder is not always better. The quality of education would depend the content of the class, not whether the class demanded "challenging work” in terms of grades, tests, papers, etc. A class could be “easy” in terms of grades/ papers / tests (or lack thereof) but also be extremely valuable and beneficial educationally. The contrary is also true. Beyond checking a box, hard classes may not have much educational value for at least a portion of those who take them.

Depends on the time of the class.

Seriously though I don’t measure educational quality by “challenge,” so I I’ve never given it a thought one way or another. In the case of a one credit honors discussion seminar, requiring attendance seems an entirely appropriate expectation, as does failing a student for not attending.

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That’s the term I was looking for. When I wrote “profession”, I misused the term. I mean “trade”, and trades are definitely a well-paying alternative to college, and, in fact, often better paying.

Sorry about confusion - I meant mostly retail and food service.

As I pointed out, in the mid 1990s you could indeed work retail and make a decent living. There was also a lot more chances for advancement.

Starbucks is marginal for the food service people. However, they are

Housing prices in 1995 were half of what they are today, adjusted for inflation. Tuition was 1/3 of what it is today, healthcare spending was far lower. The median house cost 1/2 of what it does today, after adjusting for inflation.

Basically, people without a college education made, realistically, 2X they do today. College graduates today make 1.5X the salaries of people without college degrees.

So your BiL, and your SiL were making 1.3 times as much as a college graduate does today.

Basically, college graduates today do not make as much as people without college degrees did back when your BiL and SiL started working.

The comparison is, therefore, not relevant.

Of course, if your BiL and SiL obtained other expertise, which is not provided by colleges, like the trades, we have already mentioned that.

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I have no problem with a college having a few seminar courses only for first-term freshmen to introduce them to certain academic fields of study. UCLA’s such classes, however, are numerous and aren’t limited to freshmen. As another poster has said, UCLA, like most other universities, has other types of seminars that are open to everyone but give no course credits. Students at UCLA have plenty of opportunities to attend those seminars to learn about any topic they wish.

BTW, I never said that all students who took fiat lux classes are getting “a lower quality education” (just that some of them may) or that harder classes are always better for all of them (just that many of them need to be challenged), as you continue to imply in your posts.

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But every job provides training. I mentioned that my '19 kid worked at Starbucks. There is a LOT of training there to learn how to be a barista and make all the different drinks. Do you have to be certified — no, but it’s not like there’s not on the job training. According to Indeed average manager salary for Starbucks is $58K a year.

Similarly with the vet tech job now. Hired w/o any experience, but learning on the job.

My brother-in-law is a self taught software engineer who heads up his own company. My sister-in-law works for him. Her husband has his own plumbing company.

I looked up on Indeed entry level jobs w/ a high school diploma in my area of North Carolina (so overall not a state with super high salaries) and there were 1006 full-time jobs with salaries of $45k annually. Obviously you could make more in investment banking or something, but I think that is a livable wage.

You can calculate what you need to live on using this tool from the University of Washington Center for Women’s Welfare. For a single person in my area it’s $30K.

Not saying that getting a college degree isn’t a worthwhile goal. I am very happy my kids want to do that because I think it opens more doors for them, but I do think it is still possible to live comfortably in this country with just a high school education.

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Then what are you trying to say about those courses in the context of underprepared students in college?

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Wouldn’t most better jobs at least eventually require some additional education (including on-the-job training, self-education, etc. – not limited to education in college) beyond what one learns in high school, as your examples suggest (coffee shop, vet tech, self-educated in software, plumber, etc.)?

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There are studies showing a substantial percentage of college students do not show a statistically significant increase in critical thinking or writing skills over the course of their education, and exit as unprepared for the workforce as they entered. Presumably course selection, and student effort, or lack thereof, were the primary causes of this failure. I have no idea if these UCLA courses are part of that problem, but apparently some courses somewhere are

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I’m confused. Are you really arguing that seminars are a bad thing and not part of a quality education? And only freshman should take seminars?