JHS- good analysis but you missed three points (I’m not being snarky- I agree with much of what you say and you state your case well).
1- Viet Nam war- the explosion in graduate programs was fueled by the need? desire? to grant academic exemptions to as many young men as possible to “fix” a bad draft number. You will notice that the “credential creep” of grad programs in education, PsyD, Allied Health, etc. coincided with the enormous number of Master’s level (and some doctoral) candidates being spewed out of universities. Why hire someone with a BA when for the same salary you can get someone with a Master’s??? Universities grew to love this model (as did accrediting organizations). As a recent patient of a large physical therapy practice I do need to ask- why the heck does someone need so many years of advanced education to “supervise” a group of people using stretchy bands in a large room- all of whom are also paying an orthopedic surgeon to manage this care. But I digress…
2- Better identification of/treatment of various learning disabilities, non-neurotypical learners, etc. While this is indeed an admirable societal goal, in many school systems, this has sucked funds away from instruction and towards special services. Again- I’m not knocking this- but I am describing. In my own school system, the budget for transportation of “special needs” kids exceeds what is spent annually on the Gifted and Talented. Some of this is legitimate- kids who cannot ride a school bus. Some of this is not- kids who participate in private traveling soccer leagues for example, who get private pick up’s every morning on their driveway because savvy parents threatened a lawsuit claiming the kids asthma doesn’t allow the kid to climb the stairs of a regular school bus. Net- private taxi service courtesy of the tax payers.
So the “regular” graduate of a “regular” high school may – in fact- not be comparable to a kid graduating from that same HS in 1962. Funds which used to go towards instruction are now spent on the legally mandated services which don’t benefit the “typical” kid.
(K classrooms in my area with 3-4 “private” aides are not uncommon. They have zero responsibility- or interest- in “aiding” the primary teacher and do not do so. They provide private assistance to one child and only that child. So the “ratio” of instructors in the classroom is terrific statistically- but zero impact on the kids who don’t get services).
3- Overall decline in the prestige? importance? of what used to be assumed as the ingredients for a civilized life. I remember when family members- even HS drop outs- regularly had symphony subscriptions, attended the opera, did book clubs and attended lectures in their spare time. Now these are considered elitist activities. But in an era when even “regular folks” bought theater tickets, people who had a college education and studied literature, spoke a few foreign languages, knew about history, etc. were considered part and parcel of society.
Now? Get your ticket punched in college, try to read as few books as possible (avoid a core curriculum like the plague) and get to work as an IT manager or CPA as quickly as possible. Camus? Some French dude. Moliere? Another loser.
That’s a little more judgmental than I’d expect from you @Pizzagirl. I understand that you see value in many aspects of college and I see that value as well. However, if high achieving high school kids are interested in a high paying career in finance and look at college as a path to that career, they should have the right to do that without a whole bunch of negativity.
JHS and Blossom- excellent points; if I may, I would like at add on a bit
From the end of the 1800 until the 1920s the major focus of the elementary school system was “citizenship” - primarily targeted towards the children of immigrants (esp eastern and Southern Europeans whom many mainstream/wasp Americans feared culturally) and “discipline”- meant to teach young people to follow rules and schedules and do repetitive tasks- the sort of things they would need in factory life. You were getting the “3Rs” but “Real” education wasn’t supposed to start until HS- by which time the vast majority would be gone- and you,mould only be teaching the “best and the brightest”. HS didn’t become a place for “everyone” until after WWII, and then of course there was also the GI Bill- where soldiers could go to college b/c the gov’t was worried that if too many young men entered the workforce at the same time it could collapse the economy (a return to depression being a HUGE fear at end of war- that’s why we kept spending).
Education is a living organism- constantly evolving. It’s one of the reasons I try not to stress to much when the latest state mandate comes in - it’s like the weather- wait 5 min, it’ll change
One doesn’t have to go to college, or spend tons of money, to educate themselves on topics of interest. So I frankly don’t see why someone should spend a lot of money to get a degree with minimal job prospects; “education” can come in many different forms," but in its present state, college is largely the first step to a job.
Something JHS remarked on - how employers are off loading training costs from themselves and their investors to workers really hit home. In the Austin American Statesman, a recent article, surveyed high tech firms about hiring needs and practices. The results were firms needed 3500 new employees annually and the local schools were only producing 1500, but only 12% of the employers would consider hiring a recent graduate and 42% would throw away any resumes with less than 5 years of experience. They definitely do not want to spend money on training, they want employees ready to produce from day 1 and this is STEM jobs. No wonder our kids are freaking out about finding a job after graduation and will do anything that enhances their hire ability including coops, internships (with or without pay) and masters programs with a lot of the costs on the workers and families. It does not leave a lot of room for expanding your horizons.
The problem is that the almost universal opinion implies that the only way to demonstrate the effort and engagement is by spending four (or six) years at an institution of “higher learning.” For a great number of students and for the majorityof majors, that is hardly the case. Our system simply compounds the problem by relying on a mostly abysmal high school system followed by remedial classes leading to a graduation with few marketable skills.
The proof is everywhere. One hardly needs a college degree to function as an accountant. The measurement of qualifications can be obtained elsewhere. Same thing for licensed professions. People are successful real estate brokers or deal in securities and never use (or need) much of what they learned in school. Coders get jobs armed with very different degrees. A MIT grad might be competing (and losing out) to a 20 years old who barely finished high school.
Does it stop there? Since college is now what HS used to be, the next frontier is graduate school. In the past decade, many parents have softened the “self-esteem” blow by encouraging, and often funding, a couple of added years of school to avoid the reality of no or low paying jobs.
There are no universal truths. There are a number of degrees and a number of school that do change the life of students. However, they are dwarfed by the number of schools that pretend to deliver a valuable “commodity” to students who deserve an education. The biggest issue is that it does cost real dollars and an opportunity cost. The jobs that follow do not warrant the “effort and engagement” of spending years in college. At best, a cycle of one year or experience with a one year stint at a community college would be sufficient.
The value of a degree is just one of those mythical tales that are supported by the people who benefit from having lots of people accepting it without questioning. What one expects to actually learn from his or investment in not part of the equation. It’s all about a rite of passage. No wonder the statement came from an educator!
“No, straight Ds tell me something. But you have to work pretty hard today to get those!”
I know, got to work very hard at the parties, be practically a “party animal”. Not familiar with this though, so I may have misjudged how hard one has to party to get straight Ds.
I’ve found that a vast majority of my marketable skills have come from self-studying materials off the Internet, compared to what I learned in college itself (and I went to an Ivy).
I see the high price tag of top universities as the price paid for access to top competition, professors, and networking opportunities. The material / education itself can be just as good from a variety of other places at a much lower price.
So the value of a degree depends a lot on what doors it opens, as well as which doors you actually wish to open. I think a lot of people go to Ivies and expect prestige alone to do the heavy lifting, when really you have to take advantage of resources you can’t get elsewhere if you are to justify the price you’re paying.
One does not need to attend a college to obtain "the education-for-its-own-sake " And many thousands (millions?) do it. There are so many resources, when you actually can have a flexibility, your own schedule, at your own level or a the level that you are trying to reach. Why to go to college for that? Our whole family, every member is engaged in self-education either on his own or with the help of non-institutional instructors. It is not a big deal to obtain education outside of educational institution, much cheaper, much more efficient. However, nobody can attend a Medical School, Law school, MBA program…or hold many positions (including my own, and I am low level nobody, but my manager is not even allowed to interview anybody without a 4 year degree for my position ) without at least a 4 year college diploma.
You can disregard this fact as much as you want, you have all rights to do so with all consequences of such a position. But it is the fact that those who want to be in Med. School, Law School, any Grad. school, hold certain positions that require a 4 year degree, these people cannot afford to neglect this simple fact, call college education commodity or anything else in a world, it is irrelevant to these people, they must have a piece of paper in their hand to fulfill their dreams.
My husband is VP for Internet sales for his company - and never touched a computer until after college. The vast majority of what he does he learned on his own, after college (as the Internet etc came to exist). Does that make his degree worthless? He doesn’t think so- b/c there is no way anyone would have looked at him without it.
I learned programming on punch cards yet still have an ongoing career in IT. We never had the Internet, Google, etc, yet were continue to develop a lot of the systems that touch your life every day. Evolution/Change/Discovery does not diminish what you know about a subject. It adds to what you know about it. What you learned allows you to have context about why things are the way they are and where things can go. While being able to use a typewriter may not be that useful anymore, the need for the keyboard has not gone away.
< If all the banks stopped recruiting at the Ivy League tomorrow, that wouldn’t diminish the value of those educations one iota. >
Actually, it will. Reputation matters a lot. If Dartmouth, for example, would not be rated high among employers, I’ll never sent my children there, even for free.
Related to this - the last few years a lot of people have predicted that the availability of free (or very cheap) excellent quality online courses would help bring down the cost of college education and would enable many people to inexpensively learn valuable skills and land high-paying jobs.
Well, admittedly it’s very early days still. But I’ve read studies of what seems to be happening so far, and there’s evidence that it’s mostly the complete opposite of what people predicted. Instead, it’s most people with “elite” educations, who already have lots of skills and resources, that are the ones really turning things like MOOCS, etc. to their advantage. Of course, there are lots of exceptions to this, but it seems like making the effort to really master a skill set, even if all the content is packaged and offered for free, is too hard relative to watching the latest hijinks of the Kardashians
So, MOOCS and related efforts to increase access to high quality education seem to be making the elite more elite. Frankly, perhaps it means I’m a cynic but I’m not surprised at all. There’s always a latest education fad that promises to be a silver bullet. But they’re mostly worthless and I don’t think there will be a fundamental change in how people get educated until we either change human nature or perfect mind melds. However, I still think increasing access to knowledge is a good thing and I love what some of these online education pioneers are trying to do.
BTW - awesome post JHS. I don’t agree 100%, but I hope to find some time to post a few worthy follow-up thoughts.
MOOCS are not worthless. Khan academy isn’t worthless. The thousands of online courses now available aren’t worthless.
But every month I seem to run into a parent who says that that their kid (who either partied through HS or didn’t have enough initiative, work ethic, or whatever to get admitted to a college that the parent deems “worth paying for”) is going to "get an online degree- which is “just as good” as a brick and mortar university… to which I say, “fantastic!” but I’m really thinking, “Call me back in four years”.
It takes a LOT of motivation to sit at home- alone- and slog your way through macroeconomics or statistics or accounting, not to mention classes with a high degree of abstraction. A LOT. So who benefits from these classes? the highly motivated. Not a kid who snored through HS-- absent a huge leap in maturity and ambition. The kid can’t command a high paying job out of HS because he’s got no marketable skills. And absent maturity and ambition… the availability of online classes doesn’t help him.
If all the banks stopped recruiting at the Ivy League tomorrow, that wouldn’t diminish the value of those educations one iota. >
Actually, it will. Reputation matters a lot. If Dartmouth, for example, would not be rated high among employers, I’ll never sent my children there, even for free."
Well, reputation matters a lot for certain kinds of people, for whom nothing is worth doing unless other people are clapping their hands in admiration, and you’re clearly one of those kinds. Which is, of course, fine - chacun a son gout and all.
blossom - Oops, I now realize my post wasn’t clear. I’ve seen a few MOOC lectures covering even some very technical subjects, and I agree with you - I think that several of them are absolutely first rate “excellent quality online courses” … and they’re free and instantly available 24 x 7. As I said, “I love what some of these online education pioneers are trying to do.”
What I meant to call worthless were the promises that the proponents of the educational fads that come and go every few years (whether it’s new math, whole-language, computers in every classroom, MOOCS) make; that this time, we’ll really solve some fundamental educational problems. As you said, the problem isn’t making the knowledge available or even how to teach it - there are many many ways to do that, many valid instructional methods, even these new ones. It’s overcoming challenges like motivation, aptitude, interest, poverty, family environment, innate talent, etc.
Those who already know how to succeed will leverage MOOCS; those who don’t will not benefit. And I think those benefits will disproportionately accrue to the top of society. But just to be clear, I personally don’t have a problem with this at all. If someone is motivated and does the work, then more power to them and no one should begrudge them a thing. I just wish we could bottle this “secret” sauce, that actually isn’t a secret at all !!
AL2- thanks for clarifying. I agree with your entire post.
I think the problem with Ed Reform as a construct is that it likely uses as its conceptual model the public health field. So- discovering that smoking causes/exacerbates lung cancer and emphysema was a game changer. Wearing seat belts reduces fatalities in car accidents- so get people to buckle up. Lead paint impairs cognitive development in babies and toddlers. etc.
But education hasn’t worked this way. Technology is the lever, not a prime cause/solution.
I recently hired someone who did an online MBA. She’s a terrific professional- highly motivated, articulate, hard working, insightful, great writer, absorbs information quickly and synthesizes issues very well. Her MBA adds exactly zero to her profile. It’s from a second rate institution that basically accepts anyone; the course content of an MBA is pretty irrelevant anyway, it’s the analytical skills and quantitative reasoning that’s valuable, and when your “classmates” GMAT’s are 200 points below yours, the group-work done online isn’t all that helpful for honing your problem-solving skills!
Nonetheless- it demonstrated initiative that even while living in a place without a brick and mortar first tier MBA program, she carved out the time to get the degree. So it’s not exactly “worthless”- but she could have gotten an online Master’s in Art History (her BA) and we’d pretty much have concluded the same thing about her- initiative, drive, hard-working… the second rate MBA didn’t do much for her!!!
I feel like a lot of online learning is the educational equivalent of having a feeding tube inserted into your nose. Yes, you get the macronutrients and fluids delivered directly, but given the choice most people would prefer to go out to a nice restaurant of or have a diet of solid home-cooked meals and would pay more for them. There’s something to be said for fully experiencing the colors and textures and ambience and company associated with taking your sustenance in the more traditional, communal way.
Blossom, some super-quick responses, since I have about two minutes:
– The Vietnam War dynamic certainly contributed to the expansion of the university, but I think the GI Bill, co-education, the push for racial equality, and the sheer demographics of the baby boom did as much or more.
By the way, from my experience I trust the expertise of physical therapists more than I do necessarily that of orthopedic surgeons, other than with respect to actual surgery. I agree that physical therapists are probably over-trained, and that more could be done by “physical therapist assistants,” but I am pretty impressed by the quality of physical therapist training.
– I don’t really think that special ed is to blame for the decline in quality of high school degrees, although I certainly understand the budget issue. The account I like to give is that we decided actually to try to educate large groups of kids that we had not really been educating in the past, including those with intellectual disabilities, those who are very poor, those who are very not-white, etc. Until fairly recently, high school itself was a form of elite education; now it’s not. That’s not a bad thing at all, but it means that merely being a high school graduate doesn’t give anyone elite status. It also means that we are trying to educate people who aren’t already being educated at home, to a large extent, and that is not so easy to do.
– The decline in prestige of high culture corresponds to a rise in paying attention to people who are not in the traditional managing class. That’s democracy at work! It’s not necessarily a bad thing, even if it means that some symphony orchestras are going to go belly up. Once upon a time, people bemoaned the decline in prestige of Latin the same way – all that poetry and prose writing in the vernacular, yeesh!
