<p>^^^</p>
<p>That number is misleading. It includes all children who aren’t old enough and all older people.</p>
<p>If you look at the percentage of Americans between the ages of 20-40, you’ll see a much higher number went to college.</p>
<p>how much higher? we’re still not talking anywhere close to a majority of americans…</p>
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<p>The hitherto commonly accepted answer to that question has changed. I.E., even an Ivy student has to be careful when choosing a major, because it will define them more in the eyes of potential employers than the name of the school they attended. Ergo, grading for an elite school will still yield a competitive advantage, but it is subject to the markets perceived worth of the specific major.</p>
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I think a tracking system would be GOOD. Come sit in my high school. there are PLENTY of kids who are going to college for no reason other than they have been fed the lie that you “have to”. Most will drop out after a year or two, some will scrape by and graduate in six with lots of debt and a communications degree, wondering why they aren’t making more money. Track some of them and send them to trade school, seriously. The world needs ditch diggers just as bad as we need engineers. These kids don’t try in high school and clog up the system. They slow down classes for people who care. If they had another option, both high school and college would be better
I don’t think this kills the American dream at all. I think it just forces people to prioritize what they want. If they don’t want to work, then no college for you.</p>
<p>@CASMom: Thank you, I agree it would be unAmerican almost…I don’t want to make this political but personally I think a system where the government would have more power/control and we would have less freedom is not a good thing, in my humble opinion. It’s not that I don’t sympathize with those critiquing our current system where the middle class (who don’t receieve much need based aid and have to take on the burden of loans) is often screwed over in the process. </p>
<p>@rocket6louise: I understand where you’re coming from, since my hs was similar - but ultimately I think the individual should have the freedom to choose, assuming they have the grades to be accepted to college. No one should be forced to pick a specific track, whether it’s vocational or professional. My grandparents lived in a country where they did not have that power - the Govt there literally picked a career for you. For example, my grandpa is trained as an Engineer but he wanted to be an Architect - very similar careers but the Govt-mandated exam literally placed him in the Engineer track and that was the only training he could receive - when they immigrated to the US in the 1960’s it was partly to avoid an overbearing Govt system.</p>
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<p>I agree… I think where things hit the fan is where people demand freedom but want to be absolved of personal responsibility. Those two things are, generally, mutually exclusive.</p>
<p>@rocket6louise: “These kids don’t try in high school and clog up the system. They slow down classes for people who care. If they had another option, both high school and college would be better.”</p>
<p>---- There is another option, let them fail in high school instead of passing them through the system just to keep them off the streets or to avoid “damaging their self esteem”. It would be better for them, and for those students in the schools who ARE there to learn. It would also be much cheaper to experience failure in high school than in college. I have a strong feeling that those who were failed early enough in high school would either wake up and smell the coffee or drop out and “unclog” the system. (I also teach in a high school and know exactly what you are referring to.)</p>
<p>---- That said, I find it hard to believe that anyone in America really wants the government determining who gets to go to college and who gets to be a sanitation engineer. And what about kids who DO work hard but just don’t test well? If they don’t pass the test/make the cut are they supposed to abandon their dreams? Also, if you think that Europe is a happy place for youth who are not part of the educational elite you need to visit Europe. Those are the kids who are currently rioting in the streets, burning cars, and sending Europe hurtling toward anarchy.</p>
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<p>I couldn’t agree more. And I’m not saying that we should dictate EXACTLy what people do. But I firmly believe that more kids should be pushed towards a vo-tech career. Right now, there is a huge stigma against it, but there are so many kids who would be better served going into something like that. My sister will be attending vo-tech next year and I think it will be wonderful for her. For so many kids though, the option is never pushed. Let’s face it, not everyone is meant for college, but I do think everyone needs some sort of education, and trade school is a great option.
At some point, we have to create higher standards for kids who want to be “college prep”</p>
<p>I agree that we could benefit from more tracking at the HS and even college levels (we have a similar problem in clinical psych where people are taking out mounds of debt for a doctoral degree at take-most-comers professional psych schools with often questionable educational quality for a career that pays $60k. Not only does this create debt issues, but it often saturates the market because these schools have class sizes that are 5-15x that of university-based programs. Good/excellent psychologists can come out of these programs, but regardless of training quality, the debt issue is still a huge problem). However, I question what would happened to late bloomers, like my dad, who got his BS at age 40 but is now a successful engineer.</p>
<p>@psych: I’m still an undergraduate student but every advsisor/professor/scientist I’ve talked to has led me to believe PhD programs in science fields are generally free and include research stipends (and the few programs that aren’t free aren’t worth going into)? Is this not true for other fields like clinical psychology?</p>
<p>cptofthehouse,</p>
<p>I could definitely relate to your food anecdotes, especially the part about men and women’s eating habits. At Georgia Tech, an “unlimited” meal plan is 9999 meals. Toward the end of my freshman semester, I was hovering around the 96-- range. I saw a girl in front of me present her card to the cashier, who inspected the photo and then swiped it. She was still in the 99-- range!</p>
<p>I can also relate to the “cooking on your own saves money” thing. It’s true if you actually buy groceries and cook your own meals from semi / scratch. On average, for one week’s worth of meals–breakfast, lunch, and dinner–I spend no more than $60 a week for vegetables, meats, fruits, and so forth. By contrast, some of my friends also cooked on their own but then quickly proceeded to eating out frequently for lunch and dinner. That can get pricely really quickly.</p>
<p>I don’t know how I feel about the idea of “pushing” vo-tech. For some students that can be a great opportunity, I could definitely see that. But if it had been someones job to determine whether or not to encourage me to go to college or to go into a vocation, with my performance UP UNTIL college nobody would have ever believed I was college material. Nobody would have ever encouraged me to go to college. And then in my first semester of college it was discovered I was coping (badly) with massive learning disabilities, at which point my grades skyrocketed-- without accommodations, I just had to understand what was wrong before I could “fix” it and nobody ever knew. I was certainly college material but we didn’t know that until I got there. Nobody had successfully TAUGHT me up to that point, and even though I was coming to school to learn I wasn’t able to do it until I learned the proper way to teach myself. It’s depressing to think I might not have had the opportunity to discover that had someone decided they didn’t think I was college material and pushed me into another direction.</p>
<p>@springgreen</p>
<p>It IS true for university-based programs (like the one I’ll be attending next year in School Psych, for example). However, the APA has (disastrously, IMO) allowed free-standing professional schools to crop up. University-based programs in clinical, counseling, and school psych are much like those in the natural sciences–small cohort (5-12 people a year), strong research training (even for those that have a more balanced clinical/research agenda), and usually fully funded with a tuition waiver plus stipend. These are typically VERY competitive to get into.</p>
<p>Free standing professional schools, on the other hand, are MUCH easier to get into, have large cohorts (70-100+ people a year), have weaker research training, and offer almost no funding.</p>
<p>While there are some university-based programs that don’t guarantee full funding for all years, most of those at least guarantee full funding for a few years and often offer partial funding for the other years, though I would still be somewhat wary of those situations. (But I’m really debt adverse in general)</p>
<p>Generally, I think “If it’s not funded, it not worth it” is a pretty good maxim for clinical psych as well. Even if you can get good training, the debt is, IMO, no way worth it or manageable for a vast majority of people.</p>
<p>For example, debt stats for students applying for capstone internship in 2007-2008. Most professional schools are PsyDs and most university-based programs are PhDs. There are some funded university-based PsyDs and some unfunded PhDs, so it’s not a perfect proxy variable, it it should give you a good, though rough, idea…</p>
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<p>Source: <a href=“About The APPIC Match”>http://www.appic.org/match/5_2_2_4_10c_match_about_statistics_surveys_2008C.htm</a></p>
<p>So, you have half of all PhD applicants with $40k or less in debt (more than I’d like to take out, personally, but not outrageous, especially if you have a family or other obligations to support as a grad student) with more than one-fifth having NO debt. OTOH, 93% of PsyDs have some grad school debt, and most two thirds have $100k or more in debt. See the difference? And that’s only using a proxy variable! APPIC hasn’t run the stats on these, but I’d be REALLY surprised if that wasn’t a significant difference.</p>
<p>"HAHAHA…you’re joking right? PSU’s and PItt’s TUITION is over 14k. This means a student would have to commute and work insanely to make that happen.
For most states, this plan would work fine, but not in PA "</p>
<p>Since when are PSU and Pitt the only 4-year public colleges in Pennsylvania? IUP is $7k a year. CUP is $5500 a year.</p>
<p>Several top 20 universities serve a la cart.</p>
<p>But even so, one has to wonder at the quality of an educational institution that operates its dining halls as “profit centers”.</p>
<p>I agree! As an almost college graduate next year at NEU, I am in so much debt. I remember during my senior year in high school, adults had told me that my education is an investment and if I really wanted to go, I should do it. I wish someone told me realistically what my financial decision would entail. However at the time, even if someone told me that all that debt may not be worth it, I would be ambitious enough to try to prove them wrong.</p>
<p>I agree with the previous posts about prestige though. Maybe we should stop promoting prestige and associate expensive schools with “great degrees”. It’s a very controversial topic. I am a communication studies major and with my current internship, I think I can handle my debt.</p>
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<p>IUP and CUP don’t count as good colleges, sorry. I say this as someone who knows 50+ people who go to each school. They aren’t high-quality educational institutions.</p>
<p>Also, what does “getting a good education” have anything to do with “the American dream”? If anything, the American dream is starting something yourself, not relying on some institution to validate your success.</p>
<p>The college degree is implicitly marketed as the ticket to the “good life”.</p>
<p>There is another thread here “Colleges for Non-Intellectuals”. My wife’s comment was “Isn’t that almost all of them?”</p>
<p>Is there an entitlement to go to an above-average college at public expense? There’s a question of access to education, and then there’s a question of access to excellence. I support a system where most people in this country can get a bachelor’s degree dirt cheap or close to it. There are already plenty of public schools providing this. Those are good, serviceable educations that will allow the graduates to progress. Going to college at NYU is a luxury, just like going to high school at Exeter is a luxury.</p>
<p>The topic came up when we were discussing the availability of private loans in a system where they are more easily dischargeable in bankruptcy. I think it’s quite likely that students majoring in engineering, nursing, etc. would be able to borrow quite a bit to attend state flagships. The market would probably undertake a serious analysis of future earnings that’s sorely needed today. My guess is that you would probably qualify for more loans, at a cheaper rate, not just by going to a good school and choosing a remunerative major, but also for making good grades. There are all kinds of ways to predict who’s unlikely to default. Some borrowers would be safe bets for moderate loans.</p>
<p>*There is another thread here “Colleges for Non-Intellectuals”. My wife’s comment was “Isn’t that almost all of them?” *</p>
<p>And…thank goodness for that. Otherwise we’d only have colleges for the top 1-4% of the nation.</p>