<p>Charles Murray has a guest column in the New York Times with a suggestion for the President-elect: </p>
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<p>Is our President-Elect powerful enough to derail the whole "prestige" thing?</p>
<p>Well, in a way, what the author proposed had been practiced in feudal Europe and else where. Do we want to go back there, really?</p>
<p>Knowledge is everything
This applies to everywhere</p>
<p>You know what? the author makes some really good points about the majority of HS students[ not CC students, but average "Joe" HS seniors]- especially regarding what most students are capable of and interested in:</p>
<p>"For most of the nation’s youths, making the bachelor’s degree a job qualification means demanding a credential that is beyond their reach. It is a truth that politicians and educators cannot bring themselves to say out loud: A large majority of young people do not have the intellectual ability to do genuine college-level work.</p>
<p>If you doubt it, go back and look through your old college textbooks, and then do a little homework on the reading ability of high school seniors. About 10 percent to 20 percent of all 18-year-olds can absorb the material in your old liberal arts textbooks. For engineering and the hard sciences, the percentage is probably not as high as 10.</p>
<p>No improvements in primary and secondary education will do more than tweak those percentages. The core disciplines taught at a true college level are tough, requiring high levels of linguistic and logical-mathematical ability. Those abilities are no more malleable than athletic or musical talent. </p>
<p>But I’m not thinking just about students who are not smart enough to deal with college-level material. Many young people who have the intellectual ability to succeed in rigorous liberal arts courses don’t want to. For these students, the distribution requirements of the college degree do not open up new horizons. They are bothersome time-wasters.</p>
<p>A century ago, these students would happily have gone to work after high school. Now they know they need to acquire additional skills, but they want to treat college as vocational training, not as a leisurely journey to well-roundedness.</p>
<p>As more and more students who cannot get or don’t want a liberal education have appeared on campuses, colleges have adapted by expanding the range of courses and adding vocationally oriented majors. That’s appropriate. What’s not appropriate is keeping the bachelor’s degree as the measure of job preparedness, as the minimal requirement to get your foot in the door for vast numbers of jobs that don’t really require a B.A. or B.S."</p>
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<p>This isn't a matter of prestige. The majority of high school seniors are completely content with going to their nearest in-state, public university. As a high school senior in a relatively low-achieving school, I can tell you that even 95% of students in my AP courses are banking on getting accepted to tier 2-3 universities in my state (NC). They haven't the faintest idea of the US News & World Report rankings and could seriously care less. It's about going to a four year university to drink, party, then graduate with a degree because that is what their parents and our school system has told them what to do. </p>
<p>My school, a poor, inner city school, rams it into our heads that everyone needs to go to a four-year institution to be successful. Those who attend the local community college "washed-out". Personally, even as a high school senior who will be attending one of the top liberal arts colleges in the nation, I find this disgusting and completely incorrect. I hear my peers say things along the lines of, "I would rather drop out than go to community college." Do you know why they think these things? Because that's what these public high schools tell their students.</p>
<p>It has to stop somewhere. The great majority of students neither desire nor have the intellectual capacity, as the article clearly puts, to handle a solid, liberal education. And there is NOTHING wrong with this! As a society, we need to stop placing so much emphasis on the four year institution of higher learning. As a whole, we needs citizens who can learn a valuable skill and apply it in the economy.</p>
<p>Employers are using bachelor's degrees as a very expensive 4 year IQ sorting. It's pathetic. We are devoting a massive amount of resources to higher education on people with less than 115 IQs that do not need to be educated beyond the standard reading/writing/arithmetic.</p>
<p>And Charles Murray is the man.</p>
<p>"As a whole, we needs citizens who can learn a valuable skill and apply[it] in the economy.
Well said!</p>
<p>!!!
There is a VAST difference between not requiring bachelor's degrees and "dropping out"--one that I would have hoped someone who writes for the New York Times would recognize. It's a good idea that he's bringing up, but his wording and reasoning are baffling and bizarre.</p>
<p>I teach at community college, and I totally disagree with the article cited. Struggling to get an AA, and then for most, a BA or BS, is all that educates my students to be understanding and thinking adults.</p>
<p>In many cases both their parents and their high schools have failed them. I teach writing, literature and intellectual history. Many students cannot write a decent sentence when they come into my classes and don't have the clarity to pose or recognize a cogent argument.</p>
<p>Our goal, as a faculty, is to remediate and to stimulate. We have very demanding distribution requirements. I think an understanding of many disciplines is essential to a thinking electorate.</p>
<p>Without an understanding of basic chemistry, geology and biology how can decisions about the environment be reached? About cloning? About stem cell research?</p>
<p>Without any math skills how can these students manage their retirement accounts when they do get jobs?</p>
<p>And do we really want a working cohort that miss all references to Hamlet made in popular culture? Do we want companies to stop mounting Shakespeare because no one pays to see it?</p>
<p>Yes, it's true that many start college behind the ideal study body Charles Murray dreams of, but many, many students catch up and become more thoughtful individuals and a better basis for a democratic society.</p>
<p>I am not talking about jobs that required degrees in engineering, teaching or nursing here - I am talking about jobs that require "a bachelor's degree."</p>
<p>From a practical point of view:
Many employers like to see prospective employees with four-year degrees because this shows that the applicant was able to get through a bachelor's degree. The applicant managed to decide what to major in; to register, show up for, and pass the classes needed for the degree; and to meet all of his or her college's other requirements.</p>
<p>For jobs that require "a bachelor's degree" the employers don't care if the degree was earned through two years of community college followed by a state college. For many jobs, the major doesn't matter. Art history, English, Sociology - whatever the student preferred. The bachelor's degree shows that generally speaking, the student is "with it," capable. He can read and write; he can learn.</p>
<p>Many, many people without bachelor's degrees are smart and capable too, of course. The bachelor's degree requirement is just a quick way for an employer to increase the odds of finding a capable employee.</p>
<p>@ mythmom- But do you think that means students should be pushed harder at the high school level or should the academic stratification continue?</p>
<p>How about Murray's concern that students who are smart but who can't afford college are disadvantaged by making a college degree an implicit job requirement? </p>
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<p>That's an interesting article. I have spoken to a Cornell Alum, math teacher and parents. They all agreed that its what you can do that matters in the end. Who cares if you went to Harvard--and still can't serve people in a fast food resaruant or flip hamburgers. </p>
<p>Education should be about learning even if its a CC. In America there is too much emphasis placed on the product (the Bachelor's Degree). The process (surviving the 4 years) has become a game of who can get in and out in the least possible amount of time engery and effort.</p>
<p>Our president-elect is as pedigreed educationally as anyone with Punahou, Columbia, Harvard, UCh in his life. Married to a educationally pedigreed woman and sending his children to name schools as well.</p>
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Does he have any evidence to support this idea? Any at all?</p>
<p>Odious. Just odious. I agree that college should be a choice, not an automatic "well, I ought to go," but it doesn't have to do with any belief in the immutability and innateness of intelligence. </p>
<p>One wouldn't have thought Charles Murray could get more odious with time, but apparently he hasn't become less odious.</p>
<p>mythmom, i totally agree with you about schools/parents failing their students!! i recently posted on cc about my youngest who was having difficulty at school (grade 8)..not an academic by any means but not "dumb". probably a solid C student with effort. BUT>>> he was receiving A's on report cards for work that was not legible, he couldnt answer simple math questions but was recieving b's and a's...failing exams but finishing the year with A's. this past few weeks we have been holding the school to account to explain these discrepencies and here are some of the replies.
1. there are no text books as the budget does not allow more than a class room copy.
2. there is no homework assignd by the teachers as they have been told not to give any as "they have other commitments like sports that take up their time"
3. a science teacher can not grade a paper based on handwriting etc only on "science" content..only the english teacher can grade writing.</p>
<p>we did proceed and start Sylvan.. only a few lessons so far due to the holidays...his assessment showed he was missing vital/basic foundations/skills back to grade 3....
we have been asking these questions for years but kept being lulled by the report cards and took no serious action. </p>
<p>How can he be given A's? He has had no incentive to improve..any work gets a good grade.<br>
He may well never go to college, or may go to community college or vocational program, but he deserves a chance to be the best he can be, not just passed through from grade to grade with none of the basics he needs in whatever he chooses to do in life.</p>
<p>I can't believe that the author of that article had the audacity to tie his proposals to Obama. As he and his wife well know, there is no way in the world that they would have even gotten in the front door to get white collar jobs, much less the sort of positions they have held during their lives, without their education and their degrees. The offspring of wealthy white people may be able to slide by in life on the strength of their charm or whatever, but a higher education has always the only ticket out of a life of poverty or physical labor for minorities. What a slap in the face to all of the minority and immigrant parents who have struggled at menial jobs to save their money to fund their children's education so that they could have a better life! </p>
<p>I am sure that Obama is very well aware of the negative impact that devaluing of an education would have on our society.</p>
<p>"but a higher education has always the only ticket out of a life of poverty or physical labor for minorities"</p>
<p>No it hasn't. There are many tickets out.</p>
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<p>Evidence for this, please?</p>