Anyone who has been here for awhile and has followed my post on education. Dr. Williams nailed it. If you have kids or grandkids read up.
A MINORITY VIEW
BY WALTER E. WILLIAMS
RELEASE: WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 27, 2008, AND THEREAFTER
Is College Worth It?
As parents pack their youngsters off to college, they might ask themselves whether it's worth both the money they will spend and their children's time. Dr. Marty Nemko has researched that question in an article aptly titled "America's Most Over-rated Product: Higher Education (http://www.martynemko.com/articles/a...ucation_id1539)."
The U.S. Department of Education statistics show that 76 out of 100 students who graduate in the bottom 40 percent of their high school class do not graduate from college, even if they spend eight and a half years in college. That's even with colleges having dumbed down classes to accommodate such students. Only 23 percent of the 1.3 million students who took the ACT college entrance examinations in 2007 were prepared to do college-level study in math, English and science. Even though a majority of students are grossly under-prepared to do college-level work, each year colleges admit hundreds of thousands of such students.
While colleges have strong financial motives to admit unsuccessful students, for failing students the experience can be devastating. They often leave with their families, or themselves, having piled up thousands of dollars in debt. There is possibly trauma and poor self-esteem for having failed, and perhaps embarrassment for their families. Dr. Nemko says that worst of all is that few of these former college students, having spent thousands of dollars, wind up in a job that required a college education. It's not uncommon to find them driving a taxi, working at a restaurant or department store, performing some other job that they could have had as a high school graduate or dropout.
What about students who are prepared for college? First, only 40 percent of each year's 2 million freshmen graduate in four years; 45 percent never graduate at all. Often, having a college degree does not mean much. According to a 2006 Pew Charitable Trusts study, 50 percent of college seniors failed a test that required them to interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, and compare credit card offers. About 20 percent of college seniors did not have the quantitative skills to estimate if their car had enough gas to get to the gas station. According a recent National Assessment of Adult Literacy, the percentage of college graduates proficient in prose literacy has declined from 40 percent to 31 percent within the past decade. Employers report that many college graduates lack the basic skills of critical thinking, writing and problem-solving.
Colleges are in business. Students are a cost. Research is a profit center. When colleges boast about having this professor who has won a science award or that professor who has won the Nobel Prize, very often an undergraduate student will never be taught by that professor. It is a "bait and switch" tactic and very often your youngster will take classes not taught by a professor but taught in large classes by a graduate student. Faculty who bring in large grants are more highly valued than faculty who teach well. Teaching excellence is so often undervalued that the late Ernest Boyer, vice president for Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, quipped that, "Winning the campus teaching award is the kiss of death when it comes to tenure."
Parents and taxpayers cough up billions upon billions of dollars to the nation's colleges and universities. Colleges make money whether students learn or not, whether they graduate or not, and whether they get a good job after graduating or not. Colleges and universities engage in "bait and switch," confer fraudulent degrees and engage in other practices that would bring legal sanctions if done by any other business. There is little or no oversight of the nation's over 4,000 colleges and universities that enroll over 17 million students. There are some colleges, such as Grove City College and Hillsdale College, that do a fine job of undergraduate education. Useful information about what colleges are doing what can be found in the Delaware-based Intercollegiate Studies Institute's "Choosing the Right College" (http://isi.org/college_guide/choosing_right_college.html).
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com
COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
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John Adams “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.”
Ronald Reagan: 'Everybody that is for abortion has already been born'
"I never said I was worth it. I only said I wouldn't do it for less " William F. Buckley Jr.
the only problem is that a lot of jobs where you don't really need to have a college education, still give a person with a college degree a big advantage or even require one. Just look at my dad's plant. He's a pipefitter in a chemical plant (and has a 4 year degree) but when he got hired you didn't have to have one. Now to do the exact same job as him, it is pretty much required to have a bachelor's degree.
So, in other words Mr. Williams is a HUGE hypocrite, being as he is a professor at a university.
Wonder what he recommends as an alternative. Maybe shut down every university in the country. Sure would save taxpayers and parents a lot of money....
No not at all. He speaks the truth about so many who enter college just to enter college. Kids are pushed into that direction only to major in made up degrees such as Women Studies and/or Black studies. They grad and what are they going to do with the degree? That is only one point, there are many others.
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John Adams “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.”
Ronald Reagan: 'Everybody that is for abortion has already been born'
"I never said I was worth it. I only said I wouldn't do it for less " William F. Buckley Jr.
So, what does he recommend? Eliminating all "made up" degrees? Just because he is a professor in ecomomics and sees no use in some of these "made up" degrees, doesn't mean there aren't people that want an education in these subjects. If there weren't a demand for these degrees, the colleges would not have them.
To me they are worthless degrees, but if someone wants to study them, go for it. It just takes a little common sense to know if there is a job market for a certain field of study. Personally, I know if I would have chosen to study for a degree in basketweaving instead of engineering, I know my parents wouldn't have helped me through college. Same will go for my kids in a few years. I want them to go to college, but I am not going to throw money away. If someone else wants to, that is their business.
I can see Williams' point about it being money wasted to send unprepared students to college. And colleges do make money whether students graduate or not. Students and their parents, however, also have to accept some of the responsibility for choosing their degree, major, classes and teachers wisely.
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Jesus Christ--The reason for the season!
If you can read this, thank a teacher. If you can read this in English, thank a veteran.
If you're certain you know everything, there's little opportunity to learn anything.
Idon't understand where Williams wants to go withthis. This is America and people have the right to make bad decisions and live with them. If kids and their parents want to throw their money away, they have the right to do so. If at some point in their life they want to grow up and apply themselves (maybe go to college) they should have the opportunity to do that also.
Two of my best friends in high school were very average students. They never stood out at anything academically in high school. Both completely excelled when they went to college and have excelled in their professional careers for almost 20 years.
Again, what is Williams big claim to fame here? What does he want to do about it?
"There is possible trauma and poor self-esteem for having failed." Sounds a bit like some Xanaxed-out soccer mom arguing that the soccer teams shouldn't keep score so that the losers won't be traumatized [:'(]
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"Shoot him again....his soul is still dancing"
It's called informational cascadedad. It's a follow up to a recent article making the rounds in the paper in regards to how many kids make very poor choices when selecting their major at college.
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John Adams “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.”
Ronald Reagan: 'Everybody that is for abortion has already been born'
"I never said I was worth it. I only said I wouldn't do it for less " William F. Buckley Jr.
I don't understand the point of the article, either. I don't dispute the information contained, but I don't know what the "moral of the story" is.
A good education is a vital asset. If you are going to take pains to coach, shape, and form your children to prepare them for anindependent and a rich life as an adult, you need to place education high on the to-do list. You need to consider locating your residence where your kids can get a good education. You need to place high expectations on your kids for their performance in school. I grant that different children have different aptitudes and capabilities. I'm suggesting you encourage your children to apply themselves and get as much out of their educations as their individual aptitudes and capabilities permit. If your children are capable of college level studies, definitely that is better for them than not attending college. There is no dispute, I think, about these things.
If there is any message I would take away from the article, it would be to make damn sure my kids are not in that fraction of students that leave high school unprepared to succeed in college. It isn't that hard to succeed in college -- which I would define as maintaining a minimum of a C average. You need to be able to read. You need to have the self-discipline to invest time in preparing for classes rather than partying when no one is breathing down your neck and whipping you to keep studying. You need to be able to do a modicum of independent thinking. You need to be able to roll your butt out of bed and get to classes on time. You need to have the organizational skills that allow you to remember that a test is scheduled and to prepare slightly for the test. It really isn't rocket science. I suspect most people who fail at college fail because they don't do the things I have listed in the above paragraph.
There are probably a lot of people who start out going to junior colleges that for some reason don't navigate the transition to a four year college. You have to have worked out the coursework credit transfer game successfully, not necessarily an easy process. You need to come up with the money to do this (many people attend junior college while living at home with parents -- completing the degree at a four year college may involve moving away from home -- money issues as well as self-control issues then come to the front). Maybe you are just taking a few courses while working full-time and you get distracted, as a young person, by the abundance of money from your full-time job (abundant in the context of a single person living at home under parents's roof) and avoid the heavy lifting of full-time coursework. I would be interested in some slicing-and-dicing of the statistics to understand a bit more with respect to this angle -- role of junior colleges.
Very near and dear to my heart!
