Michelle Obama's going on: 'Everbody must have college'-
Why? Why? What is the reason why everyone has to go
to college? Especially when college is so utterly
meaningless right now, it has no core curriculum and
people end up saddled with huge debts.
So opines the feminist cultural critic, Camille Paglia, in a recent interview in the Wall Street Journal.
(Saturday/Sunday, December 28-29, 2013) She goes on to state that the widespread emphasis on college is "social snobbery on the part of a lot of upper-middle-class families who want the sticker in the window". I'm happy to say that I share many of these views with Ms. Paglia, whom I admire, and have expressed them frequently in this blog.
As Glenn Harlan Reynolds, law professor at the University of Tennessee states in his new book, The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education From Itself
America's higher education problem calls for both
wiser choices by families and better value from
schools. For some students, this will mean choosing
a major carefully (opting for a more practical area of
study, like engineering over humanities), going to a
less expensive community college or skipping college
altogether to learn a trade.
("Degrees of Value: Making College Pay Off", Wall Street Journal, Saturday-Sunday, January 4-5, 2014)
The community college system has, in many regions, changed its model from a freshman program of unrelated courses to a more defined program wherein students' choices are limited to courses which will lead to a specific degree. Many times the program is designed to award certificates attesting to acquisition of employable skills along the way. Davis Jenkins, a senior research associate with the Community College Research Center at Columbia University states, "There's more attention to making the path through education to careers clearer, because people cannot afford to spend time earning unnecessary credits." (Wall Street Journal, Saturday-Sunday, December 14-15, 2013)
Mr. Reynolds agrees:
Today's emphasis on measuring college education in terms
of future earnings and employability may strike some as
philistine but most students have little choice. When you
could pay your way through college by waiting tables, the
idea that you should 'study what interests you' was more viable
than it is today, when the cost of a four-year degree often
runs to six figures. For an 18-year-old, investing such a sum
in education without a payoff makes no more sense than
buying a Ferrari on credit.
An interesting graphic from the Reynolds article highlights the following statistics:
71% College graduates in the class of 2012 who had student loan debt
$29,400 Average student debt per borrower
6% Annual increase in student debt at graduation from 2008 to 2012
As University of Michigan economics finance professor, Mark Perry, has calculated,
tuition for all universities, public and private, increased from 1978 to 2011
at an annual rate of 7.45%. By comparison, health-care costs increased
by only 5.8% and housing, notwithstanding the bubble, increased
at 4.3%. Family incomes, on the other hand, barely kept up
with the consumer-price index, which grew at an annual rate of 3.8%.
(WSJ, January 4-5, 2014)
41% College graduates who say their jobs don't require a college degree
I had contemplated not continuing my blog in 2014. Most of my "tips" regarding career exploration and planning were posted in the first year or two. (Yes, I began this blog four years ago this August.) Lately, I've been using my posts to draw attention to articles and books which may be of interest to students and parents looking for guidance. If you follow the suggestions I've made in archived posts, you should be finding these things out for yourself. Then I came upon the Paglia and Reynolds articles. They are just so worthwhile I needed to bring them to your attention and urge you to read them for yourselves. In the future I will post when something similar occurs. I won't be able to let you know specifics as to when that will be, as I have in the past. I may write weekly, monthly or not at all. I apologize for any inconvenience but I want to enjoy this experience and not make it a chore. As I've said often, most of this can be done on your own. I, most likely, will check in - or butt in, depending on your opinion of my posts - from time to time to keep you abreast of things.
HAPPY 2014 !
