Home Run

Walter Williams

IS COLLEGE EDUCATION WORTH IT?

The scam of higher education.

The fact of business is that colleges admit a far greater number of students than those who test as being college-ready. Why should students be admitted to college when they are not capable of academic performance at the college level?

 Admitting such students gets the nation's high schools off the hook.

 The nation's high schools can continue to deliver grossly fraudulent education — namely, issue diplomas that attest that students can read, write and compute at a 12th-grade level when they may not be able to perform at even an eighth- or ninth-grade level.

Many students who manage to graduate don't have a lot to show for their time and money. New York University professor Richard Arum, co-author of "Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses," says that his study shows that more than a third of students showed no improvement in critical thinking skills after four years at a university. That observation is confirmed by the many employers who complain that lots of recent graduates cannot seem to write an email that will not embarrass the company. In 1970, only 11 percent of adult Americans held college degrees. These degree holders were viewed as the nation's best and brightest. 

Today, over 30 percent hold college degrees, with a significant portion of these graduates not demonstrably smarter or more disciplined than the average American.

 Declining academic standards and grade inflation tend to confirm employer perceptions that college degrees say little about job readiness.

What happens to many of these ill-prepared college graduates? If they manage to become employed in the first place, their employment has little to do with their degree.

 One estimate is that 1 in 3 college graduates have a job historically performed by those with a high-school diploma or the equivalent.

 According to Richard Vedder, who is a professor of economics at Ohio University and the director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, we had 115,000 janitors, 16,000 parking lot attendants, 83,000 bartenders and about 35,000 taxi drivers with bachelor's degrees in 2012.

The bottom line is that college is not for everyone. There is absolutely no shame in a youngster's graduating from high school and learning a trade. Doing so might earn him much more money than many of his peers who attend college.

DYI:

Just as my headline states:  Home Run for Walter Williams is a huge understatement.  American educational system from top to bottom is deplorable; only repaired through free market reforms.  Government needs to be pulled out of the educational process starting with the Department of Education.  For the life of me I have no idea what those people do except spend vast sums of my tax dollars furthering an atrocious public schools in the suburbs and shocking unspeakable (main stream press) of staggering proportion in the inner cities.  Regrettably I’ve come to the conclusion parents who have their children in public schools are committing child neglect!  At first I would only cry out “child neglect” as a way of gaining attention to the growing public schools scandals.  Now it is both.

A two prong attack needs to be levied by the parents.  The first is shop intelligently for private schools or home school when ever possible as time and money permits.  Those who do go private or home school have the odds in their favor of obtaining a quality education.  This will highlight the deplorable conditions as parents escape the clutches of government schools.   Second vote for politicians who advocate free market reforms in education – and holding them accountable – when they lie – voting them out of office.  No one said it would be easy and unfortunately the battle never ends as academia is the breeding ground for socialist who attempt utopia through government. 

   DYI