Should Everyone Go to College?
By Matthew Dunn
During
this week and next, students, educators, and parents will be worrying about
standardized tests being given throughout New York State. Although these tests have given anxiety in
the past, the tests given to Middle and Elementary school students have taken
on a new flavor this year. This year the
tests will be based on the Common Core Standards for English Language Arts and
Mathematics. These standards were
designed because of the poor performance of American college students. By implementing these standards, schools are
supposed to be positioning students for college and careers and preparing them
to better compete in the global economy.[1]
New
York State changed the tests to comply with the Common Core Standards as part
of the Race to the Top Initiative put forward by the Obama Administration. The Race to the Top Initiative put forward by
the Department of Education is designed to improve the quality of public
schools, increase the amount of choice that parents have in choosing a school,
and to make sure that students are prepared by schools for the world of college
and careers. State education departments
choosing to take part in Race to the Top, would have to submit their plans to
the Department of Education explaining how they planned to implement the
different aspects of Race to the Top.
States which won the competition which be granted additional funds for
education.[2]
New York State was one of the winning states in the competition and therefore
it needed to implement the Common Core Standards on its state assessments in
reading and mathematics.
The
Common Core Standards and the Race to the Top Initiative are two of the more
recent efforts to improve America’s schools.
Since 2001, with the passage of the No Child Left Behind law, there has
been an ongoing effort by the government to implement reforms of the
educational system of the United States.
It had been said for years before that, that schools were not
adequately educating students in the
United States, and the United States was quickly falling behind other nations
in terms of educational abilities.
Critics have and continue to argue that if The United States does not
improve its educational programs, then we will fall behind other nations in the
new global economy. In order to improve
educational programs the government is now putting more focus on the quality of
schools, and schools which are said to not measure up to standards can be
closed. Therefore schools now have more
pressure to perform well on state assessments.
In
addition to the actions of the government, there have been many investigative
reports as well as some high profile documentary films that have exposed how
the educational system of the United States is failing. Many of the writers and producers of these
films seem to agree to some major points, that U.S. schools are not properly
preparing students for the world of the 21st century. Because of this they advocate for more
accountability and choice in America’s schools.
They believe that a more educated workforce is needed to meet the demand
for high skill occupations which have become the dominant professions of today.
However,
while the critics of the American educational system seem to have the admirable
goals of creating an educational system where every American student can go to
college and then find a successful career, there is another side to their
story. In fact the story is much more
complicated than schools, and requires a close look at what the United States
is like today.
Jonathan
Alter a senior editor of Newsweek
magazine says in the film Waiting for
Superman “ Nowadays if you don’t go to college in America, you’re kind of
screwed. And America’s kind of screwed.”[3] This comment follows an animation discussing
how most public schools were designed with the idea that most students would
not go to college during the Post-War era, and that most would go into
manufacturing and agriculture. However,
now we have an economy which has many high skill jobs many of which cannot be
filled because of lack of an educated workforce.
This
part of the film, which is one of the central points of the educational reform
movement today both omits and distorts information about the United States
economy. The film makes the point that
the world has changed and that our economy is no longer based on
manufacturing. However, this is not just
some force of nature as the film shows.
Since the 1970s the United States has become a de-industrialized
nation. This did not happen because the
work force of the United States was lacking but in fact was a conscious effort
by multinational corporations to save money on labor costs. As almost all of us know when we look at our
consumer products almost none of them say made in the USA anymore. Corporations have outsourced, downsized, and
relocated their labor forces to other countries around the world, where there
are almost no labor protections and no trade unions, so they can pay near slave
wages. The critics of education should
take these facts into account and if they are looking to reasons for
unemployment, they should look at the organizations which have caused much of
the unemployment.[4]
However,
the critics of education like to point to one industry which seems to be thriving
in well paying jobs. The computer
technology sector. Bill Gates, the
founder of Microsoft, has emerged as a leader in criticizing the current
educational system, as well as the leading funder of alternative educational
models. He asserts that the United
States does not have a well educated workforce and that they are not prepared
for the work of the 21st century.
Because of this, technology companies like Microsoft have had to import
workers from other parts of the world.[5]
(Ironically as Gates and his foundation fund push college readiness, Gates and
a slew of other technological innovators did not graduate from college. Besides Gates, his former partner at
Microsoft Paul Allen, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Apple’s Steve Jobs, and
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Sean Parker have all either dropped out of
college or never attended in the first place.
If we follow the example of these technological innovators, it seems as
if college is not necessary.)
While
indeed computer companies and the media would have us believe that working at a
technology company is one of the best jobs there is, where you have great
bosses, and get to play video games all the time, this is far from the
truth. It is well known that the technology
bubble burst in 2000. Since then
employment in the technology sector has neither been as profitable or as
stable. In fact Microsoft itself has
been well known for hiring temporary workers and for outsourcing many of its
key functions to other companies, so it keeps the least amount of people
possible on its payroll.[6] One wonders with only a highly select few
programmers and most of its actual production pushed to low wage countries,
what are these great jobs that they talk about so much.[7]
Like Henry Ford in the early 20th century, technology magnates
believe that technology is here to solve all of our problems. However, they fail to discuss how technology
and automation make so many human positions unnecessary for major corporations.
In
addition to the myth of employment from college education, an issue that rarely
is discussed by educational reformers is if more people are expected to be
going to college, who is going to pay for it.
According to the New York Federal Reserve, student debt is now higher
than auto loans, credit card loans, and home-equity debts as more and more
students have gone to college in recent years.
As more students go to college, tuition rises and therefore so does the
amount of loans that students have.[8] In New York State tuition at state colleges
in 2003 was $3400 per year for undergraduates.[9] In 2013, it was $5570 approximately at 64%
increase in 10 years.[10] If tuition continues to increase at this rate
for another ten years than tuition at state colleges and universities in New
York for undergraduates will be over $9000 in 2023. Also this is also only undergraduate
tuition. Many college careers now
require graduate degrees, for which the tuition is substantially higher. In addition to this colleges have numerous
fees as well as various expenses for students.
These figures also do not take into account what exclusive private
colleges and university costs are, so of which are near $60,000 per year.[11]
What
might be at work if even more students started going to college would be a law
of unintended consequences. More
students would attend and accumulate even more debt. Economists have already stated that student
debt is preventing many younger Americans from accumulating material items such
as houses and cars which are seen as bedrock of being middle class in
America. Some have even predicted that a
student debt bubble similar to the housing bubble is developing in the United
States. Even if all students who went to
college found good jobs after college, it seems as though because of the high
cost of college, the costs might outweigh the benefits in some situations.
Perhaps
what is most misleading about the facts and figures that are promoted by
educational reformers is how the U.S. economy has ceased to be an economic
powerhouse and that our financial and unemployment problems are the result of
the failure of the unemployment crisis.
In a debate about inequality in America in 2011, economist Allan Meltzer of Carnegie
Mellon declared “Income distribution is spread because of the failure of the
education system.”[12] Statements such as this lie about the impact
that educational achievement can have on a nation’s economy. Finland is often one country whose education
system is thought to be one of the best in the world. It has a rigorous curriculum, and its
students have very high rates of achievement.
However, even with its marvelous education system, Finland currently has
an unemployment rate of 8.1%.[13] At the current time the U.S. unemployment
rate is 7.6%.[14] So if we are to believe the rhetoric of the
reformers, than why, even though the United States has a poor educational
system, do we have lower levels of unemployment, than Finland, one of the best
educational systems in the world?
Public
schools have long been a point for debating in the United States. What should be taught and how it should be
taught have been questions that academics have been trying to answer since the
idea of public schools came into being.
Now, educational reformers argue that all students need to be ready for
college level work, because if they are not than the U.S. economy will
suffer. To achieve these goals they
advocate for more accountability in schools in terms of test results and
teacher evaluations, and the creation of more choice of schools for parents and
students. However, where is the choice
in the statement that all students need to be prepared for college. College is supposed be an exploratory time in
a person’s life when they learn and discover more about themselves and what
kind of adult they want to be. It is not
simply 13th grade where they learn how to do a job. Moreover, as college is still an individual
choice, schools should not push agendas on students. Our schools are not laboratories where new
theories about the American capitalist system need to be tested. Students in schools are not supposed be
soldiers in America’s economic battle with the rest of the world. Rather it should be a place where they can
interact with older and more educated members of society, learn a diverse
curriculum, make friends with their peers, and learn about themselves. When we put so much emphasis on how schools
and students need to contribute to the global economy, than we ignore one of
the main reasons why public schools were started in the first place: to make
good citizens.
[1] National
Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Council of Chief State School
Officers. Common Core Standards. National Governors Association Center for
Best Practices, Council of Chief State School Officers, Washington D.C.
2010. http://www.corestandards.org/.
[2]
U.S. Department of Education. “Race to
the Top Overview.” http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/performance/new-york-year-2.pdf.
[3]
Alter, Jonathan. Waiting for Superman.
Directed by Davis Guggenheim. Los
Angeles: Paramount Vantage, 2010.
[4]
This fact has been pointed out in numerous publications and films since the
1980s and has been a well known aspect of life for many Americans who have
suffered due to the lack of good available work for the last two decades.
[5]
Gates, William III. Waiting for Superman.
Ibid.
[6]
Klein, Naomi. No Logo. New York: Picador,
2000. This book has multiple examples
from Microsoft’s labor practices as well as the labor practices of
multinational firms around the world.
[7]
For another example of how the technology industry inflates itself go to
www.code.org, where they talk about learning the skill of coding, and how so
many wonderful jobs in America are not being filled because schools don’t teach
this valuable skill.
[8]
Brown, Meta and Sydnee Caldwell. “Young
Borrowers Retreat from Housing and Auto Markets.” Federal Reserve Bank of New
York. http://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2013/04/young-student-loan-borrowers-retreat-from-housing-and-auto-markets.html. (Accessed April 17, 2013).
[9]
Smith Matt. “Activists tell Albany: Freeze SUNY Tuition.” The Daily Star Newspaper. http://old.thedailystar.com/news/stories/2002/12/06/ons.html. (December 6, 2002)
[10]
Stony Brook Tuition and Fees schedule. http://www.stonybrook.edu/bursar/tuition/tuition-and-fee-rates.shtml. ( Accessed April 19, 2013).
[11]
Accessing the website of any elite college will explain what tuition costs
are. For example the University
Registrar at Stanford explains that tuition is $13,750 a quarter, three times
yearly. I chose Stanford University for
search because of its close proximity to Silicon Valley. http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/registrar/students/tuition-fees_12-13.
[12]
Meltzer, Allan. RT Crosstalk. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq88v-VAN4M. (10/3/2011).
[13]
Eurostat Statistics. http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/table.do?tab=table&language=en&pcode=teilm020&tableSelection=1&plugin=1. (Accessed 4/19/2013)
[14]
Bureau of Labor Statistics Economic Release.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm. (Accessed 04/05/2013).
