Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Should Everyone Go to College?


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 Crosstalkhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq88v-VAN4M.  (10/3/2011).
[14] Bureau of Labor Statistics Economic Release.  http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm.  (Accessed 04/05/2013).

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