COLUMN: College isn’t for everyone
This year, Kwame R. Brown, chairman of the Council of the District of Columbia, announced his intention to sponsor a bill that would compel all high school students in Washington, D.C., to take either the SAT or the ACT and apply to at least one college before they can graduate.
His intention is to increase high school graduation rates and help high school students prepare for college.
While preparing high school students to go to college is a good, even necessary, idea, there are inherent problems in Brown’s legislation. The first, and most obvious, is that college isn’t for everyone. A four-year university degree is intended to give a rounded experience, and graduates are expected to know about not just their selected field of study, but the arts, sciences and cultures that exist in the world. And frankly, we all know people in college who couldn’t care less about any of that.
The Chronicle of Higher Education states that high school education may not be for everyone, and cites the shocking statistic that 25 percent of American males do not graduate high school.
Economist Alex Tabarrok, in another Chronicle article concerning college dropouts, stated the classroom is the only road to knowledge in the U.S. Students are expected to sit quietly and digest information for 12-16 years, and Tabarrok doesn’t blame some of them for burning out. Learning at a desk isn’t appealing to everyone.
Typically, those who do not perform well in high school do not perform well in college. This is evidenced by the surprising statistics at our own university. Gaining admission requires only a 2.5 GPA in high school and an ACT score of 18. Between 2000 and 2010, less than 25 percent of USU students graduated within four years. The average six-year graduation rate is just above 52 percent.
Meanwhile, those who don’t graduate are less likely to have had the high school grades and test scores to receive scholarships. Therefore, they end up with equal or more debt compared to their peers who graduate college and no degree to show for it.
The story isn’t much better for many who do graduate. The marketplace is currently flooded with college graduates who end up taking jobs that are more suited for high school graduates, simply because the supply of college degrees is exceeding the current demand.
According to Businessweek, there are currently 100,000 college graduates who hold janitor jobs, while 16,000 are parking lot attendants.
In the Huffington Post, Patricia McGuire warned of another issue in universal college degrees: College becomes a right rather than a privilege that is earned.
“We already see too many students who believe that they deserve a degree simply for showing up – that’s how some got their high school diplomas,” she states.
While the privilege of attaining higher education should be extended to everyone, a four-year university degree should not be given without an intense amount of scholarly effort on the part of the student. And the national statistics showing 40 percent of college attendees drop out shows most people are unwilling or unable to compete at a college level.
To those who fall into this category, vocational training is a much better option. It sets an individual up to learn short-term skills for rapid workplace entry. Those who go this route bypass spending thousands of dollars on liberal education classes they don’t care about, and forgo the years spent unemployed during college.
The bottom line is that some people don’t need college to be successful. My younger brother is an entrepreneurial genius, but I’ll be amazed if he manages to graduate high school. He’ll always make good money because he’s smart and resourceful, but he’d be wasting his time and money if he tried to sit through four years of college. A college diploma has never been a one-way ticket toward financial success, and it never will be, but it is almost always a financial risk that needs to be considered more carefully than it currently is.
All these things considered, it seems Chairman Brown would be better off spending less money making his college program readily available to those who want it, rather than spending more money compelling those who don’t.
– Liz Emery is a senior majoring in English with a creative writing emphasis. Her column is published every other Wednesday. Comments on her column can be sent to liz.emery@yahoo.com.