The College Fix

Here comes yet more evidence the commonly-accepted wisdom that you must obtain a college degree, no matter the considerable costs, is a bit off. The Huffington Post reports on the findings of a new book by Richard Arum of New York University and Josipa Roksa of the University of Virginia:

A study of more than 2,300 undergraduates found 45 percent of students show no significant improvement in the key measures of critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing by the end of their sophomore years.

Not much is asked of students, either. Half did not take a single course requiring 20 pages of writing during their prior semester, and one-third did not take a single course requiring even 40 pages of reading per week. …

The study, an unusually large-scale effort to track student learning over time, comes as the federal government, reformers and others argue that the U.S. must produce more college graduates to remain competitive globally. But if students aren’t learning much, that calls into question whether boosting graduation rates will provide that edge.

Arum and Roksa aren’t the first to point out why a major push to boost graduation rates won’t necessarily help the U.S. economy in fundamental ways. Last month, Ohio University economist Richard Vetter co-authored a study showing that over 300,000 bartenders had college degrees they didn’t need (emphasis added):

Even with alternative assumptions, a majority of the increased college graduate population is doing jobs that historically have been filled by persons with lesser education. …

The push to increase the number of college graduates seems horribly misguided from a strict economic/vocational perspective. It is precisely that perspective that is emphasized by those, starting with President Obama, who insist that we need to have more college graduates. …

Lastly, I am saddened that this is happening. Many of those advocating more access are well meaning and have pure motives, but they are ignorant of the evidence. But higher education is all about facts, knowledge—learning how the world works and disseminating that information to others. Some in higher education KNOW about all of this and are keeping quiet about it because of their own self-interest. We are deceiving our young population to mindlessly pursue college degrees when very often that is advice that is increasingly questionable.

Studies like these are incredibly important because they arm higher ed skeptics with facts to back up what we suspect is true–namely, that funding of higher ed is way out of line with the actual value of a college degree, university curricula are woefully inadequate at educating students given what they’re spending, and administrators have not been held accountable for the whole mess.

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