How Did We Ever Get Higher Ed Backwards?

[marmar]

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:




How Did We Ever Get Higher Ed Backwards?
May 21, 2011

Back in the mid 20th century, colleges and universities helped America beat down economic inequality. Now they reinforce it.

By Sam Pizzigati


The American Dream isn’t quite unfolding the way Richard Silva expected. The 20-year-old Silva is currently studying at Cerritos College, a two-year school south of Los Angeles. He graduated from high school in 2009 and anticipated, back then, that he’d be transferring to a four-year school this coming fall.

No way. Cerritos is not offering the courses students like Silva need to graduate. In 2008, the college’s summer session offered 1,352 courses. This summer’s course roster totals about 200. A two-year course of study, protesting Cerritos students charged last week, now takes three to five, even six, years.

“At this rate,” Silva said last week, “I won’t be able to transfer to a four year university until 2013.”

Richard Silva hardly stands alone. Less than half U.S. high school grads today who go on to postsecondary education receive any degree within six years. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://toomuchonline.org/how-did-we-ever-get-higher-ed-backwards/

[XanaDUer]

1. I'm so glad I'm middle aged

I am hearing this more and more from co-workers who are also attending college - no way can you get a four-year degree in four years!

Insane!

[Jazz Ambassador]

2. At the risk of blaming the victim

This piece strikes me as an exercise in false nostalgia. Colleges and universities didn't do a better job of closing the class gap 50 years ago; society did a better job of closing the class gap, by providing good-paying jobs that didn't require a college education. Now that those days are gone, we're sending more kids than ever to college, but I'd say -- in my experience, as a former professor at public and private universities -- the single biggest reason students struggle in college is that they aren't prepared for it. We've created an untenable position for higher ed: asking it to continue giving us "college graduates" worthy of the name while sending them raw material (our high school grads) who in no way have the intellectual tools (let alone discipline) to do the job being asked for them.

The obvious solution would be for colleges not to admit unqualified students, but with so many institutions of higher ed in the US, there's no economic incentive for them to do so; they'd put themselves out of business. Insetad, there's an incentive to keep passing kids through the system, just as in their elementary and high schools. And in so doing, I suppose they do help create a class gap -- by rendering their own degrees worthless as documents that vouchsafe the qualities of their graduates, and therefore giving an even further advantage to graduates of "name" schools whose reputations still mean something.