By the time Herbert Hoover had become president, education in the US was considered to be compulsory. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), and mandatory K–12 education, essentially, became the law of the land.

For all practical purposes, that was the world I grew up in, and it served me well. I was brought up in a small town in Appalachia. Despite that disadvantage, I received a solid K-12 education.

My parents, of modest financial means, couldn’t give me any money to advance my education, but they gave me something more valuable—expectations. I was expected to be the first in my family to go to college.

The dedicated teachers in my small town in Appalachia had prepared me well academically. College, back then, was affordable, and I was able to work my way through a state university with minimum wage jobs. The economy in the 1960’s was humming along. Since there were very few college graduates, I was scooped up in a heartbeat by a Fortune 100 company, and went on to enjoy a prosperous career.

My life was no “Horatio Alger” tale, but it was a mini-America success story driven by the power of education.

However, in the past half century, education in the US has basically “gone to Hell in a handbasket.”

The Deterioration in the Quality of a High School Education
The Deterioration in the Quality of a College Education
The “Gutting” of Vocational Education
The Explosion in the Cost of College
The Student Loan Crisis
The College For All Movement

I’m going to focus on “college for all,” what I call “College Mania.”

Egalitarianism is at the core of our post-secondary education crisis. Many, many Americans, at heart, believe every student should have the opportunity to go to college.

Do you remember reading about French sociologist and political theorist, Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), when you were in high school? He visited the United States in 1831. Upon his return to France, he documented his observations in the two volume, “Democracy in America,” which became one of the most influential books of the 19th century.
He was most impressed by America’s spirit of egalitarianism—the doctrine that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities.

“Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.”

That principle can’t always be applied in today’s world.

I was a very mediocre high school QB. Fortunately, I had the good sense to understand that I had no future on a college gridiron. If I had “walked on,” the coaches wouldn’t have wasted five minutes embarrassing me into an ignominious retreat.

But when it comes to “cognitive ability,” it doesn’t work that way. Most colleges in the US don’t hold to a rigorous standard when it comes to the “academic walk-ons.”

Half of Those Matriculating Today Aren’t College Material.

Employers want graduates who can write a coherent paragraph, speak extempore, interpret qualitative and quantitative data, and do research. To acquire these skills, a student needs to have above average intelligence and be highly motivated. With forty-five percent of high school grads going on to college, more than half of them don’t fit that profile.

For example, of those who matriculate, twenty-five percent are quietly ushered off to the side for remediation, in the hopes they can be rescued and restored to the path of academic achievement.

Why do you think most colleges and universities actively lead on academically mediocre students?

We don’t need more students attending college. We need, on average, better academically qualified college students.

Two Thirds of Those Matriculating Don’t Get a Job That Requires a College Degree Today.

Forty percent drop out.
Twenty-six percent graduate with some kind of degree or another, but they can’t compete. They can’t get a job that requires a college degree.

The market is saturated. There aren’t enough well-paying, professional jobs for all the college grads today. What would we do with more?

The Quality of a College Education Has Deteriorated

Sixty years ago only seven percent went on to college. They tended to be the academically elite. The unwritten rule of thumb was the top 10%—an IQ of 120. Imagine you are teaching that class.
Today every Tom, Dick, and Harriet goes to college.
Look over your right shoulder. That guy behind you in English 101 thinks Catcher in the Rye is a book about baseball. Now, imagine teaching that class.

Opening up college to everyone is just going to exacerbate the deterioration of the quality of a college education.

I suggest you read Academically Adrift.

Summary

Way too many teenagers are being funneled into four-year institutions today, victims of a system that worships at the altar of “college readiness.”

Most of them are going to fail in one way or another. The solution is not to pour more students into the same funnel.

Repeat after me,

“College is NOT for everyone. College should not be a fundamental right.”

Notes

Underemployment

Vedder in Forbes | Crisis #2: Too Little Learning

https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardvedder/2019/03/25/the-triple-college-crisis-crisis-3-too-few-good-jobs/#7eec7104169f
https://www.quora.com/Is-Charles-Murray-correct-that-too-many-people-are-going-to-college/answer/Thomas-B-Walsh