I’m glad to see that the Times Editorial Board finally has some questions about college. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/13/opinion/making-college-pay.html?hp&rref=opinion I think they are still missing the main point and conflating college degree with college education. I also think that their statistics paint too rosy a picture. It is important to dig into the data to see which college grads are making good salaries, from which era, and whether it is because high school degrees have been dumbed down. In other words, how much high school education have we switched to college, etc…?
I posted two comments. Here is the first one. I will put the second one in a new post. The second one argues that more college education is good for the economy.
In the last paragraph in the comment on this post, I cite some data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I think that data gives more of an indication that there is something wrong with education.
The Editorial Board is finally moving in the right direction when it realizes that “..more college won’t change the economy’s low-wage trajectory.” More college “education” (something easily confused with “more college”) will help the economy, though.
A major reason for the confusion about what is a college education is that too many college’s are businesses that realize that they can take advantage of uneducated “consumers” (once quaintly called “students”) and well-educated – but far too trusting – adults. Those adults just accept it that college professors and administrators have integrity. I have been there as a professor (at an “elite” school) and I can attest that some do have integrity; but many don’t. It is the ones who don’t who are willing to do whatever it takes to bring the school revenues and prestige.
Until the public realizes how bad it is, little will change. College will continue to be a drain on the economy by sucking in hopeful young people, telling them they are educated, and sending them out for either no job or a bad job. (The Editorial Board can look at “A Tale Out of School” on my blog, inside-hgiher-ed.com, to read how this happens.)
Though, it is true that “The recent jobless rate for college graduates ages 25 and older was 3.2 percent”, a further search of the BLS shows that, for those under 29, it was 13.5% in 2011, and 9% for those with just a bachelors degree in 2007. The new college degree is not your grandmother’s college degree.”
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