A few weeks ago, the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that approximately 70.1 percent of all 2009 high school graduates in America enrolled in college or university. This is the highest post-secondary-school attendance rate ever recorded in the United States.
Although initially one might take this statistic as a positive reflection of a burgeoning American education system, a recent article in The New York Times by Jacques Steinberg '88 attempts to upend such interpretations. Titled "Plan B: Skip College," Steinberg's piece questions the habitual, almost mechanical, tendency towards post-secondary education in this country.
The argument Steinberg outlines hinges on the notion that there are several industries in America, which are in need of skilled professionals with a high level of expertise, but not necessarily a college diploma. In the article, professor Richard Vedder of Ohio University says that the future might hold a slightly higher demand for brain surgeons, quantum physicists and the like, but this demand will ultimately be dwarfed by the ever-increasing vacancies in jobs that do not require a college education (i.e. the majority of jobs). Even though teachers and parents alike are quick to pressure America's 18-year-olds into spending upwards of $100,000 on a college education, Steinberg says, attending college probably isn't the right decision for every single high school grad. After all, Vedder "likes to ask," why do 15 percent of America's mailmen have college degrees?
Similar articles abound. A recent Daily Finance piece titled "College Enrollment Hits New Record, but That's Not Necessarily Good News," highlights the large number of students who are simply unable to complete their college years. According to that article, among 2009 college freshmen who graduated in the bottom 40 percent of their high school class, 75 percent will never actually earn a college diploma.
While such perspectives are interesting, they unjustifiably conceive of college as merely a means to an end, rather than as an end in and of itself. College is not exclusively about a student's academic pursuits or professional preparation. A physical college diploma should not be regarded as an asset in isolation. Instead, it is meant to symbolize a four-year transition or transformation. The by-product that piece of paper you get at graduation is largely meaningless; it is the underlying process, which is important.
Attending college must be understood as a segue not into a profession, but into adulthood. Vedder's camp of economists are justified in their reasoning only insofar as going to college is viewed as a purely financial investment. Perhaps going to college for a few years before dropping out without a degree, or graduating from college only to hold a job for which college is not a prerequisite doesn't make good economic sense. But even so, the benefit and importance of college cannot be viewed in some sort of financial vacuum. Do we want what's best for American society or the American labor market?
Over the past three years I've learned more outside of the classroom at Dartmouth than I have sitting in any lecture hall. We don't pay $40,000 a year for nine or 10 hours of class a week. Instead, we are paying for an entire experience. More important than the actual content of the classes a college student takes are the informal, implicit lessons he or she learns along the way: how to communicate with others, how to manage one's time, how to empathize. This is not learning how to be an employee; it's learning how to be a human being.
Granted, every college is not Dartmouth. Perhaps certain schools don't cultivate the holistic experience that we get in Hanover. Even so, I can't help but to think that going to college for most of these 70.1 percent is about a lot more than entering the workforce and making money in the most cost-effective manner. Accordingly, piloting these students away from college is sacrificing their personal development for the sake of professional progress and efficiency. We should not shortchange the moral, spiritual, intellectual or otherwise human development of America's high school graduates simply because a group of economists believes attending college, for some of these students, is financially unnecessary or irresponsible. Trying to quantify or "price" the lessons and maturity that come with attending college is an imprecise, and probably impossible, endeavor.
