Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Waiting for Superman

According to the Pew study, 1 out of 6 college grads felt that college wasn't worth it. That is a substantial enough fraction for me to conclude that "College isn't for everyone, even everyone who can manage to go in the current environment." is a rational statement.

There is no reason for someone who loves a craft or a trade to feel that they should have to go to a traditional college, when an apprenticeship or technical certificate would serve them as well without creating a mountain of debt. I can think of three men in my immediate circle of friends who are all more than moderately gifted (SB-LM IQs range from 167-185) and who loved machines and mechanical work, and chose to be automotive mechanics. One turned down a full college scholarship to go into the military with a mechanic MOS. One chose to go through one of the most rigorous automotive technical programs in the country. The third went to college, got a BA in Psychology in two years, and then got out and went back to working on cars for a living. All eventually became ASE certified Master Mechanics. None of them regretted going into a trade. The one who went to college regretted acquiring debt to pay for knowledge that he could have acquired for free in the library in his spare time.

My father was a phenomenal cabinet maker. He learned his trade working beside his father and grandfather. He graduated high school with a Regent's diploma, and could have gone to college out of high school - but what would a Bachelor's degree have done for him, besides take him out of his craft for four years? He eventually did get an Associate's degree in his forties, when the technical school where he had been teaching cabinetry and woodworking for five years decided that all of their faculty had to have at least an AS. It was the most ridiculous exercise I had ever seen. He didn't learn a thing, and it just wasted his time and money.

If you are going to argue that "College is for everyone.", a single counterexample is sufficient to disprove that assertion.

Throwing more anecdotal evidence at this argument that college isn't for everyone-

I spent two years as an administrator at a vocational and technical charter high school. The charter graduated kids who had spent 4 years studying graphic design, culinary arts, childcare and child development, construction as well as the necessary high school graduation classes. Most of my students were foster kids, kids in the juvenile detention system or kids coming from very, very hard lives. Getting a job was their goal, not going to college. They simply wanted to have food and clothes and a useful skill they could put to work.

Our district shut the charter down because of the expense of running the school (tools are expensive) and because we did not promote college for all. We didn't teach a single AP class or even honors college prep classes. But you know what? Our graduation rate was 100% for 5 years and every one of our kids passed the required graduation exam in California.

I followed 15 kids that were sophomores and juniors afterward to find out what happened to them. Two graduated high school. The others all dropped out- some after transferring to the regular public school, some after going to the alternative/credit recovery school.

College for all failed those kids. And thousands more around the country who can't even imagine student loans. If they decided at 28 to go to community college or to go back to school, they were prepared educationally and mentally to make those decisions. We certainly never said "you can't go to college". But we did say "Hey, you're really great with your hands- did you know an apprentice electrician can make $60K?"

Wow. Very sad story. Sounds like it was a great school.

The kinds of kids we had didn't raise test scores Val, didn't earn any big fancy awards or get any positive attention. Putting them in one school was great for the kids, bad for the district. Who wants a reputation of being the school where everyone is "Basic" or below?

It was a real tragedy. I often think of the trickle down effect and how many lives could have been changed if we'd been able to stay open regardless of test scores and budgets. I'm pretty sure it costs more for the kids who went back into the system in some way than it did to educate them.

Great story. And very true.

The "college for all" mantra is creating a permanent underclass because these people cannot find that first job that leads to personal growth.

It also harms us as a nation by hollowing out our trades professions.

Of course, it does benefit the colleges and admins because they do not have to compete for money with the trade schools.

I suspect this is why the "hatchet job" was tried on for-profit schools - which backfired BTW.

About half of my IT staff has two year or less certs. IMHO, I could have 90% with just certs.

Front lines? LOL.

Being in the infantry today is like playing college football with the demands on your body. I don't know of anyone who does not have bad knees or backs after they reach 30.

Or the training accidents that kill and maim. Or the bad backs from humping the 120 pound rucks. My sister has permanent disability from her 6 years and my hearing and left hand are bad from my six years.

The US military runs the largest trade school program in the world. A kid does not have to join the Army to go to a trade school.

But, done right, they probably could not do better.

And I think a lot of really bright kids could be an officer after getting their BA/BS and learn how to lead. Six years in a post-grad leadership school, then get out and go into executive management.

The training I received in the Army was top notch, far better than anything I got when I was working on my MBA. Without that training, I would not be doing what I am today.

Eric Greitens was a Rhodes Scholar and became a Navy SEAL officer following his time at Oxford.

http://www.ericgreitens.com/

Beckee,
I think you've raised a lot of good questions throughout this discussion as pertains to perception and goals for students who may or may not eventually attend college. There is a big difference between talking about college in a classroom full of kids who already see college as a possibility and talking about college in a classroom full of kids who either have not considered it or who assume that they can�t have access. It occurs to me that more caution is needed in the classroom full of kids who are being raised with an expectation that they will go to college. Those are the kids who are likely to be defining success very narrowly and closing off other career options. Talking about college in a classroom full of kids who otherwise wouldn�t consider it is important. Because going to college is outside the norm for their community, they are less likely to close off other options in response, but may never consider college otherwise. That got me wondering about all of those statistics related to outcomes for college graduates and how they might apply differently in different subgroups of the population. I recall a friend of mine, who is African-American, talking about how she would never go to the grocery store in jeans and a tee-shirt or a pair of sweats because as an African-American woman she was treated with suspicion whenever she entered a store in something other than professional dress. In the context of this discussion, that got me wondering whether the lack of a college degree impacted African-Americans differently. In a culture that still has plenty of racism to go around, is the college degree necessary to acceptance in the job market in a different way than it is for white Americans? A quick search led me to:

this report

I have not read the whole chapter, but I looked to see if I could get an answer to that question and what I did find (in table 389) is that for those 25 and older, in the most recent year documented (2009), unemployment dipped below 10% ONLY in the segment of the African-American population with bachelor�s degrees. By contrast, within the same age demographic, unemployment for whites only climbed above 10% for whites without a high school diploma.
My point is not that everyone should go to college, but that we need to take into account that the impact of doing something or not doing something will play differently when combined with other significant societal factors. Just as it turns out that medical research done exclusively on males is often misleading when applied to females, discussions of college outcomes for a demographic that is disproportionately white can be misleading when applied to racial or ethnic subgroups.
Similar data
can be found here but it is less recent (2003)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/20/us/20school.html
Review of Census Data Reveals Information Tied to Schools
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
New York Times
August 19, 2011

...

But degrees mean higher earnings. The average annual pay for a worker with a bachelor�s degree was $58,613 in 2008, nearly double the $31,283 earned by workers with a high school diploma only, the bureau said.

<end of excerpt>

The first sentence above implies that the degree causes the entire differential, but I think it only explains PART of the differential.

Anyone else wish that these types of articles would include mean, median, and mode when they reference "average" earnings, test scores, and other outcomes?

Aculady: yes! Please, all the data!

DeeDee