Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Waiting for Superman

I'm not even a little bit angry. I'm asking questions because it leads to interesting and useful discussion. Is there an overlap between the time it is meaningful to talk about going to college, and the time "College is not for everyone" becomes "College is not for Student X in particular"?

And is there an overlap or a mismatch between who makes that decision for an individual and who *should* make that decision? Is that decision made more often on the characteristics of the parents than the characteristics of the child?

And does a teacher's decision to not encourage her students, in general, to attend college have every bit as much impact as deciding to encourage all of them?

I'm not as familiar with scholarships based on your major, as I went to a liberal arts college where one was expected to decide on a major after a few semesters of taking everything. My good friend was a talented artist, but she was from a working class family who had suffered much hardship (like losing all their possessions in a warehouse fire) and she couldn't afford the paints.

She thought about biology, having done a science fair project with white mice in high school. but didn't have the talent in that subject to go much beyond introductory courses. Then it turned out she was good at political science and passionate about arms control. She's a high ranking government official who travels on a diplomatic passport these days, and I don't believe she often thinks about art or biology.

Objective measures of college readiness find large racial gaps (see the articles below), which I don't think can be closed. Policymakers don't want to admit that. The Republican party is the natural home for pessimism/realism on gap closing, but Bush gave us just the opposite -- No Child Left Behind.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2011/0817/ACT-scores-up-more-US-students-ready-for-college
ACT scores up, more US students ready for college
By Amanda Paulson, Staff writer / August 17, 2011
Christian Science Monitor

...

The ACT�s college-readiness benchmarks � based on actual grades earned by students � are the minimum scores that indicate a student has a 75 percent chance of earning a C or better, or a 50 percent chance of earning a B or better, in a first-year credit-bearing college course.

...

The results also showed a significant race-based achievement gap. Just 4 percent of African-Americans met the benchmarks in all four subjects, compared with 11 percent of Hispanics and American Indians, 15 percent of Pacific Islanders, 31 percent of whites, and 41 percent of Asian-Americans. At least 50 percent of African-American, Hispanic, and American-Indian students didn�t meet any of the four benchmarks.

<end of excerpt>

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/n...tes-meet-college-readiness-standard.html
College-Readiness Low Among State Graduates, Data Show
By SHARON OTTERMAN
New York Times
June 14, 2011

Heightening concerns about the value of many of its high school diplomas, the New York State Education Department released new data on Tuesday showing that only 37 percent of students who entered high school in 2006 left four years later adequately prepared for college, with even smaller percentages of minority graduates and those in the largest cities meeting that standard.

In New York City, 21 percent of the students who started high school in 2006 graduated last year with high enough scores on state math and English tests to be deemed ready for higher education or well-paying careers. In Rochester, it was 6 percent; in Yonkers, 14.5 percent.

The new calculations, part of a statewide push to realign standards with college readiness, also underscored a racial achievement gap: 13 percent of black students and 15 percent of Hispanic students statewide were deemed college-ready after four years of high school, compared with 51 percent of white graduates and 56 percent of Asian-Americans.

...

*sigh*

Hi! My DD9 has been serious about Ballet and since 6 she has been in a pre-professional Ballet program (an hour away from our home). She thinks she would like to be in a company. To be a successful Ballet Dancer, one most often joins a company out of high school. She is smart, creative, motivated in all things. I am taking it a day at a time. Should I tell her to set her Ballet hopes lower so she can attend a university? I wonder all the time if the hours at Ballet will be taking away from extra curricular school related opportunities..or are distracting to her schooling. I wonder if she changes her mind later and wants to be a docter, or whatever, she will regret the years spent trying to be the best Ballet dancer. I guess you can only support them now, and hope that you are doing the right thing for later. But I certainly don't think that everone should or needs to go to college. (I've also though about having her accelerated so she graduates early, she can join a company at 16 and then go to college and 18 or 19...) No matter how hard you plan, college just isn't in the cards for some people and the last thing I want is to make her feel like a failure for chosing her passion over college. So, although we talk about what college she might go to some day, we also talk about which company she may be asked to join. I have a gifted neice who graduated HS at 16, got married and had a baby at 17 and bought a house at 18. I'm not at all thrilled with her decision, but she is the best mom and wife ever and she is so happy researching cloth diapers, baby food, educational toys and babysitting. College just doesn't make everybody happy.

The decision should be made by the student and no one else! If the parents can't afford the costs, the student has to find a way to pay for it, if his goal is really that important to him. I did that when I wanted to do graduate work in a field outside my major, and knew that I needed an extra year of classes in order to qualify.


Hmm...from this and other posts, it seems that you're defaulting to encouraging everyone to go to college and that not going is somehow carries a stigma. College should really only be a target for, at most, about a quarter of the population (but probably more like 20% or less).

Unless your students are a lot more capable than people on average in the rest of the world, most of them aren't capable of getting a traditional college education. Encouraging them to go as a general rule is, IMO, lying to them and is cruel for reasons I laid out in previous messages. But here are more reasons:

Our society has been encouraging too many people to go to college for too long. One result of this is a proliferation of watered-down programs that don't require a lot of reading and writing, among other things. The effects are showing --- there's a national discussion around the so-called college bubble, and a big recent study found that many college grads didn't learn much while they were in school. For example, here's a summary of a report called Academically Adrift.

I spent a three years as an adjunct at a community college and work with college-aged people now. Too many of them check off their "gen ed" requirements as a laundry list of stuff to get out of the way. They're very matter-of-fact about it and don't seem especially interested in biology or philosophy or history or whatever. I don't get a sense of the joy of learning from them. The gen ed classes are just another hurdle to clear. I'm not dumping on the students here: I'm criticizing a system that tells them to go to college without considering whether or not college is actually the best option for them.

And as Austin pointed out earlier today, they're yoked to their student loans for life. Read the article in The Atlantic that he found.

I'd very much like to know why you encourage all or most of your students to go to college.

Well, let's see. The data shows that people who go to college make more money and find it easier to find a job in both good times and bad. That people with graduate degrees are more likely to find their work satisfying and interesting. The data show that people in their twenties just don't make much money, but that education makes a big difference in earnings for the majority of adults' working lives.

My own experience as a teenager from the working class and a high school with "Vocational" in the name was that college was a busy, joyful and life-changing experience. Most of my satisfying friendships are from my college years. Education led to many opportunities for a wide range of experiences.

And teaching students without goals is like pushing ropes on a daily basis. I see a thousand little decisions that students make having more of an impact than IQ.

Recent data isn't showing that (see the links I've provided and the one that Austin provided), which is why reports like Academically Adrift are surfacing and why we're having a national conversation about the college bubble. '

You've said that "the data shows that..." but you haven't given me any links to support what you're saying. How old is that data? Does it come from a time when most people didn't go to college?

With respect, that argument that college grads earn more money is somewhat hackneyed (and I don't think that going to college with a primary goal of earning more money as a result is a great idea). Worse, too many people just seem to accept that argument without questioning it.


Do you mean that you think that other people's experiences will mirror yours? Hmm. What about everything that JonLaw has said and other comments on this thread that offer different perspectives?


I'm getting the sense that you're saying that college is the only goal. I don't understand that.

As for other decisions having more of an impact than IQ, yes, I agree. But when it's time to write a 20-page term paper or make complex calculations, IQ is a significant barrier, and there's really no way around it unless your IQ is around one standard deviation above the mean or more. Which brings us back to watered-down programs that don't offer meaningful education.

What are your thoughts on reports like Academically Adrift and the national $1 trillion student loan burden?

I'm beginning my preliminary investigation into SLABS...the packaged securitized student loan thingy for investors.

The educational finance model permits real compound growth with respect to student loan debt. This is then passed on to colleges and universities in the form of real compound growth in tuition with students taking on the risk of paying this money back.

Put simply, colleges and universities increase tuition faster than inflation. We all know this. Everyone complains about it. But nothing ever happens.

Colleges and Universities use the compound tuition growth model to ratchet up costs, year after placid academic year, with no discernable improvement in anything except massive resort-type facilities for students. However, this idiotic system has never come face to face with a major economic paradigm shift before.

The fuse for the coming major discontinuity in the world of educational finance has been lit.

Perhaps what we should really be doing is encouraging students not to close doors too early. When DH was in highschool, a counselor told him matter of factly that he wasn't ever going to go to college and steered him away from some key classes needed to be admitted to college (as he handed him information on enlisting in the military). DH had no interest in the latter and at the time took the counselor at his word regarding the former. When he determined that in fact he did want to go to college a mere two years later, he had to first enroll in a 2 year program that offered some of the courses required for college entrance. While he actually liked the two year college better (smaller class sizes relative to the giant lecture halls at the university we attended), it added to his overall college expense since he had to pay for courses he could have taken for free in highschool. In many ways it makes the most sense to me to counsel students not to close doors too early. As the world continually changes, it is unrealistic to assume that we know what the best opportunities for a student will be ten years down the line.

I have mixed feelings about college being/not being for everyone. It doesn't make sense to saddle people with debt to go in directions that minimize their talents. It doesn't make sense to deflate college expectations to make the classes more accesible to students who are less academically talented. But....I am uncomfortable with the sugar coated and skewed version of social studied taught in K12, which I think leaves adults unprepared to think critically about social policy and geopolitical policy/decision making. When I think about wanting people to go to college, it has less to do with their employment prospects than it does with wanting more of our total population to be more broadly educated. It seems like a lot of institutions offer either an associates degree program or a bachelors degree program. It would be nice if associate degree possibilities were the norm at four year colleges. Those breadth requirement classes could offer something a step above high school (for those who can handle those classes, but perhaps not the intermediate/advanced college classes) without expecting "everyone" to follow a route that may be either unsuited or unnecessary to their job propects. Just thinking aloud....