Should everybody go to 4-year university?
 

Are Too Many People Going to College?
By Charles Murray
From the Magazine: Monday, September 8, 2008
Filed under: Public Square

America’s university system is creating a class-riven nation. There has to be a better way.

To ask whether too many people are going to college requires us to think about the importance and nature of a liberal education. “Universities are not intended to teach the knowledge required to fit men for some special mode of gaining their livelihood,” John Stuart Mill told students at the University of St. Andrews in 1867. “Their object is not to make skillful lawyers, or physicians, or engineers, but capable and cultivated human beings.” If this is true (and I agree that it is), why say that too many people are going to college? Surely a mass democracy should encourage as many people as possible to become “capable and cultivated human beings” in Mill’s sense. We should not restrict the availability of a liberal education to a rarefied intellectual elite. More people should be going to college, not fewer.

Yes and no. More people should be getting the basics of a liberal education. But for most students, the places to provide those basics are elementary and middle school. E. D. Hirsch Jr. is the indispensable thinker on this topic, beginning with his 1987 book Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. Part of his argument involves the importance of a body of core knowledge in fostering reading speed and comprehension. With regard to a liberal education, Hirsch makes three points that are germane here:

Full participation in any culture requires familiarity with a body of core knowledge. To live in the United States and not recognize Teddy Roosevelt, Prohibition, the Minutemen, Wall Street, smoke-filled rooms, or Gettysburg is like trying to read without knowing some of the ten thousand most commonly used words in the language. It signifies a degree of cultural illiteracy about America. But the core knowledge transcends one’s own country. Not to recognize Falstaff, Apollo, the Sistine Chapel, the Inquisition, the twenty-third Psalm, or Mozart signifies cultural illiteracy about the West. Not to recognize the solar system, the Big Bang, natural selection, relativity, or the periodic table is to be scientifically illiterate. Not to recognize the Mediterranean, Vienna, the Yangtze River, Mount Everest, or Mecca is to be geographically illiterate.

College is seen as the open sesame to a good job and a desirable way for adolescents to transition to adulthood. Neither reason is as persuasive as it first appears.
This core knowledge is an important part of the glue that holds the culture together. All American children, of whatever ethnic heritage, and whether their families came here 300 years ago or three months ago, need to learn about the Pilgrims, Valley Forge, Duke Ellington, Apollo 11, Susan B. Anthony, George C. Marshall, and the Freedom Riders. All students need to learn the iconic stories. For a society of immigrants such as ours, the core knowledge is our shared identity that makes us Americans together rather than hyphenated Americans.

K–8 are the right years to teach the core knowledge, and the effort should get off to a running start in elementary school. Starting early is partly a matter of necessity: There’s a lot to learn, and it takes time. But another reason is that small children enjoy learning myths and fables, showing off names and dates they have memorized, and hearing about great historical figures and exciting deeds. The educational establishment sees this kind of curriculum as one that forces children to memorize boring facts. That conventional wisdom is wrong on every count. The facts can be fascinating (if taught right); a lot more than memorization is entailed; yet memorizing things is an indispensable part of education, too; and memorizing is something that children do much, much better than adults. The core knowledge is suited to ways that young children naturally learn and enjoy learning. Not all children will be able to do the reading with the same level of comprehension, but the fact-based nature of the core knowledge actually works to the benefit of low ability students—remembering facts is much easier than making inferences and deductions. The core knowledge curriculum lends itself to adaptation for students across a wide range of academic ability.

In the 20 years since Cultural Literacy was published, Hirsch and his colleagues have developed and refined his original formulation into an inventory of more than 6,000 items that approximate the core knowledge broadly shared by literate Americans. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge Foundation has also developed a detailed, grade by-grade curriculum for K–8, complete with lists of books and other teaching materials.

The Core Knowledge approach need not stop with eighth grade. High school is a good place for survey courses in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences taught at a level below the demands of a college course and accessible to most students in the upper two-thirds of the distribution of academic ability. Some students will not want to take these courses, and it can be counterproductive to require them to do so, but high school can put considerable flesh on the liberal education skeleton for students who are still interested.

more at: http://www.american.com/archive/2008/september-october-magazine/are-too-many-people-going-to-college

It has always been my opinion that the core knowledge courses do NOT belong in universities and colleges. That's what K-12 is for. If that were the case I'd say everyone needs to complete high school but college/university is optional. I'd also like to see public universities free (fully taxpayer funded) but with higher admission requirements, meaning you need more than just money and a pulse to be admitted.

I am a Junior in a 4 year university, studying to get my BBA.



On a more related topic, this years Freshman class is the biggest to date too.

I would like to see no public financing of any universities. Potential students would pay full price for tuition and would have to seriously weigh the potential increase in their lifetime earning power against the cost of study. Corporations could fund the education of candidates who met their criteria as part of their hiring process. Free post-secondary education doesn't mean a better educated population. It means a population that takes its education for granted, and a university system that doesn't have to answer for the quality of its instruction as long as everyone gets a degree. A university system that was fully paid for by each attendee would have no choice but to offer the highest level of instruction or face extinction to more competive institutions. Student loans and taxpayer funds and built schools that little incentive to do much but fill seats and pump out degrees.

It's just like "free" health care doesn't ensure a healthy population - more likely a population that takes its medical care for granted and thus lets its health fall into disrepair, but why worry, treatment is free.

I find it scary how even students in my senior 400 level classes lack basic knowledge about our country, and the world.


For example Belarus, 3/4 of the class wasn't familer with this country, or exactly where it was. Now keep in mind this is an International Management class. When I raised my hand the professor was somewhat surprised that I knew about this country. I have Hurrying Heinz's Panzer army to thank for my knowledge of this area, but still.:D

With your plan, say bye-bye to US competitiveness in the global economy. Why would US corporations fund US universities when they can just hire someone from China or India with better knowledge & education and pay them less? If anything we need more public funding so that everyone who is smart in this country has a chance to compete and contribute. Even with public funding universities can be competitive if it's done right. If a university doesn't perform, cut its funding. It's that simple.

Sometimes, I think that all the gen-ed classes should be eliminated to cut school down 2 years, focusing solely on your interests.

Then there are instances where my well rounded education has served me in the real world or I'm able to pull a random fact out of my a$$.

Just look at it sometime.

Everytime the goverment increases grants etc to fund college, colleges raise tuition.
Everytime colleges raise tuitions, goverments increase grants.

Everytime the goverment increases grants etc to fund college, colleges raise tuition.
Everytime colleges raise tuitions, goverments increase grants.

Everytime the goverment increases grants etc to fund college, colleges raise tuition.
Everytime colleges raise tuitions, goverments increase grants.

Everytime the goverment increases grants etc to fund college, colleges raise tuition.
Everytime colleges raise tuitions, goverments increase grants.

Everytime the goverment increases grants etc to fund college, colleges raise tuition.
Everytime colleges raise tuitions, goverments increase grants.

Everytime the goverment increases grants etc to fund college, colleges raise tuition.
Everytime colleges raise tuitions, goverments increase grants.

...

I'm not knocking college, but too many people come out of college knowing little or nothing.
That degree means nothing.
Knowing how to use a hammer, doesn't mean u can build a house.


Like the recent MBA grad I knew a few years ago, we were discussing the ROI of a project. He asked what ROI was.

AGAIN a very recent MBA grad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

seriously.... eff trig.... When the hell will I need to use radians... I can see using them if I design wheels or clock, but screw that.. digital clocks are the way to go

no, absolutely not. that's like saying everyone should learn how to X, or Y, or Z. but generally speaking, an educated society is a better society. how much education? that's hard to say.

i think alot of people make the mistake of equating education and class. i've known well educated people in my life who, like examples above, have no idea about world politics. or, they are the most ignorant (veiled) racists and treat service workers like waiters, bell hops, etc like s##t.

i myself have a good education background including an mba. i value the experience and what i learned and would not trade it for anything. education can be a great equalizer---or a trump car. that's all i'll say about that.

I certainly see your point about US companies hiring more cheaply outside of the country, but that is happening anyway in the presence of heavy government funding. Regardless, corporations are funding post-secondary education in the US and if their contributions were able to better direct the quality of the programs and candidates accepted into programs they may find even more incentive.

The basic gist of my argument is that between public and private spending there is only so much money in an economic system. Governments can't create wealth, they can only move it around and this is typically done in very inefficient and often wasteful ways. The idea is that if the Government is not spending funds on universities taxes should actually drop by more than the current "real cost" of university eduaction as the administration of the funds is removed at the government level leaving the same or greater amount of funds to be directed to post-secondary education in a more efficient manner.

The only way the government can provide more funds for universities than the private sector is for the government to creat money or credit out of thin air - which they seem to do with ease - and that is certainly more destructive to the overall economy than US jobs going overseas in the long run.

Your last point about cutting funding to Universities that don't perform makes sense, but from what we've all seen about how governments dole out funds, does it really seem likely to happen? It is much easier for a dean or group of professors to lobby one influential congressman than it is for them to perform upto the expectations of an entire campus and their parents and potential corporate sponsors.

I is a college grad, with a 3.0GPA, but not good enough for Grad School...

It's frightening how many don't even have a grasp of simple math, spelling and grammar. I was amazed at the number of kids taking "remedial" math and english courses before they even got around to required and core classes. I'm no math wizard or word smith, hell I was only slightly above average throughout my secondary years, but what the hell did they do in high school? UConn, while more selective now, wasn't real easy to get into when I was there almost 20 :eek: years ago. There were guys that couldn't write a sentence to save their lives. All of those gag sentences about the spell checking looked like the way they wrote.

The fact that many college students can't do rudimentary stuff doesn't come as a surprise. Economics, geography, history and world affairs even less so.

My FIL is a math professor at SCSU and an adjunct at Quinnipiac and he's always amazed at how little his lower level course students know. It's pretty sad that they can go through high school and receive good enough grades to get accepted to a college or university and not know $h!t.

I think my argument for no publicly funded unversities can be extended all the way down to elementary school. Government and education don't seem to mix well at any level.

Here's a very interesting take on the idea: http://mises.org/story/2750

Isn't that how they are doing it right now where children are forced to school whether they want to learn or not?

Sure you do. However, the question is why I should pay for you or your offspring to improve yourselves? You want to go higher? You earn your way. Sure, student loans are fine but you pay for it when you are done. I'd rather see higher standards IN the classes so that if you can't meet it, your are out.