For years, many people – me included – encouraged others to go to college. We pontificated that the only way to break glass ceilings, indeed, all socio-economic ceilings, was to get a degree. I think that we were right in limited circumstances, but then it became a mania. Other routes to betterment were maligned and a full-frontal assault was manufactured to shove young people into collegiate classrooms. Money, money, and more money, along with a full-throated indoctrination campaign from Sesame Street to pop entertainment to the high school guidance counselor were geared with singleness of purpose to get every warm body into a college desk. Looking back on it, the whole humongous effort was a colossal waste. And it shows.
Richard Vedder, Distinguished Professor of Economics Emeritus at Ohio University, writing in Forbes draws the curtains back to show the emperor to be naked. You can read his eye-opening piece here.
He begins his analysis with a National Bureau of Economic Research study of the recent rise in college graduation rates, a reversal of the previous long-lasting trend. A good thing, right? In one sense, yes, but in another, it’s a sign of the decline of academic excellence. The author eliminated improvements in such things as academic preparation in the lower grades and greater access to taxpayer subsidies as the causes. There’s good evidence of rot in the former and the latter has no connection to anything but tuition inflation. The authors end up with grade inflation for the spike in graduation rates.
Average grades have risen as measures of study time have fallen. Transcripts are littered with anything but coursework in science, math, or classical philosophy. But we have those great GPA’s.
Many teachers are mightily trying to produce an educated citizenry. I’ve had the pleasure of working with a good number of them. Surely, a good portion of the blame applies to further down the social supply chain and outside of it (politics?).
The increase in college graduation rates is not a time for uncorking bottles of champagne. We’ll have to keep in mind that these numbers arise out of a very troubled educational environment.
RogerG