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Why aren't more people going to college?
Brad DeLong writes:
Altonji, Bharadwaj, and Lange do not know.
The whole post is interesting, but from this I can only conclude that Altonji, Bharadwaj, and Lange have never taught Introduction to Composition to a large group of freshman in a public university in the United States. Anyone who has taught such a class -- or for that matter talked to anyone who has -- will have some inkling why more people are not going to college. Herein lie the roots of growing inequality -- on the bottom side at least -- and don't let anyone induce you to take your eye off the ball by playing switcheroo and bringing up the (separate) topic of the growing wealth of the top one percent.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on May 11, 2008 at 07:34 AM in Education | Permalink
Comments
Wouldn't the economist's answer be: A university education is not convincingly worth the time/effort/money to a large number of potential attendees.
I absolutely agree that there is a huge premium for skilled labor. From my own experience (even though I went to a world leading university in my field) I would accuse universities of being remarkably poor at producing skilled labor. My decade or so of interviewing people for technical positions just reinforces this belief.
I believe university education is hampered by a bias against an educational program that appears to be to "vocational" in nature. Almost as though universities still see themselves as some sort of gateway to gentility. Graduates have a much greater depth of knowledge in general subjects (the three R's) but laughably little practical experience. Post-BS education finally seems to address some of that, but at the expense of 2 years more tuition, and opportunity cost.
Coming from rather humble beginnings, I know why I went to school. To get a job that paid a premium for what I was able to offer. I was very disappointed with what I received in return for a massive amount of student load debt. I worked (luckily in my field) to put myself through school, and found it much more valuable (and they paid me to learn!)
I can only remember one advisor in all my years at school who considered the practical goals of my education. I was in the Physics program at the time. One day he called me in and gave me this sage advice: "I don't think you are cut out for academia [where most opportunities in theoretical physics would be], maybe you should consider computer science." That conversation was the trigger that got me thinking critically about what the hell I was doing at school, what I wanted to achieve, and how in the hell I was going to get there. It was almost worth the tuition.
Posted by: Mark Denovich at May 11, 2008 9:17:31 AM
One of the commenters mentions expanding student loans. From what I've seen other forms of financial
aid have become more difficult to get since I went to college, which has resulted in increased reliance
on loans, which combined with increased college costs leads to a large debt burden on people just
getting started. This leads to a perceived need to pursue only subjects which will lead to an
immediate payoff(engineering, investment banking), and there are only so many people who can handle
those occupations. The desire/need for job-based education also causes students to go to vo-tech schools,
which have become increasing viable and cost-effective (my daughter is seriously considering one).
Posted by: mikesdak at May 11, 2008 9:36:03 AM
One of the commenters mentions expanding student loans. From what I've seen other forms of financial
aid have become more difficult to get since I went to college, which has resulted in increased reliance
on loans, which combined with increased college costs leads to a large debt burden on people just
getting started. This leads to a perceived need to pursue only subjects which will lead to an
immediate payoff(engineering, investment banking), and there are only so many people who can handle
those occupations. The desire/need for job-based education also causes students to go to vo-tech schools,
which have become increasing viable and cost-effective (my daughter is seriously considering one).
Posted by: mikesdak at May 11, 2008 9:37:16 AM
My apologies for the double post. I also should have said the the comment I referred to was at the
original story site.
Posted by: mikesdak at May 11, 2008 9:39:13 AM
I wholeheartedly agree with Marks beginning statement.
Two years ago I had a interviewer for a job make the comment that "college weeds people out." It was his response to discovering I didn't have a college degree. Interestingly they offered me the job - I didn't take it. My boyfriend has a dual degree in chemistry and english. He is an accountant.
Its the assumption that people will go to college after high school. But high schools and colleges do an incredibly poor job of preparing the individual for what they will spend the rest of their life doing: working.
(also in information technology - but I figured it out without spending a premium on college)
Posted by: tim at May 11, 2008 9:53:39 AM
In California I think we saw the pages of "GE" requirements expand along with the tuition (and the loans).
I always figured "get me a good job, and I can read the great books on my own time."
(I got out in '81 with my Chem BS to become another programmer.)
Posted by: odograph at May 11, 2008 10:29:27 AM
"Anyone who has taught such a class -- or for that matter talked to anyone who has -- will have some inkling why more people are not going to college."
I'm sorry -- what is your answer as to why more people are not going to college? Apparently it has something to do with freshman composition?
Posted by: mk at May 11, 2008 10:42:13 AM
In this day and age of the web, any professor who packs a hundred kids into a lecture hall is not teaching.
Posted by: Matt at May 11, 2008 10:51:29 AM
"I'm sorry -- what is your answer as to why more people are not going to college? Apparently it has something to do with freshman composition?"
He probably means that most high school graduates lack the basic skills, including writing skills, to succeed in college.
Posted by: Jacqueline at May 11, 2008 11:00:33 AM
I hate to be the jackass who inserts IQ into the discussion, but I will be: certainly the education system can be improved to some degree, but if IQ is a prerequisite for skills, there's only so much you can do because IQ is pretty much fixed. The Bell Curve basically predicted this.
Posted by: kapkool at May 11, 2008 11:58:37 AM
Indeed, the problem is not that too few attend college, but that too few are prepared to take advantage of college.
We must invest more in young children.
Posted by: Michael Bishop at May 11, 2008 11:59:35 AM
We must invest more in young children.
It drives me crazy reading sentences like that. Washington DC "invests" (a euphemism for spend) a staggeringly large amount per pupil, and has horrendously poor results to show for it.
The US also spends more per capita on K-12 education than anywhere in the world, but in the developed world anyway we are merely middle of the pack.
Therefore is is illogical to think the problem is lack of spending in our children.
John Stossel did a comparison of a normal Belgian high school class and the best class in a NJ suburb that was considered one of the best in the US. He found that the average Belgian outpeformed the best students in the US class.
Therefore unless one believes that the best US students are somehow genetically inferior to the average Belgian, then IQ doesn't explain the discrepancy either.
This leaves one obvious conclusion, namely that the system of K-12 schools in the US that are run by the government is the problem, not lack of funding nor IQ.
Sounds like it is time to bring universal K-12 tuition vouchers to the US, just like Belgium has. We should probably sell off our public schools while we're at it. Why keep them since by definition we believe they are horribly run?
Posted by: happyjuggler0 at May 11, 2008 12:20:58 PM
I think the average person cannot justify the cost of a college education when sitting in a freshman English course, where most college freshman cannot justify waking up to go to such a course over the opportunity cost of sleeping an extra hour that day. A vast majority of people learn in US high schools that they do not need to learn anything, and can still graduate and get the job they want.
Colleges are already overpopulated. Anyone graduate from college and try to obtain a job in the finance or engineering industries lately? Its as hard as getting into a top 50 US college. When a significant number of college graduates cannot find jobs they want, how can we say more people should be going to college. The people who are not going may be more insightful than Altonji, Bharadwaj, and Lange.
Posted by: Brainwarped at May 11, 2008 12:24:02 PM
Compare the situation with Russia - here more people apply for colledge entrance than leave high school ( i.e. almost all grads apply for colledge and also older population tries to catch up ) . The other side the salary problem and requirements for education are reverse. I already mentioned in one reply second most rich russian Prokhorov and his blog - there he tells that big russian bussiness needs workers, not educated people. The wage premium is also reverse to US - usually ( esp in province ) low qualification jobs are paid better due to shortage of those wishing to get them.
the situation seems signal few things 1) IQ is a scarse resource 2) US is good in allocating it 3) there is some room in other countries which waster their resources. 4) overall educational system functions quite disconnected to real life requirements.
In former ussr the approach to solve the problem of practical skills was devised -to work at company during education ( but as colledge/university education was average 6 years in ussr ( no Bachelors - only MS degrees ) - 3 years at company departments gave quite good sense of what was going in specific field.
I graduated from uni which was first among those which tried the system.
and at second forth and six th years I worked at different departments of one corporation.
Unfortunately though - the industry ( military space ) collapsed just after dissolution of ussr , so I had to teach myself to become a software developer ( instead of being an engineer of control systems for space vehicles ).
The experience is that - when I got my knowledge by myself - I become really practically and profeccionally oriented but those state efforts to give 'practical' skills failed - just plainly because they did not know even that these skills are not neccesary in near future and overall it is quite difficult to formalize what is the real 'practical skill', while theoretical subjects have a deep history and clear ways to exercise in subtleties.
So I would see the solution as following - put more educational materials on the net ( like MIT opencourseware ) and allow people to get degrees by passing some exams, maybe incrimentally, according to the requirements they encounter in life ( it would be difficult to devise the system, but noneless I think that it would be neccesary to have it, and also it would be a way to earn money - sertification should cost quite a bit ) without attending colledge or uni, create some online assesment system for foreigners ( say IQ test with some educational questions ) and provide those with high IQ ( say 135 +) and specific skills a green card.
The proposals are quite radical, but still they could solve the problem, but just free education ( if the scarse IQ hypotesis is correct ) will solve almost nothing. The education interest should be selfenforced and also the system should efficiently use scarse resource IQ.
Posted by: Sergey Kurdakov at May 11, 2008 12:31:15 PM
MY apologies for my last post. I hate it when I make a post on education and it is full of typos and basic error like "in" instead of "on".
I blame my public school education instead of myself for my mistakes. I am a victim. :x
Posted by: happyjuggler0 at May 11, 2008 12:32:10 PM
"have never taught Introduction to Composition to a large group of freshman in a public university in the United States."
Although it's not available online yet, read the current issue of The Atlantic, and especially the story by "Professor X" titled something like "In the Basement of the Ivory Tower." You might've already read it, as this comment seems almost like a restatement of part of its thesis.
Posted by: Jake at May 11, 2008 12:34:05 PM
Anyone graduate from college and try to obtain a job in the finance or engineering industries lately? Its as hard as getting into a top 50 US college.
????
I thought jobs are plentiful for engineering graduates.
Posted by: Peter at May 11, 2008 12:54:55 PM
I know it goes against the current dogma on the "knowledge economy", but I wish we wouldn't make so many go to university. My classes are full of students who aren't interested in higher learning or learning at all, but know that they need the degree to get a job and get on with their lives. There must be ways to filter applicants that are cheaper and less painful for all involved.
Posted by: Allison at May 11, 2008 1:59:44 PM
It's not that hard to get into a top 50 college. The ones in the 40-50 range accept 80% of their applicants or so. So if you apply to a few you're pretty much set.
Posted by: Andy at May 11, 2008 2:00:09 PM
Some related links:
America's Most Overrated Product: the Bachelor's Degree
The Age of Educational Romanticism
Overqualified: What's the Deal?
Posted by: TGGP at May 11, 2008 2:22:51 PM
Brainwarped--
Yes, I graduated from an engineering program recently (about a year ago) and tried to obtain a job and...it was laughably easy, especially for the amount of effort I put into it. Now I have an awesome job that pays me lots of money. None of my other engineer friends had any difficulty whatsoever finding jobs as far as I'm aware. Were you just completely pulling that out of your ass? Maybe my experience is exceptional, but I would have to see some numbers to think so.
Posted by: mtc at May 11, 2008 2:28:05 PM
I have gone through life without a degree, and it has never been an issue.
Now I live in the United States, and this is the first time I've experienced bias against college "dropouts". Not only ridiculous bias by hiring managers, but also bias in the green card and visa systems. People aren't judged based on their capabilities and experience, but on unrelated pieces of paper they've accumulated throughout life.
For instance, you'll get a green card more quickly with any degree, even one that doesn't bear any relationship to the job you're in. You get elevated to the "professional" category, whereas without a degree you're just a "skilled worker". Work experience is not brought into consideration at all.
It boggles my mind that the US would make it difficult for highly skilled individuals - and I am not ashamed to claim I am orders of magnitude more skilled than many college graduates around me - to join and participate in this economy.
In hindsight, had I known that ten years later I would face ridiculous prejudice for not having a degree, I probably would have grit my teeth and continued the mind numbing boredom and tedium of university. But at the time it was easy for me to work as a developer in a startup company earning a higher salary than senior professors at my university. Most 19 year olds in my position would have chosen the same.
And thinking back, had I been here in the US at that time, the choice would have been even more clear cut. Stay at university, accumulating a huge debt, working on toy projects and abstract concepts and algorithms you will forget after a few months? Or join a company and actually contribute to society? At least in my country of origin, the debt I accumulated in my brief time at university was not onerous, and quickly paid off.
The vocations for which university degrees are important have, unsurprisingly, courses that are fairly vocational in nature. Consider studying for medicine. You learn anatomy - something you can directly apply each day in your working life. In computer science you take a course on algorithms which you will likely never have to implement or directly use ever again. Hands up all CS graduates who've had to write a version of Boyer–Moore? Now keep your hands up if the college dropout next to you would be unable to implement the same thing?
Posted by: John Doe at May 11, 2008 2:41:08 PM
I teach intro economics at a large public university... same as teaching composition. I bend over backwards to "go easy" in the intro classes and still nearly a third get D's and F's. Some don't have the skills, but more are just profoundly unprepared for college with respect to perspective, setting goals, being held accountable. In short they are immature. I don't believe the average public high school student is held accountable, has a chance of actually failing a course.
Why do they go to college? Good question. I think because that's what their buddies from high school planned to do, their parents encouraged, and because it seems like a good way to "get a good job." I would strongly encourage an average high school student to go to community college and work... to grow up a bit, see what's out there, investigate vocational programs etc.
Posted by: Martin Kennedy at May 11, 2008 2:50:56 PM
I have taught many introductory science classes, and can unequivocally say there are already far too many people going to college. Especially with the expansion of the community college system. There are too many people going to college, precisely because of the financial incentives, who simply don't have the ability to become a highly skilled worker. Not everyone does, and the reasons are many (not a discussion I care to get into).
Posted by: efp at May 11, 2008 3:16:45 PM
I've never taught freshman comp. I have taught freshman music theory and ear training, classes almost exclusively taken by music majors. It's strange to look around the class in the second week, knowing that at least a quarter of them don't honestly belong here and more than half of them are unlikely to be sitting in the follow-up sophomore class. Keep in mind, all these kids are here because they have been successful musicians at the high school level; many are on scholarships.
But between lack of money, and trouble in my class, and trouble in the rest of the meatgrinder of freshman classes, and relationship issues, and wondering how the hell they are going to make a living when they graduate, and the issues of becoming an independent adult, I can count on half of them being gone in a year.
Posted by: ShortWoman at May 11, 2008 3:18:20 PM
