Should You Go To College?

University of California, Berkeley

All parents of high school students and prospective college students themselves should read a poignant analysis in the June 6, 2011 New Yorker magazine: Live and Learn: Why We Have College (link here). The author, Louis Menand, sorts the purposes of college into two competing theories and reviews the literature about whether students actually learn anything from the college experience.

Menand states in his Theory I that college acts as a sorting mechanism and a tool for the American meritocracy. Professional schools can trust G.P.A. as a measure of intellectual capacity and productive potential (P. 74). Grades matter more than if the student actually learns anything. On average, adults with college degrees do make more money than those without.

Theory II is the opposite. Grades do not matter as much as what is learned. "College exposes future citizens to material that enlightens and empowers them, whatever careers they end up choosing" (ibid.). The trouble with Theory II is many students, especially those pursuing business degrees, don't learn much (as shown by the results on the Collegiate Learning Assessment) after three years of college. Students spend less time studying than they did fifty years ago. Lastly, the process of college is socially inefficient, since students pursuing vocational degrees don't care about classes in the liberal arts, but still have to take them to get a bachelors degree. It gets worse: "half of all Americans who enter college never finish" (P. 78).

So why force vocational students into these classes? Instead, why not track students? This is what many European countries do. Only the elite go to college. The rest go to vocational schools where they will never have to try to understand Nietzsche and Plato. The vocational schools offer work skills, not a B.A. degree. Menand hints that were we to do this, it would mark the end of our liberal arts schools. Perhaps it should be done anyway. I teach a lot of low-level students this year. Out of my 140 students, perhaps 60 will end up graduating from a four-year institution. Yet when I polled them, almost all of them want to go to college and get a bachelors degree.What a waste! Most of my students and more than half of 18-year-old American kids who enter post-secondary studies would be better served with vocational training. Most people don't want to take the time to understand Nietzsche and Plato, and only a motivated elite will get something out of the process.

Six–Year Undergraduate Completion Rates^a

• The systemwide graduation rate for University of California (UC) students is about 80 percent, compared with just under 50 percent at the California State University (CSU). Only about 30 percent of California Community College (CCC) students who endeavor to transfer or graduate with an associate’s degree or certificate actually do so. (Source, California Legislative Analyst's Office http://www.lao.ca.gov/reports/2011/calfacts/calfacts_010511.aspx)