This compelling post discusses the goals for increasing the US population’s attainment of college degrees.
The very first thought I had after reading the research was, “College degrees are great – but is granting more of them the solution?”
Here’s a recent article in the Wall Street Journal. I’ve excerpted below:
In the midst of the Asian financial crisis (1998), China’s government decided China needed bold measures. On government orders, China’s universities — most of which are state-controlled — boosted enrollment by up to 30% a year, year after year for most of this decade (In 1998, 3.4 million Chinese attended university. By 2008, the number was 21.5 million.). A more skilled Chinese work force, it was reasoned, would jump-start domestic consumption, helping to wean China’s economy off exports.
China is now suffering from a higher-education equivalent of the global credit bubble. “Objectively there was a need to expand education,” says Yang Dongping, head of a nongovernmental organization dedicated to education reform. “But we’ve just experienced an educational disaster.” The problem: many of the schools turned into diploma mills, churning out poorly qualified students leaving all to wonder “is this education was of any value?”
Here are just a few of my concerns about any similar proposition for the US:
- Is the goal of increasing college degrees to make people more competitive in the workplace? If so, wouldn’t granting too many bachelor’s degrees dilute the value of all bachelor’s degrees? Will the Master’s degree become the new bachelor’s degree?
- Is the goal of increasing college degrees to guarantee work for citizens? If so, then urging more to receive college degrees assumes unlimited demand (ie – jobs) and that’s just not a realistic expectation, no matter how good the economy. Only in a Utopian society would a college degree guarantee a job (much less a higher paying job).
- Is the goal of increasing college degrees to make people better off economically? If so, can we believe that this will disrupt the natural macro-economic equilibrium? For instance, an increase in the minimum wage drives up the cost of labor, which directly translates into an increase in cost of goods & services. So, yes, while workers are earning more, the prices of goods and services are now higher as well. This often results in a net sum zero in overall “better off-ness.”
- Where will these new students come from? A majority of the students whom colleges admit are grossly underprepared. Only 23 percent of the 1.3 million high-school graduates of 2007 who took the ACT examination were ready for college-level work in the core subjects of English, math, reading, and science.
- Is forcing an increase in college degrees to increase employability the equivalent of printing more money to pay for a national budget? (Please note that this is not a political statement as every administration has done this – this is why what did cost $1 in 1913 now costs $22.43 in 2008). More dollars chasing fewer goods & services is the definition of inflation, and this always results in the dilution of the value of the dollar…and this leads me back to concern #1.
These are just my personal concerns – and, admittedly, I’ve not seen any documents detailing what the implementation of the goals for attainment would look like. Please post/reply or email me as you come across additional discussions on these important issues – I welcome it!
-April L. Mollerberg
Sources:
China Faces a Grad Glut After Boom at Colleges, Wall Street Journal (By IAN JOHNSON) 4/28/09
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