How Many People Should Go To College Anyway?

There is a strong bias in this country to giving all high school graduates access to college. We have no real alternative plan for 18 to 22 year old high school graduates aside from the military. There are no decent jobs for them. We don't have vocational training programs for them to become plumbers, carpenters and whatnot. If you are a high school graduate, aren't destitute, and aren't going into the military, chances are that you'll at least try college for a semester or two. About two thirds of high school graduates do just that.

In order to accommodate this extraordinary level of participation, we've created colleges for every kind of student imaginable. There are schools for the very smart, schools for the average student, schools for the high school dunce, schools for the wealthy, and schools for the poor. There is some overlap between those distinctions I've just made, but the fact is America has a very stratified, caste-like system for higher education where the strata are highly organized by SAT score, high school GPA and family income level.

Come from a wealthy (180K annual income or better) family and chances are you won't go to a public school. If you're a 2100 or better SAT kind of kid, you'll end up at places like where I used to teach, Duke. If you're an 1800 of better SAT kind of kid, you'll end up at places like Syracuse or Kalamazoo. If you're kind of slow, but rich, there are places for you as well.

Similarly, if you come from a family of relatively modest income (80K or less), you aren't going to go to a private school unless it's a sketchy for-profit one like the University of Phoenix (for profit private schools typically make their money by fleecing the poor and lower-middle class). You might try to save some money and go to a community college first before you go to a four year state school. If you're smart and can afford it, you end up at the flagship state campus. If you're slow, you'll end up at an open-admissions public school, typically a campus where there are few dorms and many students live at home or work at least part time.

Given the great variety of schools available - thousands of four year schools - one would think that graduation rates would be reasonable for our nation's students. But they aren't. Despite a large menu of schools, graduation rates have stagnated at about 50 percent for decades. Much of that stagnation is due to the low-end schools, both private (usually for profit) and public. Graduation rates for these schools can be abysmal, in the 20 percent range. But even at flagship state schools, which get the best of the students from modest income families, graduation rates are typically less than 75 percent.

There are those that think this level of failure is acceptable. A little college is better than no college at all they say. But this blithe optimism ignores that the average GPA of those that do drop out is incredibly low relative to national averages, in the 2.0 to 2.3 range from what little data I can find. In this day and age, that kind of student has learned essentially zero over his or her year or two on campus. It is a waste of time and money for these people to attend college.

The low graduation rates indicate that there is a profound mismatch between the academic performance of incoming freshmen and what is expected of them. It’s not really a matter of brains. We’ve already stratified students so that they, by and large, are attending the kind of college they should attend based on their scholastic aptitude. It’s a matter of commitment and finances. Many students don’t really have the financial resources or time to do the 20 to 25 hours a week of work and attendance required. They may have to work full time. They may have families to raise. Others have the resources, but not the drive.

Over the last fifty years, we’ve tried to deal with our high college dropout rates by lowering academic standards. It hasn’t worked. Part of our failure to increase graduation rates relates to the increased cost of higher education. Part of it relates to our continuing to push for higher access. Part of it relates to the increasing failure of our high schools to prepare students for college (or to be fair, the inability of high schools to produce a higher percentage of college ready students out of the high school pool).

This dilution of what a college degree means, ultimately, that our best and brightest aren’t being challenged as much as they once were. Literacy rates are down for college graduates. Study hours are down for college students. Recently, for example, I took a tour of a flagship school’s intro physics labs. The class didn’t use calculus, but somehow met requirements for many students’ majors. The campus has, on paper, the best students in the state by far. Physics without calculus for students who are, supposedly, science majors? Roll over Isaac Newton and give Albert Einstein the news.

When it comes to college education we have been emphasizing quantity over quality for decades. Curiously, this watering down has occurred across the board, even in places where student quality is, at least on paper, quite high. There is no good reason why the schools that attract the best and brightest have decided to expect less of their students. But they have done so.

Despite the high number of students who fail to graduate, there are those who continue to push for even more access to college. The Obama administration certainly is pushing hard in this direction. Obama has called for a dramatic increase in the population of college graduates. He wants an astonishing 60% of all 25 to 34 year olds to have associate degrees or better within 10 years (up from 40% today) and has argued that the increase is necessary for this country to maintain its economic competitiveness.

The Obama team’s views on access have their origins in a recent book, The Race Between Education and Technology by Goldin and Katz. It’s a very good book. I highly recommend it. For those who believe that books no longer can influence society, the profound impact of this one book on DC thinking says you’re wrong. But I think the message of this book – or at least how people like Obama are interpreting the message of this book – is also wrong. I’ll continue this next time.