Chronical Higher Education
Mon, 22 Feb 2010 05:12:19 +0000
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One of the key tenets of American and maybe even Western culture is that education always leads to greater and greater heights. You can see this truism repeated in almost every film and TV show as wealthy characters who aren’t part of a fish-out-of-water storyline almost inevitably got to their significant income brackets by their business savvy or attending graduate school to get a lucrative job requiring that extra level of education. Even in the world of politics the two parties which can’t seem to agree on anything anymore manage to come to a consensus on the idea that more education is a key weapon in fighting rising unemployment during massive economic crashes. This is why more and more students are being urged to get more education and attend a post-secondary educational institution to make themselves ever more valuable to tomorrow’s employers.
Unfortunately, the reality isn’t that simple and getting a degree, especially an advanced one, is a double edged sword. According to a panel of experts assembled by The Chronicle of Higher Education, not everyone could benefit from attending college or using is as a safe harbor in rough economic times. Instead, the advice is that students carefully evaluate their options before deciding what’s best for them because the traditional four year college model simply isn’t for everyone and it seems unfair to either burden students with debt or force a major revision in the criteria used by admissions offices solely to boost student populations. Besides, there’s a serious cost to boosting student populations at traditional colleges. There are only so many professors and TAs, the dorms can only hold so many people, and the staff can only provide so many services to a very finite number of students. Considering that many states are actually cutting back on their education subsidies while they should’ve been doing just the opposite, makes the problem even worse. Considering these issues along with cold, hard facts about historical student performance leads to advice like this…
All high-school students should receive a cost-benefit analysis of the various options suitable to their situations: four-year college, two-year degree program, a short-term career-prep program, apprenticeship program, on-the-job training, self-employment, the military. Students with weak academic records should be informed that, of freshmen at “four year” colleges who graduated in the bottom 40 percent of their high-school class, two-thirds won’t graduate even when given eight and a half years [to complete their coursework]. And that even if such students defy the odds, they will likely graduate with a low GPA and a major in low demand by employers.
And that’s where we hit a major issue. How much are employers going to pay for skilled workers? We live in a society in which people want to earn as much as possible but pay as little as possible for the products they’re going to use on a daily basis. The problem is that companies can’t run themselves at a loss and this means that they’re only going to hire as many skilled workers as they can afford and sometimes, barely enough to be handling the basics, i.e. as few as they can get away with having without risking a complete collapse of a key process. As someone who recently returned to college to seek more advanced skills, I’m basically betting that my field of study will still be important enough to accommodate more professionals and researchers holding graduate degrees when I graduate. At the same time, I’ll also be facing the question of whether I would need to study even more to put myself ahead of the competition or if at some point my education will make me over- qualified for the jobs employers are willing to offer. There are no set rules or guidelines. I’m just trying to make educated guesses based on BLS data and my experience in IT as well as that of others in the field.
So if even those who invested years in the job market before seeking to push their education to another level are playing a kind of employment blackjack, what of those who are fresh out of high school, headed to a four year college because that’s what they’ve been told to do? What if they decide to take on areas of study that are absolutely fascinating to them but for which employers have no regard? What company has a use for military historians or a creative writing major? Certainly teachers, designers and copywriters are always needed and there will always be a few places for them. However, there will be a lot more competition for those places and many of these degree holders may end up doing something very different with their majors. That’s helping to turn a bachelor’s degree into an evaluation of one’s skills to pay attention in class rather than acquire relevant skills for the job and it’s starting to depress the wage premiums on having a degree in the first place. We can’t turn colleges into job factories taking orders from companies based on their employment projections and we need institutions which encourage people to explore and broaden their horizons. At the same time, pretending that every major will eventually yield a career which can ensure a stable living wage is also irresponsible.
But then again, it’s difficult to predict what skills will be in demand four years from now because the economy runs on corporate profits and annual salaries rather than a four year cycle of hiring brand new grads. In fact, the worse the economy, the less grads can expect to land a job and may very well end up spending more and more time in college, accruing debt and becoming highly educated but inexperienced. Some colleges combat this by requiring resumes demonstrating professional experience in a chosen area of expertise if you want to be a graduate student so you’re more likely to stick with your chosen curriculum and your degree will actually help you in future endeavors by showing that you’ve spent the time and effort taking your skills to a new highs. Still, what about newly enrolled college freshmen who are still not sure what they want to study, only told that a college degree is a necessity for success and will always help them land a job?
Will colleges try to make sure that only high achievers will be awarded degrees and try to make degrees more exclusive? Will they be willing to grant more degrees to more students because they feel this will get them the funds they need in the future because they can pressure politicians with high graduation numbers? And what will happen in a job market where a bachelor’s degree is the new high school diploma? Finding the answers to these questions will require a close cooperation between all the parties involved, and right now that kind of genuine communication between students, colleges, employees and politicians is sorely missing. College degrees seem to be becoming hit or miss experiments in landing a currently trendy job after college, quickly forgotten after landing the first professional, full time job after graduation as a simple formality…
Imagine you are the parent of a newly school-age child, and that you are preparing this son or daughter for the first day of school. What would you tell him or her about school culture in anticipation of the first day, and of the next fourteen years of life?Warnings for students preparing to attend traditional school for the first time often mimic those heard on the toughest streets of Boston:
- Don’t rock the boat. You never know who you’re sitting next to, so make sure to keep your opinions (meaning your personality) in check.
- Speak when spoken to. Teachers often ask for, but rarely ever actually want to hear, your perspective.
- Ask the right questions, or don’t ask any questions at all. In other words, if your classroom queries exhibit the slightest hint of controversy, watch your back.
- Remember, surviving and succeeding at school is decided, for the most part, by the law of averages. (So don’t knock on wood.)
These words are from the mother of a Kindergarten student at the Driscoll School, a public elementary school in Brookline. After listing the warnings, she laughed and added, “I might as well be telling my son to carry a razor blade in his sock. It sounds like I’m sending him to prison”.
If the warnings to six year old children read like those listed above, imagine the fear with which students enter high school.
Private schools in the Boston area offer a slight advantage over public schools to their students, with lower average class sizes, individual attention from faculty and, in some cases, better academic and human resources. But private schools and especially private Catholic schools are struggling in the aftermath of the economic downturn and controversy within the Catholic Church.
When asked about her most useful classroom resource in the aftermath of budget cuts, reduced spending and a pay-scale reduction at St. Mary of the Assumption Elementary School in Brookline, Kindergarten teacher Megan Drielak responded, “The parents, of course.” As private Catholic schools across the country, and especially in the Boston area, are facing reduced funding and lower enrollments, teachers have begun turning inward, to the parents of their students, for classroom help. Parents are often called upon to act as classroom aids, field trip chaperones, after-school tutors and project supervisors. Gone are the days when parents dropped off their kids on the school steps and returned seven hours later. Many are now spending time both in their children’s classrooms and stuffing envelopes in the office. In fact, one St. Mary student was heard in the halls saying, “Finally, my mom spends more time in the principal’s office than I do!” With all these added hours of parental participation and classroom work, is it worth spending the extra money to send children to private schools? One-income families are forced to add a second income to pay the high tuition fees associated with a private education. At least one parent, if not both, must deal with the pressure of taking time off from career to work in their children’s classrooms. The benefits of low student-teacher ratios and one-on-one attention are hardly worth the effort.
The solution is simple, though invariably overlooked: homeschooling. For parents who spend part of their day in a classroom, the leap from private school to homeschooling is quite simple. And since the costs of homeschooling are miniscule compared to a private school education, two-income homes are no longer necessary. This solution is particularly appropriate for Boston area families who are bombarded by a high cost of living, higher property tax, and other costs associated with living in a metropolis.
So why are most parents dismissing or ignoring the homeschooling option for their children? Many parents value the importance of socialization, and think that homeschooling will prevent their children from meeting friends and maintaining relationships with their peers. Others believe that the exposure to real world problems in traditional school will teach their kids the skills necessary to succeed in future careers. Some parents just enjoy their adult time, and take advantage of the six hour school day as a means to either advance their careers or maintain their households.
All of these are valid reasons to be cautious when considering schooling options. But no one reason is strong enough to override the sentiments of the parent quoted above. Any parent who is willing to make a direct comparison between the dangers of traditional school and the dangers of prison should seriously consider the homeschooling option.
It has become a cliché to say that the U.S. is in decline. It is certainly true, but need not be irreversible, and the country has been there before. It was in decline when the Watergate debacle destroyed a successful presidency and the long and costly enterprise in Vietnam ended terribly on the helipad on the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon. But 15 years later, the country was at a unique pinnacle as the world’s only superpower. Not even the Roman Empire enjoyed such eminence, though its rivals, Persia and China, were (unlike their current status) too distant to be seriously bothersome.
What is unusual now is that all the Great Powers are in decline, except China — and that country’s rise is at least a third composed of a public relations flim-flam job, of the kind that always recruits the credulous in the West, as Hitler, Stalin and Japan Inc. did. Western Europe has failed as a coherent force. The Lisbon Constitution is a shambles and the new leaders of federal Europe are such nebbishes, chosen for their inoffensive unassertiveness, that not 5% of Europeans could recall their names.
Europe has been harder hit than the U.S. by the economic crisis and is mired in spurious rhetoric, much of it in French, limning an illusory social-market variant to “cowboy capitalism.” This is like the Holy See’s ancient but sporadic search for a third way between socialism and capitalism. It is a vain pursuit of an economic system diluted by the imposition of self-indulgent European cultural fatigue, masquerading as gentility.
Russia is a fraud. Its population is in steep decline and chronically afflicted by alcoholism. The governmental system is authoritarian and corrupt, allied with protégés who have been given monopolistic concessions and who repay their rulers with obscene kickbacks. Except for a few areas that have survived from the U.S.S.R.’s expertise in some defence industries, Russia’s manufacturing is continuing to wither and its economy depends almost entirely on the exportation of natural resources, especially oil. It is not an efficient producer of anything, and commodity prices are always vulnerable.
Japan, which only 20 years ago was making more confident noises than China is today about surpassing the United States economically, is now sluggish and geriatric. It has a new government even more bumptious and inept than Washington’s. And its vaunted genius at sophisticated manufacturing has been undermined by the widespread product-quality problems at Toyota, so soon after it became the world’s largest automobile manufacturer — displacing General Motors, which, after the pause that refreshes in Chapter 11 to shed unsightly debt, may be starting to recover. Japan is torn between reinvigorating the alliance with the U.S. and detaching from it to appease China.
It now seems clearer than ever that China is manipulating the North Korean nuclear threat to rattle Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Indonesia, while retaining, in a barbarous Beltway phrase, plausible deniability. The U.S. U-turn on missile defence and the production of F-22 Raptors has increased Japan’s temptation. But if it departs the U.S. alliance to nuzzle with China, it will be through as a Great Power.
India is a nascent Great Power, about 10 years behind China in building a capitalist economy, but with the advantages of reasonably democratic and partially functioning legal systems. Its influence will grow, but does not extend far beyond, or even into, the Indian Ocean now.
The rise of China is not without limits. It still has 900 million peasants living much as they did thousands of years ago. Half the population has little or no exposure to medical care or education and other social services are spotty, corruption is rife and there are important relics of the command economy still in place. GDP is deemed to be increased whenever an expense or investment is approved, not as the decision is implemented. Parallel indicators such as electricity production are not consistent with economic growth rates on the scale claimed. It is not clear that the Chinese public will buy consumer goods that are not being exported, and although the country now has huge foreign currency reserves, its financial system is much more opaque than was Japan’s when it plunged into stagnation 20 years ago. The enforced population-restraint policy ensures an aging population.
China has managed one of the great economic modernizations of world history, but it is not a naturally rich or particularly skilled country (though higher education is making great strides), and it has a dominant public sector that cannot be relied upon over time to perform better than central planners traditionally have. And the United States is ceasing to ship it millions of jobs and to accept the dumping of billions of dollars of cheap, and often defective, merchandise.
The Great Powers are now like their currencies: They are measurable only in relation to one another. None of the major currencies is objectively strong, except China’s, and that is on the basis of unverifiable claims and projections.
The Obama administration has spent a dismal year being rebuffed by the refuse of international despotism to which it has offered an outstretched hand (Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba), condescended to by China and subjected to gamecock insolences from Russia. Its attempt to advance peace in the Middle East by denying it had made a settlements agreement with Israel was, deservedly, a fiasco.
The administration has left the country and the world completely unenlightened about how it proposes to reduce stupefying deficits and rampant money-supply increases without bringing on a bone-cracking recession and/or rampaging inflation. The domestic front has been a dreadful botch of health care and a scalding, total immersion in Al Gore’s self-enriching fantasies about global warming. (For this harebrained cause, the President bustled around Copenhagen like a one-armed paper-hanger trying to generate enthusiasm for pledging $100-billion per year in compensation to Mugabe, Chavez, the Sudanese genocidists and China, whose Prime Minister ceased strutting about the Danish capital like Douglas MacArthur evicting the Bonus Army, as he proclaimed China’s predestined supremacy, just long enough to claim the leadership (as the world’s greatest emitter of carbons) of the G-77 of compensation claimants.)
Despite this appalling year of miscues and vaudeville amateurism, hope persists. The President did the right thing in Afghanistan, and will almost certainly, of all ironies, be a successful war President. He is sending military assistance to Taiwan, and finally meeting the Dalai Lama and ignoring Chinese protests. Obama is no Clinton at opportunistic zigzag course-changing. But if he becomes serious about offshore drilling and nuclear power, taxes financial transactions and elective energy use and doesn’t strangle incomes, shows some fiscal restraint, accepts a sane compromise on health care, banishes cap-and-trade to Halloween trick-or-treating (where I assume it came from), revives the alliance with Europe and applies his outstretched palm to Iran’s bewhiskered face at great velocity, he could still be a successful President. Europe, Japan and (thanks to George W. Bush’s diplomacy) India are natural allies, and Russia will go to the highest bidder as long as it is treated politely. And if their interests are defined clearly, there need not be antagonism between the U.S. and China.
In the balance of American standing in the world, in three years, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan may well be countries with reasonable power-sharing, and secular governments favourable to the West. Apart from the collapse of the Iron Curtain, this would be the greatest regional strategic victory in the world since president Truman’s successful defence of South Korea.
America appears weak, compared to what it has been and should be; but not, thankfully, compared to its rivals.
National Review Online
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