The Simplicity Factor
The Simplicity Factor
As a parent, the one thing I continually said
to all of the children in my life is that you need to do well in school and go
to college. Those were the same words said to me by my parents, older relatives,
and family friends. And as a college
professor, I often repeat those sentiments to students that cross my path.
A few years
ago, President Obama stressed the point that all American kids should go to
college. He tried to make it a part of
his agenda by proposing ideas of free college or free community college. The
president believed that having more college educated Americans would make our
nation greater. More recently, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo supported
legislation, which he claimed would create free college across the state
university system.
I recently
told some astonished students that I do not believe that all Americans should
go to college. However, there are some consequences in that line of
thinking. The idea of going to college
has several components. These include
issues of geography, religion, race, class, ethnicity, and gender. Everyone does not want to go, nor get to go,
and there are distinct choices that determine who, ultimately, gets to go to
college. Opportunities are not a
reflection of equity.
But to somewhat of a surprise, in
one of the most developed nations in the world, the majority of American
citizens do not have a college degree. This is in contrast to Russia, Canada and
Japan where the majority of the population hold college degrees or the equivalent
(USA Today February 2014). America,
which spends a great deal of its resources on education, does not see the
return on its investment. The US ranks
fifth in the top ten of world nations with college or tertiary educated
populations. (The other nations in the top ten are Israel, New Zealand,
Australia, South Korea, Great Britain, Norway, and Finland)
In 2014, researchers pointed out
that roughly 62.6% of all high school graduates were going directly to college. The states that had the greatest percentages
of high schoolers going straight to college included Connecticut, Massachusetts,
and Mississippi with over 72% of their graduating students going to college (HigherEdInfo.org).
At the lower end of the spectrum were
Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, Utah, and West Virginia.
In these states, less than half of all graduates enrolled in college
after earning their diplomas.
A year later, in 2015, the
statistics pointed out that roughly 69.2% of all high school graduates were
going directly to college. The data also
indicated that roughly 40% of all Americans had an associate’s degree, and
about 22% of all Americans had some college but no degree. In 2016, the Census Bureau reported that a
third or 33.4% of all Americans had a bachelor’s degree.
Last fall, in 2017, over 20 million
Americans enrolled in colleges and universities across the nation. A majority of these students are female, and
their percentage in the total number of college-educated students is
growing. Yet, as more women than men are
attending and graduating from college there remain wage inequities. The glass
ceiling has cracks but it is not breaking.
That slight digression is
important, as it shows that American society remains dominated by men despite a
rapidly increasing rate of gender change.
This achievement comes with some disturbing facts. More female students,
for example, will be in debt than their male counterparts and they will make
less money even if they are in the same fields.
However, chances are that while they won’t be more successful, they will
make tremendous inroads in historically male professions. More than half of all
graduating dentists, lawyers and general practitioner physicians are now
female.
Yet, the statistics for the class
of 2021 will hardly deviate from the existing trends. It is expected that 2/3rds
will graduate within six years. And
about 20% will never graduate from college.
This subject of who goes, drops out, and graduates from college is a subject that infuriates me on countless levels.
Foremost, as previously mentioned, I
don’t believe that every graduating high school student should go to college. But
if students do go to college every effort should be made to ensure (financially
and academically) that they are able to graduate.
Students who apply to college
should know why they want to go to college.
Random surveys show that many high school students are applying to
college because of peer or parental pressure, but not because of a specific
desire to study in a particular field. For many, college is simply grade 13!
A critical aspect of going to
college and surviving the rigors of college is the preparation for
college. I would guess that less than
half of all the high school graduates are actually prepared for college. Today’s students are often singular minded in
their educational approach. They want to
major in a particular field, and are often lured to that area of study largely
by the promise of employment and salary not by their actual interest or
competency in the discipline. Parents, more than ever, play a critical role in
determining their children’s attitudes towards college through their degrees of
financial and academic support, and their own personal expectations. While
there are many more helicopter parents, at the other end of the spectrum are
parents who never aid their children’s quest for a degree. Today’s students are more limited in
scope. They are also more likely to not
want to study disciplines outside of their chosen fields. And a good percentage, do not want to
extensively read or take examinations.
The result is what I call a “simplicity
factor”. Students want college to be as
easy as possible and they all want good grades. They see college as a
transition to a job and not as an expansion of their minds.
Unfortunately, this is a pipe
dream. The framers of the nation’s colleges favor complexity. They are highly against promoting college as
a transitional journey from high school to the workplace. People who have dedicated their lives to
years of academic study staff higher education institutions. They are philosophically motivated to push
rigor and standards. College, for them, is not supposed to be a party. It is supposed to be hard work. And given the two vastly different
perspectives, college is not working for all Americans. It is becoming a tiered system where students
at the best schools prosper in ways that students at lesser institutions do
not. Costs vary across the spectrum of
institutions, and the level of debt has become oppressive. Going to college in
America can spell success or it can turn into a lifetime of financial ruin.
The simplicity factor also reveals
that American knowledge, both the base knowledge and the acquired knowledge, is
uneven. All college students do not know
or learn the same things. But we have no
way of knowing what many high school students know because the nation lacks
standardized curriculum. Most of the
national tests are not standardized and there are different benchmark scores
for each state. Our standardized tests
measure different elements. The
standardized tests for college admission do not measure the broad high school
curriculum but instead are predictors of success or failure in the first year. They are aptitude tests, but not knowledge
examinations. Similarly, when students
survive college and want to advance into a career or further education, testing
is also critical. Standardized tests for professional licenses, and tests for
admission to graduate and professional schools are revealing the differences between
the best and the worst. The system
penalizes good students who attend schools that succumb to a version of the
simplicity factor.
The current wave of testing is a
by-product of the simplicity factor. On one hand, our society has downplayed
competition as highlighted by giving every team a trophy for participation, and
on the other we have promoted testing that doesn’t reveal the impact of good
teaching. The overall result is a
weakening of the guiding principles of our education system. And it serves to
discourage many from wanting to go to college as well as fails to offer
alternatives to those who might not want to attend.
Again this phenomenon creates gaps
between those who have attended college and those who haven’t. It also is an indicator if the college has
fulfilled its mission of transforming students into more enlightened persons. And when it has enlightened its students, they
will tend to see the world in a similar manner. But can a nation fully function if
a percentage of its populations think and see things differently largely due to
their level of educational attainment?
Maybe President Obama sees and saw something that others simply overlooked!
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