Democrats completely wrong on college issue

This policy statment by the Democratic Leadership Committee exemplifies why I can't stand Democrats.

The DLC's stated goal is to make "college as universal as high school," which is a completely bogus goal. Why do people flipping hamburgers at McDonald's need college degrees? If students can't learn basic reading and math skills by the time the graduate from high school, what in the world does the DLC think that college is going to do for them?

The DLC proposal talks about how college graduates earn a lot more money than non-graduates. Of course I agree with this fact, and when examining the data in the General Social Survey I have not found any other demographic factor that's even as close to being as determinant of earnings as a bachelor's degree or a graduate degree.

But the DLC proposal also mentions that "[s]tudents who don't finish college don't earn much more than their counterparts who never entered." which seems like proof to me that that primary benefit of college is the credential and not the actual knowledge capital which college may, or may not, impart on its attendees.

The credential is just a zero-sum transfer of wealth, and college as a whole seems like a negative-sum game, because it's likely that the actual value of the knowledge is less than the cost of tuition plus lost earnings from not working. This means that the more people who attend college, the worse our economy becomes.

The best way to make society more fair is to work towards ending the reliance on credentials. Credentialism will always favor the children of the rich whose parents can afford to buy them better credentials.

Comments

[JewishAtheist]

What control could the Democrats have over credentialism? What, do you want a law against discriminating based on education? I guess they could try to ban legacy admissions, but that's probably only a drop in the bucket. The Democrats are, of course, trying to equalize the playing field before college as well.

The facts, as you agree, are that people with college education make more money and that those with degrees are not necessarily more capable than those without. This points to an obvious gap between rich and poor (again, as you agree) which is not based in merit.

It seems the obvious solution, within the current system, is to send more of the poor and capable to college. Burger flippers don't need college (and they don't need high school) but as you've pointed out, unskilled labor opportunities are decreasing in our country anyway.

[Half Sigma]

Jewish Atheist: "It seems the obvious solution, within the current system, is to send more of the poor and capable to college."

No, because it seems obvious that if everyone had a bachelor's degree then it would become as useless as a high school degree is today, and employers would turn to graduate degrees instead, and the rich would be better able to afford to send their children to graduate degree.

The government cannot win the war against the rich spending money to credentialize their children. The only solution is to encourage hiring based on actual ability to do the job instead of a credential.

[Peter]

A college degree is valuable mainly because it shows that the person holding it is not a complete babbling idiot.

[JewishAtheist]

No, because it seems obvious that if everyone had a bachelor's degree then it would become as useless as a high school degree is today, and employers would turn to graduate degrees instead, and the rich would be better able to afford to send their children to graduate degree.

That's a very good point, Sigma. I just don't see how government could prevent credentialism without some extreme form of affirmative action that would be even less popular than the current one.

[spungen]

Note that it says some 47 percent of students now are "non-traditional." So many of the people at issue aren't even young people starting their lives fresh. College is becoming a more and more attractive alternative to/vacation from the job market to all sorts of dysfunctional adults in their late 20s, 30s, on up.

Used to be, older students were guys getting back from war or people going to night school to advance their careers while supporting families, but not anymore. "Single mom" doesn't necessarily mean divorced older homemaker -- it means never-married chick who likes to party and has a kid, and finds going to classes and living off loans and financial aid less confining to her lifestyle than holding down a real job.

I'd like to see the CSUs and all similar state systems closed, except for vocational studies. And, academic financial aid severely limited when people are over a certain age, at least for certain majors. I know it'll never happen.

The "shitty-college-for-all" stupidity isn't limited to Democrats. Take away the public spending proposals, and you've got a popular conservative argument: Success is available equally to all, if only they act right.

[superdestroyer]

HS,

Many times you have ranted that employers should care less about credentials and more about "ability." However, how are employers suppose to determine if someone has "what it takes" to do the job through the normal hiring practices of most employers? Would you propose that all employers become like Wal-Mart and hire people on a First in-first hired type system. Or do you have a secret system for identifying great employees who may not have great credentials?

[Fred]

Yet another bad idea: college as universal as high school. High school, for that matter, really shouldn't be universal either. However we have this problem, which is that there are few legal career opportunities for 12 year olds. So let's keep high school, but let's accept that by the age of 12, kids should start separating themselves out based on academic abilities. I don't care for the European-style, one time standardized test to determine which kids are university bound and which will soon be greasing machinery. However, for high schools to serve any purpose other than adolescent warehousing, they need to offer courses of varying difficulty which students must qualify to take through some sort of well-established and blind grading system, so as to avoid charges that the teacher doesn't like so and so's kid.

High school should end at 16, after which, a student would either prepare with considerable intensity for university study, undertake less-rigorous but still credible training for office work, banking, and the like, apprentice to work with the hands, or take up a life of crime.

Community colleges and the less demanding four year colleges, which is what most four year colleges are, could serve those students who don't show the potential to do genuine university work. The end result: university degrees mean something and are pegged more or less at the level of a Master's degree now, there exists a range of educational paths to accomodate students of various abilities and interests, and tons of money is saved. Right now, we're frustrating the hell out of everybody by trying (half-heardtedly) to educate people beyond their level of ability. I think it's a good plan. I think thel liklihood of anything like this ever being implemented in the US is awfully close to zero. Politically unpalatable.

[spungen]

"Right now, we're frustrating the hell out of everybody by trying (half-heardtedly) to educate people beyond their level of ability."

Yes, why is it that almost none of the many, many government-run universities in this country have any prestige? The only one I can think of is UC Berkeley, and even that gets an asterisk due to the ease of transferring in. It seems like a better idea would be to stop paying billions for a bunch of half-assed universities, where students have to spend or borrow a lot anyway, and start paying for a few prestigious ones, which would be free to those who qualified.

Without some kind of credentialism, wouldn't things just be based on personal relationships? That certainly wouldn't be a blow to the privileged.

[JewishAtheist]

Yes, why is it that almost none of the many, many government-run universities in this country have any prestige?

Many of the State schools are very prestigious, particularly in particular fields. More particularly in the more practical fields. UVA, Michigan, all the UCs, some of the SUNYs, etc.

Check the list:
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/brief/natudoc/tier1/t1natudoc_brief.php

[Steve]

An alternative to a credential would be the results of a standardized test tailored to job performance prediction.

But standardized tests are illegal for the purpose of employment.

And you wondered why educators as a group are such harsh critics of IQ testing. Life is sweet when Uncle Sam breaks the kneecaps of your competition.

[michael vassar]

"very prestigious" is relative. None but Berkley are comparible to the top 20 or so private schools. The premiums associated with going to a school with average SATs of 1300 instead of 1000 seem to be much less than those associated with going to schools with average SATS of 1450 instead of 1300.

[spungen]

JAtheist, the link expired, but I don't dispute there are some decent public undergrads, mainly for the sciences and business. Many are probably perfectly adequate, especially if one wants to work in that geographic area and is not in a crowded field. I think you overstate the general prestige of the UCs, though. Some are much better-regarded than others. I don't know much about SUNY bc I'm on the West Coast but I've often heard it compared to the CSU system.

I still assert that there are many, many more government-funded universities that are third-tier or worse. I think the career and grad-school-admittance penalties for a third-tier public school degree, especially one with "state" in the title, is worse than that for a third-tier private. They're not even cheap anymore. Which is why I think the government should focus its funding on the few successful schools.

An example: At my law school, the class was roughly 70 percent UC grads (but only a couple from Riverside and Irvine). But, there was only a tiny handful of Cal State grads -- even though the CSU system is bigger. I doubt it was due to lack of applicants. Many CSU grads go to law school, but most can't qualify for the first-tier law schools. You don't see them much in the prestigious law jobs, either.

[Douglas Knight]

I've heard that employers judge whether an applicant can read based on the college. A credential that guarantees the ability to read seems to me like it should be very valuable. I think the answer to JewishAtheist's question is to make a high school diploma guarantee the ability to read.

[SFG]

In medicine, UCSF is a top 10 school, and Michigan, UCLA, and UVa are top 20.

[spungen]

Yeah, there are some very well-regarded public grad/professional schools. And they still charge a lot, although less. In fact, my law school was state-run. Ironically, the state law school system admitted to discriminating against the state's own CSUs, and some of its UCs, when weighing undergrad grades for admittance purposes.

[spungen]

The policy statement also recommends support for Hillary's "Non-traditional Student Success Act." This would provide Pell Grants for Internet classes and increase them for prisoners.

[Kirk]

Except for the G.I. Bill (which is used to encourage people to join the military) I can't support any gov't funding for colleges. It seems too much like the poor being taxed to benefit the rich, with blue-collar workers paying for the educations of their future bosses.

On a side note, am I the only one who saw the interview with Bob Rosner? He writes the "Working Wounded" blog for ABC.News.com. He's of the opinion that the college degree is pretty much an arbitrary measurement of someone's potential to be in management. Most interestingly, he suspects that HR managers insist on new hires having degrees, simply because the managers themselves have them. By insisting that a degree is necessary, HR managers are feeding their own egos: "I have this degree, so of course it's important to have one!"

It explains the bogus concept of having a 25 year-old college-graduate running a shift filled with workers that have been on the job since before the boss was born.

[Fred]

Interesting topic, particularly regarding the prestige and quality (obviously, often quite different) of various public universities. If you're interested in average SAT/ACT scores for incoming freshmen at various public and private universities, take a look at this site:

http://www.ophs.opusd.k12.ca.us/average_sat_act_scores.htm

The results are interesting. I tallied up the SAT scores from some of the highest ranking public unis:

Georgia Inst. of Technology 1329
College of Wiliam and Mary 1317 (yes, it is a public university)
Univ. of Virginia 1313
US Naval Academy 1304
UC Berkley 1291
UC San Diego 1256
Univ. of NC at Chapel Hill 1256
Univ of Texas at Austin 1217

I stopped adding up scores at this point, but these would seem to be among the highest ranked public universities in terms of avg. SAT scores. For universities in general, the service academies generally rank pretty high, and technical schools typically score higher than general universites, for example, Cal Tech's average SAT is in the 1500s. Comments?