Many of you have probably read a recent essay by Professor X in The Atlantic magazine. The surest sign that this has struck a nerve is that it was recommended by two adversaries: Andrew Sullivan and Eric Alterman. And they're not the only ones.
The author cites the unsuitability for college of many night students to whom he must teach ENG-101 and ENG-102 - "not because they want to but because they must". And while he notes that many of his students are there due to requirements for advancement on their day jobs, he appears to assign equal responsibility as follows:
Academia is all for it, naturally. Industry is all for it; some companies even help with tuition costs. Government is all for it; the truly needy have lots of opportunities for financial aid. The media applauds it—try to imagine someone speaking out against the idea.
Yet I've long felt that it stems primarily from employers deciding that certain jobs now require college, when quite possibly targeted post-secondary training courses would suffice - and would like your feedback.
(more after the jump).
Regarding employers, the author notes the following:
There is a sense that the American workforce needs to be more professional at every level. Many jobs that never before required college now call for at least some post-secondary course work. School custodians ... may not need college — but the people who supervise them ......... probably do. There is a sense that our bank tellers should be college educated, and so should our medical-billing techs, and our child-welfare officers, and our sheriffs and federal marshals. We want the police officer who stops the car with the broken taillight to have a nodding acquaintance with great literature.
And while I, too, would be delighted to have a workforce with higher education, I think he takes the word of employers that college is a necessity (for jobs that never required it before) too much at face value. Post-secondary education, it seems to me, can be tailored to those skills that high school graduates need, that supplement on-the-job training. But the author notes the dreaded word "vocational" as a hindrance.
In my region, I hear of skilled jobs that are supposedly going unfilled which I suspect falls into the you-gotta-have-college-nowadays syndrome: those that traditionally took those jobs may not be college material, and those who are successful in college wouldn't consider them (either because they consider those jobs beneath them or possibly could be off-shored).
Now, I'm going to hold my nose, but last year in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed piece, the winger Charles Murray I felt got one thing right. Instead of barking about genetics, this time he's off on a tear over IQ scores - and he speaks primarily of full-time traditional day students. Yet he does seem to attribute the change appropriately, in my estimation, about why so many attend college who would be better off not doing so - on employers:
Government policy contributes to the problem by making college scholarships and loans too easy to get, but its role is ancillary. The demand for college is market-driven, because a college degree does, in fact, open up access to jobs that are closed to people without one.
It is a screening device for employers....that you stuck it out for four years says something about your perseverance. But the degree itself does not qualify the graduate for anything. There are better, faster and more efficient ways for young people to acquire credentials to provide to employers.
Now, I am quite certain that there are so jobs that did not require college in the past but legitimately do today. I am sure there are.
Yet I suspect that at least in some cases employers have raised the bar not because it is necessary (and cannot be taught in a different post-secondary system) but because they can.
I'd really like to hear from others about this - what has been your experience? Either way, is this situation part of what causes the mis-match in jobs going unfilled, as alluded to earlier?