College: a national treasure or America's most overrated product?

I have presented these statistics in previous writings but they're so important that I want to aggregate them for you here.

Despite having been a poor student in high school, are you or someone you love considering attempting a college degree? Are you wondering whether it might be wiser to pursue an alternative such as a short-term career-prep program, an apprenticeship, the military, or on-the-job training, perhaps at an ethical entrepreneur's elbow?

Consider these:

The New York Times reports, "The National Assessment of Adult Literacy revealed distressing declines in literacy, especially among those with the most education. (emphases mine) For example, "Fewer than one-third of college graduates--down from 40 percent a decade ago--were deemed 'Proficient' in terms of literacy as defined by the ability to read and understand lengthy passages. A small but still alarming percentage of college graduates scored 'Below Basic,' meaning they were incapable of all but the simplest tasks."

USA Today reports that according to a study funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, "Nearing a diploma, most college students cannot handle many complex but common tasks, from understanding credit card offers to comparing the cost per ounce of food...More than 50% of students at four-year schools and 75% at two-year college...could not interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers...Most students at community colleges and four-year schools showed 'intermediate skills,' meaning they could...identify a location on a map or calculate the cost of ordering office supplies."

Just think of how much professors have to dumb down their classes to accommodate to such students. When I was teaching, even at Berkeley, I had to dumb down my classes, dramatically. But I would not inflate grades. When I dared fail a student who truly, truly had terrible writing and thinking skills, I received a call from a dean urging me to give her a passing grade: "Society really needs more minority woman role models." I refused to change her grade. Despite my having excellent student evaluations, I was not rehired.

Dr. Clifford Adelman, senior researcher at the U.S. Office Education, reported that of freshman at four-year colleges who graduated in the bottom 40 percent of their high school class, only 1/4 will graduate...even if given 8 1/2 years!

And according to a just-released study of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data by the Chronicle of Higher Education in an article called The Great College Scam,, 60% of the increased number of college graduates from 1992 to 2008 work on jobs requiring just high school!

As colleges dig ever deeper into the barrel of high school graduates to extract maximum profit and meet government-imposed and other pressures to increase minority enrollment, those colleges are shepherding students into college when they know that's not the person's wisest post-secondary choice. As bad, the colleges do not inform the students of the terrible odds against them. If a physician prescribed a treatment requiring years, a fortune, and huge opportunity costs and which had a small chance of success, without obtaining the patient's fully informed consent, that doctor would be sued and lose in every court in the land. Yet our government not only doesn't sue the colleges, it rewards them by giving students ever more financial aid, which merely allows colleges to raise tuition more!

We simply must stop allowing colleges to ruin countless students' lives. Government should withhold financial aid to institutions that produce the above results, and of course, should mandate the College Report Card I've urged for so long. Only that way, can prospective students have the information they need to decide if, for them, a college education is the national treasure that colleges tell us it is, or America's most overrated product.

The Great College Scam

I've long written about colleges, in their greed, digging ever deeper into the applicant pool, admitting students who are not even close to ready for college-level instruction, very unlikely to graduate, and even less likely to land a job that requires a college degree.

Now, in The Great College Scam, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports a study of Bureau of Labor Statistics data that proves the point most frighteningly:

60% of the increased number of college graduates from 1992 to 2008 work on jobs requiring just high school!!!

It's time for the media to expose a college education for what it is: America's Most Overrated Product.

Update: HERE'S a derivative article on the topic.

Advice to the parent of an Ivy-aspiring kid

I often get inquiries from prospective clients, which in essence say, "Get my kid into a prestigious college."

Here's how I responded today to one of those queries:

The path of least resistance: Let her be her designer-label self--get into the most prestigious college she can but you be very savvy about filling out the financial aid forms. Use this great book. She'll probably get as good a deal from the Ivy as from MegaState U--the prestigious privates have beaucoup bucks. Negotiate hard with those villains.

I haven't found many kids who say "I've worked so hard to get into a prestigious college" be open to often smarter options such as deferring college for a year or 40, doing interesting things in the real world. Then, if needed, she can return to college. Girls are especially likely to be enamored of the straight-to-college plan, which is erroneously perceived to be the low-risk approach. Most high-achieving girls also love the structure of school. Alas, too often, those choices are not in the kid's best developmental interest let alone long-term career interest.

Parents too are subject to the "I'll do anything for my wonderful kid" mindset-- "How could I deny her Ivy when she's worked so hard?" It's fallacious thinking but pervasive and nearly impossible to dissuade from.

Where I can, without too much resistance, add value is helping her choose a career, teach her how to maximize her chances of achieving career success, and importantly, teach her how to make the most of college. Colleges don't want to tell you how, because if more students used these techniques (e.g., get course credit for customized one-on-one courses) it would cut into universities' profit.

Our Frightening Graduation Statistics

Following publication of my article America’s Most Overrated Product: A Bachelor’s Degree, in the Chronicle of Higher Education, I received a fat packet from a Harry Stille, who, after retiring from the South Carolina legislature, started the Higher Education Policy Center.

That packet contained a variety of statistics on the four-year colleges in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live. I was particularly saddened to see that, except for UC Berkeley, which attracts an unusually high-performing student body, the graduation rates, especially at the public colleges, is frighteningly low.

Of course, the term “four-year” college is a misnomer. Most students at such institutions don’t graduate in four years … if at all. Here are the six-year graduation rates for these colleges and their students’ unbelievably low 25%ile SAT score.

San Francisco State: 880 SAT, 40 percent graduate in six years.
Cal State East Bay: 770 SAT, 43 percent graduate in six years.
San Jose State: 860 SAT, 40 percent graduate in six years
Sacramento State: 840 SAT, 40 percent graduate in six years.

Even sadder, the true numbers are probably even worse. Those numbers were obtained by calculating the average of the numbers submitted to the U.S. News & World Report, Barron’s, Peterson’s, and Newsweek college guides. Many colleges do not submit data on all their students. For example, last I checked (a few years ago, admittedly) UC-Berkeley reports the results only for “regularly admitted freshmen.” That excluded the 6 percent who were admitted as “special admits.” I also know that other institutions exclude groups of low-performing students.

Four-year colleges must stop their obsession with making more money no matter what. They admit, every year, hundreds of thousands of students with poor high school records, and most of them suffer the terror of being clueless in their classes, accumulating a mountain of debt, little learning, and the enormous opportunity cost of what they could have been learning and accomplishing in an apprenticeship program, community college, at the elbow of an entrepreneur, or yes, even in the media-reviled military.

Should Colleges be More Accountable?

A few weeks ago, the Chronicle of Higher Education published my article, America’s Most Overrated Product: A Bachelor’s Degree.

One of that article’s contentions is that each college’s student recruitment materials be required to include a report card containing such information as graduation rates and average student growth in thinking skills, writing, etc. disaggregated by SAT score bands.

I’ve been pleased that the article has generated national interest: It has been republished in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Dallas Morning News, and I was interviewed about it on a number of shows including National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation. I’ve received so many supportive emails from professors, administrators, students, and former students.

The article has also generated many responses in the Chronicle’s Forum, not all positive. In this blog post, I list the major criticisms of my call for a required college report card and my response to each criticism:

Criticism #1: “Surely teaching isn’t poor at teaching-oriented institutions, of which there are thousands. In my R1 department, the quality of teaching by top-notch research profs is amazingly (emphasis mine) good, with a few glaring exceptions.”

My Response
Here are my criteria for “amazing” teaching. How many faculty members could honestly describe themselves as “amazing?”

— Providing instruction that will cause significant growth in the critical competencies:

— thinking skills

— writing skills

— responsible citizenship

— information literacy (for example, competent use of libraries, Google, etc)

— an understanding of the scientific method

— the ability to think probabilistically

— the ability to estimate accurately

— an appreciation of iconic music and art through the ages

— an appreciation of the universal themes in literature and the major definitions and tensions within, for example, love, jealousy, ambition, greed, alienation, the meaning of life, fear, prejudice, death, etc.

— Often using immersive activities such as simulations, role plays, and debates, which increase the likelihood of growth in those competencies.

— The willingness to be truly available, one-on-one, to students as intellectual and emotional mentors. That means the clichéd but invaluable long talks, walks, coffees, and dinners with students, asking them questions, for example, about their search for meaning, career, responsible citizenship, wisdom, etc.

From where I sit, that is the standard to which we should aspire. And if teaching faculty members don’t have the time or ability to be “amazing,” colleges need to change the bases on which teaching faculty are hired, provided tutelage, and promoted.

Criticism #2: “Is it colleges’ fault if students are bored? Shouldn’t they be taking more responsibility for their educations?” (My article cited the Higher Education Research Institute national study that found that 44.6% of freshmen at four-year colleges were frequently bored in class.)

My response
It is the admissions committee’s fault for admitting severely underprepared students, who are far more likely to be bored. (Wouldn’t you be bored as a student in a class for which you were severely underprepared?)

And faculty must take responsibility for not boring the fully qualified. Faculty has an obligation to choose content that reasonably qualified undergraduate students would find valuable, presented in interactive, engaging ways to ensure that they, at least, retain the critical learnings listed above.

Criticism #3: Requiring colleges to administer a test of value-added is a bad idea: It wouldn’t measure the important things and/or would cost too much to administer.

My Response
The Collegiate Learning Assessment, a non-multiple-choice, computer-administered test of reasoning, problem solving, and writing, has been widely recommended by higher education reform commissions and cogently defended in “Collegiate Learning Assessment: Facts and Fantasy,” Evaluation Review, Vol. 31, No. 4, 2007, pp 415-439.

Of course, no test measures everything, but each institution’s administering an exam such as the Collegiate Learning Assessment to a random sample of freshmen and then again to those students as seniors would provide a cost-effective index of a college’s value-added. Of course, the sample quality would be diminished by the fact that colleges will vary in the percentage and characteristics of the tested freshmen who left the college before their senior year. Nonetheless, it would be a most useful tool for comparing colleges and for helping a college to evaluate its effectiveness.

Should 4-Year Colleges Admit Underprepared Students?

My Chronicle of Higher Education article, America’s Most Overrated Product: A Bachelor’s Degree argued that four-year colleges should not admit underprepared students.

A number of posters to the Chronicle Forum disagree. Here are their arguments and my responses:

Criticism #1: Marginal students struggle even with a college degree. Why would you discourage them from getting even that?

My Response
As my article documented, every year, four-year colleges enroll hundreds of thousands of students who graduated in the bottom half of their high-school class, the large majority of whom learn little, acquire much debt, and have only a 1/3 chance of graduating even if given 8 1/2 years.

Those students will likely learn more and have a brighter career future if they choose an option other than four-year college: an apprenticeship program, community college, career college, the military, or a launchpad job at the elbow of a fund raiser, ethical small-business owner, electrician, etc. Because colleges are turning out ever more college graduates at the same time as employers are offshoring, part-timing, and automating ever more white-collar jobs, even if those weak students manage to beat the large odds and get their degree, they are likely to be among the weakest college graduates and thus more career-at-risk than if they had chosen one of the aforementioned paths.

I felt compelled to write America’s Most Overrated Product: A Bachelor’s Degree in part, because I’ve seen countless students who struggled in high school pushed to college where they dropped out or managed to — six to 10 years later — finish their degree, only to find themselves unable to get a better job than they could have gotten as a mere high-school graduate. And, importantly, most of them lack the thinking and communication skills one would expect even of a marginal college graduate. Meanwhile, they see their peers happier and more successful in a career such as the aforementioned.

Criticism #2: Some students did badly in high school but blossomed in college.

My Response
The evidence is dispositive: For every late-blooming success, there are many who fail, and for whom a non-college path would have been wiser.

Most physicians wouldn’t prescribe a treatment that took four to eight years, cost a fortune, and had a high risk of failure. And if a physician did so without fully informing the patient, the patient would likely sue and win in any court in the land. Yet every year, four-year colleges administer such a treatment — providing nowhere near full disclosure — to hundreds of thousands of underprepared students, the large majority of whom end up dropping out having acquired little learning, much debt, and damaged self-esteem.

And not only are the colleges not sued, government rewards them with ever-increased financial aid, which allows the colleges to continue to raise tuition beyond the cost of inflation.

Criticism #3: Don’t just blame the colleges for admitting underprepared students. High school counselors have a responsibility too.

My Response
I agree, but colleges must first provide counselors with the data on average learning gains, graduation rates, and employment for students, disaggregated by SAT score bands. That would greatly help high-school counselors assist students in weighing the cost-benefit of four-year college versus the aforementioned options.

Me on NPR's Talk of the Nation

I was discussing my article in the Chronicle of Higher Education: America's Most Overrated Product.

Here's the link to the audio interview

Sorting Students is GOOD

Tracking students into high and low tracks, and having high standards for college admission are anathema to liberals.

I am liberal on a number of issues, but among my strongest-held beliefs is that the costs of not-sorting students are far greater than the costs of sorting. For example, mixing high- and low-ability kids in the same class virtually ensures that both groups often receive inappropriate-level instruction and an exhausted teacher. Metaevaluations of ability-grouping studies bear this out.

And, yes, it should be done early. The longer we wait, the greater the costs. Of course, I'm not just talking about dollar costs. I'm talking about the costs to both low- and high-achieving kids, to teachers, and importantly, to the larger society.