This is exactly the system in France -- higher education is provided for free, through the highest levels. If you are French, attending the Sorbonne is free. But, in order to attend the universities, you have to pass the Baccalauréat which is highly challenging. Each year, about 20% of French high school students do not pass the Bac, meaning they repeat their last year of high school. There are other options (career/professional track programs) for students who do not want to continue on to the equivalent of a traditional four-year degree, or for those who do not pass the bac. What I observed in my year teaching in this system is that while it is an attempt to improve access for all students, in practice, many of the same inequalities exist. Poor students tend to live in neighborhoods with struggling local schools, and then end up being less likely to pass the bac or to choose baccalaureate programs in the first place. Their schools end up with the same kinds of defacto segregation along racial and economic lines that we are attempting to deal with here.
Do all students go for the Bac or is it only a subset of students? What do the other students do for HS if they do not do Bac?
Having taught special education students in high school for years, I think having more internships, project-based learning and vocational programs are needed. My partner is in sheet metal, You need math to pass the test to get in the union but it's a great career. My students were not prepared to try something like that because they were told they were going to college so why get job skills? They didn't have problem-solving skills, they didn't have motivation, and they didn't have the ability to navigate a community college system. A vocational/internship program would have helped.
I think if free (or, at least, price controlled) higher education were implemented, there would need to be a shift in education philosophy - no more pushing every kid to a degree - show them that vocational and technical schools exist and that they could always take certificate programs at colleges and get jobs from those.
And I'd actually broaden your last statement - I think we, as a society, would have to admit how poorly we're doing. People don't want to think of their schools as failing.
I also think PARENTS are going to have to come to terms with the fact that many of thier children come to school and sit in a chair, they do not use/have academic behaviors. I don't think many parents want to really know what their child does all day.
Another comment on the free higher education for all idea - sorry to keep talking about this folks. When I look at what jobs seems to be increasingly available, they may be "professional" jobs, but they probably don't warrant a college degree. Take graphic design or computer coding - plenty of high schools students can and already do well with these things, and I don't that you need 16 years of education to learn those skills. Not saying that there wouldn't be a value to them in terms of broad education, but in the narrow sense of education helping facilitate an economy, I think we should focus more on restructuring high school. And by that I don't mean just a return to traditional vocational education with careers that look like they're from 1972 (e.g., shop) - not that those are unimportant, but what if we had tons of very practical "terminal" degrees that were based on 21st century jobs - even looking into marketing/branding, culinary, business management, etc. - I know tons of college grads who run their own small businesses or do contract/consulting work where no one asks about college degrees, and most of the skills were learned "on the job." In my college days, here's how it went - college was the only way to have a career that middle class people considered "professional." There was a social stigma attached to not going to college. There were no other options for a person like me. So, to me promoting a healthy economy and true equality doesn't mean just promoting that "you can have a great life even if you don't achieve as much as me," but restructuring what's seen as "achievement" in the first place, and redefining more appropriate paths for legitimately great, and socially desirable, careers.
And I think this goes hand in hand with what I've been saying about education restructuring - If school were more than just college prep, we likely we more kids engaged.
I think so to, but does that address the issue of self discipline? Should one only put in the necessary effort when one "likes" or "feels" like doing it? Doesn't one work hard 100% of the time when they FEEL like it? Should self discipline and pride play a more important role?
There are technology and pre-professional tracks for students who are not planning to continue on to the equivalent of a four-year degree. These students do not take the bac. Also, I double-checked and while the public universities are not 100% free, they are very low-cost -- comparable to the costs of our community colleges.
Thanks for checking. So those that get the low-cost education tend to be those who have been tracked for university or college minus the ones who could be tracked there but preferred a non-university career. That is in-line with most countries with free or close to free college education. It requires only be top academic students get the benefit. As I told EdEd, there is no way that would happen in our country in today's climate.
But there is a "net economic benefit to society because as it turns out, asking young people to choose between being tens of thousands of dollars in debt or being effectively shut out from the middle class is a bad idea." No, it's not free, but the cost would amount to roughly 1% of what is spent on the military each year, with the benefit of joining the rest of the first world.
More than 40% of those with subsidized student loans aren't making their required payments...so let's make college "free"...surely that will solve the problem. But don't let families have vouchers to send their young kids to charters or parochial schools...they should pay for that choice...such hypocrisy.
Are you quoting someone about the "net economic benefit"? I don't want to wrongly associate the idea with you if you are quoting someone else. There is an assumption that there would be a net economic benefit. What happens when we allow large numbers of people training? Do you think a plumber will be charging 80 dollars an hour and having a good living if we triple the number of plumbers in your local area? Same with any job. We see what happened with administrative assistant jobs, paralegal jobs, etc. As the glut of people with the degrees grew the qualifications rose and the pay declined. The same will happen if we provide "free" education without limiting the entrance standards significantly.
Yeah, I think you're describing great virtue, and I support it, but realistically I also know that - even with myself personally - I tend to be more engaged in something when I'm bought into it. So, yes - there are steps along one's journey that just aren't that fun that we just need to put up with and still put forth effort, but if we're not engaged in the basic premise, I'd argue that there's something wrong with the system (or a mismatch), not the person.
Ummmm In High School , I see students try to sleep through class and the next year somehow they go on to the next grade. Will College go to that very same standard ? That is something to think about.
It could just be early, but I really don't see any hypocrisy in that statement. The government offers free educational services for K-12. If the family wants to go to a private school that doesn't want to follow specific standards or ascribes to a particular religion, that's fine, but they can't use public money to fund it. If the government offers free public college education, the same rules would apply. The colleges would have to meet specific standards, and shouldn't be religiously affiliated. If the student wants to apply to private colleges, that's fine but the cost is on them. California had a very similar public university system in the past where university was very cheap before college administrators realized they could ridiculously hike up tuition by adding a ton of extras and because they ended up being some of the most competitive universities.
Here's the deal guys... The genie is out of the bottle already. You already are required to have a degree for most jobs. Does it make sense for many of these jobs to require a Bachelor's degree (assuming they got a good enough education at the HS)? Probably not. But as you said because of the saturation of degrees, they can get away with it. We can't force businesses to remove those restrictions. Ed you make some good points about the saturation of college degrees, and the standard of public education, but as a2z said, it is very unlikely that things are going to change without a top-down approach. Blame will continue to be put on teachers, parents will continue to shirk responsibility for their children, kids are getting lazier because they know they can get away with it, and teachers can't fail them because administrators just want to pass kids on regardless of if they have met the standards or not, and the kids that do fail will continue along the school to prison pipeline. Vouchers isn't going to change that. Administrators need to make changes to schools to support their teachers in managing behavior and academics rather than pressuring teachers to pad things to make them look good. Only then can good work be done to start supporting students in the classroom.
Now you are changing the parameters of what was being said. Right now the government gives Pell grants to students at public, private, and religious colleges and universities. Shouldn't you be advocating against grants being allowed at private (equivalent to charter) and religious colleges and universities? When people speak of free college and university, they don't mean constrained to just state run institutions.
No, but we, as a society, change the focus and business would follow if HS really prepared students well enough to do those jobs and didn't need 4 more years of education and remedial classes (for some) in order to do what people used to be able to do when they left HS.
I attended a private religious university with a grant and I'm grateful for it. Right now, I suppose grants can apply anywhere because we really don't have free college. But if we did have free public college (which I am in favor of), yes, it would be quite similar to the voucher situation if something similar to the college grant system went to a private university. I understand some European countries run that way. They might have free college to one degree or another, but there are still for-profit private universities and I don't think state funds can be used for them.
So we basically have a voucher system for the poor which allows monies to go to any accredited school. This would be the basis for any argument against providing vouchers to attend private or religious schools k-12 schools.
I know that's probably the case that they offer grants to all colleges right now, because the government has a vested interest in providing higher education to low socioeconomic students. If they had a better public college system, I think those funds should be diverted from being able to be used for religious and private colleges. But we don't have a good public college system in most states. Most colleges tend to be private institutions in other states. California is a different animal, since it has so many options of public colleges in both the CSU and UC system. Now that I'm in Oregon, I'm realizing that there are maybe 1-2 public colleges here as opposed to the 10-20 in California. There are also many things that need to be changed tuition and expense wise for the public colleges in California. The prices got hiked up way too much so that it's completely unaffordable and the only way you can get a degree is if you go into immense debt. That's not how the public college system in California was designed, but that's what it turned into.
I don't think that would be the case. At least not unless there was like a 2-3 decade turnaround time. We have so many college educated members of the workforce already. If all of a sudden, people stopped attending colleges, the businesses would still be able to take their pick from a ton of college educated candidates regardless of how better prepared kids are out of high school, meaning an entire generation would be passed up for jobs for a long time. Either that, or they'll hire more high school only graduates but pay them way less than college graduates just because they can, making it more worth it to go to college and get a degree. Eventually after many many years if you were able to build up a population of high school only graduates who had good skills and all of the other candidates already had jobs or were retired, businesses might be forced to hire high school only graduates and maybe they'll be pleased with their work, maybe not, but in this climate, they're likely to get overlooked. Part of it also seems to be that businesses often have fairly unrealistic expectations of how prepared candidates should be before they enter the workforce. They're often looking for skills that are specific to their particular jobs or things that could only be learned while on the job. We need to look into somehow building a culture of businesses taking on the responsibility for adequately training their workforce.
Your argument assumes that these college graduates are going to continue taking entry-level jobs even 10 years down the road or that there will be no growth in the number of jobs which means those college graduates in entry-level jobs will still be there in 10 years. If fewer people are going to college business will have to look at HS educated people to fill them. My biggest question is why we can't have people graduating HS with adequate basic skills after 13 years of formal education. There is no excuse for that. This problem wasn't created in a year and it won't go away in a year, but it seems your solution is to make the problem worse not better. Make taxpayers pay huge amounts of money to educate people beyond the needs of the job. There is no such thing as a "free lunch". Someone pays.
So change the system. Right now we don't have free college, so why put specifics on which college does or does not get grants? When I was a student, all I knew is I qualified for a Pell grant.
But the argument we were discussing was about vouchers not being allowed at religious schools from someone who said that charters were ok, but not religious schools. It had nothing to do with k-12 being free but everything to do with not wanting government money to go to a religious school. It is hypocritical to say government money can go to religious schools if it is in the form of a Pell grant but not in the form of a K-12 voucher when the rational to not give the money to the religious school is because the school is religious. Why put specifics on which college can get Pell money? Well, for those who do not want government money going to a religious organization which was the argument, I guess it would be the same reason. The argument wasn't that government money shouldn't be give to a religious school because there are other free options, especially when they were condoning money going to charter schools. By the way, I don't have a problem with vouchers or Pell grants going to religious schools. I don't see k-12 improving any time soon because if they were going to improve on their own volition, they would have like the school near me did. It was shown that it wasn't the kids, it was the school. They just won't no matter if you do stick or carrot nor do they have to because kids are required to attend school so they have a guaranteed "customer base" regardless of how poorly of a job they do.
We all know nothing is fully free. We'd all be paying some amount of tax for it. We don't need everyone to continue repeating that as if we don't know that. I don't think it would be "huge amounts" as you say. We could probably fund a LOT of higher education for people or even at least just make it cheaper by using very minimal taxation. I think yes, the problem with large amounts of college educated entry level workers is probably going to increase rather than decrease with cheaper or free college. But at the same time, that means that there are higher ratios of college-educated businessmen and innovators out there to create new jobs, and it's more than likely these jobs are going to require higher education (coding, engineering, business, and the like). Whereas the number of jobs that a person could get right out of high school (manufacturing, minimum-wage, secretarial work, etc.) are only going to decrease as technology makes those positions obsolete. Most positions that a student can get right out of High School regardless of if the High School is rigorous or not are the positions that are disappearing. You cannot prepare HS students for those higher-level jobs in the four years of HS AND have them complete a compulsory and comprehensive general education, especially as most of them are not yet mature enough to choose for themselves precisely what job they will be spending the rest of their lives in. Most don't reach that maturity until sometime in college or even further out. HS remains a time to acclimate to their social groups, get a general education, and try things out that they think they might be interested in. Not to choose a career and get all of the credentials they need to jump into the work force immediately after graduation. Some can do this, but not most. I think that's why the HS system is not focused on this goal. If we make college cheaper or free, we can at least eliminate the problem of people going into debt to get better job training. People are going to continue to get college degrees as long as it is more profitable to get one than not, and despite the debt and risks, it is more profitable in the long-run. Not to mention that I personally believe it offers opportunities to those that might not normally get those opportunities, and I think that makes it worth it. Regardless of how rigorous we make our high schools there are still going to be those who drop out, don't participate, or learn anything. Those are never going to go away, and they can work those lower-end minimum wage jobs. There is no shortage of minimum wage workers. If we can prepare our HS students better they can start working right away in medium-level careers, but they won't reach the earning potential of those who get a college degree, and that's fine. But keeping college only for the wealthy isn't going to solve any problems. I'm all for increasing the rigor of our HS system, and our college system. I don't think it's likely to happen, but I'm for it. However college needs to be made accessible to more people without the danger of going into crippling debt so that there can be more social mobility in our society.
I actually think we will see a major shift in the next 2-3 decades in terms of higher education, and I think the answer lies in other forms of education certification. Consider a "certificate in nonprofit management" - there are a lot of nonprofits I've worked with that would value that sort of certificate, but it is fairly short and isn't a formal degree. I agree Peregrin when you say we can't necessarily revert back to how things work or just expect careers to downgrade their standards to high school level. But, creating something new - a new form of credentialing, a new format of education, could avoid the stigma of "just a high school education" but not have costs and time associated with a 4-year degree. As another example, consider this school in Atlanta: The Creative Circus. It's a "Portfolio School" that offers post-secondary education, and is really respected in agencies around town. People who go there aren't seen as "second-tier" as if they "didn't make it into other schools" - it's seen as a good first choice. Still, this is considered a "trade school" - it's just that the image and result has been well-branded as something desirable. Here's a link: https://creativecircus.edu/portfolio-school/ I believe our new national/global economy is going to be vastly different than the industrial-based one of the past century, and we're going to need massive shifts to adopt to it. Even the way things are right now is simply not going to work. While such a shift as I'm proposing is big, so is the idea that we'd be sending 75%+ of our population on to traditional education for another 4 years - it's cumbersome, expensive, and not always immensely helpful - we'd be throwing money at something that would not only not necessarily solve the problem it was intended to solve, but would likely creative (or exacerbate) other problems. Now, all of this said, I'm not sure we're very far off - if we had tons of creative or other trade schools up and running, and college became seen as just one option of many good, first-choice options, I'd be open to consider public funding for those - again, under strict standards of performance, start/completion time, etc. But, I do certainly believe in the idea of free public education. I just think, if we're all going to foot the bill, that it ought to at least be worth our while.
I agree, that something like certificates is likely to grow in the future. I would support this idea. I think the idea of getting a college degree has changed over the generations. I THINK at one point, a large part of getting a college education was about being "educated" well rounded..etc. I don't really think this exists much today, today going to a university is almost all about preparing oneself for the workforce...getting a job. I think certificates make perfect sense for some fields, no need to take all the classes necessary for a full degree, just the ones necessary for the job at hand.
The certification movement is certainly growing in many areas with many good positions only requiring a two year certificate, instead of a four year degree (nursing, welding, EMTs, etc.). Most of these are hosted at community colleges though, which again why I think it's a good idea to look at free or very cheap higher education, especially at the community colleges which typically serve lower socioeconomic students or those who are trying to save money. For the most part they are already cheap tuition wise, but the textbooks tend to be a large part of the cost.
Certifications are big in many fields now. Some businesses won't hire without one and others say they aren't worth the paper they are printed on because the certification doesn't demonstrate application of the knowledge which is what businesses really need in an employee. An employee who can think and apply any knowledge they have or learn is much more valuable than the one that just knows the information. So, even with certifications we will still end up with problems like we have now. I believe one of the reasons that internships have become such a big thing for businesses is that it is one way they can see that a perspective employee has demonstrated they can apply themselves in the field.
I am not really following the higher education discussion that this has turned into, I just really see the way things are going now, that certifications are likely to grow in popularity and become more of the norm. Like I said, not really following the higher education discussion this turned into, so maybe it has been answered, but do you think a regular 4 year bachelors degree or Masters degree shows better application of knowledge versus a certificate? I think the certificate in many ways are more directly related to showing application versus a bachelors degree. By certificates I am referring to the ones such as Cisco, A++, ones that are "endorsed" companies, not really the certificates that individual colleges just seem to make up.
It depends on what is required for the certificate. If it requires hands-on application and knowledge it would be worth something. That means some sort of internship or hours in the field. At that point, why not an apprenticeship with classes. Cisco and A+ are endorsed, but how you get them may determine you can apply your skill. Our vocational schools have students applying the knowledge before they test, but a book-smart person could study for A+ and pass without being able to do much of the work. So, I can be for certifications if it is more than just the test - whether that be adding a certification along with OTJ training or a training class in addition to the test.
