The press continues to play fast
and loose with the costs and so called value of the educational process. It is tiresome to repeat this but a student
owes it to himself to explore the limits of his abilities in order to refine
his life choices. Do just that and what
comes after is always a case of making it up as you go.
Obviously the more educated you
become, the more ideas and choices become available. That is what you are paying for. If you do not do the work, you will merely be
outed and downgrades in terms of your options.
If it is to be all about money,
then I suggest a great career in insurance awaits you.
Backlash brews over media’s focus on value of college
Fri Jun 17, 3:43 pm ET
By Liz
Goodwin
A San Francisco
State University
instructor writes
in Poynter today that the media is misrepresenting some basic features
of the debate over the value of a college education.
In reviewing recent coverage, Sarah Fidelibus argues that
journalists are taking surveys out of context in making the case that a college
education isn't worth young people's time and money anymore. The critique comes
on the heels of a piece in the New Republic
titled "Why the media is always wrong about the value of a college degree."
In the latter article, Education Sector's Kevin Carey mocks media
stories that profile woeful Ivy League grads who haven't landed the prestigious
jobs they'd hoped for right out of college. He points out that these stories
have been running in newspapers for decades--while also noting that an Ivy
League education has only become more coveted (and lucrative) over the same
period. "They always feature an over-educated bartender, and they are
always wrong," Carey writes about the stories.
While The Lookout, too, has noticed a rash of over-hyped headlines
about the value of college (ahem, New
York magazine), we think these critics are too quick to brush off scholars'
concerns about the higher education industry. The often overheated tenor of
debate on both ends of the higher-ed question may make it harder to carry out
an honest accounting of an industry that already tends to shy away
from transparency.
Yes, it's absolutely true that college graduates, in aggregate, can
expect much lower unemployment rates and much higher lifetime earnings than
their peers who only received a high school education. But that doesn't mean
it's pointless to ask whether individual colleges are doing a good job
educating their students, and if they are doing so in a cost-effective way.
This is especially pertinent because the cost of a four-year degree has tripled
since 1980, adjusting for inflation, and the average college graduate who took
out loans left school $24,000 in debt in 2009.
The recent revelations
of abuse by some for-profit private colleges show that an
unquestioning belief in the value of higher education can leave students with
towering debt and few marketable skills. The institutions primarily serve
low-income and minority students, who are
more likely to be underprepared for college courses than their
better-off peers and also more likely to drop out before finishing their
degree. For-profit students have typically signed
up to pay much more for programs available at public community colleges
and four-year universities.
But the question of value doesn't just apply to the for-profit sector
of higher-ed. Another clue that more scrutiny couldn't hurt is the depressing
results of the "Academically Adrift" study of 2,300 students who
attend two dozen different universities. Nearly half of those students
performed worse or the same on a critical thinking and writing test after two
years of college than they had prior to starting their college education. Poor
and minority students were over-represented among the students who did not
improve. More than half of all the students studied did not have to write more
than 20 pages for any class they took in a single semester, and most spent only
12 hours a week studying.
The New Republic 's Carey is right that it makes
little sense to worry about Ivy League grads going jobless, in part because
most of those schools offer generous need-based aid. But Ivy League grads are a
tiny portion of the total college-educated population.
In fact, in an essay he wrote in January about "Academically
Adrift," Carey argued for tougher, uniform standards for colleges. "
'Trust us,' they say: 'Everyone who walks across our graduation stage has
completed a rigorous course of study,' " he wrote. "Now we know that
those are lies."
He added: "The students on the margins of college completion are
much more likely to fall into the danger zone of poor preparation, low
admissions selectivity, and lack of academic rigor. New federal policies need
to ensure that they don't just earn a degree, but actually learn something
along the way."
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