Professor X by In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: Confessions of an Accidental Academic

Author:In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: Confessions of an Accidental Academic [Academic, In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: Confessions of an Accidental]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Sociology, Social Science, Part-Time - United States, Anecdotes, Educators, Part-Time, General, United States, Biography & Autobiography, Personal Memoirs, Education, College Teachers, English Teachers - United States, Social Conditions, Part-Time - United States - Social Conditions, Teaching Methods & Materials, English Teachers, Higher
ISBN: 067002256X
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2011-03-31T05:00:00+00:00

debtor, and we seem rather

cavalierly to be encouraging more

and more students to take it on for

fewer and fewer rewards.

Americans believe in college. A

poll conducted several years ago by

the Chronicle of Higher Education

found that “the public’s trust in

colleges ranks near the top among

all kinds of institutions, right along

with its faith in the U.S. military and

in churches and religious

organizations… . Nearly 93 percent

of respondents agreed that higher-

education institutions are one of the

most valuable resources to the

United States.” 20

That was back in 2004, but, if

anything, the American public is

more college-crazed than ever.

Nearly 70 percent of all those who

graduated from high school from

October 2007 to October 2008 went

on to enroll in some manner of

college program. 21 All this pushing for college has worked. College

enrollment increased from 17.5

million students in the year 2000 to

20.5 million in 2006, an increase of

about 17 percent.22

The American college juggernaut

is in full swing, and unless someone

finds himself imbued with the

entrepreneurial spirit, there are few

other options. “The evidence for the

individual economic benefits of

college is overwhelming,” says

Sandy Baum, professor emerita of

economics at Skidmore College and

senior analyst for the College

Board. “While the wage premium

for a college education is not at its

highest level ever, it is larger than it

was five years ago, and typical

four-year-college graduates earn

more than 50 percent above typical

high-school graduates.” 23

My students believe this; that is

why they are there. But some of

them, I think—particularly when

they are asked, as prospective

medical technologists, to turn in a

paper comparing Nathaniel

Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman

Brown” and “The Minister’s Black

Veil”—may have an inkling that we

all have been caught in a trap of our

own making. They may think of all

the second-tier colleges of the

United States, after sitting through

three classes of Hamlet with me, as

“springes to catch woodcocks,” as

Shakespeare would say.

The requirements for higher

education in many occupations are

self-imposed, and probably not

really necessary. As Stephen J.

McNamee and Robert K. Miller Jr.

point out in The Meritocracy Myth:

With so many Americans receiving

college degrees … the overall

return on the investment has

declined. To put it simply, the labor

force is being flooded with new

college graduates. There are fewer

“college level” jobs being

produced by the economy than there

are new college graduates. The

result has been an increase in both

underemployment (e.g., college

graduates waiting tables) and

credential inflation (employers

requiring higher levels of education

for positions without a

corresponding increase in the

demands of the positions

themselves). Under these

conditions, many students perceive

that getting a college education

would not help them so much as the

lack of a college education would

hurt them.24

And why wouldn’t employers

want their workers to have at least a

couple of years of college under

their belts? What’s the harm?

Doesn’t college broaden the mind,

expand the spirit, make for a

measured and reasoning workforce?

Isn’t an expansion of college

enrollment a societal good? I think

that most Americans sincerely

believe this is so, though the

aspirations of their prospective

employers may be more pedestrian.

Here are McNamee and Miller

again:

In the process of credentials

inflation, higher education degrees

come to be required even for some

jobs that may not be very

intellectually demanding or for

which an advanced degree would

hardly seem necessary. For

example, a college degree may not

actually be needed to manage a

video store. But if the pool of

applicants for such a position

comes to include holders