In the Basement of the Ivory Tower by Professor X

Author:Professor X [X, Professor]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: VIKING ADULT
Published: 2011-03-31T05:00:00+00:00

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

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