By Robert
Reich
I
know a high school senior who’s so worried about whether she’ll be accepted at
the college of her choice she can’t sleep.
The parent of
another senior tells me he stands at the mailbox for an hour every day waiting
for a hoped-for acceptance letter to arrive.
Parents are also
uptight. I’veheard of some who have stopped socializing with other parents of
children competing for admission to the same university.
Competition for
places top-brand colleges is absurdly intense.
With inequality at
record levels and almost all the economic gains going to the top, there’s more
pressure than ever to get the golden ring.
So parents who can
afford it are paying grotesque sums to give their kids an edge.
They “enhance” their
kid’s resumes with such things as bassoon lessons, trips to preserve the
wildlife in Botswana, internships at the Atlantic Monthly.
They hire test
preparation coaches. They arrange for consultants to help their children write
compelling essays on college applications.
They make generous
contributions to the elite colleges they once attended, to which their kids are
applying – colleges that give extra points to “legacies” and even more to
those from wealthy families that donate tons of money.
You might call this
affirmative action for the rich.
The same
intensifying competition is affecting mid-range colleges and universities that
are doing everything they can to burnish their own brands – competing with
other mid-range institutions to enlarge their applicant pools, attract good
students, and inch upward on the U.S. News college rankings.
Every college
president wants to increase the ratio of applications to admissions, thereby
becoming more elite.
Excuse me, but this
is nuts.
The biggest
absurdity is that a four-year college degree has become the only gateway into
the American middle class.
But not every young
person is suited to four years of college. They may be bright and ambitious but
they won’t get much out of it. They’d rather be doing something else, like
making money or painting murals.
They feel compelled
to go to college because they’ve been told over and over that a college degree
is necessary.
Yet if they start
college and then drop out, they feel like total failures.
Even if they get
the degree, they’re stuck with a huge bill — and may be paying down their
student debt for years.
And all too often
the jobs they land after graduating don’t pay enough to make the degree
worthwhile.
Last year,
according to the Federal Reserve Bank of
New York,46 percent of recent college graduates were in
jobs that don’t even require a college degree.
The biggest frauds
are for-profit colleges that are raking in money even as their
students drop out in droves, and whose diplomas are barely worth the ink-jets
they’re printed on.
America clings to
the conceit that four years of college are necessary for everyone, and looks
down its nose at people who don’t have college degrees.
This has to stop.
Young people need an alternative. That alternative should be a world-class
system of vocational-technical education.
A four-year college
degree isn’t necessary for many of tomorrow’s good jobs.
For example, the
emerging economy will need platoons of technicians able to install, service,
and repair all the high-tech machinery filling up hospitals, offices, and
factories.
And people who can
upgrade the software embedded in almost every gadget you buy.
Today it’s even
hard to find a skilled plumber or electrician.
Yet the vocational
and technical education now available to young Americans is typically
underfunded and inadequate. And too often denigrated as being for “losers.”
These programs
should be creating winners.
Germany – whose
median wage (after taxes and transfers) is higher than ours – gives many of its
young people world-class technical
skills that have made
Germany a world leader in fields such as precision manufacturing.
A world-class
technical education doesn’t have to mean young people’s fates are determined
when they’re fourteen.
Instead, rising
high-school seniors could be given the option of entering a program that
extends a year or two beyond high school and ends with a diploma acknowledging
their technical expertise.
Community colleges
– the under-appreciated crown jewels of America’s feeble attempts at equal
opportunity – could be developing these curricula. Businesses could be advising
on the technical skills they’ll need, and promising jobs to young people who
complete their degrees with good grades.
Government could be
investing enough money to make these programs thrive. (And raising taxes on top
incomes enough to temper the wild competition for admission to elite colleges
that grease the way to those top incomes.)
Instead, we
continue to push most of our young people through a single funnel called a
four-year college education — a funnel so narrow it’s causing applicants and
their parents excessive stress and worry about “getting in;” that’s too often
ill suited and unnecessary, and far too expensive; and that can cause college
dropouts to feel like failures for the rest of their lives.
It’s time to give
up the idea that every young person has to go to college, and start offering
high-school seniors an alternative route into the middle class.
ROBERT B. REICH, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at
the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center
for Developing Economies, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration.
Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of
the twentieth century. He has written thirteen books, including the best
sellers “Aftershock" and “The Work of Nations." His latest,
"Beyond Outrage," is now out in paperback. He is also a founding
editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause. His new
film, "Inequality for All," is now available on Netflix, iTunes, DVD,
and On Demand.