In Suffering Schools Gladly, George Leef takes issue with the recent national Report Card and its contention that American “economic leadership” will be at risk if more people don’t go to college:
Many students benefit greatly from their college coursework, in ways that improve their productivity. Individuals who work in the fields of science and engineering require a strong academic background. Although it isn’t inconceivable that people doing such work might learn what they need to on the job — the Wright brothers, after all, mastered the physics of heavier-than-air flight even though they had never taken any college courses — it’s probably efficient to have college and university programs provide that background.On the other hand, it is clear that for many American undergraduates, their college years provide them with little knowledge or skill essential to, or even useful, in their later work. They don’t study math or science. For all the talk about “the knowledge economy,” few jobs actually call for knowledge that one can only acquire through years of study in a formal academic setting. Rather than a period of intense concentration that substantially builds vital human capital, for a large number of American students, college is four, five, or six years of — to borrow the title of one of Professor Murray Sperber’s books — beer and circus.
As more and more young people go to college, a college degree means less and less:
Last year’s National Assessment of Adult Literacy showed that just 31 percent of college graduates could be regarded as “proficient” in their ability to read prose. When the NAAL was done in 1992, the figure was 40 percent, which seems to support the widespread anecdotal evidence that academic standards have been declining under the pressure to retain students who don’t have much interest or ability in academic pursuits. The NAAL also shows weakness among college graduates in their ability to do simple math problems and the 2003 report of the National Commission on Writing found widespread dissatisfaction among employers with the writing skills of graduates.So are Americans “less prepared” just because they have fewer college degrees — or because there has been an erosion of academic standards deep into our entire educational system?
How can the US economy remain so strong with such poor education. It’s pretty simple really: Schools do not have a monopoly on learning.