I've been seeing a lot of lectures and articles lately that ask "are students learning enough/anything/the right things," and generally questioning the value of a college education.
The most striking example was from my favorite candidate, Mr. Rick Santorum, when he said this:
Not all folks are gifted in the same way. ... Some people have incredible gifts with their hands. Some people have incredible gifts and ... want to work out there making things. President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob.
There are good decent men and women who go out and work hard every day and put their skills to test that aren’t taught by some liberal college professor trying to indoctrinate them.
Oh, I understand why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image. I want to create jobs so people can remake their children into their image, not his.
First of all, all the people I know who didn't go to college desperately want their children to be able to attend college. To imply that poor people don't want to go to college is a little far-fetched.
But his comments got me thinking--what would my life have been like if I hadn't gone to college? First off, I probably wouldn't have left Maine. I would probably have started working retail and/or secretarial jobs (the kind of things I did during summers and winters in college). I might now be at a place similar to where my Aunt Norma was at my age: twice divorced, living with my two kids and working at a bottling plant.
What do you guys think--any regrets about deciding to go to college? And should we be encouraging every kid to go to college? Maybe Rick Santorum just feels that college campuses are full of heathen liberals who will crush your children's belief in God?
College: Snobs Only?
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2 comments:
Overall, I do not regret going to college. I give college a great deal of credit for who I am today, as it was a safe environment for me to not only increase my skills, but also to gain the confidence I needed to apply them in real life. I do however sometimes think about whether I could have acquired these skills somewhere else, either at another college or maybe by not going to college at all...
It is this question where I think quotes by Santorum confuse the issue. The US marketplace has increasingly required students to either have a degree in something, or to acquire some kind of training, often in the form of a certification. Even people in the IT fields without degrees, need to at least prove they have basic skills and more importantly an ability to learn new ones.
Statistics show that people entering the workforce without credentials do not get as many jobs and do not make as much money overall. When the President says that all students should have an opportunity to go to college, what this means is that people going into the workforce need an opportunity, or rather a safe environment to learn what they need to be a contributing member of the workforce.
Personally, I beleive everyone has a right to pursue an education. If you beleive that this education for you would be best served by doing something with your hands, or something more technical, then it should be pursued. However, many people do not know what they want to do after they finish K-12 and it would be unfair to limit their options.
At this point, K-12 is where we are failing students in this regard. Few schools give students the chance to try different things and many are locked into simply preparing you for the SATs. This problem is only compounded with a bloated community college system that spends the better part of two years remediating students to go on to a four year school, rather than helping them decide what it is they may want to do when they get to that 4-year school.
In many ways, I do not blame the schools or community colleges themselves, but rather I think it is foolish for someone to simply say, "Not everyone needs to go to college," without addressing what you think they should be doing instead.
My father was an electrician, he made good money and it was good job to have. In my heart, I think I would have been good at it if I wanted to, but I appreciate that I could go to college because I don't think I was ready to make that decision at 18.
Long story short... young adults need the opportunity to decide what they want to do when they grow up. We all know that for many this question will resurface throughout life. Everyone deserves some support when they have to decide it for the first time.
very well said, Joe. I think that needs to be an opinion piece or a letter to the editor somewhere!
You make a good point that one's lifetime career options should not be decided (for most people anyway) at age 18.mThe next question seems to be "How do we create that safe space for exploring career paths while also providing students with appropriate skills? How can we serve both students who have a clear sense of what they want to do AND students that require more time and space to choose a career path?"
I worked with undergraduate seniors in their last semester here in our school, and some of them are woefully unprepared in terms of being able to write clearly and work independently. And that happens because every professor says, "This student needs remedial help, but that is not my job. Someone should have taught it to them before now."
What does leave me hopeful is that I see some schools and nonprofits making a real effort to get students thinking about career options--having them mentored by local professionals, supporting STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) programs to underserved schools, etc. I wish I had had even a taste of that when I was a teenager.
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