The New York Sun has an interesting column on education in America:
The report on reforming our school system just released by the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce urges that my experience be less unusual for American students. One of its main ideas is that mandatory schooling begin at age 3 and end after 10th-grade. After that, going on to colleges and universities would be one of several choices available. Another choice, equally typical and just as well-funded, would be vocational training.
This idea would hardly surprise our great-grandparents. Before World War II, fewer than half of students went beyond the ninth-grade. The concept of a four-year college education as a rite of passage to middle-class adulthood only developed in the wake of the GI Bill. It has become a waste of resources, both monetary and personal.[...]
Obviously, however, the solution is not to strand students with an eighth-grade education as it currently stands in America. Rather, education should be “front-loaded.” In much less time than we take students’ time up with now, they could be given a substantial but no-nonsense education tooled to preparing them to be productive citizens. This can be done without the pretense that any but a few Americans need to be plied with “book learning” over several years beyond this basic toolkit.
The past gives hope here. Although there is a certain idealization of public schooling in the days of yore, the typical eighth-grader a century ago had a facility in, for example, writing that few of today’s college graduates could even approximate. The eloquent letters written by Civil War soldiers are a famous example.
I agree that for many jobs in which a college degree is believed to be required, a full college education isn’t strictly necessary, and I have previously wondered whether American society would be better served if there were a distinction between universities (for academic and research studies) and some form of business/vocational schools (for professional, non-academic education).
However, heading down that path of thinking, one quickly runs into an important question — if there’s a distinction between “necessary and practical” education and “over-education”, what subjects constitute “over-education”?
It seems to me that part of the value of the college experience in American society is that students end up being exposed to a broad range of subjects, giving them the opportunity to explore a different path than perhaps they may have chosen, as well as to develop a broad base of basic knowledge that should be considered necessary to support an informed citizenry, one that doesn’t simply have to trust the pronouncements made by our leaders.
Another part of the value of college, in my opinion, is that it serves as a beneficial transition from childhood, where a person is protected by his/her parents and local community, into adulthood by being exposed to a broader range of people from various backgrounds, and different ideas.
Maybe the entire process of educating our children is a bit too long, and the last couple of years of high school and the first couple of years of college could be compacted together. Or perhaps there are other ways to provide the intangible benefits of the college experience more efficiently and cost-effectively.
It’s interesting stuff to think about, at any rate.