For the entire existence of the James G. Martin Center, we have been arguing that, due to governmental policies, higher education has been badly oversold. That is, many students have been lured into college even though they have little interest in or aptitude for advanced academic studies. The notion that a college degree was a sure-fire investment that would pay off handsomely after graduation was erroneous, but great numbers of students and their families were taken in by that siren song. Moreover, a stigma somehow attached to students who didn’t go to college—if you had to “settle” for working after high school, that was a mark of shame.
The apotheosis of college reached its peak under President Obama, who declared early in 2009 that it must be our national goal to lead the world in the percentage of citizens who have graduated from college. Anyone who disagreed with his idea that college is a national elixir was scoffed at.
A large number of college graduates have ended up working in low-paying jobs that call for no advanced study.
One writer who dared to raise doubts about college was Charles Murray. In his book Real Education, he argued that the bachelor’s degree was being forced to do things it was never meant for. He observed that a high percentage of the students enrolling in college weren’t seeking advanced learning; what they wanted and needed was hands-on training for the jobs they would later do. Four or more years of classes and papers and exams were mostly a waste of time and money for them.
Nevertheless, the education lobby has continued to declare that the college degree is the best way for almost everyone.
In the years since Murray’s book was published, a lot of evidence has come to light that supports his point of view, especially the large number of college graduates who have ended up working in low-paying jobs that call for no advanced study. Nevertheless, the education lobby has continued to declare that the college degree is the best way for almost everyone.
It will be impossible to keep up the cheerleading that college is the key to the American Dream now that Kathleen deLaski’s book Who Needs College Anymore? is out. She has written a deeply thought-out and extensively researched book arguing that new methods for preparing young people for the working world, and, just as important, for helping employers identify those who best suit their needs, are rapidly developing. The days when a college degree was essential will soon be gone.
DeLaski states at the outset, “I believe we are on the cusp of a new era in which college as we know it could become an umbrella descriptor for several proud paths to adultification, skilling, or confidence building. In today’s fluid, do-it-yourself, just in time training culture, 62 percent of Americans are not earning a bachelor’s degree. They are finding alternatives and work-arounds, many hacking their way to sufficiency, a small number to lofty success.”
Echoing Murray, deLaski observes that large numbers of today’s college students never graduate, and, among those who do, many wind up struggling to pay their college loans, working in jobs they could have done without going to college. The good old college experience just isn’t centered on their needs. Fortunately, new technologies are changing that.
What makes this book all the more compelling is the author’s admission that, for many years, she was on the opposite side of the “college for all” debate. She worked for the Student Loan Marketing Association (Sallie Mae), which vigorously pushed the college agenda, since the more students took out loans, the more money it made. And she admits to having used the “but if you don’t go to college, you will end up flipping burgers” line on one of her children. But after years of carefully looking at the way college actually works for students, she came to the realization that few people really need to earn a degree.
The evidence for that conclusion is very persuasive, for example her conversations with lots of young people about their stories—such as the man who earned degrees at Yale and the Wharton School but said that all his studying left him feeling unemployable.
One of the developments now giving people alternatives to the college degree as a means of signaling their employability are bootcamps. They are immersions in skill acquisition that students can use to sell themselves in an expanding range of fields. Bootcamps aren’t brand new—they’ve been around for more than 10 years—so how are they working out? One of deLaski’s stories here is most enlightening.
DeLaski has spoken with employers and learned that they are looking for better ways of identifying talent.
A young man who had gone to college and earned a degree in computer science was unable to “launch professionally” and spent several years after college working in retail sales. Then he came across an ad for a bootcamp named Climb Hire, which said it would train people for salesforce-administration jobs and that those who completed the program would owe the $7,200 tuition only if they landed a job paying at least $45,000. Since he was earning only $22,000, he thought he had nothing to lose. So he signed up, learned the material in convenient evening classes, and then found a job paying enough that he was obligated to repay the tuition. Money well spent.
College grads have no loyalty, so employers are starting to “fish upstream.”
Bootcamps, deLaski observes, are good at “retrofitting” people who’ve gone to college but have not been able to find a route to success.
What about employers? DeLaski has also spoken with many of them and learned that they are looking for better ways of identifying talent than relying on the presence or absence of a college degree. One executive told her, “I’m not sure I want college graduates. I don’t want all their baggage coming with them. I’m just looking for workers I can train into my industry.”
One problem, he said, is that college grads have no loyalty, so he (and other employers) are starting to “fish upstream,” meaning they try to connect with prospective workers while they are still in high school. They do that by pointing interested students towards bootcamps, community-college classes, certificate programs, or anything else that will give them identifiable skills. With all the information that’s becoming available to employers about those skills, college is more and more an unnecessary middleman.
These kinds of training programs don’t yet exist for many industries, but they are proliferating quickly. So are apprenticeships, and deLaski relates another eye-opening story about a young woman who apprenticed with the insurance company Pinnacol. In high school, she had not figured out what, if anything, she wanted to study in college and was afraid of going into debt for it. When she heard about Pinnacol’s apprenticeship, she decided to give it a try. Now, at 21, she is an underwriter managing 2,000 worker’s-compensation accounts. College for her? Possibly, in the future.
So, where does that leave colleges?
The huge, artificial expansion of demand for college degrees that began with the government’s ill-considered intervention in higher education 70 years ago is going to decrease greatly as students avail themselves of better ways of getting into the world of work. Most schools will have a hard time finding ways to fit into the new reality. Only a rather small percentage of students really need college degrees these days, such as those who want to go into medicine or law, whose professional schools are open only to those with college degrees. (There is no reason for that restriction, and it’s something else that should change.)
DeLaski points to a few colleges that have adapted to the need to offer students what they want rather than the traditional degree, such as Western Governors University. Most colleges, however, will struggle as their market shrinks. They aren’t nimble (as Brian Rosenberg discussed in his book “Whatever It Is, I’m Against It”), and few faculty members have any expertise in teaching the kinds of things students will pay for.
How do you suppose the heads of companies that made vacuum tubes for televisions and radios felt when they first heard about a new technology called the transistor? They realized that it would force them out of business—unless they could somehow find a way to ride the wave of change. If college presidents read Kathleen deLaski’s book, they will have the same sense of foreboding.
George Leef is director of external relations at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.
This article was originally published at jamesgmartin.center
