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December 21, 2004
College Isn't For Everyone
Ross Douthat at andrewsullivan.com talks about proposals for giving everyone a college education. He does not seem to think it is a great idea, but I suspect if it did happen the trends of the past fifty years would continue. Both high school and college diplomas would mean even less than they do today. Colleges would get easier, add a lot more remedial classes, and people who went to college would learn less than they do now, which would make college degrees worth less than they are now. Considering that we already graduate people from high school who can barely read and that students graduate from some colleges now and still can not put a coherent thought to paper, this would not be a good trend. At my former high school and many other public high schools if you show up, do the minimum amount of work, and can perform at about an 8th grade level you graduate. Instead of putting more people into college and lowering the difficulty and the quality of college curriculum even more, we instead need to improve the quality of our lower level education so that high school diplomas mean something more than that you showed up for four years. Graduating from college only means something today because it is still hard to do most of the time, which makes it at least a partial (if imperfect) measure of education and intelligence. Make it so everyone goes and it loses even that quality.
This will be my last post for a while as I am about to be away from my computer for about a week. I have The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells and The Hobbit to listen to over the next week.
Merry Christmas!
Posted by Pete at December 21, 2004 04:10 PM
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Comments
Well duh
Posted by: Chase at December 29, 2004 11:02 PM