Four years of college shouldn’t be the only gateway to the middle class
Thinking about education reform in the Trump era
Friends,
Trump’s latest idiotic idea of redistributing $3 billion in grant money from Harvard to trade schools, which he posted yesterday, masks a larger and more serious issue.
It’s absurd that a four-year college degree has become the only gateway into the American middle class.
Many high school seniors feel compelled to go to college because they’ve been told over and over that a college degree is necessary.
But not every young person is suited to four years of college.
Some may be bright and ambitious but won’t get much out of college.
An estimated half of recent college graduates are in jobs that don’t even require a college degree.
And they’re stuck with a huge bill — and may be paying down their student debt for decades. Trump’s Department of Education has restarted collections on defaulted student loans. For the first time in years, borrowers who haven’t kept up with their bills could see their wages taken or face other punishments.
If young people start college and then drop out, they feel like total failures.
The biggest frauds are for-profit colleges that are raking in money even as their students drop out in droves, and whose diplomas are barely worth the inkjets they’re printed on.
America clings to the conceit that four years of college are necessary for everyone and looks down its nose at people who don’t have college degrees.
This has to stop. If the election of Donald Trump has taught us anything, it’s that people without college degrees — fully 60 percent of adult Americans, most of whom voted for him — need better jobs, better wages, and more respect.
Young people need an alternative to a four-year college degree. That alternative should be a world-class system of vocational-technical education.
A four-year college degree isn’t necessary for many of tomorrow’s good jobs.
The emerging economy will need platoons of technicians able to install, service, and repair all the high-tech machinery filling up hospitals, offices, and factories.
Along with people who can upgrade the software embedded in almost every gadget you buy.
Who can implement machine-learning algorithms. Process natural language for AI. Install and service robots.
Today it’s even hard to find a skilled plumber or electrician.
The vocational and technical education now available to young Americans is wildly underfunded and inadequate.
And too often, vocational and technical education is denigrated as being for “losers.”
These programs should be creating winners.
Germany — whose median wage (after taxes and transfers) is higher than ours — gives many of its young people world-class technical skills that have made Germany a global leader in fields such as precision manufacturing.
A world-class technical education doesn’t have to mean young people’s fates are determined when they’re 14. Instead, rising high school seniors could be given the option of entering a program that extends a year or two beyond high school and ends with a diploma acknowledging their technical expertise.
Community colleges — the under-appreciated crown jewels of America’s feeble attempts at equal opportunity — could be developing these curricula and credentials.
Businesses could be advising on the technical skills they’ll need and promising jobs to young people who complete their degrees with good grades.
Government could be investing enough money to make these programs thrive. (Trump’s $3 billion to trade schools would hardly make a difference.)
Instead, we continue to push most of our young people through a single funnel called a four-year college education — a funnel so narrow it’s causing applicants and their parents excessive stress and worry about “getting in”; that’s too often ill-suited and unnecessary, and far too expensive; and that can cause college dropouts to feel like failures for the rest of their lives.
Trump’s attack on Harvard and other prestigious universities will only harm America. And his idea of redistributing grant money from Harvard to trade schools is a silly populist token.
But it does offer an opportunity to rethink one of the central tenets of American society: It’s time to give up the idea that every young person has to go to college.
America should offer high school seniors a genuine alternative route into the middle class.
While I agree that a four-year college degree is not necessary for a successful life, there are still many jobs that require them. Trump‘s idea of taking billions of dollars away from Harvard and funneling it to trade schools is just plain silly.
While I applaud anyone who goes to a trade school, which includes things like x-ray technician, dental hygienist, auto mechanic, computer programmer, and other valuable skills, taking it away from a university is only robbing Peter to pay Paul. Much of Harvards money is used for medical and scientific research. That is not applicable to a trade school. If Trump really wants to support people going to trade schools, he would stop robbing the US treasury just to enrich his friends. He would encourage more scholarships to academic and vocational schools. Pulling money out of one pocket to put it into another pocket is just plain stupid.
Actually, I wonder how many trade school graduates Trump employs around the White House. That would be really telling. We do know that when he has had trade school workers doing the construction on his properties, he has often not even bothered to pay them. That shows how much he values the work that they do. He is just an empty suit, throwing empty ideas around.
Yes, we should support trade schools. No, not everybody needs a four year education. But robbing academic institutions and funneling the money over to trade schools is not the answer at all. What we need to do is give more money to education as a whole.
Trump‘s only purpose here is to embarrass Harvard University because they have not kissed his ring. Otherwise, he would not give a rip about trade schools.
I agree fully with Robert Reich regarding the need for providing pathways for our youth into useful careers without insisting they go into debt for a typical four year college degree.