Jan 11, 2011

Is College a Ticket to Success?

A piece posted today in the Chronicle of Higher Education, New Evidence That College is a Risky Investment, argues quite rightly that merely choosing to attend college does not translate into the likely successful life our culture unfortunately still promises to prospective students.  It is often overlooked -- and Richard Vedder is doing a service to point out -- that if a student does not actually graduate with a degree, the better-paying job opportunities will remain inaccessible for him or her, and they will likely accrue still-harder-to-pay debt in the process.
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I have been saying for years that there is a huge risk that new college entrants will drop out, and that published academic studies usually implicitly look at those who graduate, ignoring a roughly equal number who fail to graduate from college in a timely manner. That is the huge flaw in the Does College Pay? studies annually produced by Sandy Baum for the College Board.

 An Ethical Issue?

The latest four-year graduation rate for my institution, a low-tier HBCU, is in the single digits, and even the 6-year figures are not particularly promising (in fact the UNC system as a whole, with its target goals of 30 % four-year graduation and 50% six-year seems willing to accept that half of the students who enroll do not graduate even after 6 years).  Our provost has stressed some of the ethical implications of this, arguing that it is our duty to change these rates, to do everything possible to assure "student success."

My view is that while all of this may be true, it does not go far enough.  There's a fundamental disconnect here, a set of failures of practical reasoning -- failures on the part of those examining the situation and taking stands on whether a college education is a good investment.  Those who are failing here include not only educators but also students.  In fact, I'd extend it to anyone who blithely passes on the dangerous nostrum that college per se is the ticket to a better life.  I'd extend it even further to those who with somewhat more sophistication claim that getting a college education, walking across the stage, and entering the workplace diploma in hand makes it likely one will get a good, well-paying job and thus provide a component of the good life in America. Those claims might have been true at one time, but they are no longer.

What matters today in our present circumstances is not simply whether one went to college, or even whether one graduated, but whether one acquired and developed the knowledge, skills, habits, and attitudes employers demand of employees.  Those are what a college diploma promises, but does not reliably deliver.  That is because we are graduating students who lack these acquisitions and dispositions.  Our curricula promise to introduce and inculcate, to deepen and reinforce these.  And, sometimes that does happen.  But, all to often it does not.  Why that is is a broad and complex problem, and I won't pretend to provide a full analysis here, let alone a solution (I'll confess that I haven't got one that would be politically palatable).  But what I will do is outline an argument, a line of practical reasoning through which I lead all of the students in my Critical Thinking classes, introducing the majority of them to thinking rigorously about this for the first (and all too often only) time in their college career.

An Exercise in Critical Thinking

I start by asking them:  Why are you here?  Why are you taking this class?  Usually there's silence for a few minutes (itself a sign of the basic attitude of passivity our students need to undo and progressively replace with habits of active and engaged thinking).

This class is required. . . .  We have to take it. . . . My adviser made me take it. . .   -- eventually someone says: It's required for graduation.  Now we're gaining some traction.  I go to the chalkboard and draw the first two parts of a what will be a diagram depicting a means-ends analysis:  Critical Thinking on the left, an arrow drawn rightward, then Graduating College.

So, why do you want to graduate college then?  I ask them.  To impress your friends and families?  Maybe you want to get an education for its own sake?  I draw another arrow rightward.

They are quicker to reply now, warmed up perhaps, some of them starting to see where this is going.  So I can get a good job.  I write Good Job right of the last arrow.

That opens up further questions:  What's a good job? What kind of jobs are you going to get?  This is the heartbreaking part.  Some of them have no idea at all, just some rosy, fuzzy notion that something good is assuredly waiting for them.  Others rattle off jobs far beyond their likely qualifications.  Some others are going to start their own businesses.

I don't discourage them -- they'll get enough of that down the line -- instead I lay on praise mixed with facts about what that course will require, for instance:  Law school!  That is excellent!  You'll want to work very hard in this class then, since understanding arguments inside and out is something a lawyer has to be able to do in their sleep.  I'd suggest also doing all of the formal logic chapters we won't get to in this class. If you keep that up for the next several years, that'll help you on the LSAT.

Here we get to the crux.  The diagram replicates their reasoning process, leading by irrevocable arrows from my Critical Thinking class to getting the Good Job.  They have been led through a process of practical reasoning, one which if only implicitly, they have already carried out.  I stop to stress the fact that we could in fact produce an argument for why a student has to pass my Critical Thinking class, and we do so:
If I want a Good Job, I have to graduate from College.
If I want to graduate from College, I have to pass Critical Thinking.
I do want a Good Job.
Therefore, I have to pass Critical Thinking
It sounds pretty good.  But, this is in fact a bad argument.  It's not bad because there is something wrong with its structure.  Nor are the premises false.  It is bad in a different, more contextual, higher-order way, because other important and relevant considerations are left out -- something key to good practical reasoning.  There's two different dimensions to what missing.  One is that things work differently, the world and its workings are structured differently than how the students have imagined it so far.  The other is that students are lacking information, and don't even realize that they are missing anything.

Let's look at the missing reasoning first.  

Who decides whether you get the good job?  I ask.  It's not automatic, right?  Who's it up to?  The employer, they realize. And why does that employer hire someone?   What do they want from them?  This puzzles them at first, and with prodding their answers get more refined.  To do the job.  To do the job well.  To do the job as well as or better than the other candidates.

What does that take?  I then query.  What do you actually have to have to do the job well?  Sometimes they are stumped, sometimes someone says it:  The knowledge and skills the job requires

And that, I tell them, is what a college degree is supposed to mean.  While you are in college, in every single class you take, you are supposed to be applying yourself, doing all the homework, putting in the time studying, learning, practicing, getting better and better.  If all you are doing is studying enough to pass a test, skating by with C work, are you going to actually have those skills the employer is looking for?


I write Developing CT Skills below Critical Thinking, then Possesses Skills below Graduating College, then Employer Wants Skills below Good Job

I draw a new set of arrows connecting them parallel to the first set.  Then I erase the first set, and I tell them:  Anyone who is telling you that if you go to college, or you graduate from college, you will get a good job is either ignorant or lying to you.  Only if you develop the skills employers want do you even have a shot at the good job you want.

Now, we turn to the information they lack.  

What don't our students know that they don't know?  With respect to workplace success and college education, they are blissfully and dangerously unaware of three matters:  the stated needs and wants of employers; the real demands of jobs college is supposed to prepare them for; and the level of competition that they will face.

One can find myriad lists online providing what employers are looking for in college graduates.  They vary of course, but most consistently appearing on those lists are four main skills or dispositions.  Employers want college graduates to be able to write effectively, to have Critical Thinking skills (sometimes other terms are used), perseverance in work (often using the term "work ethic"), and they want honesty and other "ethical" behavior.  Why are these in such high demand?  Not least because for two generations, these are in short supply among college graduates.  And that means one can get through college and receive a degree without developing these vital traits.  Curricula can be set up to provide opportunities for students to develop these.  Some schools even have the luxury of being able to impose a curriculum where a student cannot graduate without these.  Ultimately, however, it rests on the student to develop these desired traits, in decisions made over and over again throughout their college career.  These are decisions which are the result of good or bad practical reasoning on the part of the student.

The "good jobs" which college is supposed to lead to demand those skills and dispositions (and many more), traits which cannot be successfully faked for long.  They do so because of the changes that have taken place in our economic environment.  Any job which can be done without considerable thought and effort, without initiative and perseverance, is not likely to pay well, and can be replaced by cheaper outsourced foreign labor or even by some electronic means.  The "good jobs" college is supposed to open the door to are demanding, and those doors will slam closed to those who after four (or more likely six) years have not made themselves into the kinds of employees that can measure up and deliver consistently.

When I ask:  if you just do C-level work, do you think an employer will want to hire you for the kind of good job you want?  far too many of my students say Yes.  They don't know yet that we have a glut of college graduates in the workplace, that right now and in the foreseeable future it is a buyer's market.  They don't grasp that they will have to compete for the same jobs with American students from better-pedigreed schools, who possess advantages of contacts, networking, name-recognition, and who have been at least exposed to a more demanding curriculum.  They also don't realize that they will face foreign competition from countries and cultures where K-12 education is much more rigorous, much higher-stakes, and for the present much  more effective than non-elite K-12 schooling here.

Unless our graduates aim and consistently work to acquire the skills, knowledge, attitudes, habits employers and the jobs they offer require, college is a very risky gamble indeed.  Whether any individual student does so is ultimately a matter of choice, the exercise of their free faculty of will in accordance with their practical reasoning.  We can supply structure, inducements, models, encouragement -- and in fact, we do.  But even more than that, we have to wean them away from pleasant illusions, pernicious assumptions, so they can better reason out their life paths and daily decisions.

17 comments:

  1. Thank you for the read. I really wish any of my professors had cared enough to do this. I guess the confusion went both ways.
    Email me @ robert.heffern@gmail.com if you want a recent grad's perspective on the 'Good Job' hunt (Spoiler: It's impossible).

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  2. Thanks for the comment. Yes., when I was back in school, it was just assumed that one would figure this out. It seems that in the lower- and middle-tier schools where the bulk of secondary education is actually taking place, many of the students simply don't get it.

    I have to admit that I originally started stressing these points because I wanted them to start taking the Critical Thinking course -- and its materials -- more seriously, to "take ownership" as the jargon goes, or better to take some personal responsibility for their own life and education, as we'd said in earlier times. But as time went on, and I thought ought and dug into the matter more, I saw that this was something I really have an obligation to confront my students with.

    Does it change things? Only for a few, unfortunately -- but better to reach that few, which is still a good, (albeit limited) than to just be silent

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  3. Hi- I teach at a 2 year community college in Montreal where we graduate 40% of our students in prescribed time frame. At the start of each term I ask the students the same sorts of questions you pose (I teach humanities, religious studies and ethics) and get the same blank faces you are subjected to. I find I have to make my courses "entertaining" for the students in order to ensure I get enough attendance, attention and performance. Each term my classes enjoy the process. According to the registrars office, my courses are very popular despite my on-line ratings that highlight the idea that my courses require a lot of work. Each term when I start grading papers I am often touched with a bit of guilt. I will be the first to admit that we don't really engage the topics beyond what I would call a high-school level. These kids then go off to university without the critical skills etc. needed to succeed there (the province of quebec has an odd educational system where high-school ends at grade 11 followed by two years of junior college and then 3 years of university study- redundant to say the least). You would think that these two years college would be productive- unfortunately from what I can gather, the students who do go off to university founder and take up to six years to complete their degrees while working an assortment of retail jobs. The whole system is at odds with what education is supposed to accomplish. At the end of the day, I feel somewhat complicit in all of this.

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  4. My life experience, in most cases, has gotten me far more work then my degree.
    While I loved college, I don't feel that it was preparation for the work I did later (obviously I'm not a doctor or lawyer). It was more just a ticket to be able to "play" - a very, very expensive ticket.
    I do not regret going to college, but urged my kids to do so with the knowledge it won't get you where you want, it just gets you to the game. You have to do the rest through - "work ethic", "critical thinking skills" and "perseverance".

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  5. Getting in to the comments now, to the last one -- yes, "getting you into the game" is a good way to describe it. Interestingly, when I've gone online and looked through sites compiling employer-desired skills, work ethic and critical thinking are right up there. I think perhaps if I still teach CT elsewhere (I'm leaving this job), I'll put together a unit where students have to research this themselves.

    To the comment just above it, I have a similar experience: high ratings and good comments both in student assessments and on RateMyProfessor despite the fact that I uphold (relatively for my institution) high standards and am pretty tough with students. We're also doing a lot of remedial work here, making up for not only knowledge but also basic skills and dispositions our students didn't acquire in high school. Our last 4-year graduation rate was 9%.

    So, I feel your pain, as old Clinton said, and I know that nagging feeling of guilt. But here's the thing: You didn't make that system or the conditions. And it sounds as if you are conscientiously trying to equip them with some badly needed skills and dispositions. Those are goods, and you are doing good, albeit limited -- key here not to allow the (imaginary) best to become the enemy of the (real) good

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  6. Thank you for writing up your thoughts. They will improve the little "lecture" I occasionally give when I am subbing recalcitrant high school students. I usually lead off with Durant's paraphrase of Aristotle: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

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  7. As a newly-minted instructor who teaches at both for-profit and ostensibly non-profit colleges, I found your suggestion to diagram the de rigeur "why are you in this class question" to be insightful and useful - thank you!

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  8. Aha! I think you can probably tell from the blog (and its name) that I'm a huge fan of Aristotle. I suspect that a high proportion of insights in new, engaging pedagogical theories are - when we look at them closely - rediscoveries of insist well worked out by Aristotle, Plato, Stoic philosophers, Augustine, etc. I applaud you introducing students to them - because they're otherwise likely to miss out on the contact with great thinkers.

    And, you're quite welcome. I'm always glad to read when an entry is put to use. Perhaps I ought to revisit this topic with a new, follow-up post

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  9. And, to my anonymous commenter, back when I was an undergrad, my experience was that quite a few courses didn't even begin with addressing what use the material covered in the class might be.

    I also found, to my surprise, that even at the end of courses, when I first started teaching, I had many students who had very little idea about what we were supposed to be up to -- particularly in this Critical Thinking class. My hopes were that by explaining it to them, leading them through thinking these matters out socratically, getting them to think about it, it might stick with them, and furnish something, a kind of intellectual lever, by which their views and habits could be changed for the better.

    Unfortunately, I find that there are many students who participate in that exercise, but who manage to forget, disregard, or ignore it. Perhaps I need to sit down sometime over the next year and really think this through, to its foundations, and put together something like a module on why developing CT and other foundational skill sets/ dispositions are so absolutely important, and how students can take responsibility in their own education for developing them.

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  10. Your musings brought me out of the twilight zone and, for that, I thank you! I am a visiting lecturer at a small HBCU and blank stares from ill-prepared college juniors and seniors have been the norm. Interestingly enough, the goal of the professional development course is to prepare these students for what employers expect from them once they graduate. They just don't get it, or want to get it. I'll admit, I've been questioning the usefulness of my two degrees, but will gladly take them than leave them--on any day (besides I'm still paying for them). I do agree, wholeheartedly, work ethic and the ability to think critically are lacking in today's workforce and it rests upon students to develop these skills. Another thing, I know that life happens, but I am baffled by this notion of only graduating x% in 4yrs or 6yrs...maybe it was the culture of the swanky private university I attended, but it was rare not to graduate in 4yrs. I'm automatically concerned when students introduce themselves as 2nd year Seniors or 2nd semester sophomores, etc...

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  11. I think you are missing something fairly important here. You argue that doing C work will not get you a job. The implication then is that doing A work will get you a job. This suggests that the work you are doing in college is in fact the work employers are looking for.

    I am a graduate student in computer science and I am reasonably certain that students who got C's because they spent their time working on real, practical projects, get better jobs than those students who put in the time in class and got A's. That said, the students who just got C's and did nothing else are at the bottom of the barrel.

    The other part of this is that just because employers list these skills at the top of the list does not mean those are actually the most important things. You are measuring what employers say they want, not what actually gets people hired.

    So your lecture may get students on the right track, which is a good thing, I am not convinced that what you teach is true though I would like to think it is.

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  12. What gets lost in much of the dialogue on this topic is that we gutted our topnotch vo-tech system and moved it to community colleges and made high school a tiered system of prep for college, with a few watered-down "magnet themes" thrown in for variety. Telling a kid who barely graduated to go get their vocational training at a junior college keeps many from ever trying. Even a help desk job today requires a bachelor's degree.

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  13. Ok, quick responses to these comments thoughtfully written and sent last night -- before I have to leave for the very CT class I wrote about (in which we're down to about 2/3 -1/2 the starting number of students, depending on the section.)

    To 10:14 Anon: I can't speak to the HBCU you work in, but I can say that I'm not impressed with the career services staff we have. They can give very good advice about grooming, I'll give them that. But I don't see any research on their part, or any sustained practical reasoning about what our vulnerable students need.

    I'd also stress that I don't see this as n HBCU thing, but as a real generational issue -- again, not in elite schools, but in the lower to middle tier schools nationwide (granted, there are some exceptions)

    To Justin, I think I was pretty clear that getting an A doesn't in any way guarantee students a job -- acquiring skills, dispositions, and knowledge demanded by the workplace, and being able to demonstrate one's possession of them opens the door.

    Grades and a college degree are supposed to signify that one has those skills -- but employers know that's not often the case, and most students (my students, undergrads, not grad students who already have successfully completed a major -- two very different populations) don't get this until you spell it out for them.

    You're right: if a student is getting Cs because he or she is doing work outside the class that is building their skills, can get better jobs -- but remember back to gen ed classes in college. When a student gets through with a C in classes already made about as easy as they can be, with all manners of academic support practically thrown at them, it's not because they're so busily building their skills. It's because they're not cracking the book, not studying, not using the resources we provide. C students in undergrad, pre-major don't even read the class schedule, and say things like "We have a test next week?"

    to Anon 12:31: Yes, you're right. I'm not particularly concerned here about why the students come in lacking in these basic, foundational skills. I'm not focusing on the environments which produce kids who think if they jut show up and make minimal effort, things will fall into place for them. And, I'm not underplaying the importance of those conversations.

    Pedagogically, I don't see how they are particularly helpful to the students, since they just give them a new set of possible excuses

    I see far too many of my fellow profs focusing on those structural issues and neglecting the actual engagement with students where they are, where we might be able to reach some of them, and get some of them to take responsibility for their own education.

    All that said -- yes, that ongoing conversation about history, structure, education policies, etc. is a very important one.

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  14. In my experience, having knowledge and skills are not particularly necessary to land a job. Qualifications are. Employers, generally, lack the means to truly assess the competencies of potential hires. The degree is the proxy.

    But then, to paraphrase Socrates in the Meno, it is better to believe that skills, dispositions, and knowledge are necessary, for otherwise we would become lazy and idle.

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  15. Well, it depends very much on what sort of job you are trying to get, doesn't it? There are quite a few employers, for instance, who like to administer the Watson Critical Thinking test, which itself is -- though certainly nowhere near as much as a college degree -- a proxy for possession of skills. But if you haven't any skills, you're likely not going to do well on it.

    There are ways to authentically assess foundational skills, and employers are -- and have been -- interested in incorporating them. I think we'll see more of than in the future.

    The real trouble is that -- for those students who are not attending upper-tier universities and colleges -- the meaning of a degree is steadily being eroded precisely by graduating seniors' demonstrable lacks of those skills and dispositions the degrees used to signify. So, for many students, the "qualification" of a general education is becoming less and less useful for getting themselves hired.

    For professional degrees, of course, it is an entirely different matter. But notice -- those all possess some sort of rigorous certification process, where one gets the desired and hirable "qualification" by demonstrating adequate levels of acquisition of knowledge and development of skills and dispositions

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  16. got here following your comment on bigthink.com. this is a nice blog, keep it up!

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  17. Thanks very much! I had to pare back the work on it a bit over the last semester -- I was doing a lot of online course design and started a second blog -- but I should be back to posting 6-8 posts per month this coming year

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