The Plight of Education: Symptom of a Diseased System?
Education is a subject which I hold very dear. From the age of 8, I was classically home-schooled by my parents, primarily my mother. This involved learning the classical subjects of Latin, Greek, philosophy and rhetoric, in addition to the more standard history, biology, math, literature, and writing. It was a difficult and challenging curriculum. Although I griped constantly at the time, I could not have received a better education anywhere else. For my 'senior' year of 'high-school,' I attended a community college full time in order to take a sport - fencing - and garner a demonstrably real GPA. I then attended the University of Chicago, which had a similarly rigorous approach to education.
Growing up with such a unique intellectual atmosphere, I was very conscious of the differences between myself and other children my age, between their education and mine. While, at the time, I envied them their 'home room' and 'gym' and easy classes, I now feel grateful that my intellect was not subjected to such limited opportunity as I now perceive it to be. Which is not, of course, to say that all schools - public or private - are inferior to being home-schooled (obviously there are numerous examples to the contrary), but that being extremely well-educated, being possessed of solid critical thinking skills, and having a thorough grounding in literature, history, and philosophical thought was certainly a rarity coming out of such schools, at such an age. It would be more expected of a college graduate.
Unfortunately, those college graduates are apparently not expected to have such an education anymore either. The United States is now the only major economy in the world where the younger generation is not expected to be more educated than their parents. According to the most recent OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) study, one in five children with graduate-level parents are not expected to reach the level of university, a prospect labeled 'downward mobility.' One of the reasons being blamed for this trend is the increasing cost of higher education, which has far outstripped the financial capacities of most households. Young people are beginning to choose NOT to go to college because, frankly, they see no use in it. As they watch their older brothers and sisters return home after graduating, unable to find work and burdened by colossal student debt (the nation's student debt is now over 1 trillion, and is increasing much faster than the nations' mortgage debt) they decide that going to college is not in their best interests. Those that have decided to go on to higher education are facing an average debt of $26,500 and unemployment rates of at least 16.8% (depending on your definition of labor force participation, some analysts rate it as high as 30-50%; there is roughly 50% employment rate amongst labor force participants). Of those graduates that can find a job, 16-18% are underemployed, doing work for which they are overeducated. The market is saturated.
A contradictory study from recently launched company Civitas Learning reveals a slightly different but equally dismal prospect for the US graduates. According to their recent publication, although a record number of high school students apply and attend college, an equally astonishing number of them drop out (42%).
No matter where you look, the United States appears to be heading into dangerous waters. With all the talk of the fiscal cliff, and the troubles with Israel and Palestine and Syria, the thing that we should be most worried about is the state of our educational system. The American Dream was built on the idea that working hard and getting a good education could propel you from lower class poverty to the middle class, from the middle class to the upper-middle class, and maybe even give you a shot at being a millionaire. Not anymore. The US is now ranked 16th in the world for the number of 25-34 year-olds with college degrees, among 26 developed nations. Additionally, the US higher education system has reached a record high for educating international students, most of whom take their training back to their home countries. There, with an American degree, they hold a good chance of getting an excellent job and supporting their country's economic and financial growth. (For example, Chinese undergraduate student levels in the US increased by 43% in 2011.) In effect, we are educating our international competitors for better positions than we can offer our own citizens! Many analysts blame the rising costs of a college degree, in addition to job scarcity.
The cost of higher education has gone up for a number of reasons. 1) The cost of maintaining academic resources has gone up considerably (for example, the subscription cost of academic journals is unprecedentedly and outrageously high, with some monthly journals costing upwards of $40,000 a year; some schools subscribe to thousands of such journals). 2) The Federal Government guarantees student loans, meaning that universities have little risk in hiking prices; applicants will merely take out more substantive loans, backed by the fed. 3) The status quo on luxuries for top universities has also increased dramatically, with state-of-the-art gymnasiums, libraries, dorms, and dining halls becoming de rigeur for any major college campus. 4) The average full professor's salary is now $99,000, and for a research professor at a top university it is often over six figures. Plus, the influx of new desperate graduate students means that the workload for a tenured professor has dropped significantly, while underpaid research assistants and interns take the bulk of the work. 5) With so many applicants, from both the United States and abroad, top universities have no dearth of prospective students. International students, in fact, are almost always charged full tuition with little grant or aid money. Yet, there is no shortage of international applicants. Therefore, raising tuition is a guaranteed way of increasing university income.
Yet, the problem with the US educational system does not lie exclusively with the cost of higher education; it begins with middle and high school education. The disparity between the academic performances of low income and middle or high income high school or middle school students has been attributed primarily to the difference in home environment. The millions of dollars spent to make dangerous inner city, or otherwise disadvantaged, public schools viable have often been wasted simply because: money is not the answer. Buying better computers does not necessarily increase graduation or college-attendance percentage. The problem is not with funding; it is with parenting. Children of college graduates are more likely to graduate from high school and go to college than those whose parents did not receive higher education. If even 20% of them are copping out, or copping in and dropping out, what chance do the rest have?
The US educational system has long been one of our best and brightest assets. Now, we are not only failing our own citizens, but we are falling behind in the global market for competitive, high-learning/high-earning jobs. Although I thank god for my mother's patience and tenacity in educating me and my siblings, it is really disgraceful that such a great education should be readily accessible only with help from outside the US public school system.
