College Readiness for How Many?

Bill Gates is on record stating that he envisions twice as many students as now going on to college by the year 2020. That would mean approximately 60% of the student population would be expected to attend college. Interesting goal from a man who himself never finished college because it had nothing to offer him that he could not achieve on his own. Harvard only claims him as an alum because of his success in founding Microsoft. If his venture with Paul Allen in 1975 had ended the way many entrepreneurial first tries end, in failure, their relationship with Mr. Gates might have been as difficult to document as their relationship with the President.

Yet somehow, Bill Gates thinks that pushing even more children to take on college debt and receive training he didn't get or need is a good idea. Apparently, so do many other education elites. You have to wonder if they have considered the bigger impact of such a goal.

For starters there is the concept of flooding the market. With twice as many people holding the same qualification, what will be the impact on earnings for future college graduates. Econ 101, which even Bill Gates must have taken, tells you that an increased supply results in a decreased price due to less demand. Today's college graduates are having a hard time finding employment. Granted a lot of this has to do with tax policy for businesses and a massive regulatory burden from an ever growing government, but it demonstrates that a sheepskin does not innoculate you against those concerns when looking for work.

Secondly, there is the reality of pushing students who previously were not likely to succeed in college, into college. College has traditionally been a place for our best and brightest to practice in depth study into a subject area that holds a particular interest for them. Our university systems are where some of our best research takes place. That is because they used to be about gaining more knowledge. Now they are becoming extensions of the job training program, formerly known as k-12 education.  Having taken my child on several college tours recently I was struck by the focus placed on their job placement offices. While every parent wants their child to be gainfully employed, that was not traditionally the goal of college.

If your goal is to be able to enroll more children in college programs, the reality is that you are going to have to dip further down into the performance pool. That reality is already impacting higher education as high schools are required to boost their college entrance statistics to maintain AYP. A significant amount of fudging is done to make more students academic record look acceptable to college admissions offices. This is one of the explanations for the increase in the need for remediation in college. The students entering aren't really qualified to be there. It also explains the rising college drop out rates. According to the latest statistics only 63% of students entering college will complete their degree, and many will take as many as 6 years to do so. The ones going in simply don't have what it takes to complete the work.

Thirdly, (and this point has been covered by many sources) the biggest impact on America of doubling college entrance rates will be the rising amount of student debt. Currently it is over $1 trillion. What happens if we double that to $2 trillion? With the government having a lock on student loans, how will that impact the national debt? Is that an unintended consequence of the goal of doubling college education or the purpose? The answer may lie in your willingness to think conspiratorially.

A fourth point has to do with the means being applied to the end. The goal of Common Core is to make children "college and career ready" to participate in the "global workforce." The assertion CCSSI and its supporters are making is that standards and assessments will address the workforce problem.  In other words, the reason we aren't globally competitive (which itself is a red herring) is because we haven't been consistent in what we teach children or good at assessing whether or not they are learning. If we had been, then naturally more kids would be going to college. Of course we did have 50 states using standards and assessments for many years without this being the natural outcome. Could student failure to graduate or progress on to college have anything to do with our social programs which pay people not to work, whether through welfare or unemployment benefits? Doesn't this seem at cross purposes with preparing a workforce?

The government creates social problems and then says we need more government to fix the problems it creates, and now, private corporations are throwing money at the "fix", not to improve outcomes, but to profit from the process of faux crisis management.

The last effect that absolutely needs to be considered is, what does this goal does to those who don't have what it takes to complete college, who don't wish to go there and to the programs that currently exist for such people like technical or trade schools?

Ed Week recently wrote of some of the realities of this kind of thinking for the high school student who realisitically is not on the college track. They site the rapid decline in the offering of vocational classes and institutions dedicated to the trades.

"88 percent of our public high schools still retain career- and technical-education programs, but the number of students receiving job certification is in decline. School districts that once had robust networks of vocational high schools have stripped offerings. In Boston, a city with 625,000 residents, there is only one vocational secondary school...

Instead of taking two years of foreign language to meet college "readiness" requirements as a junior or senior, why can’t more students take core classes for half the day, then leave school to intern or train as carpenters, electricians, auto technicians, dental assistants, or fitness trainers?

Instead of being pressured into a college track for the sake of improving accountability numbers, why can’t teachers and administrators honestly assess students’ college potential—or lack thereof—and help place students in programs that give them the best shot of having a productive life? It’s one thing for a student to be in a remedial rut, it’s another to compound the problem by not considering other program options."

A group of concerned citizens we spoke to recently in Macon MO expressed this exact concern. They did not necessarily want all their children to go on to college. Who would remain in Macon to run the farms and businesses there if every child went out and got essentially white collar training? No one asked the Macon School Board if college and career readiness was their goal as well. These citizens are asking why they have to funnel all their k-12 education dollars into a curriculum whose goal they never voted on or approved.

Is THIS why Arne Duncan wants Everyone to go to College?

Is college debt collection the new "Wild West in Education" scheme for "entrepreneurs" to make money?

It is no secret this Administration's goal is to make the majority of students college/career ready, in fact, it is in its educational blueprint and heard in many of their speeches.  What is the stated goal of the Administration's school reform?  From an Arne Duncan speech:

Today, we have a unique opportunity to rethink the mission of high school for the 21 century and educate our way to a better economy. I'm convinced that what we do in the next several years to complete this transformation will help America's children and the nation's workforce for decades to come.

Students are to be educated so they are globally competitive and help the nation's workforce.  The emphasis is on training human capital to supply the needs of the economy. In Duncan's world, this means there should be opportunities for all students to go to community college, career college or a four year university so as to help private businesses (and government) be successful.

Does a goal of most people achieving the same outcome make you a little nervous and suspicious?  Do you remember the No Child Left Behind Goal of "100% of students will be proficient by 2014"?  That goal was unattainable and ridiculed from the beginning, no matter how noble its intentions.

The goal of the majority of students to go to some sort of post-high school program is unattainable as well.  Some students are not motivated enough and/or are not intellectually able to handle post-high school programs.   Why is there this push for students to become become theoretically smarter and more productive human capital by furthering their education? 

What's occurring with this plan?  While more students are attending post high school programs,  it's establishing student servitude to the Federal Government long after the students have graduated due to student debt.  Since 2010, the Federal Government directly makes student loans, not private companies.  The loans are to be paid directly to the government, not private industry.  It's a pretty nifty program to ensure a money stream for a cash strapped country.  It falls apart when those students can't find a job and don't have enough money to pay their bills, much less the government treasury.

From the NY Times and Debt Collectors Cashing In on Student Loans:

At a protest last year at New York University, students called attention to their mounting debt by wearing T-shirts with the amount they owed scribbled across the front — $90,000, $75,000, $20,000.  

On the sidelines was a business consultant for the debt collection industry with a different take. 

“I couldn’t believe the accumulated wealth they represent — for our industry,” the consultant, Jerry Ashton, wrote in a column for a trade publication, InsideARM.com. “It was lip-smacking.” 

Though Mr. Ashton says his column was meant to be ironic, it nonetheless highlighted undeniable truths: many borrowers are struggling to pay off their student loans, and the debt collection industry is cashing in. 

In an attempt to recover money on the defaulted loans, the Education Department paid more than $1.4 billion last fiscal year to collection agencies and other groups to hunt down defaulters.

The article highlights one private company reaping huge dividends from the government to go after debt:

The New Oil Well?

 

Business is booming at ConServe, a debt collection agency in suburban Rochester. The company recently expanded into a neighboring building. The payroll of 420 is expected to double in three years. 

“There is great opportunity,” said Mark E. Davitt, the company’s president and founder.

Where some debt collection firms have made their fortunes collecting on delinquent credit cards or hospital bills, ConServe is thriving because of overdue student loans, a large majority of its business. 

With an outstanding balance of more than $1 trillion, student loans have become a silver lining for the debt collection industry at a time when its once-thriving business of credit card collection has diminished and the unemployment rate has made collection a challenge. To recoup unpaid loans, the federal government, private lenders and others have turned to collection agencies like ConServe. 

Mark Russell, a mergers and acquisition specialist, writing in the same trade publication as Mr. Ashton, the consultant at the N.Y.U. protest, suggested student loans might be a “new oil well” for the accounts receivable management industry, or ARM, as the industry is known.

 

Mr. Ashton's and Mr. Russell's comments remind me of education venture capitalist Scott Joftus remarking that "education is the Wild, Wild West and there is a lot of money to be made".  Not only will education reformers and venture capitalists make money from laws tweaked by politicians, so will debt collectors.

Does the alliance with private companies (ed reformers, venture capitalists, Solyndra, Mamtek, etc) with the Federal Government cause concern?  Are our tax dollars propping up this economy under the guise of supporting private industry?  Why are tax dollars being used for private industries in the first place? 

While ed reformers espouse "free market" principles in "choice" schools, it's really not "free market" at all.  The money used to fund these schools are from your tax dollars and there is little to no risk to the "entrepreneurs".   Meanwhile, education venture capitalists like Bill Gates and Scott Joftus are making money from the mandates put in place by the politicians and the Department of Education.

Now the debt collectors can step in and reap the benefits of the unattainable goal pitched to  students that they can and should (it's their "right") to go to college.  It's a Utopian goal and we know there is no Utopia.  If there is no Utopia, what is the real reason for this structuring of educational reform?

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Take some time and read the comments at the end of the Times article.  Interesting stories and theories on debt, student responsibility, the structure of the economic system, etc.