College Isn't Worth The Cost

I've heard it in the news. College costs too much for what you get out of it. The average student loan debt burden for young people graduating from college in 4 years is $23,000 dollars. Young people graduating in 6 years (much more in line with the average time spent in school) can expect upwards of $40,000 in student loan debt. And to top it off, students aren't getting what they're paying for: rigorous, intellectual, and inspiring education. The Pew Research Center recently conducted a national survey of college presidents, college graduates, and college students. The results of the survey indicate that, in many cases, the costs versus the benefits of the education just don't line up. There's a lot of good information in the research that addresses student loan debt, college costs, and lifetime earnings. All good stuff.

But I'm not writing about the survey. I'm writing about how I know this. I turn on the local news channel and there it is: "College isn't worth the cost." I read the New York Times and it's made it onto the front page. While I don't disagree with or value the Pew research, it, like all research, needs to be taken in context.

College isn't worth the cost to who? I read the news, listen to the radio, and talk to people who know stuff. I haven't heard many argue that college isn't expensive. It's expensive because it's valuable. And, I've heard very few comments that suggest a college education isn't valuable. It's what we value and how we value it that makes or breaks. But this messaging that "college isn't worth the cost" might be further widening and extending a higher education gap.

Does the cost of college override the reality that middle earners in America are the most at risk of economic collapse? Young people whose parents earn between $65,000 and $100,000 per year are doomed. Their parents earn too much for them to qualify for federal and state grant aid. Their parents make too little to cover the gap between the costs of attendance and their estimated family contribution. What are these young people to do? The message that they're receiving is that they are destined to borrow themselves into a state of frustration and desperation. The message is that they are going to graduate from college with no clear path to economic stability. Do we think that our kids are not hearing this message? They are hearing it and it scares the hell out of them. What's to suggest that they also won't dis-engage as they stare into the abyss that is their future? If the middle of our economy can't "afford" the opportunity to move forward intellectually and economically, what about the poor?

We know that the primary pathway out of poverty is education. We also know that fewer students from low income families continue education after high school than any other demographic group. There is plenty of data out there suggesting that this is the case because poor families believe that college is too expensive, so they don't explore higher education as an option.They've received the message that college is expensive and therefore out of reach. Since it's not seen as a viable financial option, youth from poor communities are more likely to disengage during their k-12 education than are their more affluent peers.

So whether it's a matter of reality or belief, we are communicating to young people that their efforts to learn more about the world won't be worth the cost of that knowledge. It's concerning the way this research is being communicated and how it's being heard. The messaging is strengthening misinformed and under-informed beliefs about opportunity that I work daily to disspell. The reality is that youth from communities characterised by low-incomes have more access to financial aid than any other group. Middle income youth have access to private, liberal arts and sciences colleges and universities that have higher financial thresholds. And youth from wealthy families will continue to have access (sometimes in spite of low academic achievement.) The power that youth have lies in their understanding and belief that they are in control of their choices and opportunities for higher education. They control their own currency - GPA. If they understood and believed that there was something valuable to them after high school, they would likely engage more diligently in earning the capital to buy those choices.

Young people don't passively accept life conditions unless they don't see their role in changing those conditions. If they hear that college isn't a choice, why work to make it a choice? Young people armed with information and the ability to synthesize that information can be a powerful force for change. If they knew that being poor or being male, black, southern, etcetera could be viewed as an asset with regard to post-secondary opportunity, they might engage more emphatically in the academics. I tell young people all of the time, "GPA is currency. It's the one thing you can control and it's the one thing you can spend." That combined with all of the assets that they bring to the table and have no control over are their capital. They need to know that what they can spend it on is worth the effort.

What we don't need is more information out there that cuts the legs out from our youth as they try to run.

Because preparing for college is as important as going...

McGavock High School Student Rap Their Way to College

MCGAVOCK HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS AND TEACHERS COMPETE IN NATIONWIDE COMPETITION CALLED "The Get MotivatED Challenge” COMCAST TO REWARD THE MOST MOTIVATED STUDENTS WITH $30,000 FOR COLLEGE SCHOLARSHIPS NASHVILLE, MARCH 11 - Hundreds of enthusiastic students and teachers from McGavock High School are half way through competing in the Get MotivatED Challenge – a five-week nationwide competition across twenty-five high schools to improve daily attendance rates. Teachers and students from across the country are working together to improve attendance and early results show it is making a difference. Leading schools in the challenge have experienced a five percent gain in attendance thus far. Comcast, one of the nation's leading providers of entertainment, information and communications products and services, has also joined the effort and is contributing $30,000 in scholarships to the Get MotivatED Challenge to help improve and maximize attendance. Attendance is one of the most significant predictors of dropping out. Studies have found that students with more than 20 absences in any given year have only a 19% chance of graduating. In Nashville, 40% of students are not graduating. Students and teachers at McGavock are working to step up their attendance and motivate each other to work hard at school.

College the Easy Way

A very thoughtful look at how successful (?) our system of education has been at creating test takers and not critical thinkers.

College the Easy Way

by Bob Herbert

The cost of college has skyrocketed and a four-year degree has become an ever more essential cornerstone to a middle-class standard of living. But what are America’s kids actually learning in college?

For an awful lot of students, the answer appears to be not much.

A provocative new book, “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses,” makes a strong case that for a large portion of the nation’s seemingly successful undergraduates the years in college barely improve their skills in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing.

Intellectual effort and academic rigor, in the minds of many of the nation’s college students, is becoming increasingly less important. According to the authors, Professors Richard Arum of New York University and Josipa Roksa of the University of Virginia: “Many students come to college not only poorly prepared by prior schooling for highly demanding academic tasks that ideally lie in front of them, but — more troubling still — they enter college with attitudes, norms, values, and behaviors that are often at odds with academic commitment.”

Click here to read the article.

The American Rite of Passage - The Car and the Classroom

I ranted recently about the discontinuity between our "system" of public education and the needs of youth. I really needed to get that all down in writing so I could read what I thought and think on it for a night.

I received some responses to my rant that validated it, but then there were the obvious questions that followed - "So what do we do about it?" Now that's really the question isn't it. There's always the "solution" to change the teacher to student ratio, increasing the access for students to teachers. But that costs a ton. What about a longer school year? Too much push back from the unions  (and to some degree, parents.) How about sitting on exercise balls instead of chairs in the classroom? Or community involvement in the classroom? Or more nutritious snacks? All reasonable ideas and all with some merit. We know they have merit because they've all been tried with varying degrees of success and sustainability. The one glaring assumption in all of these options is that they take place in a school and classroom setting. Where else would they take place? Duh.

There's the rub. The schools and classrooms, in all of their iterations over the past 7 decades are, fundamentally unchanged. They are so much a part of our culture of public education that we don't even see them anymore. It just is. Although malleable, schools are ultimately static. They can be pounded and stretched, but they will retain their basic shape. They are the vehicle that we use for education.

I'm not suggesting that we take kids out into the woods and have them stand on their heads as adults prance around chanting various equations and requesting the children recite multiplication tables. I am suggesting that we, the adults, begin to recognize that we are in a school and that classrooms have remained the same since the institution of public education in America. When we surface our implicit knowledge we can begin to understand and approach it differently.

I ranted about how our educational lifecycle in America is like a tunnel (some might refer to it as a pipeline) and how we drive our young people through that tunnel for 12 years until we pop out the other side, give them the keys and tell them to go for it. I really focused on the tunnel as the limiting factor in the analogy. This 12 year journey requires very little investment of our youth. They make very few decisions and have very little input in the process. They are the deliverable. They effectively, sit in the back of the car and are along for the ride. They (and we) never challenge that we're in a car. We just are as it is the given mode of transportation through the tunnel.

What if we were to step outside of that car and really evaluate it as the most effective means of transportation in a tunnel (which I will get into in a subsequent article?) Like our classrooms, we would look at it and check its maintanence needs - tires, gas, oil. We'd give it a tune up, maybe slap on some sweet wheels, give it a paint job, get back in and keep going.

What if we didn't get back into the car?

What if, instead, we (adults) were asked to walk? How would that change the paradigm? The walk could give us the opportunity to have deeper conversations with our youth because we wouldn't be so concerned about all the things the car requires of me. It would force us to walk at the pace of the young person and force us to encourage the kid to walk faster (or slower depending on our own pace.) It would be much easier to place the young person out ahead of us so she could challenge her own pace and mark her own path within the tunnel.

Our job as educators is to inspire and nuture creativity and critical thinking. I would suggest that our job doesn't relegate us to driver. I'm not so naive to suggest that I have the answer, nor am I suggesting that classrooms aren't the best vehicle for driving through our system of education.

I am, however, suggesting that we take a moment to think about it. What are the options that we are presenting to our youth that give them the ability and support their desire to make their way through life? We are, afterall, preparing them for life - not graduation.