The Question of “need” and college education

I suppose it is the kind of question that will be debated endlessly and never resolved, this question of “needing” a college education. But this month’s issue of the AFT publication On Campus really pointed out the inherent contradiction I see in this quest for quality education and global competitiveness for our younger generations.

First, the issue contains a column summarizing remarks made by the AFT president, Randi Weingarten, at the National Press Club in November. She made reference to “smart investments” in preK-12 education. Among these were providing universal early childhood education and “high-quality educational choices within the public school system” (2). She recommended give a “boost” to “high-achieving students from low-income households” and establishing community schools that bring together a range of family services, and concluded with “offering every student a well-rounded education that would stand in stark contrast to the ’standardized test score competition’ that has resulted from NCLB” (2). Each of these are laudable goals, and that last one is a beautiful and idealistic vision of what the ancients might have recognized as a liberal arts curriculum - language and expression, a little science, a little math, perhaps music. But that’s really the rub when it comes to public education, isn’t it? Who gets to say what a “well-rounded” education includes? Who gets to determine which activities or courses fit, and which ones should be on the side? The only thing “universal” about education is that everyone has a different idea of what a good one includes.

So we move on, both through the pages of this issue and through the years of the child’s life, until we arrive at the institution of college, where we have placed the burden of righting all the wrongs of the public education system in four short years of voluntary participation in a range of work that includes specialty areas of knowledge alongside generalist courses (like writing) that are increasingly seen as “remedial”. Whether by design or default, the issue has two articles on facing pages that point up the conflict in higher education as the fix-all for the problems of global competitiveness. The first, on the left side, is called “Education on the Cheap: Academic staffing crisis takes a toll on learning.” The article summarizes three recent studies, each of which concluded that there is a negative correlation between the percentage of adjunct faculty at an institution and the success or students. This is not because adjuncts don’t teach as well - the studies are careful to make this point. Rather, it is because the “psychological contract” between the institution and faculty members of all ranks is “broken for faculty members who work at institutions with large numbers of part-time faculty” and this breakage has a negative effect on teaching commitment across the institution. One of the studies suggests that if working conditions are improved for contingent faculty, it might mitigate the negative correlation. Hmmm.

Okay, on the right page, the article is called “Colleges cope with rising demand for remedial courses.” It includes information from a report by Strong American Schools called “Diploma to Nowhere” that estimates the number of college students enrolled in remedial courses at 1.3 million, with an associated cost of “between $2.3 billion and $2.9 billion per year.” Now, right off the bat, my first question is why should we be spending that much on “remedial” instruction when we could be using it to improve the instruction at the point it is supposed to occur, and eliminate the remedial courses? Why on earth should college be about remedial instruction? After all the money, time, political capital and energy that has been wasted in developed test after standard after requirement after test, why should colleges be charged with the responsibility to re-mediate learning that was freely available prior to college?

The article poses the answer in responses by students surveyed for the report: Make high school classes “tougher so they would be better prepared for college” (5). The report goes on to suggest that stronger connections between K-12 education and higher education “that include[s] common goals and standards” would help too (5). I’m sure they would, which explains why there is already debate in some states of re-imagining the educational sequence as preK-16, making college the new high school.

See the sequence here? and the problem? High school courses should be more difficult to prepare students for college, but if high school courses are more difficult, then more students won’t be able to pass them, and that means children “left behind” which NCLB doesn’t allow so in order to meet the “standard” and remain a school, the courses must be tailored to allow all children to succeed at the test, which is not the same as preparing for college or life. But most importantly, nothing about the standardized test driven system emphasizes the need to create a self-educating population, either before, during, or after college. C. Wright Mills said, “The aim of the college for the individual student is to eliminate the need in his life for the college; the task is to help him become a self-educating man.”

Self-educating. The magic isn’t in the number of grades completed, or the number of tests taken, or the number of degrees held. The magic is in teaching students from the earliest years that they have the ability, the right, and the obligation to become self-educating all their lives. The information freely available to every student is astonishing, and there for the taking. What’s missing is the interest, the motivation for the student to do the seeking, the taking, the learning. The magic isn’t in the student sitting is a classroom and suffering out the 14 weeks of the semester, it is in the student recognizing the need to be accountable for the learning beyond that classroom, to add it to that which has been learned earlier to support and enhance that which will come later, to apply that knowledge across a full range of life experiences, from civic engagement to relationships to parenting to business, without waiting to be told exactly what to do and how to do it. The magic is in learning, not in teaching. And if we had that in our public school ethos, then we might be able to do away with this other blazing contradiction: “Students need a university degree in order to succeed in modern society and the global economy.”

I beg to differ. The university degree is a piece of paper that measures the number of days sitting in a seat in a room, the number of exams taken and papers written, but not at all the actual learning or applied knowledge the student has. The university degree is a key to success only insofar as it reflects the student’s ability to separate the information from the book or course it’s in and have it available in the mind to use to make decisions and life choices, which calls for judgment, which in turn calls for deliberation and sometimes debate. These are the things required for success. If every student has a university degree, what is the difference from every child having high school diploma? If everyone should have it, then the universal system already in place should be upgraded to provide the success tools needed for modern society and the global economy. To do anything else is to simply abandon the role of the first twelve years of public schooling and try to atone for it all in the four years of “university” education. Better to keep the student in the public school system long enough to have those tools as he or she enters adulthood, the society, and the economy. Better to re-mediate within the system already set up to accommodate the universal. Instead of Running Start or College in the High School, maybe we need Extended Stay and Success Education in the High School.

And what of the already existing problems revealed in this delegating upward educational push? As more students flood colleges, more campuses have higher percentages of contingent faculty to teach the classes, most claiming (rightfully) that they don’t have the resources to hire enough full-time tenure track faculty to handle the load. But the reports tell us that those higher percentages of contingent faculty have negative effects both on student success (degree completion or transfer) and on overall teaching commitment. University degrees are the answer, but the system isn’t designed for the university system to replace the public school system, nor to extend it, nor to take on its failures and try to make successes of them. And if we own up to that, and overhaul that system, then what is the next magic ticket to success? A foreign education? Graduate school? The latter is already happening, actually.

This contradiction, between the need for universal education and the desire for universal success at the level of the new information society and global economy, is enduring. But if it’s really going to be solved, it might help if we begin with clarifying the question. What is the role of public education in this country at this time? Is it to prepare well-rounded broadly education citizens of a free and democratic society? Or is it to prepare workers, whether for the knowledge economy, the global economy or the green revolution? I submit that you can have the second as a direct result of the first, but not the other way around.