OpEd:
The Failure of American Colleges
June 25, 2009 by Kyle BradyTags: America, College, Education, Future, Government, Politics, Public Schools
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In the midst of a national crisis, equally financial and moral in nature, why has little thought been given to the educational system? True, there are more college graduates than ever before and enrollment is skyrocketing, but is this truly an appropriate marker of success when these are students coming from school systems with abysmal competency rates in reading/writing, math, and science? Simply put, no.
American elementary, middle, and highschools typically cater to the lowest common denominator, wanting the slowest of the class to understand material rather than challenging, or even educating, the others. They do this for funding purposes, and teach for standardized tests instead of endowing these children and teenagers with knowledge both required and useful for their futures. Private schools are different than the public system, and usually have higher numbers in all the metrics, while also producing graduates that are at least partially intelligent and knowledgeable. However, the sad truth is that private schools are often expensive, and a majority of the country is educated in the failing public school system.
One day, these public school experiment participants graduate from high school, and a portion go off to college – inflated GPAs, SAT preparation, and the mass-application process ensures that those who wish to attend college will. Some of these teenagers are intelligent and educated, more likely because of natural inclinations than the school system producing a diamond in the rough, and they do well in college, going on to even higher education, research institutions, or a key position within an influential company. But it’s not the fact that they graduated that matters – what matters is their intelligence and thirst for knowledge.
Modern colleges are largely degree factories, providing a laundry list of requirements for the students to complete – many of which are not only not a part of their field of choice, but irrelevant in the overall knowledge perspective. These requirements are filled in a mostly linear fashion, with teachers, tutors, other students, study guides, and “open note” tests there to help ease the way, producing graduates that have, on the whole, learned nothing except how to regurgitate information and manipulate those in control of your future (Professors), managing to coast through four years of higher education without an original thought or problem analysis. This goes for both private and state universities.
There are exceptions, as always: accredited engineering programs are necessarily rigorous, many scientific disciplines of study are inherently complex, and higher math is difficult to even comprehend. But these programs are not the issue; the business, communications, journalism, liberal studies, economics majors et. al are the culprits of degree devaluation. These same foci of study happen to be the most popular – coincidence? Unlikely.
When a Bachelor’s degree can be attained by drinking yourself into a stupor four or more nights a week, writing the occasional paper, and taking multiple choice exams, the credibility and value of such a so-called education becomes questionable. Computer Engineers and Biochemists like to party as much as the rest of them, but more often than not they can be found doing homework, studying, or participating in extracurricular learning activities along with the rest of their academic peers.
It is by this very process that America has reached its current position where a college degree is preferred, if not required, for even the most uncomplicated and simple jobs. “College is the new high school” is a phrase oft spoken without the realization that this is not a compliment, and is instead a criticism of both the job market and the entire education process. Regardless of the level of personal experience, actual knowledge, or demonstrable intelligence, many organizations are simply not interested in hiring candidates without degrees, as a matter of principle. Except, of course, for those that buck the broken system and found their own companies, only to be praised years later for not receiving a college degree – an odd compliment considering they were ignored and looked down on until reaching a stratospheric level of success. These are the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs of the world.
Many majors themselves are a joke, where the only real skills to be learned are slick talking and a few core life truths, in addition to some controversial and wholly fabricated rulesets – the graduates of business and economics schools caused the collapse of the entire financial system because of faux knowledge, inflated self-value, and a lack of basic intelligence. The universities, however, continue to pump out such gems of genius without much change to the programs, or even a recognition of their complicity in the issue, which is, in itself, an indictment of the very system.
The American education system is a disaster just short of an entire failure, and the universities which undereducated high school students graduate to are largely just as short-sighted and worthless as their lower education counterparts. Consistently providing easy ways to acquire supposed verification of intellectual and overall individual value is of no benefit to anyone, let alone the graduates themselves. True reform starts at the education level, which can’t be accomplished with budget cuts, lowered expectations, and ignoring the problem.
This situation needs to be addressed before it drives the country, and the world, further into the arms of coddled and misled overgrown children.
Kyle can be found on Twitter and MySpace, or reached via email.
