The Politics of College

I am grateful and enriched by exposure to our college students. You are lucky and you can be as special as you chose. Lord knows the Republic is desperate for your dedicated talent. Take seriously your opportunity and understand that the public story on college "for everyone" is a classic political rouse. Here's why:

It is widely believed that every American should have the opportunity to go to college and earn a degree.

Simple idea and a great one. But an inherent flaw is that 90 million adult Americans are unable to read at the fifth grade level and are unable to make change for a dollar. The "college is pillar" is a calculated and simplistic appeal to swing voters. It's not a real call to national action. The college pillar skips right over literacy. It is also disingenuous to disregard the connection between household income and college possibilities. The average SAT verbal score for children qualified to take the SAT from homes with annual income of $10,000 or less is 427. Politicians aren't talking to those people. Focusing on students ready for college is most likely to mean students from households with incomes closer to $100,000 and up where the average verbal score is 560.

The need for college education is stressed by every politician and business leader out there. Corporate employers are dying for talent and college educated employees have incomes nearly double those without college. But college graduation rates have remained steady for the last 35 years and among those who go to four-year colleges, 500,000 a year drop out while we graduate about 1.4 million.

The idea that college is the great social equalizer is political theater. Consider that in America's top 146 colleges and universities, "only 3% of the student body is from families in the country's bottom quarter of wage earners." In a stunning 2003 report from the National Assessment of Adult Literacy and the U.S. Department of Education it was learned that only "31% of the (college) graduates scored at the proficient level -- meaning that they could read lengthily, complex texts and draw complicated inferences."

Many corporate employers find a large percentage of those who actually go to college require some kind of remedial reading and writing coursework to gain an entry level job. Nevertheless, the median household income for college grads is $64,406 while it is $35,744 for high school-only grads. The high school diploma earner's household income is 44% less than the college grad household. However, the median household income of the non-high schook grad is $17,261, indicating an even greater earnings gap (52%) between them and the high school grad. Forget trying to force more kids into college. Any study one might cite on the overarching importance of early childhood development proves that this is where the country should focus first because it has the greatest yield. "Full-funding of Head Start" is not enough and swing voters don't want to hear about Head Start, let alone what we really need to do.

MF