You Can't Outsource Hairdressers: How to Fix Education in this Country
Everyone and their second cousin knows exactly what's wrong with education in this country. The problem is that everyone has a different idea, but mine has the virtue of being right. (Hey, if Certain News Outlets can present their view of the universe as the One True Viewpoint, the rest of us need to start doing the same thing..."fair and balanced" only works if everyone plays by the same rules)
In a nutshell: Why should everyone go to college?
First, some basic economics: If you have a resource and demand for that resource goes up, the cost of that resource will also go up. So guess what happens when a lot more students are trying to go to college? And this explains why the cost of a college education has risen so dramatically over the past twenty or so years.
Second: Okay, so you go to college. But what good does the college degree do for you? Unless you're in a STEM discipline (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) or pre-professional program (teaching, pre-law, pre-business), what you have is a liberal arts degree. Now, there's nothing wrong with a degree in, say, French literature. But did you really need to pay $80K for it? And before you say that you got the college experience...remember that a lot of colleges run seminars, open to the public, so if you really want to get some insight into Moliere, you could just 1) read Tartuffe, 2) attend lectures. (And with the internet, you can also 3) watch amateur and perhaps professional productions of Moliere and 4) see what real scholars say about it.) The point is: you can study these things on your own. (Actually, the point is: You should be able to study these things on your own)
"But you need a college education to compete in the modern workplace." Ah, now here's a real justification: if you don't have a college education, you can't be X. That makes sense for people who are in (surprise) STEM disciplines or pre-professional programs. But what about the rest of us? If you're going to be the manager of a retail store, does it matter that Monet painted "Starry Night"? (Except, perhaps, to point out that Monet did not, in fact, paint "Starry Night"...) Granted, some of your education will be useful: if you learned Spanish or accounting, that will be very useful in the real world. However, compare the number of "useful" classes to the total number of classes, and in most majors, that number is pretty small.
Here's the real issue. In our drive to make sure that everyone can go to college, we forgot that there's a lot of things that you can do without a college education. For example, hairdressing, auto mechanic, plumber, electrician, cook, bus driver, etc. When I was in school, we had two tracks: college preparatory and vocational. Those who weren't going to college took courses look shop (that is, working with tools, not consumerism), culinary arts, etc., and when they graduated, they had a useful skill that they could use to either obtain an entry level job in some field, or as preparation to go to vocational school.
Sure, they're not glamorous jobs...but perhaps that's because society doesn't view them that way, and I'm pretty sure my auto mechanic makes more than I do. Moreover, there's an important feature about these jobs: they have to be done on the spot, by someone who lives near you. I don't get my hair cut in China or my car fixed in Pakistan, and if my toilet overflows, a call center in North Dakota won't help me. Already, our economy is largely service driven...except that by elimninating vocational training, we're reducing the number of high school students who can actually perform service jobs.
And something else to consider: knowledge is easy to transport, and most if not all white collar professional careers are based around. How long before French is taught by someone from Gabon? How long before you get legal advice from someone in Singapore? How long before your accounting is done by someone in the Philippines?