Who Needs College Anyway? Question by Richard Colvin, Hechinger Institute

President Obama set an ambitious new goal in his speech to Congress on February 24, 2009, proclaiming that by 2020, America will ...have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.

But some experts, like author Charles Murray, dont think we need more Americans going to college. In his new book, Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing Americas Schools Back to Reality (Random House, 2008), Murray argues that Americans place too much value on the bachelors degree.

Murray and researcher Anthony Carnevale debated Who Needs a College Education Anyway? at the Hechinger Institutes Seminar for Higher Education Reporters in December 2008. Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Ed moderated the debate.

Murray, the W. H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, contends that because ability varies and 50 percent of people are below average, our current system of higher education makes little sense.

Carnevale, Research Professor and Director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, argues we should encourage as many students as possible to attend and graduate from college, because intelligence isnt fixed at birth and can be influenced by education.

After their remarks, Murray and Carnevale took questions from journalists participating in the Seminar.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• college
• bell curve
• degree attainment
• postsecondary attainment
• college access
• below average
• drive a forklift
• social mobility
• social inequality
• upward mobility
• american education

[CollegeReform]

Let's start a movement to change things. Type Reform Higher Education Now in the search box on Facebook or click CollegeReform below.

[prayfertrey]

Nuh, uh! You are!

[DJSardaukar]

Congratulations, you're an idiot and obviously not worth having a reasonable discussion with.

[prayfertrey]

I disagree with your assertion that child molesters would make good baby sitters.

[DJSardaukar]

And just who do you think you are to decide for everyone else what they should or should not be. People are fully capable of deciding for themselves regardless of whether you, a mere individual, consider them ugly and dead on the inside.

[prayfertrey]

It's a well known fact that by the time someone is 13, it's too late to start raising them. Good citizens are created in stable, supportive homes. Society itself should be a place where you encounter new ideas and interesting people... not the one we have now which has been almost entirely handed over to the lowest common denominator; by and for people who are ugly and dead on the inside. Just look at the "most viewed" vids on you tube.