Who Needs College Anyway? - IQ and Performance

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
• IQ
• higher education
• bachelor's degree
• bell curve
• degree attainment
• postsecondary attainment
• college access
• below average
• drive a forklift
• social mobility
• social inequality
• upward mobility
• american education

[todengine]

awrezy, Mr. Murray has said nothing about African Americans and the poor. You are the one playing the race card here. We all know that everyone has different intelligence levels, its just been taboo to discuss. Mr. Murray is a breath of fresh air.

[prschuster]

IQ is basically a rough measure of your academic aptitude. It's a good predictor of your potential to do well in school and in most white collar professions. Calling this intelligence is just begging the question.

[zwiiyt]

@Elesparto Just answer one question. DO you think ONE is more likely to have a high income and have degrees in hard sciences if they are 'smart.'

IQ correlates positively with both.

[Elesparto]

@zwiiyt

Quantification is possible for you because this is what you've been drilled to believe. The IQ quantitative scores are made up--these are tests with made up scores that are supposed to mean something--but of course they mean something within the confines of an academic environment and within the confines of bubble tests and within the confines of a world view but outside of these there is no measure of human intelligence that can say this one is intelligent is this one is not...

[zwiiyt]

@Elesparto Of course its possible to quantify intelligence. It gets easier once you define it too. A general definition is the innate cognitive ability to solve new problems. THis means one can solve puzzels and see patterns in things far easier than others. THis ability correlates directly with brain anatomy too.

[Elesparto]

@zwiiyt

If you say IQ correlates with high income then you're saying that it correlates with academic rigor because this is what the proponents of IQ are claiming--High Academic grades=high IQ=high income--this is the main theme of those who claim IQ is real. And what I'm telling you is don't look too much at these academic correlations but ask yourself: Is it possible to quantify human intelligence? Is it really possible within the range of infinite probabilities and possibilities? I say no.

[zwiiyt]

@Elesparto No, i never said that IQ correlates with academic rigor. What i said was that IQ correlates positively with high income. I then asked you whether a smart person is more likely to be capable of earning a high income or less capable. I think the answer is pretty obvious and has been true in every civilization at every time period:

The smarter you are, the higher you can earn. IT's not that difficult

[Elesparto]

@zwiiyt

IQ, like the belief in a super race of men, like the construction of national boundaries is as arbitrary as these concepts are. Yes IQ correlates with academic rigor because this is what it was designed to do in its evolutionary period from its creation at the beginning of the 19th century until the present--note its evolution and you'll see a gradual reformulation towards an academic rigor, the kind you find in Ivy league colleges--it is by design not by some metaphysical coincidence.

[zwiiyt]

@Elesparto IF that is so, why does IQ correlate so highly with income? Don't you agree that a high income required one to be 'smart.' And please don't bring up inheritance or royalty...that's a strawman.

[Elesparto]

Assigning a number to intelligence falls within the realm of science fiction, sort of like the capacity to beam someone up on a spaceship (Pure Fiction). Surely you smart people must see the fiction in IQ and in many aspects of psychology as well. I think that if you truly analyze and go beyond what the proponents of IQ are saying then you will see it all for what it is and for what it was meant to accomplish. The controlling elites have created these types of frauds throughout the centuries.

[sidereally]

@youngdones IQ is simple: it's important to have enough of it, but beyond that normal to just above normal is just 'extra' and not necessary.

[youngdones]

Could someone with an IQ of 70 earn a PhD in physics, mathematics, chemistry, engineering, computer science, biology, or neuroscience?

I didn't think so.