America’s Grand Failure: The College Track

The Bureau of Labor says that, in 2008, 68.9% of all HS graduates enrolled in a four-year college. Forty percent will eventually drop out, with even higher numbers for Blacks and Latinos. Reasons for dropping out include, financial, mismatched expectations, poor motivation, preparation, and study skills.

The idea that every child in America should go to college is flawed. This is different than the notion that young people, who are ready, willing, and able, should not get help. We need to acknowledge that we are failing all the kids who should have another choice. This isn’t just the kids who fail, but also those destined to under perform due to misplacement.

Also, the alternative which kids need is not to simply go to community college, on a remedial academic track, to make up for not being able to make the cut into a four-year college. They need real alternatives that develop them, accepting the need to serve/contribute to society, in a more manual/service orientation, and less intellectual manner.

Following this, America needs communities where people, who do not go to college, can live well, against a more elastic version of the American dream. That dream might not only include a suburban home with a 2-car garage, but also allow for more down-sized home ownership, not just ghetto squalor or fixer-uppers. Large complexes that wed tenants to extended renting, minus the pride and benefits of ownership, are not the answer.

School systems, across all economic levels, need to facilitate placing students in the most appropriate development scenario. At minimum we need service-tech and vocational-tech school tracks that capture kids, and their imaginations, at the end of middle school. This is the best opportunity for reducing first on-set high school drop-out rates, which only fuel unemployment, bad attitudes, and crime.

Pushing kids into college fuels higher-education bloat, and saddles these dropouts with large debts, no degree, and limited job prospects. So, good education is not about promoting more kids against a bad standard. Rather, it is our educators, and their system, that need to become responsive to real need – and more responsible to this country's future.

James C. Collier

READ MOST RECENT POSTS AT ACTING WHITE...

Technorati Tags: America’s Grand Failure: The College Track, Drop-Out, Vocation, Debt, Graduation, Acting White