TWO VIEWS-I: THE REVOLT AGAINST COLLEGE
Berube, Maurice R.
I S COLLEGE WORTI~PirRILE?--.I THE REVOLT AGAINST COLLEGE MA'UI CF. R. BERUBE The declining v ue of a college degree Our most cherished beliefs on the efficacy of education are under severe...
...I S COLLEGE WORTI~PirRILE?--.I THE REVOLT AGAINST COLLEGE MA'UI CF...
...For the trenchant question raised by Berg and Miller concerns the after-effects of overeducation: morale and productivity...
...in March of 1975, at the height of the recession, unemployment for college graduates was 2.9 percent compared to 9.1 percent for high school graduates, and an astounding 40 percent for black youngsters with a high school education or less...
...One should not write off college, and leave it to the domain of the elite...
...And graduates of business schools, with Masters in Business Administration, have found high-paying opportunities along with the professionals...
...He paid humanists to edit these manuscripts, had the new editions copied and disseminated...
...a proposition that does not strike me as being seLf-evident...
...In the past eight years, the proportion of college-age youngsters attending college has dropped from 44 percent to 33 percent...
...Moreover, one must realize that the market will tend to correct itself...
...What is perhaps more distressing is that many college graduates are performing work far below their capabilities...
...Cosimo had broken off the studies of his youth to go into business and politics...
...Until recently, the surge to be admitted to these professional schools was unusually strong...
...Nevertheless, the medical profession has had to supplement its corps with foreign-born doctors who now account Commonweal: 233 for nearly a fourth of all doctors in thi~ country...
...The educational establishment needs a push from outside to redefine its mission...
...Other studies, including one on which I worked, showed that the poor and uneducated are not as apathetic as the middle class presumes, when they are given opportunities and roles whereby their efforts can affect public policy...
...And so the campus, as supporter of the credentials society maintained by the market system, would be abolished...
...One could therefore propose college as a minimum requirement for all who desire it, and postgraduate work for those professionals who require the credential...
...R. BERUBE The declining v ue of a college degree Our most cherished beliefs on the efficacy of education are under severe challenge...
...Thus, much of this credentials society criticism boils down to a critique of college curriculum...
...College students worried about employment have set their sights on the professions: law, medicine, dentistry...
...The college and university remains, as Daniel Bell characterized it, as the primary institution of society...
...One survey by the University of Michigan's Research Center conservatively states that 27 percent of the country's workers are overqualified...
...There has been some breathing room with a small influx of liberal and New Leftish instructors from the sixties on faculties" and the addition of courses such as Black Studies that have some element of social change...
...Whatever the percentage it is clearly too high...
...This counterattack to prevailing opinion questions the social mobility inherent in a college education...
...Surely, as Berg believes, "in relation to jobs, education has its limits...
...Critics such as Berg assume a static economy, and in turn, conceive that employers would cease using academic credentials as a touchstone for hiring, even after a massive on-the-job training program was instituted...
...The recession of the seventies has also affected college graduates and diminished the value of a degree...
...Second, there should also be national emphasis on relating the college experience more to the realities of the workplace...
...lege, Caroline Bird concluded in The Case Against College, could well be "the dumbest investment you can make...
...Most Ph.D...
...by 1976, that advantage plunged to 6 percent...
...Nevertheless, the crucial fact remains that the credentials society will not vanish overnight...
...As with other instincts, such as sex and hunger and the urge to make a home, satisfying the need can be intensely pleasurable...
...And as Berg notes, the disparity in pay between a plumber in an effective union and a schoolteacher not in a union, is so great that studies show those teachers with greater educational preparation are most likely to leave the profession...
...Television debates the merits of collegegoing...
...Now there has been a slackening, brought about, in part, by the intense competition, discouraging applicants...
...The fault here lies with the Ph.D.'s who are culturally ill at ease with unions and are too timid and conservative to resort to militant unionization...
...By adroit use ROBERT GORHAM DAVIS, a previous contributor, i~ a prolessor in the Department o/ English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University...
...it must be remembered that the conservative President Ford received the "enlightened" votes of a good majority of the college-educated...
...My experience in a program that sought to screen, encourage and develop social change agents in urban studies were mixed: The first director of the program achieved remarkable resuits, but the successor, a regular academic, reorganized the whole direction of the program...
...Witmer also predicts that there will be a great demand for college graduates within a generation, and that by then public policy will have come around to the notion that every youngster has a right to college...
...And that criticism could not have been more timely...
...Generously commissioning the best architects, sculptors and painters of his period and treating them with respect, he started a building program that was to make Florence the supreme city artistically in Italy...
...But the overwhelming argument advanced by such as Miller and Berg is that overeducated workers are not as efficient, productive, or personally fulfilled as the less educated worker who has risen from within the ranks of the company...
...Nonetheless, critics of the credentials society have Commonweal: 235 struck a responsive chord...
...College pays off for minorities, and the first function of college is still mobility...
...The economy has changed drastically in the past 20 years, going from blue collar to white collar, from an industrial to a service society...
...It is difficult, however, to see how policymakers can influence that development, and that, as in the past, outside pressure groups will shoulder the responsibility...
...A bad economy, coupled with an oversupply of college graduates, is mainly to blame for the lessened opportunities for educated youth...
...There is-no doubting that for some, as Caroline Bird concedes, college has distinct advantages for personal growth...
...In the language of educators, they are "underemployed...
...This is a most appropriate time for a new thrust...
...As a result, there are fewer students in the schools and colleges...
...Now, that proposition is under siege from economists, feminists, and even some educators...
...As Professors Miller and Ivar Berg have dearly pointed out, employers have hired on the basis of academic credentials, sifting those with high academic backgrounds, for jobs far below the educational background of the applicant...
...programs are self-serving...
...Although fewer middle-class youngsters are going to college than a decade ago, college still looms large for minorities...
...And David R. Witmer, Assistant Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin, challenges Caroline Bird's thesis that college is now a bad investment...
...And economists point to the shrinking economic value of the sheepskin...
...He established a great library open 15 April 1977:236...
...Miller's apt phrase, is a "credentials society," where there has been a gross misallocation between education and work...
...In 1969, a college graduate had a 24 percent monetary advantage in starting salary over other workers...
...Thus, the tendency to overeducation can be said in truth to reach a point of diminishing return...
...At best, the educational establishment retreats to the position that a college education instills personal values virtually unobtainable elsewhere...
...At present, however, there are too many prospective teachers of those students: two and one-haft aspiring public school teachers for every teaching job, and ten Ph.D.'s for every college teaching job...
...Historically, we have agreed with Horace Mann's axiom that education was the "great equalizer of the conditions of man" which "does better than to disarm the poor of their hostility towards the rich...
...The answer to overedueation is less education, not more on-the-job training...
...Nevertheless, the critics of college have been too pessimistic...
...We are producing an overeducated work class which finds itself increasingly dissatisfied with work life and thus does not perform as well as less educated workers trained on the job...
...Educators' Response The response of educators to the recession and to the critics of college has been disappointingly defensive and confused...
...Instead, Berg feels that what should be done is a massive job upgrading throughout the economy: "It would make better sense to upgrade people in the middle to higher jobs and upgrade those in lower-level jobs to middle positions, providing each group with an education appropriate r their age, needs and ambitions...
...But they are the happy few...
...So it is.not surprising-that bluecollar, uneducated workers in such roles as sanitationmen, policemen and firemen in the big cities, along with auto workers and construction workers and teamsters, 15 April 1977:234 earn more than the average .Ph.D...
...At one time a doctor's income was not particularly high, especially during the twenties when lawyers made more...
...The college should make its curriculum more relevant and the postgraduate school restrict credentialing so far as it can...
...In many socialist countries, by contrast, where unemployment is theoretically abolished, the demand for college graduates is high...
...now doctors have the highest national median income, over $45,000 a year...
...First, there should be national policy incentives to expand higher education opportunities for the poor and the working class...
...Howe's main argument is based on studies that show that college graduates participate politically at a high rate, especially in voting for political candidates...
...as fellow radicals have pointed out, the college experience has been coeformist for the most part, indoctrinating youngsters into a reverence for the status qun...
...Economist Richard Freeman reports in The Overeducated American that blacks now have a "higher rate of return for investment in college than whites," and that for women "the market opportunities . . . did not deteriorate as much as for men...
...What has developed, in Professor S.M...
...Youngsters are bombarded by the mass media about the limitations of the college degree and the economic casualties of the recession...
...The Department of Labor forecasts a drop of 4 million college students in the 1980s as compared to a 6 million rise in the 1960s and a 4 million increase in the 1970s...
...To a certain extent, the declining value of a college degree represents the shifting wage scales of blue- and white-collar employment...
...Moreover, the economy has adversely influenced graduate education...
...My own experience the past few years teaching in a college with exceptionally bright and motivated students (Queens College of City University of New York) is that a handful of students pursue a lifelong interest in intellectual concerns...
...In medicine, there are 15,000 openings for approximately 45,000 applicants, nine out of ten of whom are academically qualified for admission...
...Still, the problem of underemployment has yet to be resolved...
...And the plain fact is that the academic profession has always attracted those least interested and likely to want to rearrange social conditions...
...Moreover, one can legitimately question the quality of the participation of the college-educated middle class...
...The need to know, the passion to know, is so strong and autonomous that it can properly be called an instinct...
...Consequently, many youngsters are rethinking the prospect of attending college...
...Since the desire constafitly recurs, the pleasure is unending...
...But, education is no longer a growth industry as the baby boom of World War II has matured, and adults are having children barely enough to replace themselves--zero population growth...
...This syndrome is more likely to occur in a worker with advanced degrees...
...Third, the "personal value" of college should be made more socially conscious...
...Estimates of overqualification vary...
...Job offers to new college graduates rose 14 percent the past year...
...Labor has traditionally been blue-collar and resisted white-collar unionization (AFL-CIO President George Meany never approved of unionizing public school teachers, for example), so that the weakest-and least militant unions have been white-collar unions...
...Commissioner of Education and presently vice president of the Division of Education and Research of the Ford Foundation, summed up this position: College critics, he states, have overlooked "the contribution of advanced education to the personal lives of American citizens and its contribution to their lives as active citizens of our republic...
...Since capitalism requires oversupply of manpower, it is somewhat ironic that middle-class college graduates find themselves feeling the pinch that traditionally plagued the working class...
...More to the point...
...In addition, Herbert Bienstock of the Bureau of Labor Statistics points out that, at its worst, the recession affected the uneducated more than college graduates...
...Leading educational advocates seem unable to confront the realities of the recession...
...Myron Clark, past president of the Society for the Advancement of Management, has a figure of 80 percent...
...it prevents being poor...
...of money, but also by winning and retaining popular support, he gained control of the government of Florence in 1434...
...I conclude that for the vast majority of youngsters college means mainly economic and social mobtUty...
...But I do not think that the college experience has especial "personal value" unless it starts to stress the reconstruction of the social order rather than just maintaining the present system...
...five years later, that advantage would be calculated at 7 percent...
...That is a result, in large part, of the success of organized labor...
...Instead, colleges go on overproducing academic specialists in declining fields...
...And the fault lies just as much with the college which has prepared its clients, as the employe r who selects and hires them, or the larger public who worships at education's shrine...
...But that situation is somewhat artificial, since the medical establishment, particularly the American Medical Association, has sought to create a shortage in order to maintain high income for doctors...
...large-scale unemployment has threatened the college degree as an essential passport to the middle class...
...For the past thirty years, despite more youngsters attending college, higher education remained the privilege of the affluent and middle class...
...And for them that has been especially true in certain professions, due in some measure to the lead of the federal government in its affirmative action policies encouraging the hiring of qualified minority candidates---a policy that was the legacy of organized protest of the black rights and women's liberation movements...
...The New Left radicals of the sixties were acting out the deferred dream~ of their liberal parents, as Kenneth Kenniston pointed out, rather than from the intellectual independence of their colleges or professors, who proved to be more conservative than their administrations...
...Coli MAURICE R. BERUBE, presently doing educational consulting ]or the ]ederal government, co-authored two books on education, the most recent School Boards and School Policy (Praeger...
...This is a most appropriate time to re-examine and redefine the mission of the academy...
...Harold Howe II, former U.S...
...Students have applied to law schools averaging 110,000 a year, a 116 percent increase between 1969-1971 alone...
...There are a number of things one can conclude from the crisis in higher education...
...One thinks of Cosimo de Medici, an early capitalist, the wealthiest man of his time in Italy...
...The United States Department of Labor places that figure at 35 percent...
...And so young women from prestigious eastern colleges find their college credential can get them only jobs as secretaries to editors--a clear case of overqualification...
...Nevertheless, it would be unfair to wholly blame educators for a situation that is largely the fault of a faltering economy...
...Indeed, the only significant increase in jobs in the recent past has been in the public rather than private sector, so that approximately one in every six jobs is with city, state, or federal government...
...their purpose is to train and reproduce scholars for the academy...
...Critics such as Miller and Professor Ivar Berg have forcefully maintained that the level of education and the level of work do not match...
...His research indicates that the "social return on the college investment has not in fact declined," and although it may do so, this rate of return will still be above that of the 10 percent average rate of return on business investments...
...The job market for college graduates is easing, as there are fewer students succeeding the World War II baby boom youngsters...
...Working-class whites, blacks and women are increasingly going to college and continue to perceive college as a means of social mobility...
...Instead, she advises youngsters to invest the price of a college education in a bank...
...Lifetime earning~ for college graduates were 11 percent over other workers in 1969...
...Newsweek asks "Who Needs College...
...Indeed, work and education more often than not are ill-fitted...
...Moreover, it has always mystified me why so shamefully few college graduates read serious intellectual journals such as this one...
...I S COLLEGE WORTHWHILE?--Ii Responsible citizenship requires ~lrrtost impossible knowledge Mark Schorer once wrote a short story titled "What We Don't Know Hurts Us...
...Given the facts that there are more job openings in the middle, and that many people are overqualified for the jobs they do have," Berg writes in The Great Training Robbery, "policies aimed at upgrading the educational achievements of the low-income population seem at best naive...
...The radical or extremely liberal professor has historically been held suspect by colleagues, and educational history is replete with the lack of academic freedom for these people...
...The implications of these findings might be constructed as a strong case against universal higher education...
...The Nixon era has passed, and its policies of educational benign negleetw reinforced, if not influenced, by the studies on public schooling by James Coleman and the studies on higher education by Christopher Jencks---can possibly be reversed under a more liberal Carter administration...
...The likelihood is that employers, still, will hire on the basis of academic background, no matter what retraining policy is pursued...
...Now he organized a systematic search for ancient manuscripts throughout Europe and--with the support of the Sultan in the lands controlled by the Turks...
...In short, some of the reforms that logically follow from Berg's inference should be campus reforms...
Vol. 104 • April 1977 • No. 8
