Reality Check on College
Briefing | By Lance Nation | September 17, 2008
Does everyone need a college education? According to Charles Murray,
“No, too many people are going to college. A Bachelor of Arts in and of
itself tells you nothing. We have exalted a meaningless document.”
Murray, a W. H. Brady Scholar at American Enterprise Institute (AEI), does not argue that people should not be educated. “Everyone
deserves a liberal education. However, they do not need to attend a
four-year college or university to obtain it,” he said recently at AEI.
Murray discussed his new book. Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing American Education Back to Reality.
The first truth is that “ability varies. Too many people are being told
they can do something they cannot.” Murray believes that a recent SAT
study proves exactly this. “According to a recent SAT study, only
student who score above an 1180 are prepared for college. When
calculated, this is only 10% of high school seniors. Yet, guidance
councilors tell 90% of their students to go to college.”
Murray
does not argue against the monetary statistics that show a person’s
income is higher with Bachelor degrees than without it; however, he
argues that this is due to public perception. “What does a Bachelor in
Sociology, Political Science, History, Psychology, Philosophy, or
Business Administration show? Nothing. A student could have coasted
through by choosing the easiest classes, with the easiest professors,
and not have opened a single book. However, if you don’t have this
piece of paper, you can’t even get a decent job interview . . .What we
need to do is instill a liberal education. And, we can instill a
liberal education without the four-year institutions.”
Next, Murray argues a mathematical fact, “Half of all children are
below the average.” (The definition of average is exactly that, half
are below it, half are above it.) Yet, we continuously push for all
children to go to college. “Sixty-four percent of 18-year-olds don’t go
to college. And, a third that do drop out.” It has been proven that
everyone is not college material. Does this doom those incapable of
college to trivial jobs? No, in fact, Murray argues that this would
allow a higher percentage of society to feel passionately about what
they do. “The goal of education is to learn how to make a living in an
area that interests you.” Instead of telling students to attend
college, advisors and parents should tell young people to go into a
field that they feel passionately about. “If a student at age 14 shows
an…ability in machinery, why not help that student grow in that field?
Society today demands this child go to college instead of enrolling in
an apprenticeship. Society today demands this child become a mediocre
business manager when he could be a top-notch mechanic making a six
digit figure.”
Thirdly, as already stated, Murray believes “too many people are going
to college.” Every human’s capacity is different. College is simply a
stretch too far for the majority. “The goal of K-12 should be to bring
young people to adulthood with a knowledge of their own capacity. Many
people are told they can handle college, when truthfully they cannot .
. . . People need to realize this.”
Finally, Murray explains, “The future of America depends on how we
develop the intellectually ‘gifted.’ These ‘gifted’ are the broad
elite. They are the top 10% of society . . .The majority of these men
and women have an IQ of 120, when the average American’s is 110.” The
‘gifted’ in society run our society. They are the CEO’s, doctors,
judges, and politicians. Murray explains, “By pressuring many young
people to attend college [who] do not have the capacity, we are
dampening our higher education system. We have made college easier, so
that those who lack the capacity are given the opportunity. It is this
that is stripping a proper education from the people who will run our
country.”
In his lecture, Murray states he doesn’t have the answer for fixing the
education system. He suggests, “We dump the progressive curriculum and
install E.D. Hirsh’s ‘Core Knowledge’ into the education system.” He
admits, however, that this will not fix everything. “My contribution to
the problem, is talking about the problem . . .It’s up to you all to
solve it.”
Lance Nation is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia
10 Comments | Post a Comment
Usually I hate every other article on this website, but this article is spot on. I am tired of society telling people what to do. I am in college right now, and there are people who really hate it but only go there to get a piece of paper saying they spent over 90K in the last four years.
I believe that college students who don’t want to be in college hold rest of us who do back. They impede the learning process. I have wasted so much time in my English classes.
Joseph you are dead wrong. Just because they got the piece of paper in basket weaving doesn’t mean a thing. I don’t have that piece of paper yet have carried the title of engineer and system analyst since leaving the military in 1984. Just because they know how to take tests and are indoctrinated, especially today, by liberal professors means nothing. I have been co-inventor on two technical patents and inventor on several more. Through the military I learned more of not “how to think outside the box”, but to “throw away the box”. I’ve been in college three times over the years and all three times have left due to professors who have never been outside academia thinking they know it all, yet when you challenge them, they want to take it out of your grade. I have programmed in 14 different languages and have worked as an electrical design engineer for Hughes Aircraft Company, Martin Marietta, Lockheed Martin and now Sprint. Yet in college when I took shortcuts in programming, due to more knowledge than the instructor, or I used less components in a design than was given us, though the instructor never said use ALL the components, the instructors wanted to take off points. In the defense industry, more components means more costs, weight, and heat, but the instructor wouldn’t hear of it. I have even been a manager and I hired people from technical schools more often than colleges because they had the hands on experience and practical application, not just theory. I especially hired veterans because they showed the more promise because they could think of things college kids couldn’t because of their waste of time in classes like philosophy, music, etc. So your argument doesn’t hold water. Not every kid needs to go to college and colleges need to change to help us prepare the kids of today. First they need to get rid of their liberal activist professors and have teachers who want to teach, not preach. My best instructors were ones who would always take the opposite side of an issue, no matter which side it was, to get us to think and realize there is another side to be considered. Your statement about thinkology is so wrong because the only thinking they do is liberal bull that was crammed down their throats and they were forced to learn to pass classes and graduate.
This article is correct. Astute parents will recognize that most 4 yr colleges are “extended high schools” having to teach remedial classes to the incoming freshmen just to get them up to speed. And most at college aren’t there for the purpose of learning, but mainly to party or for the experience of it all, and real learning takes a back seat.
So, the few who should go to college are the “elites?” Like Barack Obama, John McCain, George Bush and every other modern President? Makes sense to me. I WANT an elite president, not just an average person. Presidents should be smarter than most Americans, not just someone you’d like to have a beer with.
It has been reported without refutation that both Bush and Gore had SAT scores slightly below 1180, making them “marginal college material” Of course, they both had rich powerful daddies who got them into the top 5 Ivy League Universities. Both of them advanced way beyond their normal place in society because of their rich powerful daddies. They both could have been very sucessful school teachers, accountants or paralegals without the unfair help. I’d love to find out what Obama’s SAT scores were! He had rich powerful people behind him and similarly got into the Ivy League Universities just like Bush and Gore.
“My contribution to the problem, is talking about the problem . . .It’s up to you all to solve it.”
Ah, Mr. Murry. If you an all the ‘Intellectuals’ were to actually get a job that was worthy of your talents… The ‘W.P.A.’ has many lonely shovels that could use a hand or two. Tis called multi-tasking, like the Gandy Dancers did.
Problem solved.
So Bob, might I ask for proof of these rich powerful people behind Obama getting into college?
I agree with Murray, not everyone is meant for college. SOme people are better getting an internship or coop right after high school and taking things from there.
September 18 at 9:44 am | #1 | Link
I don’t know who this Murray is and based on his comments, I believe him to be over paid.
Unless these kids are graduating in a specfic
profession the rest are graduating in “Thinkology”. Most companies if not all would
prefer a thinkology major than someone with no
doucmentation at all.