In Just Six Short Years

Note: I've been sitting on this post for almost two months because it never felt like it was done. I finally decided it was never going to be done so I might as well publish it in case there is some value in it somewhere for someone. These thoughts were initially spurred by this worth-your-time post by Clay Shirky, although these ideas have been percolating in my head for years.

My daughter is twelve years old. In just six short years she'll be graduating from high school and hopefully attending college.

Wait. Hang on a second.

In just six short years she'll be graduating from high school and . . .

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College.

College holds such a preeminent spot in the American education system. All the blue ribbon commissions, all the various standards movements, and all the politicians and pundits assume that college is the end goal of our education system. As a result, our K-12 system is almost maniacally focused on preparing kids for college. (In fairness, there are still some vocational education programs around, and we applaud dutifully when we announce that students are joining the military, but we mostly ignore those kids the rest of the time.)

Look, I teach at a high school that each year sends roughly 92% of our graduates on to a two or four-year college. We live in a community where college is the default assumption and, to be sure, that's worked really well for many of our students for a long time. But I'd like to delve a bit deeper. Roughly 92% of our graduates go on to two or four year colleges, but how many of them graduate and then use that degree for gainful employment? We don't have that data, so let me do a bit of assuming.

Here are the current statistics:

Time Magazine, October 2012

Now, our students have many advantages, including their socio-economic backgrounds and a pretty decent (by traditional standards) school system. So let's make the wildly optimistic guess that we significantly outperform the averages and 80% of them graduate (and use that degree for gainful employment). That means that roughly 70% of the students who start in our high school fall into this future-college-graduate category. That's pretty good. But it also means that 30% don't. That's 3 in 10. That means of the 2150 students currently at my high school, roughly 645 of them are not in that category.

Six hundred. Forty. Five.

What about them?

But even if we ignore the 645, that still leaves 1505 who are in that category. Here's an example of a statistic that we love to throw in the faces of our students:

Time Magazine, October 2012

"See, John, you have to go to college. Just look at those numbers."

Or this one:

Time Magazine, October 2012

That second one is used almost exclusively to promote a college education, which fascinates me because you could just as easily look at it as 65% of all jobs in 2020 won't require a bachelor's degree, and 35% won't require any college at all (so if you're one of the 645 above, you'll be okay).

As Richard Florida points out in The Great Reset:

There are two kinds of jobs that are growing: higher-paying knowledge, professional and creative jobs (everything from high-tech engineers and software developers to managers and doctors to graphic designers and entertainment lawyers) and lower-paying routine jobs in the service economy (food service workers, nurses' aides, janitors, home health care workers, and the like). Over the past three decades, the U.S. economy has added 28 million routine service jobs and 23 million knowledge, professional, and creative jobs, compared to just 1 million in manufacturing. Routine service jobs now compose the single biggest area of employment: 45 percent of jobs, 60 million plus in all. Creative jobs account for 31 percent, and working-class jobs for 23 percent. (p. 117, 8)

But even if you interpret those statistics as favorable to getting a college degree, both of these have some major assumptions built-in that deserve to be teased out a bit. (Also see this post by Larry Cuban.)


Assumption #1: The future will look like the past.

Again, as Richard Florida points out:

The share of the workforce employed in agriculture dropped from 41 percent in 1900 to 16 percent in 1945. (It's less than 2 percent today.) (p. 13)

Major changes can happen, and relatively quickly. I'm not questioning the veracity of the statistic that currently those with a bachelor's degree can expect to earn 77% more than those with only a high school diploma. But I am questioning whether it's the bachelor's degree that determines that. Which leads to the next assumption.


Assumption #2: The credentials of a college degree are necessary in order to sort our students for future employers (and, it's corollary, students can only learn the skills that provide that 77% differential in earnings in a formal, credentialed higher-education program)

College as we know it is a relatively young idea. I'm not an education historian, so I'm sure others with a deeper understanding might pick this apart, but from my perspective our current views on the role of college are somewhere around sixty years old (GI Bill), and really picked up steam about forty years ago (post Vietnam War era). The idea that a large number of students should (must) continue their formal education beyond high school, that a college degree is a given if you want to achieve middle class (or better) status, that the very idea of being an "educated" person requires you to be college educated is a fairly recent development. What if it was simply an accident of the time period? What if the last half of the twentieth century was an education anomaly?

Here's an idea. What if the bulk of that 77% differential is simply because the students that are likely to be successful in the world of work are also likely to be able to navigate themselves though a college program and manage to get a four-year degree? What if it's also because college graduates are more likely to be socio-economically advantaged to begin with, and that carries over into being successful in the world of work? What if employers have simply been using college as an easy sorting mechanism to screen applicants? If some or all of those are fairly true, then perhaps that 77% differential isn't primarily because of the education those students received in college.

Now, that's not to say that a lot of folks didn't learn a lot of valuable skills in college, but that leads to our next assumption.


Assumption #3: College (as we know and define it) is the best (or only) way to learn those skills.

Here comes the obligatory mention of MOOCs. Udacity. Coursera. EDX. (For a very thoughtful, detailed, critical and well-linked look at MOOCs, check out Audrey Watters' post.)

Time Magazine, October 2012

What's more important, the knowledge or the credential? Would a student who learns the skills they need through Coursera, but doesn't have the piece of paper from a degree-granting institution, still achieve that 77% differential? Would a student who could document their "coursework," combined with documenting their accomplishments (digital portfolio/resume/body of evidence) be able to convince an employer that they were just as qualified (or perhaps more qualified)?

Two arguments usually come up when I start ranting about this (with friends). First argument is, "But those online courses aren't very good." This brings to mind Clayton Christensen's Disrupting Class, where he talks about the pattern of innovation where initially the new product isn't as good, but meets a specific need, and eventually evolves into something that not only better meets the need, but is also better quality. I think we're in that transition phase right now. Udacity/Coursera/EDX may or may not be that good right now, but they are constantly (and fairly quickly) improving. At what point will they meet - and then surpass - the quality of a typical college course (which, as far as I can tell, is not quickly improving)? (Also check out these two posts by Keith Devlin, where he - like a good mathematician - points out that too many folks are ignoring the "Massive" in MOOC).

I then ask my friends to remember their best college course. I then ask them if they think an online course could duplicate that. For the most part, they say no. And I would agree. But then I ask them how many of their college courses were like that best class. The usual response can be counted on one hand. I then ask them about their typical college course, and whether they think that could be duplicated online. They usually try to change the subject. I then ask them about their worst college course. They then switch to the second argument: "But college is about so much more than the classes."

First, I find it interesting how quickly the argument moves away from the formal education aspect of college. It's now no longer about the education you receive in your classes, but the learning that takes place by being on your own (sort of) in a nominally educational environment with others your same age. Again, I wouldn't disagree that there's a whole lot of learning - both academic and non-academic - that goes on outside of formal classes in college. But I would suggest that perhaps our assumption that college is the only way/place that can happen is a bit myopic. (Plus, I don't have the numbers, but how many people actually get the "college experience" we all envision as part of that argument? Living on campus, not working - or at least not working very much, immersed in an intellectual melting pot exploring life's big questions. My guess is less than 25% of the college population.)

I think networked learning has the possibility to replicate (or actually improve on) much of the outside-of-class-but-still-academic learning that takes place in some college settings. I can also envision a different, but still similar, environment that doesn't require a college campus. What if students right out of high school gathered in an urban area, working for employers who believed that young people can (and should) learn and work simultaneously (check out this post for Harvard Business Review by Michael Schrage)? What if those employers also believed that formal learning and working was only part of life, and that their young employees should be heavily involved in the communities in which they lived? Would four (or more) years of that be valuable? Could it replicate (or improve upon) the college experience?  Especially when you take into account that the "students" would be earning money, not just spending it, and contributing to economy by producing (not just consuming), and not spending four years accumulating debt.

Time Magazine, October 2012

Time Magazine, October 2012

Assumption #4: Young people go to school for a while, maybe 12 years (high school diploma), 16 years (college degree), or maybe longer (post-graduate, medical or legal degree), then they go to work.

In our recent history we've seen this as a mostly binary choice, and one with a specific order. You're either going to school or you're working. And you go to school first (you learn), then you work. (Yes, obviously, lots and lots of folks have worked while they go to school, and even go back to school while they are working, but the paradigm has still primarily been learn, then work.) But does it have to be this way? Should it be this way?

Again, from Richard Florida:

The idea that school is the only, or even the main, source of education is a relatively recent development. We need to understand that classroom education is merely one phase of a continuous process of learning, discovery, and engagement that can occur anywhere and anytime. We need a learning system that fuels, rather than squelches, our collective creativity. (p. 183)

What if, instead, we learn for a while (perhaps a long while), then work for a while, then learn some more, then work in a different capacity, and then continue that pattern several times over our lifetime? And even that pattern is too binary; you could certainly be learning and working at the same time (as in my urban example above). Who says that it has to be learn, then work? If you were devising a system from scratch, is that how you would design it? If you were designing your life from scratch, is that how you would want it to look?

We live in interesting times. I'm not at all sure what's going to happen next. I'm in the interesting position of wondering if college is the best option for many of our students, and for my daughter in particular, all while I've saved up four years worth of tuition in a 529 plan. I don't really know, but I think it's past time for us to start questioning some of the assumptions that our K-12 systems are resting upon.

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My daughter is twelve years old. In just six short years she'll be graduating from high school and . . .

Learning.
Working.
Contributing.
Living.

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I want to be very clear that I'm not suggesting college is horrible, or the wrong choice for a lot of students. I'm just questioning the assumption that it is the best choice for all students, or that it should be the end-goal of K-12 education, or even that it's the best system for advanced learning in a networked world.