Are Too Many Students Going to College?
Nov 10th, 2009 by Alexandre Padilla
Here’s an interesting question. Are Too Many Students Going to College? One could argue that the answer is obviously NO but is it? Several experts offer their answers to this question in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
I would argue that the answer is not as simple as yes or no. One should look at whether college admissibility and graduation standards have changed to increase enrollment and graduation rates. One could actually go back to K-12. Politicians around the world are well aware of social benefits of a high school and college education and they have made tremendous efforts to subsidize education at every level. However, my non-informed opinion is that these subsidies were by and large tied to results: admission rates, enrollment rates, graduation rates, etc. Well, a lot of these rates are tied to standards. If to reach these rates that will guarantee subsidies or government support, institutions have lowered their standards, encouraged grade curving leading to grade inflation, making exceptions, etc., the REAL value of the education in terms of productivity signal sent from the graduates to prospective employers and in terms of screening to distinguish high from low productivity workers for employers is pretty much zero because standards have changed and not only at the college level, across the board.
A good analogy in my opinion is monetary inflation. In theory, you are rich, in reality, you are still poor because, while you have more money in pocket, the price inflation makes your purchasing power the same, if not lower, than before.
Either way, this is not a problem specific to the United States, in Europe, they have the same problem and, like in US, it started with K-12 and progressively moving to College.