Many in this country, including some parents and professors, argue that college is not worth the time and money for a whole host of students, especially those who leave high school unprepared for college.
After all when faced with the rigors of a college education these students drop out, fail or take for ever to graduate. In the bargain they bankrupt their parents and pile up debts. Aren’t they better off not going to college in the first place?
This specious reasoning assumes a facade of common sense and needs to be dissected further if a majority of American students want to be winners in the global market.
The majority of parents who pay for higher education desire nothing more than value for their money. If their children graduate college to enter the work force as waiters or workers at supermarket checkout counters parents are not only disappointed, they’re angry. This anger is counterproductive if parents decide against paying for college altogether, urging children to enter the service sector soon after high school, saying higher education is a useless luxury, a silly pursuit of the leisurely upper class.
High school seniors need to be astute, pick college over minimum-wage jobs and staying committed to studies. The service sector, which used to sustain the American middle class, is degrading rapidly.
Self-service is everywhere, in supermarkets, banks and restaurants. Young people who learn how to build, repair and maintain the scanning machines in the shops and the supermarkets will have jobs tomorrow — those without a college education, who work at check-out counters or stock rooms, will not.
As I see it, robots will be navigating the corridors of tomorrow’s stores, opening packages and stacking shelves. Those who can make these robots, program them and service them when they break down will survive. Those who compete with them will become anachronisms, their jobs extinct from lack of demand.
The blue collar jobs of tomorrow will be in the energy, infrastructure development and transportation sectors. All of these jobs already are high tech and in the future they will require skilled workers who are able to create, interpret and implement the computer models that will best achieve goals such as conservation, speed and safety. A high school education will not suffice.
Our workers will have to compete for jobs globally. Parochial thinkers who will not move where the jobs are will get stuck while the adventurous ones, the polymaths and the polyglots, will survive. By training in more than one field they will be the renaissance workers of the tech era, blue collar by day and white collar by night, novelist-roofers, carpenter-journalists and others who adapt to a changing world. Many of them will be self-taught but a sound college education will be a vital part of their resume.
We cannot give up on our colleges or a college education for our students. College should not be about classes alone. For students, it should also be about meeting like-minded peers and mentors, political and social activism, volunteer work, discussions and disputes. These aspects of college are important to enrich our democracy.
We should make colleges more affordable, put teaching front and center, refuse tenure for those professors who won’t teach and demand outcomes like lower drop-out rates, better preparation for the job market and smaller classes. Goals for reform should be set and outcomes should be published. Universities with failing grades should suffer cuts in federal funding and receive no private donations no matter their fame or ivy-league status.
Our colleges are filled with students from across the globe dedicated to higher education, pursuing it with admirable single-mindedness because they know they can’t afford to fail or drop out. They make full use of the spectacular research opportunities that colleges offer, earning doctorates in difficult subjects like physics and chemistry.
By contrast, many American students take pride in “party animal” pursuits, suffering brain atrophy in the process. College presidents and deans aid this downward trajectory by looking the other way. Their folly may lead to America’s downfall, when our indifferent students fail to compete effectively against disciplined students from other countries, who treasure higher education.
Usha Nellore is a writer living in Bel Air. Reach her at [email protected].
