Winter brings closure to millions of high school students filling out college applications. To the best of their ability, they have cemented their steps toward a brighter future. Meanwhile, newspapers will fill those students with the anxiety that college is becoming a Fort Knox, locking the non-worthy out of a sanctuary.
This couldn’t be further from the truth, however, the average SAT score transposed across different iterations of the test has not budged for decades, except for a few dips, bringing into question whether the quality of students we admit is truly becoming more selective. The truth is the metaphorical Fort Knox is the top 5 to 10 percent of national universities. Schools like Johns Hopkins University, Northwestern University, and the Ivy League are the only universities becoming substantially more selective.
Caroline Hoxby, an economist whose research focuses on issues in education and public economics, has picked apart the selectivity process in universities and found results in stark contrast to espoused educators and helicopter parents. “At least 50 percent of colleges are substantially less selective now than they were in 1962,” she writes.
It gets even better. Skating by with basic proficiency in high school ensures plenty of open seats: “Since 1975, there has been more than one seat per student who is at least minimally prepared … [meaning] the achievement standard for obtaining a freshman seat in the United States is minimal and is falling.”
For all the bright-eyed and anxious students, let’s put this in perspective. At the vast majority of colleges within the United States, you could pinpoint average scores, flip a coin, and still receive your acceptance letter. Both the analytical problem solver who slaves over diminutive percentage points in class for perfect grades and the boilerplate student with mediocre grades will attend college.
I can already hear the cries of “the first student is more likely to graduate!” True, but does it make sense to lock the latter student behind mountains of debt and disingenuous portrayals of their future success?
Some will cry, “Why is selectivity so important? More alumni mean more people to donate! Larger endowment, more spent on students, creating a cogent, cohesive network, etc.” You get the point.
Again, this is true, but it’s important to understand quality over quantity. Education assays and stringent biopsies show that the quality of education is essential, accounting for up to 35 percent of the state-level variation in per-person GDP. This means that colleges that don’t push kids don’t generate results. Undergraduates with untempered potential do not fully utilize their cognitive skills and end up in underemployment as 44 percent of recent college graduates in New York find themselves. It’s evident one of these things has to change: Either adopt a resurfacing of the educational curriculum and selectivity for colleges, or accept that college degrees for menial labor jobs are the new norm.
Supply and demand should enlighten us in how college degrees will become irrelevant if too large a portion of the workforce has a college degree. The standard go-to for touting benefits of education is that there is a large gap between the educated and the non-educated. That is true. However, as the current trend of benchmark bachelor’s continues for low-skilled labor, then the scale tips in favor of employers. In other words, there is no incentive to eat frozen dinners when caviar is everywhere. Now, nothing stops an employer from picking cherries. For example, they’ll look for someone holding a master’s degree for a position that two decades ago merely required a high school education.
Here’s a simple equation: As demand is static and supply increases, a G.E.D will equal a bachelor’s salary. A bachelor’s degree salary will be crushed, paved over, and replaced with that equivalent to the high school graduate.
The workforce of today wasn’t imbued with magic properties. They are not necessarily more intelligent or better prepared. They’re equally competent and exactly parallel with those of different eras. The new dilemma is a generation is being gated behind a four-year wall, which offers a diluted educational environment. If we continue to push minimally prepared college students towards higher education, all universities degrees will be brought down a rung.
Matthew Joseph Duke is a graduate student studying Computational Neuroscience & Mathematical reasoning at the University of Southern California.
