The National Conference of State Legislatures seems to be a sensible organization, at first glance. Its mission statement says that the Washington, D.C.-based “non-partisan” think-tank is an “advocate for the interests of state governments before Congress and federal agencies.” Our founders intended us to be a federation of distinct states, not ruled by a single central government, and NCSL’s mission seems to bolster that traditional American vision of how we are to be governed.
Yet, when it comes to a specific position paper it promoted to members of the North Carolina state legislature (and across the nation), “The Path to a Degree: A Legislator’s Guide to College Access and Success,” it appears to have simply repackaged the questionable “conventional wisdom” currently promoted by the liberal educational and political establishment. In this paper, the NCSL espouses an agenda driven by the Obama administration, starting with the false premise that the economic well-being of our nation is explicitly linked to the percentage of the population that has college degrees.
The belief that producing more college graduates automatically generates economic growth is an overly simplistic—almost childish—view of how an economy works. A real economy is much more complex, depending upon many factors, including the taxation and regulatory environments, natural resources, and the cultural propensities of the population to save and invest money, to work hard, and to take entrepreneurial risks—and many more.
But the author seems to lack a basic understanding of trade-offs: spending more on public higher education means higher taxes that reduce income, more people attending college means fewer people in the work force supporting the rest of the population, resources are finite and cannot be used for everything at once, and so on.
There are many misleading statements or outright factual errors. The rest of the article cites some of the more important of these fallacies or claims and their corrections:
CLAIM: The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) says that 75 percent of the fastest growing jobs will require “some form of post-secondary education.”
FACT: According to the BLS website, only seven of the thirty job categories expected to see the most growth between 2008 and 2018 require bachelor’s degrees or above. Only three others require any formal education beyond high school. The other twenty can be learned on the job. This information can be found at http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_104.htm.
CLAIM: “People with bachelor’s degrees earn 60 percent more over their lifetime than those with only a high school diploma, which translates into higher tax revenues for states and the federal governments.” They also benefit the state because they require fewer social services.
FACT: Labor economists generally agree that the “college premium” of higher lifetime incomes is grossly overstated. This is because college graduates tend to be people with lots of natural talents, strong work ethics, and good decision–making abilities. They would therefore earn higher incomes and use social services less than other high school graduates even if they did not go to college.
In addition, the 60 percent college premium is misleading, since incomes vary widely according to the particular degree earned. The lifetime earnings of graduates in engineering or accounting almost assuredly exceed the 60 percent figure cited in the report, but many degree-holders in the humanities, arts, or social sciences do not significantly improve their incomes—and wind up working at jobs they could get right out of high school. They often accumulate considerable debt in the process, making their futures more difficult than if they had never gone to college.
Unless a person is academically inclined or driven to succeed, he or she may be better off financially learning a practical trade at a vocational school, entering the military, or getting on-the-job training.
CLAIM: “Access to higher education is not equal. Only 55 percent of the poorest high school graduates enroll in college compared to 78 percent of the wealthiest students.”
FACT: This statement incorrectly attributes all of the disparity in enrollment to access (a code word for making college affordable for people from low-income families), ignoring the key role played by choice. Prosperous people tend to value higher education more, and be more academically inclined, than poor people and therefore more will choose to go to college.
And even given the disparity, it should be considered remarkable that a majority of the poorest students in the entire country go to college after high school. Surely that could not occur if access were being denied on a large scale.
CLAIM: Money is a frequent barrier to low-income young people attending college, and they therefore need more state assistance.
FACT: Low-income students can already get a nearly free university education in North Carolina. According to a report by the UNC Board of Governors, in 2009-10 a student from a family with an annual income of $37,000 would have received $11,834 in total state and federal grants to attend NC Central University, which cost $14,256 for tuition, room, board, etc. Such a student would be also eligible for campus work-study programs and federally subsidized student loans to make up the missing $2,422—and a student working 13 weeks during summer break and three weeks during the winter break at minimum wage would take home nearly $4,000.
Jay Mathews of the Washington Post, who has covered education as a reporter for many years, recently wrote that he has never found a “gifted and motivated student” who was unable to attend college due to lack of funds.
CLAIM: “Improving affordability and access… improves state economies.”
FACT: This is an unproven yet oft-repeated claim, not a statement of fact. Perhaps it was more nearly true many years ago, but today, when 70 percent of high school graduates go to college in the first few years after high school, it is hard to imagine that there are still considerable economic gains to be had by increasing that percentage. Almost all talented young people who have the ability to graduate in the difficult-but-in-demand majors are already going to college. These are the people who will earn high incomes, innovate and serve as business leaders and entrepreneurs.
Increasing access further actually means costly subsidization of higher education for young people who have shown little academic inclination or aptitude in earlier years. They are highly likely to drop out or, at best, graduate with a meaningless degree, thereby adding little to their future incomes. It also removes these same young people from the full-time work force, where they contribute to the economy and gain valuable on-the-job training.
CLAIM: Universities need more “college success” programs in order to improve graduation rates. (These programs employ such techniques as tutoring, mentoring, group studying, and counseling to help students with weak academic backgrounds). This study also presumes that these programs can address the disparity of educational achievement levels between ethnic groups.
FACT: There is no proof that such programs lead to a significant improvement in graduation rates. Fayetteville State started its CHEER program in 2002, and its six-year graduation rate remains the lowest in the UNC system at a dismal 31.5 percent.
The study notes that the average math and reading levels of African American and Hispanic high school graduates are equivalent to those of white eighth graders. If these same proportions hold true for prospective college students, are we to believe that students who fell four years behind their peers in K-12 are going to learn at twice the rate of the same students who dramatically outperformed them in elementary, middle, and high school? They have four years worth of high school to make up, plus the four years of college to complete, in the same time that the more proficient students take to finish college. The answer is, in almost all cases, no, even with the special programs suggested.
CLAIM: Minority-serving institutions (MSIs) receive less funding than white-majority schools.
FACT: In North Carolina, the average state appropriations per student for the six “minority serving institutions” in the UNC system was $9,957 for 2008-9. For the other nine academic universities, the average was $10,628. However, if UNC-Chapel Hill is not included because of its special status as the flagship university, the average for the eight other white-majority universities was $9,620—$337 less than the average for the MSIs.
CLAIM: “Students are not learning what they need to be successful in college credit-bearing courses, and high school courses are not challenging enough.”
FACT: The above statement is true. However, the paper shows little understanding of the serious roadblocks to reform. Making classes harder will cause many more students to fail classes and repeat entire years of high school, adding many thousands of students to the K-12 enrollments—a very costly process. Any policy that causes large numbers of students to fail is also likely to be unpopular in the low-income districts where it is necessary. It is not a simple matter of curriculum alignment, but requires a major cultural shift instead.
Furthermore, the paper ignores the sad truth that most of the remediation required at the college level is the result of elementary education, when students learn the initial building blocks of reading, writing, and mathematics.
CLAIM: It is the state or federal government’s role to determine how many college graduates the nation should produce.
FACT: Labor market wages are the best way to determine how many graduates we need in each discipline. When wages are rising in a particular field, more students will adopt that field as their major, and fewer will do so when wages are falling or stagnant.
Wages for college graduates—even in many of the presumed-to-be in-demand areas—increased greatly in the 1980s and 1990s, but according to the Economic Policy Institute, real wages for college graduates have been dropping since 2000 (while wages for high school graduates have shown a slight increase).
CLAIM: Natural aptitude is not important enough of a factor to mention in a discussion of educational attainment. For instance, the report mentions the ACT, largely an achievement test, but ignores the much more commonly used SAT, which measures both achievement and aptitude.
FACT: Educational attainment is strongly linked to natural intellectual abilities. It is an undeniable fact that some people are born with the ability to grasp concepts quickly, and others more slowly. To make policy recommendations without acknowledging the role that natural ability plays in student achievement is not just irresponsible, but dangerous.
“The Path to a Degree” is filled with many other logical fallacies and inaccuracies. It represents a way of thinking that is responsible for the fiscal difficulties currently faced by many other states and nations by increasing government expenditures. While it purports to improve the lives of young people, it will actually saddle them with a heavy private and public debt load that will greatly reduce future opportunities rather than increase them.