SOME PEOPLE dream of a world in which everyone goes to college. Just like world peace and universal happiness, universal college attendance is an unrealistic goal. But more importantly, it's not desirable even if we could achieve it.
State officials in Indiana are among those pushing towards the goal of having all high school students continue on to college. Lawmakers have set aside considerable money and sacrificed even more in lost tuition revenue in order to build or expand 22 community college programs around the state. The problem, they say, is that every year, over 80,000 college-age residents fail to enter the state's higher education system. They're trying to fix that.
Therein lies the conflict. Having 80,000 people not go to college isn't a problem, and certainly not something the state should try to fix.
Indiana is emblematic of a trend in American higher education -- the broadening of our notion of who college is for. Not too long ago, less than half the population went to college. Today, over 70 percent of graduating students pursue degrees after high school. That number is projected to keep growing -- to over 80 percent in five or so years, and beyond.
Widening the pool of people served by higher education creates a number of problems. Perhaps most importantly, it waters down the university system as a whole, bringing it down towards mediocrity. In Indiana, for example, officials in the University of Indiana system are seriously concerned that massive expansion of the college system in the form of community colleges will take resources and energy away from the top institutions.
Very simply, people like the lawmakers in Indiana are advocating quantity over quality. What's important, they say, is not to provide the very best education for only a few, but to provide some higher education for nearly everyone. That sacrifices narrow excellence for widespread mediocrity.
Excellence among a few is preferable because of the degree to which our society and economy depend on leaders. Having a large number of people who are only sort of educated doesn't do much good without the capable leaders that make things function. It's like recruiting a crew for a ship and focusing only on providing good basic training to the sailors. Without a good captain to lead them, mediocre sailors aren't any better than poor ones. Either way, they aren't an effective crew.
Leaders and followers are needed in nearly all fields. Every functioning society has stratifications and differences in education level, income and capabilities. Jobs always will vary in the demands they place on employees. If people don't have differences in their abilities and qualifications as well, some people are going to be working in jobs that don't fit their capabilities.
This is the other main problem with increasing education. If the demands that jobs place on people don't increase at the same rate as the training we're providing, we're going to have a lot of bored, unhappy, overqualified workers.
We're already overeducating a major portion of our workforce. All too often, people need a college education to get hired, but not to do their job -- lots of basic managerial or clerical positions require a four-year degree. Even now, we have college graduates who get paid to play solitaire and answer phones. We don't need more college-educated people to perform jobs below their skill level.
There is a catch to all of this. Educating our entire population would be reasonable if we could put all of them in jobs commensurate with their abilities, and then get someone else to do the unskilled work. That means tremendous economic growth to create new jobs. It also means significant population growth, probably through immigration, to fill the places they vacate.
Even if we all become Ph.D.s, we'll still need someone to fix our cars, bag our groceries, prepare our Big Macs and ring up our purchases at the Gap. That either means that the label on the gas station attendant's coveralls will read "Dr. Hank" instead of just "Hank," or that we'll have to find other sources of unskilled labor.
Using immigration to provide the menial labor that fuels our society seems plausible. But we can't just exploit those people for the service they provide. Once they come here, they become the next class of uneducated, unskilled laborers. Do we spend millions of dollars to draw them all into colleges as well? If so, we're right back where we started, except with a larger population.
Active efforts to broaden the pool of college students need to stop. Providing opportunities for people who want and need higher education is one thing. Spending millions of dollars to suck people into the system who have no desire or need to be there is quite another. Improving the quality of the education we provide to some people is more important than trying to give everyone an education of questionable value or utility. Government resources devoted to education would be better utilized by improving education instead of expanding it. When it comes to higher education, quality should trump quantity.
(Bryan Maxwell is the Cavalier Daily Opinion editor.)
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