Not so long ago, the conventional wisdom was that getting a college degree (in anything, anywhere) was essential to success. Not having a college degree consigned you to a life of low-paying drudgery. Eventually, though, people woke up to the fact that lots of college grads were living in low-paying drudgery and that quite a few young Americans who didn’t go to college had found fine careers.
In today’s Martin Center article, David Randall of NAS observes that black Americans, just like other groups, have come to doubt the “college for all” idea:
Kimberly Wilson writes in Essence (“Where Black Women Come First”) an article about the decision to enroll in college that applies just about word for word to any American kid’s thought-process:
Does the investment actually pay off anymore (I say this as someone who also carries more than $200K in law school student loan debt)? [. . .] [H]igher education isn’t a one-size-fits-all path anymore. Whether it’s a four-year university, community college, trade school, or direct-to-workforce training, the most important question is no longer Where are you going? — it’s What will it be worth? [emphases in original]
Randall is most interested in reforms that would help blacks — and all other students — especially by overcoming the well-entrenched “soft bigotry of low expectations.”
Here is one of his suggestions:
Reformers should redirect federal money away from the elite colleges that still seek to practice race discrimination and toward the colleges that the vast majority of Americans attend. The federal government should reduce or eliminate tuition grants and loans to institutions of higher education with endowments above $500 million or with an endowment per student of more than $500,000. These moneys should be redirected to non-elite colleges — which currently have a higher black enrollment than elite colleges do. Directing federal money toward colleges with greater need will redirect federal money to the greater benefit of most black students.
Another is to reverse the Supreme Court’s disastrous Griggs v. Duke Power decision that gives employers a strong incentive to favor applicants simply because they have college degrees.
Read the whole thing.