Inside Higher Ed reports on the Commission on the Future of Higher Education’s latest meeting here.

I quote, “if a dominant theme emerged from the conversation, it was that the commission needed to champion the idea that a high school education no longer suffices for any American….”

But that’s utter nonsense. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that most of the occupational fields with the highest job growth over the next decade call only for vocational or on-the-job training. Putting more kids with weak high school educations through college is a needless waste of time and money. Someone should quickly send the commissioners a copy of 300 Best Jobs Without a College Degree.

Rather than pushing to make college universal, as Clinton advocated in his 1997 State of the Union speech, we ought to try to make certain that when students graduate from high school, they at least have the cognitive abilities of smart 6th graders.