To the editor:
Checker’s recent editorial (“Tackling a taboo topic,” June 10, 2010) seems reasonable in its conclusion: Different options should be available for different kids, and we shouldn’t make utopian assumptions about how everybody should go to college. But the way you frame it seems awfully Charles-Murray-esque to me. Isn’t “college for all” a bit of a straw man, when the real question is whether we should be promoting “college for more”? Clearly you signal your belief in the latter when you say, “It's definitely worth recalibrating our K-12 system so that many more young people are prepared to succeed on that path.” You might also have mentioned the clear economic payoff, at least so far, for getting a college degree.
So if raising high school standards improves preparation for a good number of kids, and gets a good number more through college, shouldn’t we applaud this? If you are worried about the discouragement hypothesis—a reasonable consideration, though I’d like to see more evidence—then by all means let’s have more vocational options, apprenticeships, etc. (Bear in mind, too, that for many students going to college already means vocational preparation—think of all the health professions courses offered at community colleges.) Unfortunately, by framing your argument as “how the college-for-all crowd is wrong,” you invite readers to conceive of the solution in an unhelpful way that denigrates the value of expanding college aspirations, college access, and college completion. Wouldn’t a better rallying cry be be “both/and”?
Ben Wildavsky
Senior Fellow
Kauffman Foundation