College gap

In Obama's speech on Tuesday he stated an ambitious goal on college education: "By 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. That is a goal we can meet."



One can quibble with whether this goal is strictly obtainable (depending on what measurements you use), but everyone agrees that increases in educational attainment are really worthwhile. Along with the income disparity gap widening between the super-rich and everyone else, we also see a gap between the college-educated professionals and everyone else.



Matt Yglesias makes the case that a major cause of our static numbers in college graduation rates is the number of people who enter college and subsequently drop out. His answer somewhat predictably puts the burden on the schools and the government:



And though money doubtless plays a role in some of this, the main problem is lack of preparation. There's a need to both improve the performance of the earlier years of our system from pre-K on forward and to improve the performance of our colleges and universities, especially those that serve the low end of the market. In an ideal world, of course, every 12 grader would be perfectly well-prepared and colleges wouldn't need to worry about that. But we need our institutions of higher education to serve the population we actually have, and that requires more transparency about what's really going and more of an ethic of responsibility on the part of administrators.



Of course pre-K through 12 education needs to be improved, but, limiting our discussion here to higher education, some of the responsibility has to go to students. I certainly did not spend most of college working particularly hard, and spent (in retrospect) an inordinate amount of time playing videogames and beirut, and I don't think my experience was atypical for traditional students. Everything worked out for me, but obviously this is not the best cultural setup for maximizing either graduation rates or useful knowledge and skills obtained in college.



One suggestion might be for some students, particularly marginal or particularly immature ones, to delay college for a year or two after high-school graduation. One of the reasons for the sloth and debauchery in college is that, for most students, it's their first taste of freedom away from their parents, and also 18 and 19 year olds are not known for great decision-making and long-term thinking. A couple year gap between high-school and college would allow an increase in maturity as well as an understanding of why



This kind of gap could be created through Americorps style programs, as well as internships in private sector, non-profit and government organizations that would provide some exposure to both working adults who aren't your parents as well as possible fields to focus on once going to college. Even a minor push by the government on this would do a lot to erase the stigma that presently attaches to graduating high-schoolers who don't immediately head off to college.