What If College Is Not For Everyone?

At a time when many in higher education leadership, like the Lumina Foundation, among others, are calling for change to graduate more and more students with degrees, others are focusing for the moment on the question: What if a college education just isn't for everyone? "

It's fine for most kids to go to college, of course, (but) it is not obvious to me that that is the best option for the majority," says Mike Gould, founder of New Futures, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that provides scholarships for low-income students pursuing anything from a four-year degree to a massage-therapy certification. "Some education may be a good thing or it may just be a lot of debt."

The problem, Gould and others say, is that many high schools focus so much on college that low-achieving students fall through the cracks. A Public Agenda report this month raises similar concerns about high school guidance counseling. It follows up on a December survey that concluded most young workers who don't have a college degree "are in their jobs by chance, not by choice," and that guidance toward a career path "is hardly clear and purposeful."

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA - "Strengths and Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats"
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA - "Smart Planning in an Era of Uncertainty"
• April 7, Houston, TX - "Sustaining Higher Education in an Age of Challenge"

More Educated, Less Unemployed

We can't get you into the original Wall Street Journal article, but we have a link to a blog post about it, and a great graphic image from Calculated Risk.

"College graduates have definitely been hurt by the current recession. Thousands find themselves out of work, and many of those newly unemployed will struggle to find a job that paid as well as their last one. Still, on a relative basis, a college education has never been more valuable."

Read the full article here:
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/08/the-value-of-education-in-a-recession/

The (attached) chart is from Calculated Risk: http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/06/unemployment-rate-and-level-of.html

Squeeze Play: How Parents and the Public Look at Higher Education Today

This new report from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education (in collaboration with Limina) is essential reading for those scanning higher education's external environment. Ouch, in a section titled "the Bloom Is Off the Rose," this report says:

Although the public still has positive feelings about higher education, with 51% giving four-year colleges a grade of good or excellent (as compared to only 37% who give secondary schools similar grades), there are some signs of fractures in the public’s long love affair with colleges and universities.
In focus groups conducted for this project, we heard, for the first time, a number of people saying that colleges and universities are “just like a business” —more concerned with money than with education