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Belongs In College

Here is who belongs in college: the high-achieving student who is interested in learning for learning's sake, those who intend to become schoolteachers and those young people who seem certain to go on to advanced degrees in law, medicine, architecture and the like.

Here is who actually goes to college: everyone. That everyone includes the learning disabled and the fairly dumb, those who have trouble reading and writing and doing math, slackers who see college as an opportunity to major in Beers of the World, burned-out book jockeys and the just plain average student with not much interest in anything. Think about your high school class. Now think about the 76 percent of those students (80 to 90 percent in middle-class suburbs) who say they expect to go to two-year or four-year colleges. You begin to see the problem?

Pamela Gerhardt, who has been teaching advanced writing and editing at the University of Maryland for six years, says she has seen a decline in her students' interest in the world of ideas. In an article in the Washington Post on August 22,1999, she noted: "Last semester, many of my students drifted in late, slumped into chairs, made excuses to leave early and surrounded my desk when papers were due, clearly distraught over the looming deadline. 'I can't think of any problems,' one told me. 'Nothing interests me.'" Her students, she said, rejected the idea of writing about things like homelessness or AIDS. Five male students, she said, wanted to write about the "problem" of the instant replay in televised football games.

Ever since the Garden of Eden, people have been complaining that things used to be better, once upon a time, back when. I suppose it is possible that, thirty years ago, students were just as shallow and impatient with education as they are today. But I don't think so. It could be that a college education is wasted on the young, but it is more likely that a college education is especially being wasted on today's youth.

Of course, there was a period twenty-five years ago when Cassandras argued that college was a waste of time and money. Around the time that The Overeducated American was published, in 1975, Caroline Bird wrote a book called The Case Against College. Her book has been out of print for decades. But there are arguments that seem very familiar to me: that Madison Avenue sells college like soap flakes, that going to college had become a choice requiring no forethought; that students weren't really there to learn and that college was no longer an effective way to train workers.

But primarily Ms. Bird argued that "there is no real evidence that the higher income of college graduates is due to college at all." She cited as her proof Christopher Jencks's report "Inequality: A Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America," which pointed out that people from high-status families tended to earn more than people from low-status families, even if they had the same amount of education.

College, Bird pointed out twenty-five years ago, "fails to work its income-raising magic for almost a third of those who go." Moreover, she said, "college doesn't make people intelligent, ambitious, happy, liberal or quick to learn new things. It's the other way around. Intelligent, ambitious, happy, liberal, quick-to-learn people are attracted to college in the first place."

Or, as Zachary Karabell asked in the 1999 book What's College For? The Struggle to Define American Higher Education, "on a more pragmatic level, does college truly lead to better jobs?" He answered his own question with "Not necessarily. The more people go to college, the less a college degree is worth." He goes on to point out that the Bureau of Labor Statistics includes in its list of jobs that require a college degree "insurance adjuster" and "manager of a Blockbuster video store." Is that what you were foreseeing for Joey when you wrote that $25,000 tuition check?

Define you as a person? In order for the admissions staff of our college to get to know you, the applicant, better, we ask that you answer the following question: Are there any significant experiences you have had, or accomplishments you have realized, that have helped to define you as a person? I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row. I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru. Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets, I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I'm bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge. I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I don't perspire. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been caller number nine and have won the weekend passes. Last summer I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration. I bat . 400. My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles. Children trust me. I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I have performed several covert operations for the CIA. I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. The laws of physics do not apply to me. I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid. On weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami. Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. I have made extraordinary four course meals using only a mouli and a toaster oven. I breed prizewinning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin. I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis. But I have not yet gone to college. This is an actual essay written by a college applicant, when applying to NYU where he now attends.

Caroline Bird was outraged over the expense of college in 1975. A Princeton education, she said, would cost $22,256 for tuition, books, travel, room, board and pocket money-for four years.

Twenty-five years later, the price for that Princeton degree has grown to $140,000, including room and board and books, but not travel money and pocket change. It's even more than that, if you factor in the student's lost wages. Because of the low unemployment rates at the end of the nineties, anyone with the IQ to go to Princeton could make at least $15,000 a year with only a high school diploma, and perhaps more. So tack on at least $60,000 (if the student knows computers, make that $120,000) in lost wages while Jared or Jessica was busy at Princeton studying Shakespeare. That puts the price of a college degree from a fine Ivy League school at more than $200,000.

Is it worth it today? Perhaps even less so than in Caroline Bird's day, primarily because students no longer seem interested in ideas, and because it is so much easier to make money just by hopping onto the Internet. I agree that from the perspective of society as a whole, it would be better if fewer people went to college," Robert Frank, the popular Cornell economist, and the author of Luxury Fever and other books, said, "Economists often challenge this notion by citing studies that show significantly higher wages for college graduates," he said. "But all these studies say is that the people who attend college are better, on the average, than those who don't. They don't tell us how much value is added to them by attending college. From the individual's point of view, it still often pays to attend college, since employers so often use education as an initial screening device. Everyone wants the best-paying and most interesting jobs, after all, which assures that there will always be a surfeit of applicants for them. So employers who offer such jobs have every incentive to confine their attention to college graduates. But that doesn't mean that we'd be poorer as a nation if fewer people went to college."

An article in Newsweek (November 1, 1999) by Robert J. Samuelson said: "Going to Harvard or Duke won't automatically produce a better job and higher pay. Graduates of these schools generally do well. But they do well because they are talented." The article was titled "The Worthless Ivy League?"

Brigid McMenamin wrote a blistering piece in Forbes magazine (December 28, 1998) called "The Tyranny of the Diploma." Beyond listing the usual suspects in the computer field who did not complete college-Bill Gates, Michael Dell-she pointed to the young digerati who are making $50,000 to $80,000 a year and more at age sixteen. At a time when most kids in college say they are there "to get a job," these kids may wel1 skip college in order to jump in on the booming Internet business.

Moreover, as Ms. McMenamin recounts, almost 15 percent, or 58 members, of the Forbes 400 (a yearly listing of the most successful business leaders), had either, as she put it, ditched college or avoided it altogether. In terms of wages, she said, brick masons and machinists had it all over biology and liberal arts mayors. As a capper, she stated: "A hefty 21 percent of all degree-holders who work earn less than the average for high school grads." She didn't even bring up plumbers, electricians and car mechanics.

For years, I have heard and seen where people associate the lack of a college degree with a lack of intelligence. Ironically, this is usually used by small minded individuals who apparently can't win an argument using facts, so they try to discredit others with childish attacks and accusations. In any event, while education is important, intelligence has little to do with paper framed on the wall.

Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States. He worked on the family farm and served in the Missouri National Guard after high school. Never attended college. He was the only president after 1870 not to earn a college degree, although he studied for two years toward a law degree at the Kansas City Law School (now the University of Missouri - Kansas City School of Law) in the early 1920s.

Walt Disney didn't even finish High School. He was later given an honorary degree, but by then had already earned tremendous success. According to the Kansas City Public School District records, Disney began attending the Benton Grammar School in 1910, and graduated on June 8, 1911, being held back a year so that Ruth could go with him. Disney later enrolled in classes at the Chicago Art Institute, where he struggled academically. Because of his early-morning paper runs, he had trouble concentrating and fell asleep in class often. He was also prone to daydreaming and doodling during class.

Michael Dell dropped out of the University of Texas at Austin after founding PC's Limited, later changing the company name to Dell Computer Corporation. Dell is the son of an orthodontist and grew up in a well-to-do Jewish family. He had his first encounter with a computer at the age of 15 when he broke down a brand new Apple II computer and rebuilt it, just to see if he could. Dell attended Memorial High School in Houston, Texas, where he did not excel scholastically. Reportedly one of his teachers, still currently teaching there, commented to him that he "would probably never go anywhere in life."

Thomas Edison was an inventor and businessman. Education started late due to childhood illnesses. Formal education lasted only three months, and was schooled by his mother thereafter. His mind often wandered and his teacher Reverend Engle was overheard calling him "addled". He recalled later, "My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt I had something to live for, someone I must not disappoint."

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States. Essentially self educated. Self-taught, he became a leading lawyer in Illinois. His formal education consisted of perhaps 18 months of schooling from unofficial teachers. Studying every book he could borrow, he mastered the Bible, William Shakespeare's works, English history and American history, and developed a plain style that puzzled audiences more used to grandiloquent oratory.

Peter Jennings was a long time ABC News anchorman. Dropped out of high school in 10th grade. He attended Trinity College School in Port Hope Ontario. Although a member of the class of 1957, Peter left in 1955 to pursue broadcasting. Jennings also attended Carleton University, University of Ottawa, and Rider College in New Jersey. He never graduated from high school or college.

Steve Jobs is the founder of Apple Computers and CEO of Pixar animation. In 1972, Jobs graduated from high school and enrolled in Reed College in Portland, Oregon, but he dropped out after only one semester. When speaking at a Stanford University graduation ceremony in 2005, Jobs ironically said to the new college graduates that, after dropping out, he remained at Reed auditing classes, including one in calligraphy. "If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts," he said.

Larry Ellison is the co-founder of Oracle Corporation. He lasted until the end of his sophomore year at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign but dropped out. After a summer in Northern California, he returned home to study at the University of Chicago but left after one quarter. Ending his attempts to finish college, he set out for California.

Co-founder of Microsoft, Paul Allen, and one of the top three richest people in the world. Allen attended Washington State University, though he dropped out after two years to go and work as a programmer for Honeywell in Boston, which placed him near his old friend again. He later convinced Bill Gates to drop out of Harvard College to found Microsoft. William Faulkner was a short story writer and novelist. Dropped out of high school shortly before graduating. Worked in his grandfather's bank and served in the Royal Canadian Air Force.

Toy manufacturer, owner and founder of Ty, Inc. Ty Warner attended Kalamazoo College in Michigan but dropped out after a year and moved to Hollywood to commence a career in acting. He enjoyed little success as an actor and returned to Chicago. In Chicago, he started working for a plush toy maker Dakin where he became an accomplished salesman, employing clever tactics to influence the decisions of "buyers" in large stores. After nearly two decades at Dakin and a long sabbatical in Italy, Warner returned again to Chicago. He mortgaged his home and invested his life savings into founding Ty Inc. in 1986.

Linda Lee. Excerpted from Success Without College: Why Your Child May Not Have to Go to College Right Now-and May Not Have to Go At All

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