If you are a high school teacher, you want most of your students go on to post-secondary education, right? Indeed, the need to increase the number of university degrees awarded is one goal that even Democrats and Republicans in Washington find common ground on. Nevertheless, Time magazine writer Ramesh Ponnuru (pictured right) wonders in a recent opinion piece whether maybe we should reconsider the big college push. The notion that most high schools students should seek a college degree may not be such a great idea after all, he writes.

To be sure,  college degree holders do much better financially, on average, than non-college grads. But,Ponnuru argues, that’s not necessarily a good reason to send more students to university. Instead, perhaps we should make a bigger effort to help non-degree holders earn more money. He points to the high dropout rate: around 40 percent of students who enroll in college drop out before six years with no degree. Moreover, estimates show that most college graduates in their 20s are employed in jobs that don’t really require a degree. That’s an indication that there’s something amiss in the market. (How many more university-educated baristas do we need?) There are alternatives, Ponnuru says, and many students could earn career and technical certificates at a fraction of the cost of a four-year sheepskin. The “tight connection” between a college degree and economic success is, he writes, inefficient. “Future generations may look back and shudder at the cruelty of it.”

Photo by Michael Ronquillo

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