There is a lot of noise about how an educated workforce will lead lay the groundwork for a prosperous society in todays global economy, but I believe there is a misconception about what this means. There is also tied in to statistical analysis showing lower rates of unemployment for those with a college degree, and better wage levels.
Still what we actually mean aside from specific job training in something like accounting or nursing is that someone comes from a culture that values higher education, that they have demonstrated an ability to achieve on their own, and that they have an ability to master new skills and wrap their heads around new ideas. While we do need people who actually know calculus it is far fewer than the industry of higher education might have us believe. Globally how many jobs are required that honestly require higher education? How many mail carriers are there with bachelors degrees? Tech based economies are export driven, and they are supplying global demand for the products they create easily, just educating a workforce isn't going to create high tech jobs. And in national economies economies competing for these jobs it is really all about the patents, the creation of patents allows the creation of industry, but how many engineers does an economy need to hold a competitive position in the pursuit of new patents? Remember we are addressing the simple concept that industry requires an educated workforce, not the needs of certain professions. This issue is compounded by how rapidly the global economy is changing. It is very difficult to know what sort of openings will require workers in 20 years. So it once again comes down to a cultural issue, having a workforce which is open to learning, is flexible, and works hard. Given this it is fair to say that the $120,000.00 or so odd dollars that many people spend on higher education is a waste.
Now the unfortunate thing about this argument is that it makes the case that we have overcapacity in our higher education system, and an industry of higher education is in itself a wonderfull thing to have, not only because it does provide economic activity, but it also opens a society to other beneficial things, such as the arts, and it is perhaps most importantly a draw for global talent.
If we are to say that we need a system of higher education because the jobs of tomorrow need educated workers, but then we realize that we are talking about a cultural issue, not an education issue, what we are doing is admitting that we have a cultural problem. There is probably no better way to offset that than by importing the culture of countries who are succeeding in this area. The U.S. has many foriegn students who come here get their educations and then are forced to go back home, we should encourage these students, with their work ethic and potential for future innovation, to stay here. This wont help the employment situation in the U.S. as much as it will increase taxable wealth by increasing the vitality of the economy, making it easier to take care of our debt burdens, and improve the quality off life for our society. We should not only encourage these students to stay we should also market the U.S. as a great place to live and do work, and create the climate that supports that.
This argument also leads to another area. That is that high school educations are not sufficiently preparing students for pursuing viable work in the economy as we know it, and how it is likely to be in the future, this is evidenced by the amount of students going to college who require remedial classes. The best way to address this is to fix the high school problem, and not add the necessity of another layer of education on top of a failing system.
The U.S. already ranks high by global standards in education spending, so just throwing money at the problem isn't the issue. The move to charter schools is an attempt to shake up the system and provide some higher levels of achievement. There is however a simple thing that could be done to help the performance of U.S. students, and that is a permit failure. We support an educational culture that says that people can be good at everything. This is unfortunately a false assumption. While people may through hard work achieve much they will have individual strengths and weaknesses, if someone is good at math maybe they aren't good at language, etc. When one applies this concept to those who have trouble achieving at a passing level in things they are good at then we are saying that they will fail at some things. In schools that achieve better results the pratice is often to be tougher on the students, but we resist this change at the public level.
Today there is such pressure to get the grades, to get into the college, to get the degree, to raise standards of living for the next generation, that the grades have become too important. For instance if we are to say that the permitting of failure in order to create the need to work harder in order to create better prepared students argument is true then grades will go down. This would seem as though the system is getting worse, although the end product should be improving.
On a philosphical there is a thing of interest going on here also. That while the U.S. has one of the harshest economic systems for those who cannot compete effectively it also has one of the laxest eductaion systems in demanding results from it's students. While the knee jerk reaction might be to say that this is caused by the liberal leaning faculties of schools I think something else may be at work. First is a desire to protect children from that harsh environment while possible, the second is that the only way to accept such a harsh system with our current cultural mindset is to say that everyone has a chance to exploit the system to their advantage. To say that some students are doomed by their natural academic gifts to be fodder for this have and have not economic environment is too difficult a thing to accept.