As a child perusing my parents’ and grandparents’ libraries in the 1950s, I came across odd books like one instructing the reader in proper pronunciation. It taught how to say the word “despicable” (stress the “des,” not the “pic”) and incognito (stress the “cog,” not the “nito”) — just the opposite of what you normally hear.
Another book told me that while there are many ways to announce that “it’s time to go to bed,” one never should say “let’s hit the sack.” Using that term revealed you as a hick because it alluded to times (and places) when beds were made of straw — and you didn’t want to be associated with them.
Such tomes (and others, including Emily Post’s famed book of etiquette) helped many Americans who weren’t fortunate enough to attend college — the vast majority in those days — brush off the hayseed and become proper members of the middle class as they moved into their Levittown homes with their new all-electric kitchens, Presto pressure cookers, and Encyclopaedia Britannicas.
Today nearly 30 percent of American adults have college degrees. But there doesn’t seem to be much difference between many of the college educated and their non-college peers.
To some extent this may be because of mass culture. Lawrence Summers, former president of Harvard, recently claimed that average Americans are smarter than they used to be. His evidence: in the 1960s the country’s favorite TV show was the “Beverly Hillbillies”; in the 2000s, it was “West Wing.” In his view, the silliness of the one versus the erudition of the other reveals the elevation of mass culture. We all have “moved up.”
Maybe, but an equally plausible reason that college graduates don’t stand out is that they are just as deeply mired in lowbrow culture as everyone else. Sports — college, professional, amateur — are today’s great levelers, along with entertainment emblems such as “American Idol,” “Biggest Loser,” “Jersey Shore,” “Bad Girls Club,” Lady Gaga and the technological world of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
The college graduate is part and parcel of this environment, and I haven’t noticed that graduates speak noticeably better than those who haven’t been to college. Their language, at best, reflects more the language of their parents and childhood peers, and every person under 30 seems to use the dreadful locution “me and Jan” as the subject of a sentence.
Personally, I don’t care terribly whether graduates sound educated or not; of greater concern is whether they are educated.
But why doesn’t college provide the superficial veneer of respectability that it did in the past?
The answer is that it doesn’t provide the substance that it did in the past. College graduates rarely quote Shakespeare or even use his plots to illustrate points. Does anyone under age 50 ever allude to Plato’s cave? As Lee Doren says in his new e-book, “Please Enroll Responsibly,” students “aren’t receiving the education most people expect when they think of earning a degree.”
Of course, there are exceptions. And when it comes to their major fields, many students learn a lot because they are vocationally motivated and their professors are teaching what they love.
But few students get a solid grounding — or any grounding at all — in what used to be called “high culture”: the fundamental intellectual ideas that underlie modern society. Core curricula at most colleges have been tossed out the window. Of the 54 accredited colleges and universities in North Carolina, for example, just two require courses in U.S. government or history.
All in all, a college education doesn’t seem to make you anything special anymore.
We already have many reasons to suspect that college is fading as an essential ingredient in life — such as continuing cost increases and the uncertain value of a degree.
If Americans once used college as a stepping-stone to a more respectable life, and that doesn’t work anymore, families are going to rethink spending thousands of dollars on higher education. Junior can just get a job and with the money he saves and buy a — well, perhaps a Lamborghini.
Now that would move the family up in the estimation of the neighbors, wouldn’t it?
• Shaw is president of the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, 333 E. Six Forks Rd., Raleigh, N.C. 27609; website: www.popecenter.org.
Comments (5)
Add commentGood Article...
This article makes good points. College, like life, is about what you learn. Some get it, some don't; some just get certified. The State of Alaska requires College degrees in many of their job requirements. The problem is, most students in Alaska apparently are obsessed with the qualification, instead of the learning process. Handing out good jobs with tenure to kids with degrees is just like handing out little bits of candy. That isn't the best way to 'enable a talented, experienced and knowledgeable workforce' anymore. There are program managers in Juneau who have never had a job. Their parents, the perm-fund corporation of Alaska and the Golden North Salmon Derby paid for their education, and in a small town, they can socially network their way into a management situation - without any talent, or experience.
I suspect with the modern communications infrastructure, the education industry will soon undergo the changes that have recently chewed up network news, the newspaper industry, and the communications industry. There are better ways now to focus on specific subjects than to pay for the cost of a brick and mortar college with all the overhead & financial baggage. Now any gifted lecturer or instructor can be on everyone's screen anytime.
In America, the greatest barrier in educating people now is financial, rather than intellectual. It is the people with a financial advantage that are receiving degrees, not necessarily the most talented and intelligent.
This article is a bit
This article is a bit alarmist and not very honest. First of all, the author works for an organization with a vested interest in improving higher education. A noble goal. But that doesn't excuse hyperbole and scare tactics, especially since such tactics work against your goal when faced with an informed (and perhaps college-educated?) audience.
In reality, college graduates make much more than non-college graduates, across the field. Even the lowly art major. They have a big advantage that, although less of an advantage today than 50 years ago, is still very real (and perhaps it's only less of an advantage because more people than ever have college degrees--and I don't think it's in our best interests to go back to a less-educated time).
I do agree with Spoorprint that too many people view a degree as a means to an end (a job, which leads to retirement, which then leads to death--such ambition!), but that's a problem with our culture's obsession with money, not so much the educational system.
Also, I really hate the concept of high culture and low culture. It's ironic that the author invokes Shakespeare when his plays invoked both high and low culture, which is why they appealed to pretty much every social class in England at the time. Much of the idea of high culture is rooted in what the snooty aristocracy liked rather than any fundamental quality setting it apart from "low culture."
High and low culture???
As one who has spent most of my adult life either as a student or a researcher or teacher, especially as a cultural anthropologist, I have no idea what "high" or "low," culture is -unless it is some phantasy that people have.
I have spent years studying "culture" in Alaska, Mexico, Europe and Japan in a "holistic" manner- that is recognizing that everything is tied to everything else. That environment, technology, social organization, rules for social behavior, languages, arts, beliefs and philosophies all impact individuals in their everyday lives.
Universities began in the middle ages in the Western World as a place where students from various "co-leges" that is countries with their own laws, languages and traditions, came together to learn the latest and best information and explanations available from around the world. In the early years of universities, the key players were students and teachers, and administrators were those who provided for that interaction.
But over the centuries, two things have happened to universities. First, they expanded into "disciplines," "schools," and "departments," with their own specialized studies and teaching. Today, students and faculty interested in art, economics, technology, languages, chemistry, biology, law, history, geology, mathematics, and all the "disciplines" may have little or no contact with each other except in beginning or basic classes.
Secondly, those whose task was to facilitate an interaction between faculty and students, with new ideas, new explanations, have become "administrators" who oftentimes have had no experience as full time teachers as faculty. They have become business managers. They decide what will be taught and when, who will be the teachers, and how the "business of education" will operate.
I know that I am "old fashioned" or "out of date" as a retired professor at a university because I am convinced, from experience, that "audio conferencing," "teaching via the internet" may be the only way some students can get credit for a course, but for me it is not the same or equal to the old face-to-face, person-to-person confrontation between teachers and students that I have experienced in a real classroom. In a classroom, there is a lot of "non-verbal" communication between students and whoever the teacher might be. When I have seen students shaking their heads, or with mouths open, or a questioning look on their face, I could respond. Students could look at me, and my non-verbal communication and gestures and question and challenge me.None of this happens on classes by "audio conference".
I entered "academia" as a fairly illiterate young man from a small Midwestern town. My first two years were at a university, where all of the faculty were old Catholic Benedictine monks, nearly all of whom had earned doctorates from secular universities. They just "blew me away," by exposing me to ideas, thoughts, factual knowledge, languages and sciences that I had never considered before. I came in as a freshman, convinced that I had all the answers. By my second year, I came to realize how little I knew and how much I more I wanted to learn and know. However, I didn't go on to again become convinced I had a "handle" on everything. As one of my colleagues explained, I got trapped at that sophomoric level of seeking answers and that has been my life.
To me, and this is just my personal opinion, a university education and experience should be something that makes one think, question, search for new ideas and explanations in life. We have some excellent trade schools for those who want a career as miners, electricians, plumbers or business people. But a real university should be a place were a person awakens to a whole new world that they never considered before. Whether students go on to get a good job, make a lot of money or become "successful" in life, to me is secondary. A university education and experience should be an awakening to all that is "out there" and one's own life as a person for what remains in their lifetime.
And so, even today as an old person, when someone disagrees with me, proposes a new or different idea, I don't take it as a threat. I take it as a challenge to question myself to see if I am sure about something, or I need to be open to the thinking of another person.
To me, that is what has been a "university education" for me.
Don't you worry, Wally...
You always make good sense, and don't worry about being old, it's just that you have been younger, longer. It's all good if you are going in the right direction.
Yes, there are many things to be gained from University culture, high or low. Learning in groups will always have certain advantages. But I still think we are approaching a sunset of the old university system. Retreats or group seminars and field trips can take the place of university classes in person, and many subjects can be covered much more efficiently by on-line lectures. I see the high cost of universities as the problem. There should be ways around that, and if there are, those ways of learning will eventually happen. Even if university costs even become paid for by the taxpayer so all people can attend, the cost will be too much to survive with the 'new' social networking techniques. Another thing I think will happen, is that education needs to happen while a person is making a living, as it is financially difficult for many to take years off of work to attend schools all day every day. A way to earn credits while fully employed would be a big advantage.
I also think that employer's will have to find ways to screen employee's to see what they have actually learned, rather than assuming that a degree is proof of professionalism. In our own State system, years on a related job should count as a substitute for a amount of time in college or time in a educational system.
Wally - I have found that when I ramble on too long in a comment, they automatically go to 'moderation' before they post. I don't think there is a sinister big-brother thing goin' on there.
But then again, I could be wrong!
Yes
Yes, the state of alaska made the mistake of requiring college degrees for positions that do not need them in any way shape or form, roughly 10 years ago.
It is one mistake the state learned and chose fix. They have started removing that erroneous requirement in the past few years.
All in all, good comments above.