Penna Dexter

Economist Walter Williams says it’s dishonest to boast about the nation’s highly touted 80-percent high school graduation rate. The National Assessment of Educational Progress for 2017 showed that 63 percent of 12th graders were not proficient in reading and 75 percent were not proficient in math.

Dr. Williams says, when it comes to college there’s a big disconnect when only 37 percent of white graduates test college-ready and yet about 70 percent are admitted to colleges. For black students, the disconnect is greater. Seventeen percent of black high school graduates test as college-ready, yet colleges admit 58 percent of them.

Colleges cope by offering remedial courses and majors with few analytical demands. These courses often include the term “studies” in their titles — ethnic studies, gender studies, etc. And, sadly, ill-prepared graduates often major in education.

Walter Williams is not the only economist asking the question: “How necessary is college anyway?” Bryan Caplan, like Dr. Williams, is a professor of economics at George Mason University. He wrote a book titled, The Case Against Education: Why the Education System is a Waste of Time and Money. He told The Wall Street Journal that a college education is worthwhile for the individual. Full time workers with bachelor’s degrees are making, on average, 73 percent more than high school graduates. Yet, he says, many majors and fields of study really don’t teach things that students will use in the jobs they eventually get. He asks, “Why is it that employers would pay all of this extra money for you to go and study a bunch of subjects that they don’t actually need you to know?”

Dr. Caplan says getting a college degree signals someone will be a good employee. But today, a college degree is a prerequisite for jobs that once did not require one.

We need to ask: is the public and personal money spent today on education buying us enough?