A few weeks ago, we asked if everyone should go to college. An anonymous professor’s essay in Atlantic Monthly showed us that not everyone who goes is ready, but the reasons behind that and the answers for it are much less clear. Clearly, not everyone is ready for or suited to a life in academia. But it would feel much better conceding that point if we knew for sure that ability, merit, and desire were the only factors at play.
Those kinds of questions are what led, in the second half of the last century, to decreases in vocational programs in high schools and an emphasis on college prep. A new study by the Center for an Urban Future, called “Schools that Work,” calls for an increase in funding for New York City’s vocational schools. An author of the study, along with the principal of a career and technical education high school in Brooklyn, spoke in support of increasing funding for such schools on The Brian Lehrer Show this week. They also pointed out that these schools offer all of the academic programs that you would get at a traditional high school in addition to technical training, and that students are prepared to enter the work force or go on to college if they successfully complete them.
Lehrer introduced the segment by proposing that it was one of a host of solutions that might stem the drop-out rate, and a caller criticized that kind of thinking, that it was a haven for would-be drop-outs. It’s true, we tend to look down on those who work with their hands, and something about preparing people to do so seems like a denial of opportunity. What the caller (very rightly) pointed out is that it’s not: he was a graduate of such a school and he held a master’s degree. He added that the mechanics, plumbers, and construction workers of the world are indispensable; of your car breaks down, a mechanic is the most important person in the world until it’s fixed. And for good measure, he pointed out that the preceding segment was about recent NYC crane accidents, and how we need to better train crane operators.
This is the flip-side of the idea that not everyone is meant for college. What, then, should we do to prepare those people for school? My father was a self-employed plumber, and that was a better-paying, more satisfying job than he would have gotten had he tried to go to a community college. He was also a high school drop-out who had grown up extremely poor. Did he feel he had no other opportunities? Maybe. Did reliance on his physical strength prove a burden when he became older and ill? Yes, and he wasn’t prepared for it. But he really enjoyed the work, and in our rural labor market, there was really nothing a community college degree could have gotten for him. He was well compensated and had freedom to take time off. And his was a job that couldn’t be outsourced.
Having college prep for everyone is a noble concept, and we shouldn’t lose it. But for too long high schools have shirked their other responsibilities — mainly preparing students for being an adult in the world. Students know how to sit in front a computer, the caller said, but they’re physical idiots. But if we can’t give everyone a ticket to college, we should at least be giving them a chance at real self-sufficiency.
