Column:

Post-secondary education needs reinvention

By Phil Klopfenstein

Published Nov. 6, 2009

I hate the all-importance of the four-year degree. Charles Murray, libertarian author who shares my revulsion, puts the case well:

"Imagine that America had no system of post-secondary education, and you were a member of a task force assigned to create one from scratch. One of your colleagues submits this proposal: First, we will set up a single goal to represent educational success, which will take four years to achieve no matter what is being taught. We will attach an economic reward to it that seldom has anything to do with what has been learned. We will urge large numbers of people who do not possess adequate ability to try to achieve the goal, wait until they have spent a lot of time and money, and then deny it to them. We will stigmatize everyone who doesn't meet the goal. We will call the goal a BA."

The American higher education system is the best in the world. It is the wealthiest, most productive, most influential system of its kind. Unfortunately, that is no reason to be complacent. The system is also one that graduates hundreds of thousands of students annually into the workforce who are truly qualified for almost no work. It is a system featuring a six-year graduation rate just south of 60 percent, a graduation rate gap of 11 percent between whites and minorities and average annual tuition continuously outstripping inflation and increases in household income.

We have a system purporting to value access, affordability and quality, yet its structure betrays true progress in each of the three. The solution to these problems is not to throw money at the problem or to lower selectivity, but to reform the rules. We should start by eliminating mandatory four-year degrees.

Ask yourself, reader, what does a degree from the University of Missouri really mean? When you have graduated, what will your degree uniquely signal about you beyond that you are likely to possess above-average intelligence and the minimum degree of perseverance required to endure a four-year test? I look to the swaths of students on this campus and see thousands and thousands of future workers who are qualified for very little.

Why, then, four years of required coursework to be eligible for the "good jobs" or seats in good graduate schools? There must be a better way for students to learn only what they choose and employers to effectively screen eligible applicants. Perhaps the educational establishment would do well to adopt a hybridized system that trends toward certification tests as is prevalent in Information Technology.

In IT, certifications such as those developed by Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle and the like allow virtually any person of any socioeconomic status or education level to — for a fee — learn a set of skills, demonstrate proficiency with these skills and compete for jobs in the open market. A system like that allows people who lack the financial or social capital to invest in a four-year degree to still be employed as a skilled laborer.

At the same time, clearer signals are sent to employers. Recent economic research is clear: Years of education, college degrees, college rankings and the like are very, very poor predictors of job performance. The useful predictors? IQ and tests of occupational knowledge. So, we have a system that alienates possible, productive laborers and sends unclear signals to employers all while perpetuating tuition inflation. There should be a better way to maintain postsecondary education in this country. There is. Let us work beyond mere reform and work toward reinvention.