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The Chronicle of Higher Education recently ran nine essays by various education experts on whether higher education has become an “engine of inequality.” Of the nine short responses, George Leef, the Director of Research for the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, was the only one to disagree, believing that government policies have caused greater inequality, not higher education. Not just is Leef wrong here, he offered no evidence for his thesis and even provides support for the opposite opinion, that education has increased inequality. Here’s his argument:
Our national arteriosclerosis is a result of the growing burden of regulations that make it more difficult for poor people to start businesses on their own or find job openings with good career paths. Local business regulations, state licensing mandates, and federal minimum-wage and other rules have all made our economy more rigid than it once was, with a strongly disparate impact on the poor.
Leef says this, but then gives no further evidence that this is the case. And even if he had provided evidence, it still does not show that high education has not been an engine of inequality. The fact that government policies contribute to income inequality does not exclude higher education from responsibility.
He then correctly points out that a college degree has become a necessity for many jobs that did not used to require a degree. He calls this “credential inflation” and admits that it is a factor in growing inequality; college graduates have fared much better during the recession than non-college graduates did. Just 4.1 percent of college graduates are unemployed right now while 8.4 percent of high school graduates and 12.6 percent of those with less than a high school diploma are unemployed. Leef is right here, but this is all evidence that higher education is an engine of inequality.
This “credential inflation” has significantly increased the need for a college degree, but many low-income kids have little chance of earning one. A 2005 study from the Economic Policy Institute found that just 29 percent of low-income students who scored well on 8th grade tests earned their degree. For high-income students, 30 percent of students who scored poorly on the test completed college while just three percent of low-income students who scored badly on the test earned a degree.
Leef then goes on to even explicitly admit that higher education has increased inequality when he says in his own follow up article:
To the slight extent that our higher education has increased social stratification, it is due to the mania for college credentials the system has helped unleash. Some people who can’t obtain the credentials that are increasingly required of job applicants—even for work that calls for nothing more than basic trainability—are shut off from good career paths. That is something of an obstacle to social mobility and if the higher education industry wanted to make amends, it could work toward alternative credentials that would be less costly and better indicators of employability.
He may want to believe that higher education is not an engine of inequality, but everything he says indicates pretty much the opposite.
Many said that higher education was the great equalizer for students of different socioeconomic backgrounds, but the evidence does not support this. Higher education has always contributed to economic inequality and continues to do so today.
A study published in the National Bureau of Economic Research in December of last year found that just five percent of low-income students born between 1961 and 1964 graduated from college compared to 36 percent of their high-income counterparts. For low-income students born between 1979 and 1982, nine percent graduated from college compared to 54 percent of high-income students born in that same period who completed school. Currently, just eight percent of low-income students graduate from college compared to 82 percent of high-income students who do.
Leef can continue to say that higher education is not an engine of inequality, but even his own argument doesn’t back that up.
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George Leef on July 24, 2012 11:17 AM:
Vinik is convinced that higher education in fact is part of the inequality problem because college degrees are supposedly more necessary than ever (for many of the better-paying jobs, anyway) but relatively few students from low-income households earn college degrees. He apparently concedes my point that the great push to put more and more people through college has led to credential inflation, but then thinks he turns the tables on my argument by saying that this proves the necessity of trying to get far more of those lower-income students through college.
What he fails to take account of in my argument is that a college degree is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for success. As I pointed out in my article (and many others have also made this observation), large numbers of Americans with college degrees -- even advanced ones -- are working in jobs that do not call for any academic preparation. That includes people from well-to-do families and people from poor families. Many of them have accumulated significant student debts, but can obtain no work that they couldn't have found right after high school. Having a college degree to your name may have been a sufficient condition for success 30 or 40 years ago, but that is certainly no longer the case.
Nor is a college degree a necessary condition, despite widespread credential inflation. There are quite a few Americans who never earned a college degree, including some who never went to college at all, who have been successful despite their lack of higher ed credentials. While credential inflation is a blockade for those without a degree in many businesses, it isn't in others, such as retailing.
Vinik seems to think that the remedy for the obstacle that credential inflation poses for those who don't have college degrees is to put many more people through college. That can't work. Even if everyone had a college degree, the jobs available in the economy would still be the same. Educational credentials are a positional good and if we could somehow put more people through college, the credential ratchet would just go up another notch and to distinguish yourself, you'd need to have a higher degree. (We are already seeing that in some business fields, where you can't get in the door without an MBA.) Here is what Stanford professor David Labaree wrote about this phenomenon in his book How To Succeed in School Without Really Learning:
The difficulty posed by (the glut of graduates) is not that the population becomes overeducated... but that it becomes overcredentialed, as people pursue diplomas less for the knowledge they are thereby acquiring than for the access the diplomas themselves provide. The result is a spiral of credential inflation, for as each level of education in turn gradually floods with a crowd of ambitious consumers, individuals have to keep seeking ever higher levels of credentials in order to move a step ahead of the pack. In such a system, nobody wins.
Labaree wrote that in 1997 and things are even worse now than back then: the credentials cost considerably more but the level of knowledge that students often obtain is lower. The more students we have tried to process through college, the more college standards have fallen to accommodate those who are academically weak and disengaged. Last year's book Academically Adrift demonstrated what professors have known for a long time, namely that many students coast through their courses without learning anything.
I'm sorry, but trying to solve the problem of credential inflation by increasing the numbers of people who go to college is like trying to cure a hangover with more alcohol.
del2124 on July 24, 2012 12:02 PM:
Well actually alcohol does make a hangover go away, however briefly.
More than that though, is it really possible to solve this problem by giving fewer credentials? In 1850 a high school degree was rare and an important credential to securing certain good jobs. Now it's common. Sure that's an example of credential inflation, but does that mean we've got too many people finishing high school?
George Leef on July 24, 2012 4:28 PM:
We need to move away from college degrees, which have become extremely unreliable as indicators of even basic skills and reliability (and often at high cost) and toward certification programs for the large numbers of young Americans who are thinking vocationally rather than academically when they complete high school.
del2124 on July 24, 2012 6:23 PM:
About 30 percent of American adults hold bachelor’s degrees. What's the ideal figure?
Also, I see your point, but this seems to be primarily about improving the quality of vocational programs, so that such things are affordable and attractive. Isn't the most important thing to address here?
George Leef on July 25, 2012 9:30 AM:
First, there is no way of knowing what the ideal percentage of bachelor's degrees is. People will naturally tend to optimize the length of and type of formal education they receive. This is another of the many fields where government targets are completely unnecessary.
Now that the mystique of the BA is wearing off -- that is, large numbers of people doubting that it is either necessary or sufficient for success in life -- the market for alternatives will rapidly develop. Competition in teaching skills and certifying them will do the best job of keeping quality up and costs down, especially if people are spending their own money. Vocational scams will abound where students are relying largely on government to cover the cost, just as college scams abound for the same reason.
Loans on July 27, 2012 1:22 PM:
Vocational scams will abound where students are relying largely on LOANS to cover the cost.
Danny Vinik on August 03, 2012 3:46 PM:
Leef’s reply to my piece ignores my central argument and entirely puts words in my mouth.
He writes, “Vinik is convinced that higher education in fact is part of the inequality problem because college degrees are supposedly more necessary than ever (for many of the better-paying jobs, anyway) but relatively few students from low-income households earn college degrees.”
At no point does Leef refute nor combat this point. Instead, he focuses on “credential inflation,” the necessity of a college degree and a mischaracterization of my argument:
“What he fails to take account of in my argument is that a college degree is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for success. As I pointed out in my article (and many others have also made this observation), large numbers of Americans with college degrees -- even advanced ones -- are working in jobs that do not call for any academic preparation. That includes people from well-to-do families and people from poor families. Many of them have accumulated significant student debts, but can obtain no work that they couldn't have found right after high school. Having a college degree to your name may have been a sufficient condition for success 30 or 40 years ago, but that is certainly no longer the case.
Nor is a college degree a necessary condition, despite widespread credential inflation. There are quite a few Americans who never earned a college degree, including some who never went to college at all, who have been successful despite their lack of higher ed credentials. While credential inflation is a blockade for those without a degree in many businesses, it isn't in others, such as retailing.”
Leef admits that having a college education (and degree) significantly raises the chances of a person’s success. As my original article pointed out, high-income students have a much greater chance of earning a college degree and thus being successful than low-income students do, regardless of intellect. This makes college an engine of inequality. Whether a college degree is necessary or sufficient for success is irrelevant.
What’s my solution?
It’s not, as Leef repeatedly says, “to put many more people through college.” I’m not really sure where he sees that in my post, but it isn’t there. The solution is equality of opportunity and right now, we are nowhere near that. As I also point out in my article, “a 2005 study from the Economic Policy Institute found that just 29 percent of low-income students who scored well on 8th grade tests earned their degree. For high-income students, 30 percent of students who scored poorly on the test completed college while just three percent of low-income students who scored badly on the test earned a degree.” That is a problem.
The fact that more high-income students who scored poorly on 8th grade tests complete college then low-income students who scored highly on those tests means that our college system is screwed up. College is offering high-income kids a greater chance at success not because they outscored their classmates, but because they can afford it. The opposite is true of income students and that makes college an engine of inequality.