Credentialism runs its course

Has the value of the college/university education diminished in the last twenty years?


I began reading College (Un)Bound by Jefffrey J. Selingo which looks at the future of higher education and how it has changed in the last twenty years with those born in the 1980s and 1990s attending post-secondary institutions.  In one part of the book, he looks at whether students are benefiting from college in a meaningful manner and refers to the book Academically Adrift by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa in which the authors looked at Collegiate Learning Assessment scores for recent graduates.  In their analysis, 45% of students after two years of study made no gains in writing, reasoning and critical thinking skills.  While after four years, a disappointing 36% made no progress.  Sadly, many students and parents blame the institutions for their failings.

I graduated with my undergraduate degree almost twenty years ago and my masters degree almost fifteen years ago.  Was it worth the time and cost?  If that is judged based on me working in the fields I studied, then no but if it is judged on me making use of the skills I learned then yes.  I started off with an undergraduate in biology and a my masters was in pharmaceutical sciences.  I am now a researcher and project manager for a shared value/sustainability consulting group.  How I got from there to here is a convoluted trip taking me from working as a lab technician, to a shipper/receiver, to managing a pharmacy teaching lab.  I never truly focused on grades, as the knowledge and skills I learned were much more interesting.  And I would rather have a good night's sleep rather than trying to squeeze out those extra few percentage points.  Not that I didn't take pride in doing well, but it really wasn't about the marks.

But I guess I'm also a little different from most people as I've taken some sort of academic or continuing education course every year since I graduated from high school except for 2002.  That's twenty years of additional formal learning that many people wouldn't even consider.

What am I getting at?  That school isn't about the grades.  It has been demonstrated that educators from grade school, high school and beyond participate in grade inflation such that the value of an "A" is diminished.  If everyone does well in school, how come so many graduates seem to know nothing when they enter the working world.  I've had to deal with PhD's trying to get packages from Vancouver to Belgium in less than twenty four hours - it was brought to me at 4:00 PM (PST) and had to get to Belgium for the next morning.  It stunned me the incapacity to realize that Belgium is 9 hours ahead of Vancouver which meant it was already 1:00 in the morning there when I received the package.  Flights to Brussels direct from Vancouver take at least 13 hours - thus, if you eliminate all processing and ground transport times, the package would at earliest be there at 2:00 in the afternoon in Brussels.  Alas, all FedEx packages go to Memphis first for sorting and then to Europe.  There was no way this was getting there the next day unless this researcher bought a ticket and got on the plane themselves.  This to me was a clear case of a lack of critical thinking or analysis skills and brought to mind me expression that incompetency on another individual's part does not constitute an emergency on my part.

So, yes, I believe that schools are failing our children and I struggle on a daily basis to help bring understanding to the world, one college graduate at a time.