What is a "college education" in America, these days? Seems to me that there is no such unitary thing, and that it can mean almost anything. As I have mentioned here in the past, I have interviewed college grads who could not do calculus or even explain basic statistics, read a foreign language, or write a grammatical, well-structured formal essay. These basic skills can be achieved in high school, by those who want to learn stuff.
Or easily achieved in the library or on the internet. Not everybody is driven to learn things.
There's a debate going on these days about the notion of "college for all," and Robert Samuelson has been scoring points.
College for All, of course, entails extensive remediation for kids who are not prepared for, or capable of, "higher ed" as we older folks think of it. It also entails lowering expectations and standards. I don't blame the schools - I mostly blame the students. There is no such thing as "getting an education," because all learning is ultimately self-education. Without drive, curiosity, discipline, determination, and IQ nothing valuable will happen.
The education industry, naturally, markets itself and wants to fill all of their seats with warm, paying bodies even if they are not capable of serious high-school level achievement. Here's a summary of the current debate on college-level remediation.
