A Murray quote via a commenter on Australian Work Force 'Over Educated':
"There is no magic point at which a genuine college-level education becomes an
option, but anything below an IQ of 110 is problematic. If you want to do well,
you should have an IQ of 115 or higher. Put another way, it makes sense for only
about 15% of the population, 25% if one stretches it, to get a college
education. And yet more than 45% of recent high school graduates enroll in
four-year colleges. Adjust that percentage to account for high-school dropouts,
and more than 40% of all persons in their late teens are trying to go to a
four-year college--enough people to absorb everyone down through an IQ of 104.
"No data that I have been able to find tell us what proportion of those
students really want four years of college-level courses, but it is safe to say
that few people who are intellectually unqualified yearn for the experience, any
more than someone who is athletically unqualified for a college varsity wants to
have his shortcomings exposed at practice every day. They are in college to
improve their chances of making a good living. What they really need is
vocational training. But nobody will say so, because 'vocational training' is
second class. 'College' is first class.
"Large numbers of those who are intellectually qualified for college also do
not yearn for four years of college-level courses. They go to college because
their parents are paying for it and college is what children of their social
class are supposed to do after they finish high school. They may have the
ability to understand the material in Economics 1 but they do not want to. They,
too, need to learn to make a living--and would do better in vocational training.
"Combine those who are unqualified with those who are qualified but not
interested, and some large proportion of students on today's college
campuses--probably a majority of them--are looking for something that the
four-year college was not designed to provide. Once there, they create a demand
for practical courses, taught at an intellectual level that can be handled by
someone with a mildly above-average IQ and/or mild motivation. The nation's
colleges try to accommodate these new demands. But most of the practical
specialties do not really require four years of training, and the best way to
teach those specialties is not through a residential institution with the staff
and infrastructure of a college. It amounts to a system that tries to turn out
televisions on an assembly line that also makes pottery. It can be done, but
it's ridiculously inefficient."
