CSotD: Generation Gap

Comments ¹⁰

1. phred

   I think it’s the function of any older generation to be horrified by how easy the current generation has it, and how wild and pampered they are. Read Held’s Angels (written by Frank Gilbreth Jr., illustrated by John Held Jr., published in the mid-1950s) for a wonderful example. Joe College’s son is attending college and has gotten into a few scrapes, which prompts him to remember his own college days in the 1920s. My parents thought I had it easy when I went to college in the late 1970s/early 80s, never mind the apartment where the water in the toilet froze one winter and I could see the sky from my bedroom closet. Now one of my cousins is going to college, and is paying $30K per year resident tuition at a state university. No, I don’t think she has it easy. Clearly I’m not doing my job as a horrified geezer.

2. Ruth Anne Crowell

   Now if we could just do a better job of supporting K-12…
   Our principal spent a good part of a recent back-to-school meeting talking about how we need to promote our school whenever and wherever we get the chance. In central Florida we are competing with charter schools, private schools, and virtual school for students and the funding they bring. I sent him a link to this and suggested that we add “workforce development” to our arguments.

3. Woodrowfan

   I sometimes hear that the blame in on the professor’s salaries. I just finished a summer class with 15 students. My salary was 75% covered by one student’s tuition. (My benefits are limited FYI, but better than I would get working at McWalDepot.) This fall semester will be about the same. I have 110 students and my wages and benefits for the entire semester will be covered by the tuition paid for by 10 students. Let’s call it 12 if we include benefits.
   I know there are lots of other expenses for the school, buildings, heat, staff, the library, a gym, security, insurance, etc, etc, etc. And not every student pays tuition. These figures are presented purely to add some context to the debate.
   Sure, the big schools with huge endowments may pay their star profs big salaries, but most us us lucky enough to find a full-time job make a decent if unspectacular, middle-class salary.
   Oh, and with class prep, grading, meeting with students, etc, I work a normal 70 hour week. I love my job, but like any other professional career, if you’re working less than 40 hours a week you’re doing it wrong.

4. Brian Fies

   I have a rule about not wading into touchy subjects on the Internet (being pretty sure I’ve never managed to change anyone’s mind on anything), but since we’re all friends here I’d say I dispute a premise and a conclusion.
   I think “if we are going to make a college degree a necessary qualification for employment” is a big unsupported “if.” In an ideal world high schools would still offer vocational training for the non-college-bound, but the fact remains that the trades and services still offer opportunities to high school grads–certainly more jobs than are available to a typical History or English major–and a good tradesperson in particular is worth his/her weight in gold. Even now, a BA/BS isn’t the only ticket to the middle class.
   I’ve never really gotten why student loans are viewed as some special sneaky burden foisted upon young people, as opposed to a car loan or credit card debt or any other kind. You’re over 18, you signed the papers, you understood the terms (I’ll owe this much at this time), you made a promise. If you can’t pay the freight, don’t board the train. Find a cheaper train. Many of my girls’ peers completed their first two years of college at the local community college for a few thousand bucks then transferred right into universities. Nobody owes anybody, and nobody has a right to, a six-figure education.
   I realize I sound a bit hard-core on this, and have compassion for particular circumstances (bankruptcy, genuine hardship, a rare and nasty twist of life). Maybe it’s the Depression Era ethic beaten into me by my grandparents (Grandma always kept a packet of Saltines in her purse just in case), but what’s wrong with saving up for what you can’t afford and not taking on an obligation you can’t repay?
   Great. Now you’ve got me talking like my grandparents.

5. Sherwood Harrington

   Brian says, “Even now, a BA/BS isn’t the only ticket to the middle class.”
   Absolutely true. I can’t speak for other states, but in California vocational education makes up a very large part of what we do in Community Colleges. That’s something often overlooked by lots of folks who look at us as discount-rate way of getting some kids into a BS or BA-granting institution’s junior year.
   And while taking courses in a vocational major, students also take core academic courses that make them better citizens — and ones who can write a comprehensible, detailed invoice that’s computed properly.
   Sadly, though, we stopped being able to accommodate everyone who could benefit from that experience three years ago. Through reduced class offerings and increased fees, we are seeing fewer new students — and those we are seeing are paying much more than before.

6. Mike Peterson

   I’m not going to the mattresses to defend the premise, but I will defend the fact of it being sold. It may well be that nobody should be fool enough to buy the Brooklyn Bridge but, still, the person who sells it carries some of the blame for the transaction along with the sucker who fell for the pitch.
   Among the cartoons likely to emerge as a Classic here one day is a 2008 Speed Bump (Dave Coverly) that shows a tow truck towing a car. The car has a bumpersticker that says “My Child Is An Honor Student,” and the truck has one that says “My Child Knows A Cam From A Rotor.”
   In most nations of the world, the tow truck operator could display both stickers. But I have long argued against a move first by New York State and then enshrined in NCLB that insists all high school graduates should be ready for college and that structures required coursework around a college-prep curriculum.
   In every other developed country, there is a two-tiered approach in which courses are not “dumbed down” for the non-liberal-arts track, but, rather, are taught from the viewpoint of that style of learning and of interest. If anything, some of the math courses are “dumbed down” for the kids who are learning to parse Goethe or Chaucer.
   In our system, by contrast, we not only require every child to fit the college-bound cookie-cutter, but we announce at graduation how many are headed to college (without ever following up with a count of those who subsequently flame out.)
   And we set up what vocational training we have in a way that makes it clearly a second-choice for those who can’t hack it on the college prep track. In fact, in New York, vocational ed is housed in the same building as special ed. Yes, they travel to class in the “short bus,” with the derisive laughter that goes along.
   And, wit’ all doo respeck, those announcements at high school graduation still tend to differentiate between four- and two-year colleges, with a clear preference for the former and, as you note, Sherwood, an assumption that the two-years are only prep for “the real thing.”
   So there remains not only a gap between how we tell kids it works and how it does work, but also between what we say we want and what we are willing to pay for. We want our kids to do as well as those German kids and those Japanese kids, but we don’t want to pay to retool our schools and make it a practical goal.
   Nor are we willing to support the system we’ve promoted. As said, the stories of six-figure debt are not typical, but even 13 grand is too much, and, if the kids were fools to pile up that kind of debt, they weren’t the ones who came up with the idea of buying a bridge.

7. Mike Peterson

   And, phred, it is interesting to read “Tom Brown at Oxford,” (1861), “Stover at Yale,” (1912) and “This Side of Paradise” (1920) to see the recurring themes of the feckless rich kids versus the serious student, particularly in the first two. Stover has a recurring song, “Oh Mommy and Daddy pay all the bills and we have all the fun,” while good, honest Tom Brown finds that the somewhat older student whom everyone else looks down on, and who waits tables to pay his way, is the son of a naval veteran living on a half-pay pension in the wake of the war and, in terms of character, that the older lad is much the superior of the rich boys who run up exorbitant bills with nary a thought of where the money comes from.
   Maybe it’s time for some contemporary writer to rip off old Thomas Hughes one more time, though he’d probably have to self-publish the resulting novel.

8. Mike Peterson

   And, Ruth Anne, the history of public education is largely the history of workforce development, particularly when we moved from small towns to cities. Jacob Riis and other reformers wanted kids to have a chance in life, but there was also the factor that the unions wanted the kids out of the factories and the police wanted them off the streets and the bigots wanted them to learn English, dammit. But at the core was the need to end the grinding poverty of the cities and make the kids a gain to society instead of a burden.
   All of which can be summarized in the much kinder sounding term “workforce development.”
   Oh, and, by the way, if you have a capable workforce at your business, you didn’t build that.

9. Brian O'Connell

   Hey! My first vist to your site, re-directed by Matt. Then spent an hour perusing back commentary. Good stuff!Greetings from China.

10. Mike Peterson

    The more the merrier, Brian. And now when I see little flags pop up from China on my globe thingy, I’ll know that at least one of them isn’t a spambot!