Thursday, 30 August 2007
Beshear on Education (Not Jobs)
I was reading the Courier Journal this morning and came across the headline, Beshear proposes to add jobs, send more students to college. Ok, lets see what his big ideas are for jobs and sending more students to college. I read the article and reread the article and no where did it mention how he was going to create more jobs. So much for accurate head lines. But it did talk about his higher education goals.
Democratic gubernatorial nominee Steve Beshear announced plans yesterday to create jobs and send more students to college.
"My goal is to double the number of degree-holders by the year 2020," Beshear said, adding that would bring the total to about 800,000. "To do this, we must make higher education more affordable."
Beshear offers a couple of plans for getting there.
His first idea is another government give-a-way. He wants to create a special loan called the Kentucky First Scholarship Program that would forgive a loan for every year a graduate works in Kentucky. This might seem like a really good idea until you consider who will apply for these "loans". People who plan on living in Kentucky after they graduate. It would be silly to take this loan if you were planning on moving after graduation. At the end of the day it is not going to create a new incentive to keep people here, but create another free ride for those living in Kentucky.
Next Beshear turned his focus to increasing the number of degrees in Kentucky where he came out with a number of ridiculous suggestions.
- Re-enrolling adults who are no longer in school but near completion of their degree.
- Pursuing opportunities to give college credit for work experience.
- Continuing efforts to strengthen agreements between public post-secondary institutions to accept credits from other schools so coursework doesn't have to be repeated.
What good is it going to do to re-enroll students who dropped out of college? They dropped out for a reason. The state government asking them to re-enroll is not going to get these people back in school. First off, these people have jobs and don't have time to go back to school. Secondly, if they cared about a college degree they would have completed it the first time. To think otherwise is just silly.
Giving college credit for work experience is an even worse idea. College is about developing the skills necessary to think for yourself and to provide a framework for solving problems rationally. Not about developing specific job skills. The analytical tools gained in college allow one to learn the skills necessary for a job. Learning how to do a job does not necessarily build up the analytical skills necessary for a degree. The correlation between degrees and jobs is not reflexive. And to treat it as such only cheapens the meaning of the degree.
Beshear's last idea will force the universities to accept more credits from junior colleges regardless of the quality of those schools. And in the process cheapening the value of those degrees.
Which brings us to the whole problem with his goal. To double the people with degrees in Kentucky in such a short period of time can only be obtained by making it easier to get a degree. Which in turn cheapens the value of the degree for those who already have one. The real goal for higher education in this state should be to increase the quality of the degrees that are already offered. If we have some of the best schools in the nation it will attract the best people from around the country. And people tend to live near where they went to school. Meaning that many of the people who come here for the high quality education will stay and make Kentucky a better state. That would be real education reform. Not the bad ideas proposed by Beshear.
