George Leef’s interview on the wisdom of the mantra that every HS grad must go to college really hit home with me today.
As part of a graduate student team consulting with a rural school system in the Midwest, I have been interviewing parents, teachers and taxpayers. One of the things that appears often in the commentary is the fact that parents and students have been told and sold on the idea that college for every kid is imperative.
The result? Their kids graduate from college and can find no jobs in the local community, unless they take minimum wage jobs at places like McDonald’s (a great place to get a first leg up, not a great destination for college-educated students trained for white-collar work).
So most graduates leave for better opportunities, the community is steadily shrinking, and at the same time it’s starving for a supply of grocers, plumbers, barkeeps, farmers, mechanics and others with the necessary technical and manual skills to keep ordinary activities humming.