Over at Unqualified Offerings, Thoreau offers a provocative comment on class and higher education:
Today (OK, yesterday, but I didn’t really sleep on the plane, so it’s still yesterday, or tomorrow is also today, or something) a friend offered (without necessarily endorsing) the theory that one reason why we try to get everyone to go to college is because it legitimizes a class system: If everybody gets the chance to try college, then their failure to attain economic success must be their own fault.
It’s an interesting idea. I’m not sure I agree with it (though I’m not sure I agree with Thoreau’s counter-arguments, either), but it did make me stop and think. The comments are worth a read as well, especially the first comment about expensive file clerks. And, of course, it probably says something about the blog-reading public that the second comment immediately flips the discussion to how graduate school is a scam.
I don’t have anything all that concrete to say about the main topic at this time– I need to think about it a little more. One thing that it does suggest, though, particularly taking the original remark together with the first comment, is that the focus of education reform ought to be on improving the quality of public high school education, and trying to ensure that people with a high school education can make a good life for themselves.