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For Most People,
College Is a Waste of Time
By CHARLES MURRAY
August 13, 2008; Page A17
Imagine that America had no system of post-secondary education, and
you were a member of a task force assigned to create one from scratch.
One of your colleagues submits this proposal:
First, we will set up a single goal to represent educational success,
which will take four years to achieve no matter what is being taught.
We will attach an economic reward to it that seldom has anything to do
with what has been learned. We will urge large numbers of people who
do not possess adequate ability to try to achieve the goal, wait until
they have spent a lot of time and money, and then deny it to them. We
will stigmatize everyone who doesn't meet the goal. We will call the
goal a "BA."
You would conclude that your colleague was cruel, not to say insane.
But that's the system we have in place.
Finding a better way should be easy. The BA acquired its current
inflated status by accident. Advanced skills for people with brains
really did get more valuable over the course of the 20th century, but
the acquisition of those skills got conflated with the existing system
of colleges, which had evolved the BA for completely different
purposes.
Outside a handful of majors -- engineering and some of the sciences --
a bachelor's degree tells an employer nothing except that the
applicant has a certain amount of intellectual ability and
perseverance. Even a degree in a vocational major like business
administration can mean anything from a solid base of knowledge to
four years of barely remembered gut courses.
The solution is not better degrees, but no degrees. Young people
entering the job market should have a known, trusted measure of their
qualifications they can carry into job interviews. That measure should
express what they know, not where they learned it or how long it took
them. They need a certification, not a degree.
The model is the CPA exam that qualifies certified public accountants.
The same test is used nationwide. It is thorough -- four sections,
timed, totaling 14 hours. A passing score indicates authentic
competence (the pass rate is below 50%). Actual scores are re****ted in
addition to pass/fail, so that employers can *****s where the
applicant falls in the distribution of accounting competence. You may
have learned accounting at an anonymous online university, but your
CPA score gives you a way to show employers you're a stronger
applicant than someone from an Ivy League school.
The merits of a CPA-like certification exam apply to any college major
for which the BA is now used as a job qualification. To name just some
of them: criminal justice, social work, public administration and the
many separate majors under the headings of business, computer science
and education. Such majors accounted for almost two-thirds of the
bachelor's degrees conferred in 2005. For that matter, certification
tests can be used for purely academic disciplines. Why not present
graduate schools with certifications in microbiology or economics --
and who cares if the applicants passed the exam after studying in the
local public library?
Certification tests need not undermine the incentives to get a
traditional liberal-arts education. If professional and graduate
schools want students who have acquired one, all they need do is
require certification scores in the appropriate disciplines. Students
facing such requirements are likely to get a much better liberal
education than even our most elite schools require now.
Certification tests will not get rid of the problems associated with
differences in intellectual ability: People with high intellectual
ability will still have an edge. Graduates of prestigious colleges
will still, on average, have higher certification scores than people
who have taken online courses -- just because prestigious colleges
attract intellectually talented applicants.
But that's irrelevant to the larger issue. Under a certification
system, four years is not required, residence is not required,
expensive tuitions are not required, and a degree is not required.
Equal educational op****tunity means, among other things, creating a
society in which it's what you know that makes the difference.
Substituting certifications for degrees would be a big step in that
direction.
The incentives are right. Certification tests would provide all
employers with valuable, trustworthy information about job applicants.
They would benefit young people who cannot or do not want to attend a
traditional four-year college. They would be welcomed by the growing
post-secondary online educational industry, which cannot offer the
halo effect of a BA from a traditional college, but can realistically
promise their students good training for a certification test -- as
good as they are likely to get at a traditional college, for a lot
less money and in a lot less time.
Certification tests would disadvantage just one set of people:
Students who have gotten into well-known traditional schools, but who
are coasting through their years in college and would score poorly on
a certification test. Disadvantaging them is an outcome devoutly to be
wished.
No technical barriers stand in the way of evolving toward a system
where certification tests would replace the BA. Hundreds of
certification tests already exist, for everything from building code
inspectors to advanced medical specialties. The problem is a shortage
of tests that are nationally accepted, like the CPA exam.
But when so many of the players would benefit, a market op****tunity
exists. If a high-profile testing company such as the Educational
Testing Service were to reach a strategic decision to create
definitive certification tests, it could coordinate with major
employers, professional groups and nontraditional universities to make
its tests the gold standard. A handful of key decisions could produce
a tipping effect. Imagine if Microsoft announced it would henceforth
require scores on a certain battery of certification tests from all of
its programming applicants. Scores on that battery would acquire
instant credibility for programming job applicants throughout the
industry.
An educational world based on certification tests would be a better
place in many ways, but the overarching benefit is that the line
between college and noncollege competencies would be blurred. Hardly
any jobs would still have the BA as a requirement for a shot at being
hired. Op****tunities would be wider and fairer, and the stigma of not
having a BA would diminish.
Most im****tant in an increasingly class-riven America: The
demonstration of competency in business administration or European
history would, appropriately, take on similarities to the
demonstration of competency in cooking or welding. Our obsession with
the BA has created a two-tiered entry to adulthood, anointing some for
admission to the club and labeling the rest as second-best.
Here's the reality: Everyone in every occupation starts as an
apprentice. Those who are good enough become journeymen. The best
become master craftsmen. This is as true of business executives and
history professors as of chefs and welders. Getting rid of the BA and
replacing it with evidence of competence -- treating post-secondary
education as apprentice****ps for everyone -- is one way to help us to
recognize that common bond.
Mr. Murray is the W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise
Institute. This essay is adapted from his forthcoming book, "Real
Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to
Reality" (Crown Forum).
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"But you don't look like a Pakistanian!"
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you,
then they fight you, then you win."
--- Gandhi
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