That’s the headline on a blog entry at Phi Beta Cons by George Leef, director of the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy in North Carolina. In his post, he directs our attention to an article about high-achieving students in England who choose jobs in manufacturing over university.

From “College Oversold, but Some Aren’t Buying“:

The Guardian published a fascinating piece on April 12 entitled “High-achieving students sailing through life without a degree.” The writer interviewed several excellent students who have gone straight into the workforce and are doing well without a college degree. Jamie Ponting, for example, at 19 decided against a university education (and 30,000 pounds of debt) to go to work full time for a firm where he had done a summer internship.

Another student, Katy Pascoe, went to work for a firm that builds yachts. Katy thinks she has excellent prospects with the firm if she successfully completes her internship, which for the first year included classroom learning. There’s a strong motivation!

The article also mentions a survey of university students showing that two-thirds do not believe they will find work relating to their degree, and a fourth saying that they think they’d have been better off with an apprenticeship or on-the-job training.

Would young people like those be any more productive if they had first spent years and lots of money to earn a college degree? I don’t think that case can be made.

PBS “Newshour” last night featured an excerpt of a good debate on the educational and economic value of increasing the number of college students. (We had previously noted the discussion in this post citing George Leef’s column.) The show’s description:

Miller Center Debate: Does the U.S. Need More Grads?

March 17, 2010 3:00 PM 

Editor’s note: Paul [Solman] recently moderated a Miller Center debate on whether the United States must dramatically increase its number of college-educated citizens to remain a leading economic power. Former Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and Michael Lomax, president of the United Negro College Fund, argued that the United States needs more graduates to maintain its economic might, while George Leef, director of research at the John William Pope Center for Higher Education in North Carolina, and Richard Vedder, professor of economics at Ohio University, argued that many jobs being created today don’t require college degrees.

You can see an excerpt of the debate on Wednesday’s NewsHour, or watch the full debate below or at the Miller Center’s Web site.

In the excerpt, Secretary Spellings and especially Michael Lomax attempted to redefine the debate topic away from the economic value of increasing the number of graduates from four-year colleges to the social/cultural/esteem benefits of ensuring additional minority enrollment. On that point, one wonders how much real benefit there is from impelling more students into four-year college educations, which are already too often mediocre or irrelevant to one’s life in the working world.

And how about a cost-benefit analysis? Is increased federal subsidization of college enrollments really a good use of the taxpayers’ dollars?

George Leef of the Pope Center for Higher Education reviews Charles Murray’s new book, “Real Education.” Both critique a four-year baccalaureate program for being more a credentialing mechanism than one that maximizes talents or rationally reflects the needs of the economy. From Leef’s review:

Consider a young man who is at the 70th percentile in language and mathematical ability. He is easily a good enough student to get into mid-level universities. As far as his “people skills” go he is average, but in small motor and spatial skills, he’s at the 95th percentile. The fellow could go to college and get a degree that would put him on track for a management job – where he probably wouldn’t rise far because he’ll be competing with many others who have better skills.

On the other hand, he could become an excellent electrician. If he were to do that, he would probably earn substantially more than if he became a manager and also enjoy far greater job security. Moreover, there is the important matter of personal satisfaction. Our young man will probably have far more of it in a career where he can see tangible results every day and quite possibly become his own boss.

Conclusion: “(G)uidance counselors and parents who automatically encourage young people to go to college straight out of high school regardless of their skills and interests are being thoughtless about the best interests of young people in their charge.” Murray has that exactly right. We need to break out of the mindset that you can’t be a success in life unless you have a college degree.

Murray is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. AEI’s web page for his book includes an intriguing plug for the book from Tom Wolfe:

Charles Murray is one professional contrarian who cannot be written off–not since his first book, Losing Ground, led to a complete restructuring of America’s welfare system. At first Real Education, with its plan for identifying ‘the elite,’ may strike you as an elaboration of his hotly contested views on IQ. But suddenly–swock!–he pops a gasper: a practical plan for literally reproducing, re-creating, a new generation of Jeffersons, Adamses, Franklins, and Hamiltons, educated, drilled, steeped, marinated in those worthies’ concern for the Good and Virtuous with a capital V–nothing less than an elite of Founding Great-great-great-great-great Grandchildren.”