Re: Re: Study says college isn’t for everyone

[Guest guest]

I started college about that same time. I also noticed that about half of the students had no interest in being in college other than their parents told them it was college or get a job or join the military. In effect, they were playing at high school for another few years, although at a high financial cost to their parents. Those students made college miserable for the roughly 1/3 who were serious students.

I've been saying for a long time that the school system in the US was misdirected. Not all schools need to be college prep. Indeed only a few really need to be. The rest can be vocationally oriented but still provide a solid civics education at the same time. This really would have been useful because there will also be a strong demand for what the article calls "mid-skill" jobs.

Even as it is most schools are failing. When businesses have to spend money teaching absolute basics like simple math, etc., you know the schools are failing and need reform. Same goes with colleges because of the high number of remedial classes. I'll admit to taking a remedial math class when I went back to college but that was because it had been something like 10 years since my last math class and I was very rusty at my worst subject. It made sense to take one so I could brush up before attempting college level math courses.

In a message dated 2/3/2011 12:49:56 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, no_reply writes:

Everything in this article was something I learned in college back around 1991. That was a state school. Pity I didn't know that harvard was doing the study now. I could have gone to Harvard and taught a class on this subject. Administrator