Some pundits contend the United States needs more college graduates to maintain its position as a global economic power. PBS recently explored that argument with a panel discussion featuring former U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings. While Spellings supported the notion that more Americans need a college education, George Leef, director of research at the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, offered a different argument. Leef discussed the debate and the topic with Donna Martinez for Carolina Journal Radio. (Click here to find a station near you or to learn about the weekly CJ Radio podcast.)
Martinez: Congratulations, first of all. It’s quite an honor for you to be included in this panel on a PBS program.
Leef: Well, I was delighted when I got an e-mail from this PBS producer back in January, asking if I wanted to participate in this event, which took place at the National Press Club.
Martinez: In Washington, D.C.
Leef: Replete with makeup and all that stuff. I could hardly have turned it down, and it was quite an experience.
Martinez: Well, it’s quite a topic as well, because we hear this a lot, George — we need to send as many kids as possible on to college, and that is the only way they are going to be prosperous and successful in life.
Leef: And that the country will become, remain, economically competitive, supposedly.
Martinez: Let’s talk about the essence of the two arguments in this debate.
Leef: Yes.
Martinez: First of all, explain the side that you are on.
Leef: Well, I was on the negative side of this question, along with Professor Richard Vedder, an economics professor at Ohio University who has written a lot about this, including a book entitled Going Broke by Degree.
Martinez: The other side of the argument?
Leef: The other side was former Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, and her partner was Michael Lomax, who is the president of the United Negro College Fund.
Martinez: Let’s talk about the key arguments of the other side. As you have written about this experience and actually reflected what went on in this debate, first of all, they talk about opportunity.
Leef: Yes. They said that getting a college degree is a great opportunity — that people who get these degrees can break out of a long family history of poverty, for instance, and become successful. Sometimes that’s true. But oftentimes, getting a college degree is of no particular benefit to the people who earn them, and it costs them a lot of money and time to get it.
Martinez: Now the other side also says, but you know what, if they have a college degree they are going to make substantially more over their lifetime.
Leef: Yes, this is an argument made all the time — that on the average, college graduates earn $1 million more. Margaret Spellings started off with that argument. Well, first of all, that number has been debunked — the million dollars. But even more importantly than exactly what that is — $279,000 or $1 million or whatever it is — that’s an average. It doesn’t mean anything about the next person who gets a college degree. It doesn’t ensure that he will gain this added earning power over his lifetime. And we know that a lot of young college graduates — in fact, even some that aren’t so young, maybe in their 30s — are today working at jobs that call for no academic preparation and don’t pay very well. Jobs like being the theater ushers or working at rental car counters. There’s no college premium just to have a diploma on the wall if you’re working at those sorts of jobs. And many college graduates now are.
Martinez: Let’s talk about the nature of today’s economy because it seems to also be a key argument from folks who believe that more and more people should go to college and that that is what helps our economy in this country. Are we at a point in the economy where a lot of people need to have a college degree because we’re knowledge-based?
Leef: No. That’s a buzzword that you hear all the time — we’re in a knowledge economy — as if that somehow meant that all of the work that requires anything other than advanced academic knowledge is somehow disappearing. It’s not true. The backbone of the American economy is the same as it has been for many, many decades — making things, delivering things, fixing things, clerks, retail clerks. There are all kinds of jobs in the economy that do not require any great academic preparation. Most employers are simply looking for people who are trainable, have decent, basic skills and the right attitude toward work.
Martinez: Now the type of jobs that you’ve just mentioned, George, a lot of them sound like they’re part of the service economy. It leads me to my next question: Are we in this country falling behind the rest of the world?
Leef: Again the answer is no. It’s true that a few countries now have a slightly higher percentage of people in their work forces who have college degrees than in the U.S. To that I say: So what? … We’ve already gone past the point of diminishing returns in the United States. As I pointed out just minutes ago, we have a huge glut of people with low-grade college credentials working in jobs that don’t call for any academic preparation. The idea that we somehow will boost the economy up by taking even more marginal students and putting them through college is simply ridiculous.
Martinez: What kind of reaction do you get, George, not just in the debate setting at the National Press Club, but just among friends and colleagues and the general public when you express this view? Because you understand, this is counter to conventional wisdom.
Leef: Yes, this is counter to the conventional wisdom. Every now and then I do run into someone who thinks that I must be off my rocker for saying these things. It’s so much the conventional wisdom that getting a college degree is essential to success these days. But then you point out — and many people know these anecdotes about the kid who has his college degree and is now selling shoes in the mall or ushering at the theater — and point out that this is not just an occasional anecdote. There is a huge glut of young people with college degrees for whom there are no high-paying, advanced jobs. And also, a lot of these young people didn’t actually gain much knowledge or skill in college because college has been so dumbed down over the last few decades.
Martinez: In fact, you write a lot about what I believe you term “credential inflation.” What is that?
Leef: Well, because we have such a glut of people in the labor force with college credentials, a lot of companies now will not even consider people who don’t have a college degree for even very simple jobs like working at a rental car counter. That’s credential inflation. And the more people we put through college, the worse it gets, which makes it harder for people who don’t have college degrees to find any sort of good work.
Martinez: I suspect, though, if you make this argument, there are going to be people who say, “You know what, OK, maybe you’re right on the statistics. Yes, you’re right, I know some folks who have a degree, and they’re working at the restaurant down the street. But isn’t it just a good thing that people would go to college and be learning things? Isn’t that just a societal good?”
Leef: You might be inclined to think that. As college was decades ago, where students had to take truly mind-expanding courses in literature and philosophy, that might have been true. But those kind of courses have dropped out of the college curriculum these days, and many of the people who go through college don’t get much in the way of those mind-expanding citizenship kinds of courses, and they don’t gain much practical skill, either.