Plan B - Skip College

Interesting New York Times article about researchers and public policy thinkers who see the revival of vocational training as a superior life-path for a large segment of students.

"Perhaps no more than half of those who began a four-year bachelor’s degree program in the fall of 2006 will get that degree within six years, according to the latest projections from the Department of Education. (The figures don’t include transfer students, who aren’t tracked.)

For college students who ranked among the bottom quarter of their high school classes, the numbers are even more stark: 80 percent will probably never get a bachelor’s degree or even a two-year associate’s degree.

That can be a lot of tuition to pay, without a degree to show for it."

Hattip to Don Hauptman.

College reading ability and comprehension

"But people with average reading ability do not understand much of the text in the assigned readings. They take away a mishmash of half-understood information and outright misunderstandings that probably leave them under the illusion they know something they do not."

The consequence of which I think we see every day.

From Charles Murray's latest book Real Education, a book filled, by turns, with excellent insights and questionable reasoning.