Jay P. Greene and Marcus Winters are skeptical that presidential hopeful John Kerry's plans to increase funding for college will solve America's educational problems:
Unfortunately, while it may be desirable to engage more young people in public service, Kerry's plan is unlikely to significantly increase the number of students who enroll in college. Contrary to popular belief, the evidence indicates that the cost of tuition prevents very few students from pursuing a college degree. The problem isn't that students can't afford college — it's that not enough students possess the academic qualifications necessary even to apply. This cannot be fixed through better financing for tuition: It requires reforming K-12 education.
Emphasis mine. This is also why I oppose quota-driven and double-standard AA programs.
In order to even be considered for admission at almost any four-year college, students must meet three requirements. They must have earned a high-school diploma, have completed a minimum number of academic courses (usually a prescribed number of English, math, and science classes), and they must also be able to read at a basic level.
Using data provided by the U.S. Department of Education, a recent study by the Manhattan Institute estimated the number of students in the nation who were college ready. The study found that nationally only 32 percent of students leave high school prepared to apply to college. The picture is particularly bleak for minorities: Just 20 percent of African-American students and 16 percent of Hispanic students are even eligible to apply to a four-year college at the end of high school.
...no plan can increase college participation simply by providing greater access to funds. And since nearly all minority students eligible to enroll in college already do, attempting to increase their number by expanding affirmative-action policies is similarly futile.
This is why I support measures like NCLB, flawed though they might be, because such plans focus on where the real problems lie. Anyone who thinks the American educational system can be fixed by throwing college tuition money at underprepared students is living in fantasyland.
Unfortunately, such folk are also in the politically correct majority, because so few are willing to say, as Green and Winters do:
Even if college were free — or, for that matter, even if we paid students to attend — students who are this poorly prepared simply can't be admitted.
Posted by kswygert at May 12, 2004 10:40 AM