When I was a student, my contemporaries and I repeatedly heard the story that if we worked hard and did well—and certainly if we went to college and received a degree—we’d have a secure job for the rest of our lives. Back then, the idea that a person with a college degree would be out of work was preposterous. The only reason that a college‐educated person would not have a job was if he or she didn’t want a job.
I left college in 1972 and I, for one, did not want a job. I’d been going to school since I was five, and I wanted a break. I wanted to find myself, so I decided to go to India, where I thought I might be. I didn’t get to India, as it happens. I only got as far as London, where there are a lot of Indian restaurants. But I never doubted that whenever I decided to get a job, I would just go out and get one.
It’s not like that now. Students leaving college are no longer guaranteed a job in the field for which they may be qualified. Many graduates leaving top universities are finding themselves doing relatively unskilled work or heading home again to figure out their next move. In fact, in January 2004, the number of unemployed American college graduates actually exceeded the number of unemployed high school dropouts. It’s difficult to believe that this would be possible, but in fact, it is.
Problems for college graduates exist in many places in the world. A report from the Association of Graduate Recruiters in the UK noted that 3.4 percent fewer college‐level job openings were available in 2003 than in the previous year. An average of forty‐two people applied for each of these jobs, as opposed to thirty‐seven the year before, meaning that the scramble for good jobs is becoming more frantic, even with a high‐level education. China, which boasts the world’s fastest‐growing economy, has seen huge numbers of college graduates (some estimates have it at 30 percent of the more than three million who graduate annually) going unemployed. What will happen when their economy slows down?
It is still true, though, that anybody starting out in the job market is better off having a college education than not having one. A recent U.S. Census Bureau report indicates that college graduates can expect to earn in excess of $1 million more than people with only high school degrees over their lifetimes. Those with professional degrees can earn greater than $3 million more.
But the plain fact is that a college degree is not worth a fraction of what it once was. A degree was once a passport to a good job. Now, at best, it’s a visa. It only gives you provisional residence in the job market. This is not because the standards of college degrees are lower than they used to be. That’s very hard to judge. It’s mainly because so many more people have them now. In the industrial period, most people did manual and blue‐collar work, and only a minority actually went to college. Those who did found that their degree certificates were like Willy Wonka’s golden ticket. Now, with so many people graduating college, four‐year degrees are more like the shiny paper in which they wrap the chocolate bars.
Why are there so many more college graduates? The first reason is that, in the developed world at least, the new economies of the twenty‐first century are driven more and more by innovations in digital technologies and information systems. They depend less on manual work and more and more on what my uncle used to call “head work.” So higher levels of education are essential for more and more people.
The second reason is that there are simply more people in the world now than ever before. The population of the world, as I noted earlier, has doubled in the last thirty years from three to six billion and may be heading for nine billion by the middle of the century. Putting these factors together, some estimates suggest that more people will be graduating from higher education in the next thirty years than the total number since the beginning of history.
According to the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD), in the decade from 1995 to 2005, the graduation rates of the countries with the most powerful economies grew 12 percent. More than 80 percent of young Australians graduate from college now, while nearly the same percentage of Norwegians do. More than 60 percent of American students get college degrees. In China, more than 17 percent percent of college‐age students go to college, and this percentage is increasing rapidly. Not long ago, it was closer to 4 percent.
One of the results of this huge growth in higher education is that the competition to get into many universities—even those beyond the vaunted first tier—has become increasingly intense. This pressure is driving a new profession of commercial coaches and college preparatory cramming programs. This is especially true in Japan, where “cram schools” exist all over the country. There are actually chains of them. These operations teach pre‐schoolers, sometimes even one‐year‐olds, to prepare for entrance exams to prestigious elementary schools (the necessary first step toward placement in a high‐level Japanese university). There, small children perform drills in literature, grammar, math, and a wide variety of other subjects to gain an edge on their “competition.” So much for recess and arts and crafts. It’s a common belief that a potential Japanese executive’s future is largely determined by the time he or she enters first grade.
This is also the case in the United States and in other parts of the world. In cities like Los Angeles and New York, there is fierce competition for places in particular kindergarten schools. Children are being interviewed at the age of three to see if they are suitable material. I assume that earnest selection panels are thumbing through the résumés of these toddlers, assessing their achievements to date—“You mean this is it? You’ve been around for almost thirty‐six months, and this is all you’ve done? You seem to have spent the first six months doing nothing but lying around and gurgling.”
Cram schools exist all over the globe. In England, cram schools focus on getting kids through college entrance exams, as do SAT prep courses in the United States. In India, cram schools known as “tutorials” help students drive through competitive tests. In Turkey, the dershane system pushes students toward getting ahead, with extensive programs for students on weekends and after school during the week.
It’s difficult to believe that an education system that places this kind of pressure on children is of benefit to anyone—the children or their communities. Most countries are making efforts to reform education. In my view, they are going about it in exactly the wrong way.
Reforming Education
Nearly every system of public education on earth is in the process of being reformed—in Asia, the Americas, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. There are two main reasons. The first is economic. Every region in the world is facing the same economic challenge—how to educate their people to find work and create wealth in a world that is changing faster than ever. The second reason is cultural. Communities throughout the world want to take advantage of globalization, but they don’t want to lose their own identities in the process. France wants to stay French, for example, and Japan wants to stay Japanese. Cultural identities are always evolving, but education is one of the ways in which communities try to control the rate of change. This is why there’s always such heat generated around the content of education.