A now deleted discussion on the message boards of this site deals with an article by Charles Murray (a commentary on his book titled Real Education), advancing four simple truths:  (1) Ability varies; (2) Half of children are below average; (3) Too many people are going to college; and (4) America's future depends on how we educate the academically gifted.  This article was prompted by that discussion.

It is widely believed in the United States that anyone with a moderate amount of intelligence should and will earn a college degree.  So-called higher education is not for the best and brightest or for the more ambitious but for everyone – average people and possibly even those with considerably less than average aptitude for academic work.  We say, "You can't get a decent-paying job without a college education" (even, in many instances, when the job does not require academic knowledge).  The implication is that anyone who lacks a college education is very stupid or very lazy or both.  At the very least – so the thinking goes – one should have completed a two-year program at a community college, preferably one that includes a nucleus of academic (as contrasted to "technical") subjects.

Not very long ago, having a college degree signified that one was exceptional, at least a notch above average in intelligence and academic aptitude.  Now, we consider such a view to be elitist and undemocratic.  We have adopted the Lake Woebegone Viewpoint, named after the fictional town of Lake Woebegone, in which all the children are "above average" (which is, of course, statistically impossible unless everyone is the same).

The grand illusion that we are entertaining is that we are raising the figure that represents "average."  The truth is, of course, that, no matter how high the average is, many people (roughly half) will be at or below that figure.  It's a statistical fact.  An even more telling fact is that we lower the average when everyone goes to college; we do not raise it.

Let's see how that has worked.  (This is not intended to be a history of public education, just a brief summary.)  Public education in our democracy was originally intended to ensure that all children had the opportunity to learn the fundamentals of reading, writing, and arithmetic.  Other subjects, such as science and history, were also part of the curriculum; having a high school diploma signified having verbal and mathematical literacy, together with a basic knowledge of other academic subjects.  Initially, only a small minority went on to "higher education."  By the mid-twentieth century, high school students were divided into those whose formal education was most likely to end there and "college prep" students, whose academic skills or interests suggested that they would go on to more advanced and specialized studies.  The latter still constituted a minority.

Around the last third of the 20th century, a system of publicly financed community colleges developed.  Their purpose was twofold – to provide "terminal" technical education in nonacademic fields (thus supplementing trade schools) and to serve as a bridge to four-year colleges (an affordable way to complete the first two years of a core academic curriculum, a way for students to determine whether they were better suited for academic work or for technical work, and so on).  These colleges were a good idea in theory, but they soon acquired a reputation (deserved or not) for being mostly institutions for students whose high school records indicated that they were unprepared for the academic demands of four-year colleges and universities.

To be sure, some students with lesser academic ability use the community college to acquire training in technical fields, and others use them to complete a core curriculum prior to transferring as juniors into four-year colleges (where some are successful).  However, since anyone can gain admission, community colleges have become havens for students with little academic aptitude.  They constitute the "13th and 14th grades" – not a true "college" education but institutions where students try to do essentially high school work to make up for their own or their schools' failures.  These are not students who are ready for collegiate academic work; they are people who have high school diplomas that they should never have received.  Not surprisingly, up to a third to half of community college admissions do so poorly on placement tests that they must take noncredit remedial classes.  Standards are so low in these classes that many who pass are still unable to do the academic work in the regular classes, where, in turn, what is needed to pass is, at best, 9th-grade performance.

The rationale behind the view that "everyone should go to college" is partly or mostly based on the conviction that today's jobs or careers require this advanced education.  While this may be somewhat true, it is overstated.  Many excellent careers are available to people with technical skills, and many individuals can succeed in business without advanced academic learning.  What we are tacitly admitting when we say that everyone should go to college is that we're giving children twelve years of education that prepares them to do almost nothing.  It isn't that we've become a society in which everyone needs to be a scholar; it's that we have a primary and secondary educational system that doesn't prepare students to do anything but the kind of work that requires no education at all.  If everyone should go to college, it's mostly because they've wasted twelve years in school before they go to college.  Then, bit by bit, colleges are forced to teach what should have been learned in high school.

While this lowering of standards and expectations is certainly true of the community colleges, it has infected the senior colleges and universities as well.  Indeed, some so-called elite institutions have been able to maintain high academic standards, and some departments within certain colleges continue to produce graduates who are experts and scholars within certain disciplines. Nevertheless, huge numbers of college graduates today have achieved a level of learning that is lower than that of an average high school graduate fifty or sixty years ago.  They can write, but they cannot write well.  They can read, but only with minimal comprehension, and any reading that involves sophisticated concepts is beyond them altogether.  Their knowledge of math is abysmal; they may be unable, for example, to compute percentages or to deal with fractions.  They do not grasp even the rudiments of science.  They have little knowledge of history, of the events and ideas that have shaped the world in which they live, and even less of geography.

Significantly, they can be very outspoken in saying why it is absolutely unimportant to know any of these things.  They are not only oblivious to the facts but unaware of the uses to which knowledge of the facts can be put.  They are satisfied to base what few ideas they have on unsupported beliefs (even the opinions of equally ignorant peers) rather than on fact-based knowledge.  Ignorance is bliss, and intellectual curiosity is dead as the Dodo bird (an allusion that they wouldn't get anyway – "What's a Dodo bird?  A Disney cartoon character?").

As one comment quoted on the message board says, "The bottom line is that colleges and universities have become an extension of high school."  Even more to the point is that they have become institutions that are, for the most part, trying to make up for deficiencies in the high schools, trying to teach what should have been taught there and even earlier.  They are doing this at huge costs to the taxpayer (who has already, via taxes, subsidized twelve years of schooling) and to parents who must pay increasingly exorbitant sums out of pocket.  Community colleges may be comparatively inexpensive, but we are still being bilked, considering that we're supporting instruction in remedial work that would not have been necessary if high schools had been doing their jobs.

Some comments suggest that the rising costs of college education represent something like a vast conspiracy by the government in collusion with the educational institutions.  There is probably some truth to that; the illusion that everybody needs to go to college (even if great numbers of them flunk out) lines a lot of pockets, and it prevents any serious attempts at educational reform at the level where real reform is needed.  Why worry whether Johnny and Jane waste four years in high school when they can make up for it in college, with Mom and Dad paying tuition fees that are rising at several times the rate of inflation?

However, there is more to it than that.  The reason that universities and colleges can get away with this gigantic rip-off is that taxpayer-subsidized primary and secondary public education has failed to do its job; therefore, the demand for the services provided by the colleges (however watered down this education may have become) is extremely high.  When the demand for a service is that high, providers of the service can name their own price.  That is elementary economics.  "Consumers" are not demanding accountability from the schools, so the public is partly to blame for having to pay the inflated prices for more education.  Reform of education is not very high on most voters' priority lists; therefore, politicians give short shrift to this issue.  The price we are paying for indifference to and apathy about our failing schools is enormous, and the cost is not only in dollars but in the squandering of our most precious asset – the nation's young people.

The short answer to whether everybody should go to college is "No."  However, as long as public education up to the college level is inadequate in both academic preparation and vocational preparation, everyone will feel that college is the only viable route.  People who would be better off with technical training, those who are not academically inclined, those who don't really want to spend four more years in school (except to get a piece of paper that reads "possible admission to a better job"), and many others will continue to flock to junior colleges, colleges, and universities, where their mere presence will lower standards and inevitably lessen the value of a college degree.

The way to stop this downward spiral is to address the cause:  Reform primary and – especially – secondary education.  Then, large numbers of high school graduates will have earned diplomas that mean something, will be prepared for decent-paying jobs in the workplace, and will not need to go to college.  A college or university education will then return to being primarily (if not exclusively) for the best and brightest, future leaders, and people who want to enter the professions.

Our present view does not well serve the "academically challenged"; it only frustrates them and prolongs the road to ultimate failure, a road paved with illusions.  More significantly, it does not well serve the "academically gifted," upon whom, as Murray says, America's future depends.