Just as the debate over resources has simmered down with a debt deal in Washington, policy analysts heated things up at a forum in New York City over the precious resources in higher education.
Hosted by the Century Foundation, a public policy think tank, the panel discussion “Who Deserves a College Education?” zoomed in on the argument that too many people are going to college and recent challenges to affirmative action.
“Right now, in this current economic environment these issues become razor sharp—people tend to be more magnanimous about issues of diversity and who gets in colleges when everybody is making money and doing well,” said Christy DeBoe Hicks, vice president for public affairs at the Century Foundation.
Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the foundation, rebuffed the argument that too many people are filling up seats on college campuses.
“In the 1980s, college graduates earned about 40 percent more than high school graduates,” said Kahlenberg. “Today, college graduates earn about 74 percent more than high school graduates. So the advantage of going to college has increased. Supply and demand are out of whack.”
While the panel took place at the Century Foundation’s offices in Manhattan, Kahlenberg and panelist Dr. Ann Marcus, director of the Steinhardt Institute of Higher Education Policy, drew from a debate that’s been swirling after the publication of the book In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: Confessions of an Accidental Academic.
The author of the book, Professor X, a government employee who works as an adjunct professor at a community college, elaborates on how some people who aspire to working in more technical fields do not need to go to college. In the book he writes, “No one is thinking about the larger implications, or even the morality of admitting so many students to classes they cannot possibly pass.”
