Quote:
Originally Posted by AGDee
Honestly, I'm not convinced that, generally speaking, our schools are "failing". College enrollment has been steadily increasing since the 1960s. The type of student who used to aspire to a bachelor's degree is now aspiring to at least a Master's degree. When my dad graduated from college in 1958 with a 2.0 as a Sociology major, he could get a great job in the business field and be very successful. Even when he retired 14 years ago (before NCLB), he said there was no way he would hire a new grad who had the credentials that he'd had when he started out. There were too many candidates who had done much better than that in more relevant fields of study. Even in my middle-upper middle class high school, back in the 80s, about 20% of class went to college. In my current lower-middle middle class neighborhood, about 75% of kids are going to college. When I was in high school, there was no such thing as AP classes or IB programs. There were tracks.. "college prep", regular and "remedial", but nothing that gave us college credit before we even graduated.
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Is all of this a sign that schools are 'succeeding' or that degrees are increasingly meaningless? My psychology degree didn't prepare me for a real job, my internship that paid for my school did. My Master's program has prepared me for a 'real' career.
Is the inability for people to work w/o a high school degree, even in jobs that don't have to require a diploma or GED a sign that schools are succeeding or that it's too easy to graduate and thus easy to discriminate against those who dropped out and yet would have done well in a labor/apprentice/journeyman position. And 40 years ago would have had a career and steady paycheck.