Too Much Higher Ed In The USA

NYT has a good article about for-profit training schools (e.g. Phoenix University, ITT) that lure students with the hope of well-paying jobs, only to saddle them with overwhelming debt upon graduation. And, these schools get lots of money in government Pell grants for their expensive programs (in the article, programs described ranged from $14K to $40K a year).

I think many higher ed programs in this country could be replaced by apprenticeship tracks, similar to the system in Germany. Perhaps apprenticeships could be supplemented by classes that focus on “bigger picture” questions, which is what school is usually good for. But, in my industry (journalism), and in many others, the best way to learn is on-the-job. The problem these days is you can’t get to that job unless you have some kind of background already, which usually is why people go to school.

I would go one step further and say that many public and private non-profit schools present the same problem as a Phoenix University, especially for undergraduate liberal arts majors. Although it was never a piece of cake to get a job with a liberal arts degree during good economic times, it has to have become very difficult now, in the recession.

Finally, I wonder whether the U.S. today has an over-educated population: that is, whether the country has more educated people than jobs for educated people. The possibility usually isn’t discussed because people are so used to berating our education system for declining standards–all the while failing to put into perspective that the public school system absorbed almost the entire population of the country over the last century. Meanwhile, the conventional wisdom holds that everyone be steered toward higher education, because college graduates make more money than non-graduates. But, that depends on the industry and is much more true for say, engineering, than for,  say, culinary work (see the NYT article). Could it be possible that we have too much higher education?