About the time my middle son (now 8) graduates from high school, my wife and I will still be a few years shy of paying off our student loan debt. We both have Masters Degrees in our respective fields, and finished our undergraduate studies in 2001.

Absolutely, we did this to ourselves. MATs, MSWs, and undergraduate degrees in English Literature and Sociology aren’t fast-track degrees toward high pay and easy loan payoff. We also added other debt and expenses to ourselves by buying a house and having three kids. Choices, and of course we could have made different ones. We live modestly, are natural homebodies, and weigh every expenditure carefully with a more secure future in mind. In reality, we’re doing better than fine.

I have a lot to be grateful for, but nonetheless have spent a great deal of the last twenty years pretty frustrated with the way things all turned out. Growing up, I heard again and again how hard work and doing well in school would offer some sort of guarantee (the “American Dream,” of course). I went to a small, poor, rural high school that had exactly zero honors or AP offerings; I grew up on a farm and took four years of Ag instead, not a bad thing at all (I was heavily involved in FFA, and probably learned more about teaching from my FFA experience than I did anywhere else). However, instead of applying any of the practical skills I learned in Ag, I went to University, since that was heralded as The Right Thing To Do. Meanwhile, a few of my friends chose not to go that route, instead getting jobs or learning skilled trades. Now in their late thirties many own their own businesses, employ others, and earn a solid living for their families in fields such as construction, cosmetology, and plumbing just to name a few. Along the way they found avenues for continued learning, whether it was taking some classes on business management or learning on the job from mentors and peers.

They worked hard to make their lives a success, of course, but hopefully you see my point: they chose the exact route that is so quickly dismissed by our system today.

This isn’t an English major’s “poor me” ramble (I and blessed to have a roof, a job, a car, health insurance). Rather, this is about the promises being made to kids today in schools. Kids, in particular kids in high school, are being indoctrinated with the belief that there is really only one appropriate option for after high school: Four-Year College. Sure, the buzzphrase is “College and Career Ready,” but do the people saying “Career” really mean skilled trades? No, the implication is that a career is what comes after college, not that the two are distinct options. There is more than a hint of classism in the the sentiment.

Any more, college is about making money; not the degree-earners making money, but the degree-bestowers making money. The post high-school push has not been about making high quality college education accessible to more people, it has been about making the titles and labels associated with college more accessible.

Might a college degree open more doors? Sure, depending on the degree and a whole lot of other factors that are rarely included in the oft-repeated promise about what a college degree will get you. In fact, research suggests that parent income and social connections (via parents) are stronger predictors of future prosperity or mobility than any other factor, including education. (Also discussed here.) I also think that those statistics we often use about how college degrees result in better income in the long run are going to gradually start to shift as degrees grow more and more accessible, ubiquitous, and in many cases, hollow.

Further, there is also recent evidence that, statistically, a student is financially better off not going to college than going to one of the bottom 1 out of 4 colleges in this country (as discussed here and here). In other words, about a quarter of the students chasing that supposed “guaranteed prosperity” of a college education actually would have been better off going straight to work.

Am I “anti-college”? No. What I am opposed to is the cultivation of a false narrative that communicates to kids that college is The Answer. What ends up happening in schools like where I work now is that any other alternative than a four-year university is not even “second best,” it’s off the chart altogether. All you have to do is watch a high school senior’s posture if his answer to the “where are you going to college next year?” is anything other than four-year university. (And even within the answers that do contain the word “university,” there is a distinct range. That a kid answering that question should act apologetic that he is “only” going to Eastern Washington University is a travesty.) And, God forbid a kid wants to “just” get a job after high school to earn some money and keep growing up a little.

I always tell my high school students that they have to do something after high school to further their education: it might be university, community college, trade schools, or on-the-job learning. Maybe this is what the first people to coin “College and Career Ready” might have meant. Put into practice, though, the sentiment has mutated.

As schools continue to evolve, we need to rethink our mantra about college. It used to be that we talked about “lifelong learning,” but perhaps that sounded far too fluffy and liberal for policymakers. Instead of heralding college as the goal…the one door through which a student must pass in order to secure a stable and prosperous life…we need to shift the narrative to make clear that K-12 education is about opening countless doors, not just the one marked COLLEGE.

Photo Source: Flickr, Leo Reynolds