"College for All" Isn't for Everyone

with Robert Cherry

Debates about the comparative values of vocational training and college education for African Americans go back well over a century in this country. Booker T. Washington versus W.E.B. Du Bois is the locus classicus. And while Du Bois’s advocacy for the cultivation of a black intellectual elite may have its virtues, the strategy has not paid off for many African Americans, and especially not for African American men. Low-income African American men are simply not performing as well in four- and two-year colleges as we might hope. And yet liberal policymakers and activists continue to double down on the idea that a four-year college education is the best way to solve the problems of the inner cities.

It’s time we said it: A college education is not a cure-all for languishing black men. In fact, the idea that community colleges and four-year universities are the only way forward has been a detriment to many people (and not just black people) who would have been better served by solid vocational training programs that provide a path to decent jobs and careers. Unfortunately, acknowledging this reality would require liberal policymakers to abandon their idealistic notions of absolute equality among individuals. All of which implies a belief that all of us are the same, in terms of our preparation for and interest in a four-year academic program; that all of us, under proper conditions, can benefit from being taught the same things in the same way; that we all have the same aspirations and the same developed abilities to pursue a conventional college education.

But that’s simply not the way it is. If liberals, as they so often claim, truly value “diversity,” they ought to be able to admit that different people have different abilities. They ought to work toward building new institutions that can accommodate and train people who (it needs to be said) don’t belong in college. Instead, as Robert Cherry notes in this excerpt from the latest TGS episode, universities are told to lower their standards and change the way they teach in order to pass on students who, often enough, end up dropping out anyway. There’s no shame at all in vocational education—it’s as valid a path as any to a meaningful and fulfilling life. A four-year education can be a wonderful thing, but if it’s forced on students who would be happier and more successful elsewhere, we need to reappraise its privileged place in our society.

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This is a clip from the episode that went out to paying subscribers on Monday. To get access to the full episode, as well as an ad-free podcast feed, Q&As, and other exclusive content and benefits, click below.

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ROBERT CHERRY: So you really have a kind of gauntlet that young black men have to run, and too many of them that get to high school are just not educational material. That's why in the book I have a couple of chapters on vocational training. When someone speaks about vocational training, they think about plumbers and carpenters. These are kids that don't have the skills to become that. They may not even have the skills to become air conditioner repair men. As someone mentioned, you need tenth-grade reading to go through the manuals for these more sophisticated machines that have to be repaired. So they may have to start with pretty low-level certificate programs, which they can build on. It could be the first time that they have a positive outcome in their educational experience when they complete a certificate program. And these certificates are stackable. So one gets you a low-level entry position, but then you pass the second certificate and you move up.

The problem with this is no politician, no anti-poverty organization is gonna get applause for getting kids into low-level certificate programs. Now, if you can get them in the carpenter programs, yeah, that'll be good. But these low-level programs that, unfortunately, many of these kids have to start in have no upside politically for liberals. It's putting off for a generation a strong middle class. So they'll shove these kids into community colleges, if possible.

GLENN LOURY: This seems to be a very important and perhaps contentious point, so I want to underscore it. It starts with a recognition of the cognitive deficits of the target population. I'm sorry to put it so starkly, but you know, that's what we're talking about. Reading, writing, and arithmetic. Just the basic ability to perform intellectual work. And the observation is that, in a certain segment of our society— and the young black men that were dispossessed in the central cities and are filling up the jails are a central part of that population—those deficits are manifest. The people don't have those skills. It goes on to say, elite visions about what reform looks like are formulaic and disconnected from reality. These are my words, Bob, but I'm trying to channel you.

I agree with you.

They think everybody's supposed to get a degree in sociology, when as a matter of fact—I'm sorry, I don't mean to be pejorative. They think everybody needs a four-year college degree and they're supposed to go to community college and then they're supposed to transfer. But in fact, that's not realistic.

Let me give you an example. A couple of years ago, Michigan required all of its seniors to take the SAT. About 89% did. So this is a particular population, many of whom ordinarily would not take the SAT. But out of that population, only 16% scored 1000. That's 500 on each of the two tests total, which is below the median probably, or very close to the median. But it's also what almost any educator believes is the minimum necessary for you to perform reasonably well in college material. 1000. And only 3% got over 1200, which is the number that the much more demanding schools expect.

But let's get back to this 84% that didn't get 1000. It doesn't do them a service, many of them, to shove them in a college. You go to the community colleges and you'll transfer to the four year colleges. You look at the failure rate out of the community colleges. It's appalling. And instead, vocational training is what many need, and unfortunately, many need vocational training at a pretty low level to begin the process of moving up.

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That's the other thing that I wanted to call attention to, you saying not carpenter, not plumber. I mean, those guys are making six figures if they get in the union and they learn their trade. But you're saying even lower level than that, given where people are. You have to meet them where they are. Stackable. Stackable is important, because it offers the prospect of a path, not just a one-off thing, but I get this one, I'll get the next one. I'll develop into my into my sinecure as a skilled employee.

And there are places in Louisiana, in South Carolina where this kind of strategy for high school students has been incredibly successful in moving people along. For liberals, it's the four-year college for all, because that will get you into the solid middle class immediately. That's their claim. Now you have to be able to get that degree, and in many cases that degree is becoming deflated, where you have much more social promotion going on.

At Brooklyn College, the community colleges, you had to take remediation if you didn't have a level of math and English, and it was keeping people from getting out of the community colleges, the math in particular. So they just dropped that requirement. You don't have to get through remediation, you just go into courses. So you had a lot of students now graduating who had marginal math skills. They wanted to go into business. Well, business, you have to take finance, you have to take economics courses. They were failing these courses. So what did they do?

They first said, well, we'll give more student help and this and that. That didn't work. So then they identified faculty who were disproportionately giving low grades to the black and Latino students. This is explicit. They identified the faculty who were giving low grades and they offered these faculty counseling, like reeducation. Seriously! Now what happened immediately, you got grade inflation. When I taught, I had a struggle not to give 20-25% of the introductory micro students something less than a C-minus or a drop. Because that's the student body. I would be successful in a variety of ways to get down to 15% or so.

I talk to a colleague now, 75% of the students to 80% of the students in introductory micro get at least a B or an A. That was the result of this threat by the administration, that if you are identified as one of these low graders, we're gonna reeducate you.

I see the picture, you could write the novel. This is Brooklyn College, City University of New York. It's very ethnic, very working-class. Who are the faculty? I'll bet you they're overly Jewish. I'll bet you they're older. I bet you they're white males. Not entirely, but substantially.

Well, they have a lot of women. There's a lot of women.

Okay, a lot of women. But I'm saying, how do you hold the ground? You said 25% with a C or less? God.

A C-minus or less. 25%.

That is a huge number of people at the bottom of the pyramid. And you're right, it wouldn't be sustainable in the modern university in most places.

That's right.

But I'm envisioning the picture of the old guard like yourself: grizzled, standards-bearing. You're gonna hold the line against the barbarians at the gates.

Look, I never got complaints from students, because I gave all kinds of options to get up to the C. So I'd say if you want to get up to the C, I'll drop one of the three exams. You want to get higher, I don't do that. But to get to the C, I'll drop it. I gave out of class help. I let them use a sheet of notes during the exam. You can't believe what I did. I'm just saying that's the nature of the community college graduates.

Now, a lot of weak students go in, and, historically, they don't even graduate. The six-year graduation rate out of the community colleges in New York for many of them was 20% or 25% before they dropped the remediation requirement. So there's a lot of weak students who've been shoved into the community colleges. And if you then have social promotion and they can transfer to the four-year, you get this dynamic. I'm sure that's the way it is in Chicago. That's the way it is in most largely urban areas. They shove incredibly weak students into the community colleges. And then the community colleges are under pressure to have high retention rates, et cetera.

And they then move up to the four-year colleges, because in urban areas they have very little occupational training. Even if they have occupational courses, they have links to the four-year, and they don't have links to jobs. That's the way it is in CUNY. They have some occupational programs, but they're all linked to the four-year colleges, because there's this obsession with four-year college for all.

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