-Langston Hughes

I read an article in the USA Today recently. The article posed the question, “What if a college education just isn’t for everyone?”

The author wrote about a student in Wis. who isn’t planning on attending college. High school junior Brian Crave is in an apprenticeship program instead – on his family’s own farm. He has morning classes at the high school and spends his afternoons working through an agricultural skills checklist. Instead of going to college, Crave plans to continue milking cows and plowing fields.

As an educator, I go into the classroom believing every student can learn. It’s my job to give students the knowledge and skills they’ll need for any career path and prepare them for higher education.

Meeting with resistance. But, like you, I’ve met with resistance. When I taught in Texas, I had mostly juniors in my English classes. Most of them had passed the then TAAS test (now TAKS). Here was their question: Miss, we passed the TAAS. Why are we here? Don’t we know it all already?

These were kids from low-income backgrounds, with working class values, and with car insurance or other bills to pay. They were good kids from nice families. But, like their parents, college never entered into their world view. That was for other people. These students looked at my class, a graduation requirement, as fun, but unimportant to their goals to leave school, work in the refineries, and fish.

In my teaching situation in rural Wis., I saw many of the same kinds of students. Some of their parents actively worked against the idea that their children should go to college. One bright student’s father told her that going to college was a way to build debt. She should be out working instead. Another kid’s parents told her she wasn’t college material; although, she was one of the smartest kids I’d had in class. One of these students just graduated from college; the other is answering phones for a local company.

The official teacher line. I’ve always told my students that the reason teachers prepare them for college is so they’ll always have options. In other countries with apprenticeship programs, a mid-life career change and university night school isn’t always a possibility. I tell classes that we want to prepare them for their future, not for their present.

We all know that college grads make more money statistically than their peers who hold just a high school diploma. In this uncertain economy where a person has a job one day and none the next, the college degree is something that no economy and no downsizing can ever take away.

Some kids, though, just want out of school. I get it. Sitting in a desk all day is a struggle for many of our kids. They hate the rules and the work. They long for the hands-on world with its practicality and its paychecks.

Dreams deferred. I read another article in the Wall Street Journal about investor Warren Buffet’s kid, Peter. When Peter graduated high school, Dad gave him a good sum of money. Not a ton of money, but enough to get Peter started in something and encourage him to work. In Buffet’s words the money was, enough to do anything, but not enough to do nothing.

Peter dropped out of Stanford, moved to San Francisco, and joined the music scene. After odd jobs and a start at MTV, he’s now an Emmy-Award winning musician.

Buffet isn’t my dad and I hear he’s not adopting, but the Oracle of Omaha does teach us something: it’s a wise investment to follow one’s dreams. Would you ever advise your students to run off and join the circus? Follow the Great White Way? Drive toward the Sunset Strip? These are risky choices – who knows if kids will succeed?

My point is that maybe college isn’t for everyone. But, college prep is. Having that college prep gives students a fall back. If a person wakes up in his thirties and decides that his construction job, his waiter job, his whatever job doesn’t really suit him, he has options.

So, no. I don’t think every kid should go to college. But I think every person should have the opportunity.

References

Markelin, M.B. (2010) What If a College Education Just Isn’t for Everyone? USA Today. http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-03-16-1Acollegeforall16_CV_N.htm?csp=34 Accessed 3/16/2010.

Shellenbarger, S. (2010) Lesson From Buffet on Following Dreams. Wall Street Journal. Tuesday, March 16, 2010, D7.

What do you think? Should we pursue the college prep curriculum that we’ve embraced for years? Should our schools move to a more vocational model for those kids who want it? Let’s discuss!

In my classes and on my student newspaper staff, JoAnna was a standout. I remember encouraging her, looking over her college application essays, and writing letters of recommendation.

I’m very proud to say that she graduated in December with a B.A. in international studies. (Oh, I hope she finds a job.)

Researchers Nicole Holland, Ph.D., and Raquel L. Farmer-Hinton, Ph.D., looked into the question of whether school size encourages a college culture. They found that smaller schools, or smaller learning communities within larger schools, were more successful in creating a college culture than big schools.

In the budget battles, their findings that smaller learning communities prepare students for higher education should give student advocates powerful arguments to keep schools small.

For we teachers, the biggest take-away from Holland and Farmer-Hilton’s research is how we can encourage this college culture in our own classrooms.

They say the college culture has three components: social support, social capital, and an ethic of knowledge and care.

Social Support

Social support is that relationship that students and teachers create. Teachers care about their students and communicate with them as people, not as authority figures. Studies show that students who experience this kind of social support are more engaged in academic achievement.

Social support is very important to creating a college culture because, like JoAnna, many students don’t have role models at home who are encouraging education beyond high school. As teachers, we have to be that social support, those role models. The researchers believe that social support is easiest to achieve in a small school or small learning community.

Social Capital

Social capital is the set of expectations that a social network has. In terms of college culture in a school, it’s the expectation that students will attend college when they graduate from high school. It’s the number of opportunities students have to learn about colleges and talk about their college plans. It’s the school norms that encourage successful college behavior like class attendance, complete assignments, and class participation. The whole school environment is set up to encourage and prepare students for higher education.

In schools where the student population hasn’t historically attended college, but where there is a great deal of social capital, the number of students who enroll in postsecondary education increased.

An Ethic of Knowledge and Care

It’s good to care about your students. Attend a school basketball game, ask about their burger-flipping jobs, and listen to a minute or two of their music. Caring about your students as individuals is important to creating the environment of social support and social capital. Studies also show that students who believe that the adults in their schools care about them work harder in classes, are more respectful in all relationships, graduate from high school, and continue on to higher education.

Caring isn’t just learning about your students as people, although that’s a good start. Sometimes caring is prodding a student to challenge himself in Honors Biology. Sometimes caring is setting a student up with a math tutor. Caring might be listening to an at-risk student’s plans for the future and nudging her to pursue some kind of postsecondary education.

The Findings

The researchers found that students in small schools or small learning communities within large schools experienced more of the college culture than students in large schools. The researchers wrote that creating social support and social capital is easier in a small school where students and teachers can get to know one another more easily.

They also wrote that the college culture needs to be a school-wide effort. Pockets of college culture within the school are a step in the right direction, but teachers who create these college culture enclaves miss some kids who need the information about postsecondary education. In a school where the college culture is inconsistent, student have to seek out information about colleges and must either self-select as a college-bound student or have someone identify them as such.

College information, college counselors, college fairs, and a small learning community aren’t enough to create the college culture that will encourage students to continue their education. The researchers wrote, “Social support and personalized student attention seem to be the most useful conduits through which college planning information is explained and disseminated.”

Reference:

Holland, N. and Farmer-Hinton, R. (2009) Leave No Schools Behind: The Importance of a College Culture in Urban Public Schools. The High School Journal, Feb/Mar 2009, 24-43.

A Public Agenda Report found that 45 percent of students at four-year universities work 20 hours or more. More than half of the community college students work more than 20 hours a week and more than a quarter work 35 hours or more. Twenty-three percent of all college students have children.

The problem is that students start college, but many of them, just 40 percent, receive their four-year degree in six years’ time. At the community college level, just 20 percent finish a two-year degree in three years.

It’s not hard to see why these kids aren’t finishing college. It’s not that students don’t want to be there, it’s that they can’t afford to be there. When faced with the reality of work-schedule and school-schedule conflicts, many choose work instead.

The researchers for Public Agenda’s report, “With Their Whole Lives Ahead of Them,” found four myths and realities about why students don’t finish college. I think that secondary school teachers can address two of them.

Myth No. 3: Most students go through a meticulous process of choosing their college from an array of alternatives.

Reality No. 3: Among students who don’t graduate, the college selection process is far more limited and often seems happenstance and uninformed.

The Public Agenda researchers found that most of the college dropouts never went through a college selection process at all. They just went to the nearest school that offered classes they could attend while working. Over half of the students valued the cost of the tuition above the overall reputation of the school.

Students who drop out of college are less likely to have parents or other family members who attended or graduated from college. These are people who selected their college not for its excellent nursing program or because of its reputation as a good business school, but because it was on the way to work.

As teachers, the question is how can we help our students choose a college where they’ll be successful? The students who don’t finish college don’t have a family structure that will help them select or stay in school. Mentoring students about career choices, traveling to a college fair with students who might be the first in their families to attend college, and hosting a virtual campus tour are ways to introduce students to the college choices available.

Myth No. 4: Students who don’t graduate understand fully the value of a college degree and the consequences and trade-offs of leaving school without one.

Reality No. 4: Students who leave college realize that a diploma is an asset, but they may not fully recognize the impact dropping out of school will have on their future.

In high school, fewer of the college dropouts thought that they’d attend college than the college graduates. Fewer dropouts thought that their teachers believed they’d attend college. They didn’t have their family’s support, either. The dropouts’ families didn’t value a college education as much as those of college graduates.

Our mission as teachers is clear: we need to communicate the importance of higher education. The students who drop out of college don’t have a strong push from their families to finish their education. We need to provide that push while the students are still in secondary school. Just talking about possible careers and the career paths in our disciplines can help students visualize the steps they need to take to find a job in a field they love. The research shows that students who do not graduate from college didn’t have as clear of an idea of what career they were aiming for as those students who did graduate. Teachers can easily supply the information and support students as they develop their career goals.

The study also found that students want to take classes in the evenings and on weekends. They’d like more financial aid for part-time students who are trying to work and go to school. Many students would like access to affordable day care options while they take classes. These are important changes, but not really changes that teachers can make.

However, we can support our students, especially first-generation potential college students. Their families aren’t pushing college and they don’t have the home support to work, go to class, and eat Ramen noodles for four years. It’s a struggle for any kid, but it’s really hard for students who have a hard time picturing themselves in a collegiate cap and gown.

Reference:

“With Their Whole Lives Ahead of Them.” (2009) Public Agenda for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Accessed 12/9/09 http://www.publicagenda.org/files/pdf/theirwholelivesaheadofthem.pdf