Is a 4-year degree program right for every student?

One of the primary goals of the organization that I work for is to get all of our students accepted to and enrolled in 4-year degree programs. The idea behind this is that graduates of 4-year program make more money over their lifetimes than graduates of 2-year programs or those who do not go to college. Additionally, students who go to a 4-year school are more likely to stay in school than those in other programs. Lastly, more often than not 4-year programs have a greater emphasis on the Liberal Arts than two year programs which usually focus on specific occupations, thus 4-year programs are considered simply better or more intellectual.

So, sitting here with my Liberal Arts school degree in Religion, in a job I adore but which is in no way financially supportive, with the knowledge that if I decide to finally get a "real job" I'm going to have to go back to school to get a degree in something actually useful- I find myself wondering if a 4-year degree really is the right thing for every student.

Is getting a liberal arts degree specifically and a 4-year degree generally more of a privilege than a necessity? Is forcing our students into 4-year programs only setting them up for failure?

When talking about this with Mitch yesterday after session he mentioned the cases of a few of his students who he is not sure should be going to 4-year schools. Some, he worries, are simply not ready for college- they rarely show up for session, they have poor writing skills, or they have a very difficult time verbally communicating in English. He worries that these students, even if they get into 4-year schools, will end up dropping out because they will be too discouraged and not receive the support they need. Or, there's the student who has a child and very little motivation. Could a 2-year program be a quicker path to a career for this student so that he could start truly providing for his family? Then there's the student who is dead set on being an auto mechanic- there are a few 4-year programs that do exist in that area, but the majority are definitely two year programs. Should that student be forced into a 4-year program simply because that's what the organization has decided is the best place for him regardless of the incredible additional expense and potential time wasted by choosing that program over a 2-year program in the same area?

Then I think of some of my students who are in similar situations. One of them, who wants to be called AMP in this blog (she'll be mentioned again, so I guess it's good for her to have a fake name) really wants to be an orthotist or a prosthetist- aka someone who designs and makes orthotics and prosthetics. When she approached colleges at the mini college fair held at our school all of the representatives told her about pre-med programs and how she would need to go to medical school for that degree. In reality, its a 2-year program at most. Or, there's my student who wants to be a pastry chef and would love to go to the Culinary Institute of America or Le Cordon Bleu. However, both of these schools are considered for-profit institutions that we are supposed to steer our students away from because of their less than stellar retention and graduation rates. I understand the concern, especially with for profit schools that are not specialized, but I also have no interest in sending my students to schools where they cannot study what they want.

So I wonder, then, if our emphasis on 4-year degree program is really motivated by theories of social mobility. Education is widely considered one of the primary sources of social mobility. All of our students are low income and I'm sure that parts of the unspoken goals of the organization is to help them move up in the socioeconomic class ladder. Is it then classist of me to believe that some of our students would be in some ways better off to do shorter programs that would land them in jobs faster rather than enrolling in longer term, less career specific, more expensive programs? Or, is that a good suggestion that would help our students more gradually change their social class standings: instead of jumping from low income, potentially non-educated groups to over educated liberal arts minded groups- taking a brief stop at the educated, hard working class that would actually allow them to support their families and communities?

IB

Our school offers a number of IB (International Baccalaureate) courses which are meant to be honors courses that are held to an international standard. From my experience working in college admissions, IB courses are considered on par with AP courses, signifying a particularly challenging or intense choice that a student could make in his or her schedule if he/she was qualified to take the course.

What's interesting about IB courses at our school is that students do not have to apply or especially qualify to take them. In fact, the school encourages every student to take at least one IB course before they graduate. IB courses are meant to come from a global perspective with the goal of educating children towards a mindset of world peace. The IB organization appears to pride itself on providing a higher level of education that could and should be recognized as advanced in colleges and universities worldwide.

When I noticed that I had a couple of students who were full IB diploma candidates (meaning that they are taking/have taken courses in all of the areas of study and are going to be writing a big final paper to culminate their studies), I assumed that they would be my highest achievers. However, these students still scored between 12-15 on their baseline ACTs, got 5-7s on their ACT essays, and, for at least one, will have to retake the GRAD reading and writing tests in order to graduate.

I found myself wondering: how does this happen? How do students make it all the way to IB courses without developing strong reading and writing skills? How can they be expected to write a "Senior Thesis"-esq paper if they cannot manage the ACT essay or their GRAD writing exam?

Through this whole discussion, these are my main concerns: 1. That my school merely implemented an IB program to pad the student's resumes with no ability to actually run the program in an advanced or correct way, 2. That these tests- the ACT and the GRAD tests are in no way able to measure these student's abilities, 3. That the emphasis on the IB program is just another form of world competition rhetoric that has completely infected our educational system.

More on all of these topics at some point.

Tough Topics

In the past few sessions some difficult topics have come up unintentionally. At these points the scholar and sociologist in me comes out, and I'm not quite sure that my students appreciate or understand my interest.

One issue was welfare, which came from our use of EBT (Electronic Benefits Transfer) Cards on a financial literacy vocabulary list. One of my most vocal and outgoing students began to talk about how his family has an EBT card- which, of course, was never asked. I didn't mind him sharing details about his financial situation if he felt comfortable, but the problems started when he began asking others about using EBT cards and claiming that it was only Black people who used them (not as bad as it could have been though, I suppose, since this student is Black). Now, the scholar in me thought "oh what an interesting moment to talk about the stereotypes of the Black community and ideas about poverty and government assistance!". The 'teacher' in me however was shocked and mortified about what this student had said and how uncomfortable he was potentially making the other students in class. We shut the discussion down pretty quickly, but I still wonder how I could effectively facilitate a discussion on this topic.

Today another issue surrounding race came up. Our school has an indoor ice rink attached but no ice hockey team. Supposedly, the school used to have an ice hockey team- but that was years ago. One student chalked it up to 'white flight'- which is actually probably true. I tried to turn that comment into a teaching moment- talking my students through the link between people who are wealthy (as my students perceived the participants in this 'white flight' to be) and the existence of a hockey team- discussing the cost of participating in hockey, buying equipment, etc. I worry, though, that instead of inspiring my students to think about the connections between income and various types of organized sports, I simply reinforced the stereotype that the White population is always wealthier than anyone else. oy.

The perils of facebook

Today we faced an issue I wasn't expecting: Our students wrote about their Baseline ACT scores in their facebook statuses. I think the most damaging post was the one from my high achiever who got a 28. Without him in the mix, my cohort's average is a 14.1-HALF of his score. He has every right to be excited about this baseline score- I'm sure that we can help him so much and that he can apply to some of the most competitive schools in the country with that score, but I cannot imagine being a student who scored an 11 and saw that status. What's even more surprising is that some of my students who scored between 13 and 15 also facebooked about their scores- something I'm not quite sure they should be proud of...

After a serious talk I think that all of my students have agreed not to post about their scores anymore, but it's interesting how much this shows that facebook is a huge part of my student's lives and they regularly share the most personal details of their lives on it.

Realities

Today was a little bit heartbreaking because it was the first day that we shared our student's baseline ACT scores with them. In this organization we focus a lot on ACT prep in the junior year and we start off the year with a baseline ACT- a test where we tell them where to go and when but nothing else.

Our student's baseline scores ranged from 9-28 (the 28 was a major outlier... after this student no one had higher than a 20). To give some context: the national average is 21 and the state average is almost 23. A good portion of both mine and victoria's students fell in the bottom 1% of test takers.

This is incredibly disheartening. Our students are smart energetic students- yet the test in no way shows that. Our English Language Learners definitely struggle the most, being unable to come even close to finishing the reading section and getting a majority of those questions wrong.

I think what affected me the most was how immune my students seemed to being in the bottom 30% or lower of test takers. Most of my students failed their GRAD tests in reading and/or writing and they are completely used to being below average. I guess this is better than being destroyed by this fact. I even had one student make a joke about it. He had a 10 or 11 and was in the bottom 1%, instead he remarked: "I'm in the top 1% of test takers!"... all I could do was look at him with a sad smile.

The ray of hope here is that we are basically guaranteed to raise our students' scores. Our organization averaged a 25% score increase last year. But, I don't really think 25% is enough for most of my students and sincerely hope it will be possible to improve their scores even more.