This does kind of further support my idea that college is the new high school, though. You can get into grad. school if you speak only Japanese. A friend of mine that got his master’s at the same time as me spoke pretty much only Taiwanese and Chinese. It was rough for him, since he had to write in English, but he managed. I agree you probably couldn’t do that in a four year.

I guess the problem is there’s three different ways to look at it: there’s what college is (however you define it), what different segments of society think it is, what it represents, and what it’s trying to be. Each one of those three topics probably requires an essay, but it might get us closer to the answer. For example, I heard about an article that was written in US News (or was it Newsweek…? Who can tell the difference?) last month by a girl who said that she’d gotten stellar grades in high school, was in every club, etc., but didn’t know how to fill out a tax form, find an apartment, grocery shop, etc. Her suggestion was that there be a college course on real life skills–things you have to be able to do in the real world to survive. This is quite indicative of what she thought college should be: preparation for the real world and her career, and not a place of study. I mean, such a class would be utterly ridiculous given the traditional idea of what college should be, but perhaps if that’s what it’s becoming, then that’s the way it should go. Who knows?

With respect to diversity, I say why not? There’s nothing that allows universities to go out of their way to ensure diversity (or at least not explicitly), but it’s certainly not harming anyone. I don’t feel sorry for anyone that doesn’t get into Berkeley or Stanford. Especially in California, there are tons of universities. When it comes to serving the educational (i.e., BA) needs of the public, I don’t think California can be beat. Just about anyone who applies can get in somewhere, if they apply to lots of places–and even if they don’t, the JC system can work. I care not a jot for a highly qualified white applicant that gets denied in favor of an underqualified (yes, underqualified) black applicant. I know of situations where two applicants of the same race with the same qualifications get different results. These things happen.

Regarding your argument, it may be valid, if your view of college holds. Of course, one might also argue that if what you say is true, then there should be more underrepresented minorities in college. Why? Because you’re looking for homogenization, and the upper class white folk are already homogenized. Further, college is contagious: you’re more likely to go to college if one or more of your parents did. If the goal you stated holds, they should be trying to get as many poor, urban and rural folks into college as possible, so they can be turned into the nondescript workforce you describe. Unless, of course, they deliberately wanted to keep that segment of society out.

Also, those who promote diversity would probably not agree with your view of college. If they don’t agree with your view of college, then they won’t agree with your argument against diversity. So this argument would have two fronts, and you’d probably have to defend your view of college, first, before you get to the diversity question. That in itself may prove a fascinating topic, since it’s apparent that there is something wrong with the “undergraduate experience” (I have many a story I could tell having sit in on faculty meetings at the linguistics department).

I misspoke when I implied that it’s vocational training. It’s not. What it is, however, is an attempt to create specialization within society based on a uniform template. There is also, to a certain extent, a drive to keep alive traditionally important subjects like the arts that are of little practical value to someone today (e.g. English poetry).

I still stand by my statement that college is primarily a place to homogenize society writ large, rather than to introduce heterogeneity. All students, generally speaking, are required to complete nearly the same set of core undergrad components that instill a uniformity to the student body.

Furthermore, you probably can’t get into a modern American university if you speak only Japanese. There are homogenized requirements to get in (e.g. English skills), and there are homogenized requirements to get out. Even if you specialize in Post Modern African Feminism, you passed a similar number of uniform requirements to get there. While that individual may not be able to get a job directly dealing with that subject, the fact that they have a grounding in academic inquiry, math, and English, provides society with a relatively standardized individual who can meaningfully enter a number of entry level jobs. The specialty is something that might help that person advance better in one career over another, but at the very least they should be better standardized to fit into the machine than someone who has not advanced their way of thinking and basic human skill set through college.

So, if we continue that, the idea of promoting “diversity” is still crap. You need people to graduate who can communicate with each other and make a meaningful contribution to society. True diversity wouldn’t get us that; it would get us an overly costly and complex system that simply wouldn’t work.

For example, consider the great myth, “My grandparents came to this country with no money, no job, and no shoes on their feet, and they didn’t just make ends meet, they succeeded!” That part’s not a myth: it happened quite a bit. They myth is, “And therefore, kids today should be able to as well.” My late stepfather, who was born in 1929, quit school after the fourth grade, and when to attain wealth doing odd jobs here and there. And he was not alone. Here’s an example of what life was like way back when. Below is a “table” (not sure if this can handle the html, so I’ll just do it ASCII-style) of the number of children in Cleveland that reached high school in 1908 and 1916. These stats happen to be broken down by first language:

1908
English: 14%
German: 7%
Yiddish: 5%
Italian: 2%
Polish: 2%

1916
English: 17%
German: 14%
Yiddish: 9%
Italian: 2%
Polish: 3%

In other words, if there were 100 students in the Cleveland school system that spoke English as their first language, 17 of them would get to high school. As for graduating, the figures are even more dismal. And this kind of thing was pretty much the standard all over the country.

So what does this tell us? Does this tell us that because just about everyone was a high school drop out there was vast poverty in America? Certainly not. What this tells us is that education was not important when it came to economic success before, say, WWII. No diploma? No problem! There were thousands of jobs for laborers and factory workers that paid competitively, and so you didn’t need anything but a strong back and gumption to make money back then. If anything, those that didn’t make it back then are the ones worthy of note.

In comparison, this is the average yearly income circa 1996 correlated with the highest level of education:

Not a HS Grad: $14,000
HS Grad: $21,400
BA: $37,000

I’m trying to find a new apartment right now, and found a place going for $1400 a month where the guy told me what they usually are looking for is someone who makes three times what the rent is per month:

$1400 x 3 = $4200 x 12 = $54,000

Quite frankly, even a BA doesn’t look too good. And that’s part of the problem. Back in the 80’s and 90’s they’d tell you a high school diploma is good, but you need a BA to be competitive. If you had an MA, you were set. Now it’s moved up. A BA is good, but you need an MA to be competitive–if you have a Ph.D. (or a law degree or a medical degree) you’re set. If you have merely a high school diploma, you may as well say goodbye to your future.

Affirmative Action as it was may not have been the way to ensure that this increasingly necessary (not optional, necessary) resource was available to everyone, but it was at least something that recognized that there was a problem. Prop. 209, like all other propositions, was merely a sensationalist way to stop what a small group of people didn’t want. (I should note here that I’m really jaded when it comes to propositions of any kind–whether I’m for them or against them. I think they’re stupid: the way they’re conceived, the way they get on the ballot, the way they’re promoted and attacked, and the way they’re voted for. It just smacks of irresponsibility.) It, of course, did nothing to help the real problem. (And since it appears you weren’t aware of it, before Prop. 209 they did screen for income. In fact, you know who got the biggest boost from Affirmative Action [at least during the year that I applied]? White applicants from places like Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. Why? Because none of them are going to college!) Affirmative Action itself was a lazy way to get at the real problem. The best way to see if someone is ready to go to college is not to look at an application, but to talk to them, see how they’ve lived their life, see what obstacles they’ve had to overcome, and then make a decision. This kind of thing takes time, money and effort, though, which is exactly what admissions boards don’t have. AA was a catch-all, lazy system to try to get at what the applications were missing. Now there’s nothing. That’s not an improvement.

Regarding college itself, it’s not there to move kids into the workforce. That’s never been its purpose. Historically, it was something for the rich and the aristocratic. You either went to college to devote your life to study or you went as a kind of finishing school, to brush up on your Latin and Greek before spending the rest of your life managing your estate. Most colleges, and those who work for them, still have this mindset. Unfortunately for them, the economic side of our society has decided to focus on the diploma as the tangible evidence that you’re better equipped to do X, whatever X is. The problem is there is no such training in college. Medicine and law is one thing, but what college major prepares you to work in an office? What classes? College doesn’t prepare you for a career–America just thinks it does. To the consternation of academicians, the focus has moved away from the actual education, and more towards the goal-oriented side of college. This is because everyone knows that the diploma is what’s important. It’s the key to economic success. That’s why communities have been upset about kids not getting in because their grades aren’t as good as someone who’s had more advantages their whole life: because it’s not about education. If it were, then sure: just take the kids with the best grades.

I think the main problem is that college is becoming something it doesn’t want to be, and it’s resisting change like a Texas Republican. In a way, it should be a place reserved solely for higher academic pursuits. But until there’s an entry level philosophy position for students with a BA in philosophy, or until you can pay for rent with poems rather than dollars, it’s all about money, and everyone should have the opportunity to try to get a BA (especially since its value has plummeted, anyway, and since MA and Ph.D. programs, who have fewer applicants to deal with, can get around any restrictions they want to take whoever they want for whatever they reason they want, with no need to justify their decisions, and no one to answer to).