We use college for too many purposes

In my view, our focus on college stems from our habit of using college for three related but different purposes:
– general intellectual training
– elite selection and preparation
– job-specific training

If we were to separate these functions, we would probably be better off.

To begin with, I doubt there would be much of a demand for post-secondary schools focused on the first function (general intellectual training,) but perhaps some of the hardest-core intellectuals would be into it. Becoming smarter and more knowledgeable in general is a worthy thing, but it should be possible to do it on the cheap. I doubt we’d subsidize it much, if at all.

The second function (elite selection and training) is why I think we focus so intently on colleges as they are now. We use them as gatekeepers to high position, the big jobs with high status and usually high pay. But does it really have to take four years, or even more, to sort out the capable from the nearly capable? The military doesn’t run Officer Candidate School for four years; it’s more like half a year. I can accept that selecting the people who are going to (or are likely to) run the show is worth doing carefully, and that there are some things worth teaching them. And of course since people are status-hungry, competition for position at whatever Social OCSes we run is going to be keen. But whatever else these institutions are, they are going to be small, because the elite pretty much by definition has to be small. Separated out, I would expect this function could be served in a year or so, and might enroll 10% of each cohort. Maybe 20% if we’re feeling exceptionally egalitarian and want to cast the net wide.

And finally we arrive at the job-specific training. This is what most people actually need, but it’s also what we’re not doing a particularly good job of delivering. To begin with, there is no particular reason this function has to be combined with the other two. We don’t need to educate the folks who want to be writers and editors together with the folks who want to be data scientists and engineers. Their job functions have very little overlap, meaning their curricula should have very little overlap, so their education could easily be done in separate institutions. And job training programs can be diverse. Some jobs are simple and require no training at all. Others are very complicated, and can easily take close to a decade of training to master. And if we were to separate the three functions, only a few of the job training institutes would look and operate much like traditional colleges.

But ultimately, we are so focused on college, and so willing to spend money on them, because we are confounding three quite different purposes that current colleges serve: general intellectual training, elite selection and preparation, and job-specific training. If we are to separate the functions, the first one would probably mostly wither, the second would be short and specific (and hence not too expensive), and the third would have its proper place as the destination for nearly everybody.