On 10/12/2011 2:09 PM, Jim Devine wrote: > right. Obama's downside is that he talks about everyone going to > college and then doesn't draw the line to exclude the for-profit > colleges. >
From the latest Harper's (behind a paywall unfortunately): Leveling the Field What I learned from for-profit education By Christopher R. Beha But if for-profits have been unscrupulous, the federal government has remained an enthusiastic partner in their growth. In his very first speech before Congress as president, Barack Obama declared that by 2020 America would once again lead the world in the percentage of adults with college degrees. Obama has restated this intention in every major education speech he’s made since then. About 40 percent of American adults have degrees today; Russia has the world’s highest rate at 54 percent. Beating Russia means producing an additional 40,000,000 college graduates over the next decade. There has been little explanation of why the bachelor’s degree, for most of its existence one credential among many, should be the default pathway to success, but again and again our leaders have pointed to it as an intrinsic good. “I’m absolutely committed,” Obama said in a speech at the University of Texas at Austin last August, “to making sure that here in America nobody is denied a college education, nobody is denied a chance to pursue their dreams, nobody is denied a chance to make the most of their lives.” Obama’s target might prove impossible to meet, but if it is going to happen it will mean educating a lot more students at schools like Phoenix. (clip) _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
