A broken education system

Congratulations. You’ve made it to college. You must have worked hard (or hard enough) to get here, and now a wealth of knowledge and opportunities lie at your disposal.

As a college student, you are part of a distinct group. And it would seem that group is becoming increasingly exclusive.

A recent report from the American Council on Education found that only 34.9 percent of young adults aged 25 to 29 have earned at least an associate degree.
The report notes that this percentage is consistent with the proportion of individuals older than 30 who had achieved the same level of education, suggesting stagnation in American intellectual achievement.

While the report stresses this apparent plateau in progress, we’re concerned with a more obvious problem: Why does only one-third of the American population have a college degree?

Of course, there is no single answer. Cost, motivation and sociological environment could all be to blame. But, we’d like to suggest that our own educational system might deserve some criticism.

There are more than 13 million children growing up in poverty today. Only half of them will graduate from high school. And those who do will be four years behind other students their age.

A member of the Teach for America Corps serving in urban Chicago notes that there are holes in the walls of his classroom and that he only has 28 textbooks for all of his students.

Is this what education should be like in America? Regardless of your political ideology, we think it’s clear that the answer is no.

But you must also ask yourself: Does this sound like my experience?
For some, it might. But for many, this is far from familiar.

While we agree that it’s troubling to ponder an America where standards of education don’t improve with each successive generation, we find it more distressing that our public school system is, in some places, woefully inadequate to prepare students for higher education.

The fact that you made it to college shouldn’t make you one of the lucky ones.