Stephen Downes calls it, “a completely useless and misleading piece of non-information” while the Globe & Mail earnestly reports that, “Once formal schooling ends, learning rates drop“. They are both talking about the Canadian Council on Learning’s Composite Learning Index.
Given the CCL’s support of homework without any data to back it up, or pushing formal post-secondary education in spite of what Canadians value, I don’t expect many innovative ideas here. What I see are reports that reinforce the existing industrial education system, with all its trappings. Instead, let me recommend some other sources of information and points of view:
Don’t correlate post-secondary education directly with economic success, either as an individual or as a society.
Educational attainment may not be a useful measurement, according to Richard Florida:
One, the educational attainment measure leaves out people who have been incredibly important to the economy, but who for one reason or another did not go to or finish college. Names that come quickly to mind are Bill Gates. Steve Jobs and Michael Dell, among countless others. My measure of creative occupations counts them all.
Two, the educational attainment measure is quite broad and thus does not allow for nations or regions to identify, quantify or build strategy around specific types of human capital or talent. We all recognize for example that Nashville is the center for country music talent, Hollywood for film, Silicon Valley for technology. And it is clear that nations and regions are coming more and more to specialize in particular kinds of economic activity, so my occupation based measure allows us to get at that.
There are systemic and biological reasons why boys are dropping out of school.
Though the CCL states that “Early adulthood is an ideal period for participation in formal education“, many parents and even educators feel that you don’t have to go to college.
See my recent blog post. Frank Herbert, the author of Dune, who is the basis for Star Wars… so you could probably say that Frank Herbert is one of the 5 most important scifi authors of all times, is a college dropout.
So, yes, I’d say that you can do just fine without college. I have a Ph.D. Heck, even a post-doctorate. I have research grants, graduate students, post-doctoral fellows… I have all of the this, but I will not encourage my own kids to go to college.
Can college help you? Sure. Absolutely. Is a degree necessary? I do not think so.
I tend to believe that the first year of college, or maybe the first two years, are all that matters. After these first two years, you have learn the key points you needed to learn. You can then pretty much go on your own and learn faster and better.
I agree with you, college is useful for some but not a panacea for all. Perhaps the CCL should change its name to the Canadian Council for Formal Education Credentials.