I plan to show President Obama's speech to my (first) first period class on Tuesday. What could be controversial about encouraging students to work hard and stay in school? Nothing particularly, but I expect Obama to say something along the lines of: "all students should go to college."
I agree that students should continue learning, but I don't think this learning must necessarily take place a a four year, or even a two year, college. What about vocational education? What about internships? Should we really encourage students to go into massive amounts of debt when they have little hope of getting a job that helps them pay off their student loans? With the national unemployment rate at nearly 10%, college may not be the best idea.
This week,
NPR spoke with some experts about debt and higher education. One student on the panel is racking up $50,000 in debt to get a Masters in Journalism (at Columbia). Of course journalism is a field where higher education isn't necessary, but that's the point-many of the best journalists have learned on the job. (One report even suggests that all Journalism schools should be closed since there are almost no jobs that will be able to pay back this money.)
Education is an investment, but each student needs to ask, "will there be a return on this investment?" If there isn't a clear link between career and college, I would advocate for community college and on the job training.
