The evolution of America’s school system has been slow. We have seen technology surpass over the years as education continues to stay the same. Providing a first-rate public education to every child in the country is a foundation of life. Today, 50 million U.S. students attend roughly 100,000 schools and are educated by over 3 million teachers. The scale alone is overwhelming. Everything in American education is broken. We need to redo the blueprint and revolutionize this sorrowful broken system. The educational system simply stopped working. It aged, declined, and broke. And now the nation has a mess on its hands. But there’s good news, too, all it takes is the courage to rip it apart. This is how the problem goes, again and again. The system used to work, but now it doesn’t. The system can be rebuilt but first, it must be torn down.
American education has some obvious shortcomings. Starting with the ability to appeal to colleges. Quiz scores, test scores, mid and final exam scores, standardized test scores, SAT scores, ACT scores and so on. If a student does not receive a high number on a test, the teacher or institution automatically assumes that this student is not knowledgeable. A student's GPA also plays a role in this. A student might get good grades, have a high GPA score, but then do poorly on an SAT because they are not great test takers. They will then send those scores to colleges and that simple number could then make or break them. Also, most colleges do not even look at the writing section for SAT's when college is all about writing papers and essays. It just does not make any sense.
As most college high school and college students can attest to, one of the biggest pains of the education system has to deal with the college application process. The process of applying to college is possibly one of the most broken systems that one will encounter through their educational journey. There are three main problems that the application process fails at. One of the problems are the applications themselves, the next problem dealing with how different Universities decide who gets in and who does not, and last issue being the FAFSA form (Free Application for Federal Student Aid).
When one applies to college, they notice right away that most colleges that they may be looking to apply to do not have the same application at all. Most college applications can range from ten to thirty pages long and can include basic stuff such as personal information to a wide variety of essays. These applications are very time consuming and can take up to a week to do if wanted to be done to perfection. For example, it is common for a student in America to apply up to a dozen colleges when looking for a school to go to. Now say all these colleges have their own personal application that is special to each university. This means that the student who is applying to these schools are going to have to complete twelve unique applications. Not only may these applications be different, most of the essays that a student may have to answer on these applications may differ as well. This can be very time consuming to this student who wants their application to stand out from other students. If each of these applications has two essays on them to do, that is 24 total essays that this student must complete to their fullest potential by the time these application deadlines are due. The application process can take a student months to complete and can cause a student to be burnt out after a few applications. Although there is such thing as the Common Application, an application that is accepted by some universities, only 600 schools in the United States accept this common application (Ruderman 5). Although it is nice that there is a form of application that is the same and accepted by different universities, it is only a slim portion of the thousands of colleges out their in the United States.
The next problem with the application process is the question “How do colleges choose between who gets in and who does not?” For most of the applications, it is really hard to tell from student to student who will get in. The first process of the acceptance mostly has to do with standardized testing and GPA. This as previously stated earlier, has problems in itself. There can be students with really good grades who may not be test takers. There are also people on the other hand who may get average grades but have a great personality and would work hard at the school of their dreams. Another issue is that GPA is different depending on the high school. A student who received a 3.1 GPA at one school may have the equivalent GPA of a 4.23 at another high school. For most College applications, if the student's scores do not meet the average that the university wants, their application is immediately thrown away without even taking into consideration all the essays they have written in order to stand out from other students. It makes you think why some of the college applications are so detailed and essay based when most of these essay go unread if scores are not high enough. Another problem that has risen in the application process has been the question of schools using quotas to make decisions. This means that some colleges have been accused of only accepting people of different races until a certain percentage is reached for a specific race. For example, a college may feel like they only want 10% of the incoming class to be Asian American. This means that they either will try to fill up this quota to make their incoming classes look diverse. Quotas are a reason to why some students who have what it takes to get into a school may not get accepted. For example, a 4.0 African American student may not get accepted compared to a 3.8 Asian American because the quota for Asian American students at a university is not filled yet. Quotas were first introduced with the idea that it can help people in minority groups get accepted easier, but it can actually have a reverse effect. If the quota for the Asian American population is 10%, after that 10% is filled, the college may not look to accept any more Asian Americans even if their scores and essays are just as good as any other student. The acceptance process is just another flaw in the application process, and the journey through education as a whole.
The final issue with the application process is the FAFSA form or the free application for federal student aid. The FAFSA form is a form that students fill out when applying to schools that allows schools to see what income the parents and student are making in a year. The FAFSA form is used to look at the total income of a family, and then devises a loan plan for that family if the student who applied to a certain college gets in. Why could this be bad though? It comes into play when colleges can see a family’s income before they accept a student. Although many colleges state that they practice need-blind acceptance, which is basically saying that they do not take an income as a factor when accepting students, there is nothing in place to enforce that this is actually occurring. This most likely occurs with students who have been waitlisted. The students that are waitlisted tend to be students on the outside that the college would rather not have in, but they will take them if the people who got accepted do not choose their school. Schools will often offer no financial aid to those on the waitlist who need financial assistance but will offer more to those on the waitlist who have a greater income. This is because they know the student with the higher family income will more likely be able to pay them all the money. One of the biggest decisions for most people when deciding on a college is whether or no they can afford college, so it is unfair that some students are being denied into schools that they would like to go to because that school is unwilling to provide the financial assistance they need because of the FAFSA form.
One of the main factors behind America’s efforts to increase access to college education beyond that of the wealthy is mainly sustained by a large social influence. “That each generation of taxpayers and parents bear the lion’s share of the burden for education for the next”. This compact goes back to the Morrill Act of 1862, which helped states create public universities that would educate those who weren’t able to afford a tertiary education from a private institution. Some boosts from the GI Bill in 1944 to the Pell Grant in 1964 have helped the problem. The federal government wasn’t the sole provider for this change, however. Generous investments to public colleges have kept the cost low, which has made it possible for families to support their kids, as well as provided “need-based aid” to students in need.
Something that needs to be taken into consideration though is that the cost of going to college does affect groups of students differently. Students from families that make an income in the top quintile, the cost of attending college is quite modest at around “17% of the family income”. Many students also receive aid from their institutions that they don’t necessarily need. This has led to high rates of completion from high-income families and the debt they receive is in most situations paid off in time.
Students from low income-families, however, have they burden to deal with. Even with the help received from financial aid, “colleges must find a way each year to pay or finance an amount roughly equivalent to 76% of their families’ annual earnings”. This leads to lower rates of attendance and the colleges are usually lower quality as well as in most cases a struggle to pay off the debt they have collected.
Although there has been a large uproar for increasing cost of medical care and prescription drugs the cost of tuition and fees have increased even faster by 699% since 1982. Which is more than three times the rate of increase in median household income.
There are many factors that contribute to what benefits one may receive after attending or failing to attend, college. How long a student attends college, if they attend at all, can determine whether or not they are employed after graduation. As of March 2018, the unemployment rate for those (25 years of age and older) with less than a high school diploma and high school graduates are 5.5 and 4.3 percent, respectively while the unemployment rate for those with a bachelors or higher is 2.2 percent. Also, 55,534 graduates that have completed their bachelor’s degrees or more are employed compared to the 9,666 who did not complete their high school education.
The duration of a student’s education can also affect income post-graduation. For those that did not complete their high school education, they received, on average, $488 weekly while those who did graduate high school received $668; meanwhile, those that received a bachelor’s degree or higher received approximately $400 to $700 more. Even those who dropped out of college or completed their associate’s degree averaged out to $761 a week. Studies have also found that for every year spent in college, there is roughly a 10 percent increase in income. Thus, if someone were to earn, for instance, $10,000 and had spent three years in college, they would gain an additional $3,000 versus someone who spent one year and gains $1,000.
No doubt a college degree is a great method to give a student a competitive advantage after graduation, however, not all graduates are able to reap the benefits immediately after finishing college. Nationally, there has been an accumulative $1.3 trillion dollars of debt made by students. This alone surpasses that of auto loans as well as credit cards. Also, it takes approximately 10 to 30 years to fully pay off federal loans and about 10 to 25 to pay off other private loans. Colleges aren’t doing enough to control the costs as “prices of attending colleges is rising faster than inflation or family income”. The main part responsible for this problem is that there is declining state support for full-time students with a decrease of 20% since 1990.
Nowadays, college focuses more on getting the degree rather than giving an actual career. Many college graduates never work in their major; they waste a lot of money and time to study something that it’s not going to be part of their career after graduating. College does not teach the student some of the skill that everyone needs to be successful professionally. Skills such as proactiveness, adaptability, critical thinking, networking, and business relationship.
According to a November 2013 study by website CareerBuilder, about 31 percent of college-educated American workers age 35 and older are never employed within their degree field. For recent graduates, the chances of working within a degree field are even bleaker. According to the CareerBuilder study, half of the college-educated workers said their first job was outside their field. A study made by Brad Plumer for The Washington Post claimed that only 27 percent of graduates have a job related to their major. Only 62 percent of U.S. college graduates had a job that needed a college degree, and only 27 percent match with their major. Landing a job unrelated to your major is the most common outcome by far. Despite an inability to find work in their chosen academic fields, 64 percent of employees say they are happy with the degree they pursued, and 61 percent said that they still believe they can find their dream job. Just over one-third of the college-educated workers wished they had picked a different college major.
Another huge problem in the college system is the lack of critical skills being taught for pursuing your career and becoming successful in one’s professional field. College can help students grow in a lot of diverse ways, but it teaches “how to test,” instead of how to think. That means students must follow a syllabus, do all the assignments, and follow all the instructions, and figure out what type of answers the professor wants to hear. That is how they get an A.
These days, graduation denotes the start of your learning, not the end of it. In school, learning happens at a moderately typical pace. You have time to do your assigned reading, work on your homework, go to office hours if you have any questions, and ensure you understand everything impeccably before the exam. But the real world isn’t like that; you may need to execute on projects quickly before you get an ideal comprehension of how everything should function. You will need to keep learning by doing things like reading the correct books, manufacturing an association, networking with experienced professionals, and offer some benefit to each other. These skills are essential because 85% of a man's prosperity is due to "human engineering, your identity, communication ability, negotiation skills, and emotional intelligence.”
Lastly, a major aspect of life is networking. College doesn’t teach students how to network or implement practical life interactions. Networking is “the cultivation of productive relationships for employment or business.” (Merriam Webster). The ability to make professional conversation with other professionals to gain knowledge or job opportunities is lacked. There is no time in college to go out and take part in real applications of your major, until the last year when it is too late. So after four years of studying your desired topic, you will be thrown into the real world just to realize you have to start from the very beginning.
Acknowledgment of this semi-crisis is has been known for decades but now we must admit to the problems and implement necessary solutions to rid of this. Through the thorough analysis, viewers and readers understand there is not one underlying cause of the heartbreak of our education system. We can start by including a solution the very on breakdown discussed above.
As standardized testing keeps minimizing a students character and self-worth, we discuss other options to replace this process. One approach is to implement multiple ways of measuring one's school progress and performance. Many call this a “student portfolio,” teachers gather works from a wide range of subjects over the year and they are reflected upon. Approaches of this sort have been developed in Britain, Australia, and the United States, particularly in Vermont. In addition projects such as the Learning Record, based in California, and the Work Sampling System, based in Ann Arbor, are other examples (Kamenetez). A big part of learning teachers say is “reflection.” Reflection allows the student to see their own progress both the good and the bad, overall contributing immensely to the students overall learning.
Finding ways around the cost of college may be difficult in the 21st economy, but there are other ways. Leaders should just start off by fully remodeling the pricing towards our 21st century times. The current tuition model being used today is from the 1970s when the economy was different. Where one family was able to handle college costs out of pocket. Today, 20 percent of families pay 100 percent or more of their annual income to cover the net price of college, according to an analysis by Robert Kelchen, an assistant professor of higher education at Seton Hall University. In 1996, just 10 percent did. Adapting to latest times colleges and universities can publish tuition information by family income and academic program.
Solving the college application is relevant and close to our time. California universities have drawn up a matching system for top-tier schools. This system is run by an outside non-profit entity — the National Resident Matching Program — in which has been “matching residents and hospitals for over 60 years using a mathematical algorithm to pair the preferences of applicants with the best fit for the programs that need staff.” (Nordquist). Using an algorithm to match each individual to their desired school proved to fill 99.4% of available residency position. So why not try matching high school seniors up? Being able to match to the school of best fit in one go, reduces the stress of students (and parents).
There is no simple way to fix the flaw in our education system. A simple solution infers that a single strategy or proposition will be sufficient enough to solve the entirety of the issue. So, all of these options are viable ways to piece together the education system, a solution best fit to bring change is a “guess and check,” method. Start testing the many solutions created. Start experimenting with the schooling systems. Now is the time to start trying them out, and if they work implement them as you begin to see results and progress.