GroshLink

Although Higher Education's Big Lie (Ann Larson, Inside Higher Ed, 6/3/2010) is too strong, it compliments several articles which I've recently posted (e.g., College For All? Experts Say Not Necessarily, Worst Paying College Degrees) AND is a helpful warning as to how we can fall for "the education gospel."  It's much more complicated than that.  No doubt that's part of the rise of Helicopter Parenting Out in the Open, But what is the Origin & Purpose?  Below's the opening 2 paragraphs, be sure to read the whole article, http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/06/03/larson.

The notion that education, particularly a college degree, is the key to career success is a particularly American idea. It is what the sociologists W. Norton Grubb and Marvin Lazerson have called "the education gospel," a national ethos of hard work in school paying off and of equal opportunity for all. Politicians of every stripe have addressed unemployment by advising the unemployed to take individual responsibility for their futures by learning new skills and by reinventing themselves for a global economy where opportunity will materialize for those with the right credentials.

And workers have responded to the call. As The New York Times reported recently, there are now more students enrolled in U.S. institutions of higher education than ever before. Today, women attend college in record numbers, and, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2003, the number of African American, Hispanic, and other minorities enrolled in college reached the highest levels in history. -- Higher Education's Big Lie (Ann Larson, Inside Higher Ed, 6/3/2010)