| President Obama set an ambitious new goal in his speech to Congress on February 24, 2009, proclaiming that by 2020, America will ...have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. But some experts, like author Charles Murray, dont think we need more Americans going to college. In his new book, Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing Americas Schools Back to Reality (Random House, 2008), Murray argues that Americans place too much value on the bachelors degree. Murray and researcher Anthony Carnevale debated Who Needs a College Education Anyway? at the Hechinger Institutes Seminar for Higher Education Reporters in December 2008. Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Ed moderated the debate. Murray, the WH Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, contends that because ability varies and 50 percent of people are below average, our current system of higher education makes little sense. Carnevale, Research Professor and Director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, argues we should encourage as many students as possible to attend and graduate from college, because intelligence isnt fixed at birth and can be influenced by education. After their remarks, Murray and Carnevale took questions from journalists participating in the Seminar. |
