How to Improve College Education in the United States - Essay Example

Education system in the United States has been in a slow trend for the last four decades and is yet to regain positive momentum. Graduation rates in high schools and colleges have not moved from their usual points in the past years (Hout 1). Apparently, over 85 percent of students with the age of twenty years and above hold high school diplomas now as it was in the past four decades. On the other hand, approximately 28 percent of today’s thirty years old have acquired degrees from colleges. In essence, education progress in the United States has moved from a hundred years of hard times and development where the secondary and higher education had continually opened greater opportunities to the young generation in the United States. The progress towards universal high school graduation dragged down in the 1960s, and by 1975, it had come to a standstill (Hout 2). If anything, there were instances of high college rates for young men, but the gains associated with women enough kept the general graduation rates from drastically falling. According to critics and scholars, the failures in high school and college for the young people have been associated to numerous issues. These issues include drugs and video games, hard knocks and false promises. Moreover, these young people have been experiencing both few options and many options, which to an extent either separately or together contribute to initial failure (Hout 4). It is crucial to note is that, it is difficult to account for the persistence slowdown as the patterns entails different ways in which men and women trend, the lock step for private and public education, individual effort, and preparation for education systems in the United States. In light of this, substantial information indicates that the lack of education progression in the last thirty years is associated to decisions made by the colleges and universities as compared to the changes associated to the young people while preparing for their college education. Consequently, prestigious systems that are present in private education, and the reducing funds in public universities for the student facilitates the rationing of opportunities in colleges and universities as compare to expanding them. Fundamentally, colleges have become far more selective than they were in the past with admission officers turning away numerous qualified applicants. This is justified by the allegation of lack of enough facilities in the institutions to cater for these students. These impositions by various colleges have contributed to boosting the prestige of good applicants (Jencks Para 1). However, other colleges that do not give limitation on admissions provide students with chances to join the institutions to advance their education. Never the less, even as this is achieved, some of the youth who are qualified for these institutions do not enroll for their preferred courses while others begin their education but do not have the opportunity to complete. Due to this, the graduation rate has barely been below 30 percent for the past fifty years. In the recent past, the United States has had a stagnated growth of colleges and universities. There has been slow advancement of education facilities to a point of having more people who need to advance their education, but they are faced by the lack of facilities leading to a huge logjam that has not yet been resolved (Jencks Para 4). The glory of the education system in the United Stated which was the envy of the world’s had drastically lost competition. Been the hub of top universities, United States has given in to the harsh rate of taxes that have kept the ever increasing number of young scholars in most of the universities away. In fact, according to a research done by an organization on Economic Cooperation and Development, young people from counties such as France, Ireland , Japan, and others have cheaper college cost as compared to young people in the United States. It is far much easier to get bachelor degrees in other countries except, the United States. The initial problem for the education system in the United States is that the rate of graduation has grown amicably as compared to that of high school. Conversely, the number of graduates joining colleges has gone up, but those that earn a full term degree course have gone down with reference to financial aid that has not been any better (Jencks Para 12). In the United States, most of the young people who want advance their education in colleges comfort families who are less affluent who are compelled to borrow from the government to be able to compete their four year degree. This was accompanied by the idea of letting the college students give back to the society by taking more of loans than grants from the government, even though the whole experience is seen as a risky investment. Another solution that has been thought of is the use of community colleges, which goes for two years to serve some of the young people who are still willing to continue with their education, but do not have enough finances to join some of the top universities and prefer to work with commuting distances to colleges (Jencks Para 14). Improvement The importance of education is that it plays a major role in determining the future of the concerned individuals. At times, it seems to widen the gap between the high and low income families with regard to the level of education that is present. Placing hopes on education simply means that only those who are educated prosper in life. Needless to mention, that the gap between the rich and the poor widen with the presence of education. According to ‘Are Undergraduates Actually Learning Anything?’ a considerable percentage of undergraduates are said to have failed in developing the broad based skills and knowledge that is expected of them. They lack complex reasoning and written communication as they spend more than half of the college years paying less attention to learning to an extent of not being able to demonstrate any statistical improvement in their studies. The research further says that although they might graduate, they do not have the cognitive skills that are expected of the making it an issue of concern (Arum and Roksa Para 2). In reference to this, it is important that the United States assesses student learning in higher education institutions (Forest et al 88). Assessment basically entails educational improvement where ideas are enacted on the type of learning that has more value to students and aim at assisting in its achievement. The values should incorporate both, what we choose to assess and how we do it. Assessment becomes valuable only if it shows the understanding of learning as a multidimensional, integrated process that reveals performance over a given period of time. Learning as a complex process does not only revolve around what the students know, but what they are capable of doing with what they know. This assessment process should be ongoing to ensure that all the loop holes are dealt with in accordance to learning expectations (Forest et al 89). Additionally, the United States should ensure their colleges and universities regain back their glory as some of the best universities worldwide. This could be done through ensuring that the level of education is taken to a notch higher and more complex cognitive skills are taught to prepare graduated to a working experienced world. The college and universities should not be highly taxed especially for foreign students as this discourages them from joining the institutions. Through this, there will be a grantee of an improvement in the college education in the United States (Arum and Roksa 9). Works Cited Arum, Richard and Roksa, Josipa. Are Undergraduates Actually Learning Anything? Chronicle of Higher Education.2011.Web 18th Jan 2011. http://chronicle.com/article/Are-Undergraduates-Actually/125979/. Forest, James, et al. Higher education in the United States: an encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO.2002.Print. Hout, Michael. Rationing College Opportunity, The American Prospect.2009.Web 22nd Oct 2012 http://paa2009.princeton.edu/papers/91500. Jencks, Christopher. The Graduation Gap, The American Prospect.2009.Web 22nd Oct 2009. < http://prospect.org/article/graduation-gap->. Read More