To the Editor:
It’s about time that the harm done in advocating “college for all” is finally exposed (“Not Every Student Should Go to College. And That’s OK,” March 10, 2020). The truth is that not everyone is college material. For one reason or another, they lack the wherewithal for success. This explains why, according to a 2018 report by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, more than 40 percent of first-time fall 2012 students at two-year public institutions failed to graduate in six years.
We can persist in the fiction that students without a bachelor’s degree have a bleak future—even though other countries with robust vocational education programs and apprenticeships prove that is not the case. But we are so obsessed with democratization that we are blind to how we shortchange too many students.
Walt Gardner
Education Blogger
Los Angeles, Calif.
