Education

 Engineering Building, University of Wyoming, 1950s.

First of all, let me start off by noting that I'm not posting this as a screed advocating dropping out of school, quite the opposite.

Anyhow, this is my second social history post of the day.  The first one, posted just below, concerns weddings, this one concerns education.

Some friends and I were observing how the value of degrees has changed over the past couple of decades. The change is really quite remarkable.

My grandfather, on my father's side, dropped out of school at age 13.  He basically did this, apparently, with his parents permission.  I don't know the whole story, and I don't know if anyone now living does, but what I basically know is that he didn't like the school he was attending and wanted out.  His parents granted him t he permission to do so, and he left Dyersville Iowa, his home, to go to work in San Francisco.  Grossly condensing the story, at the time of his untimely death at the age of 47, he'd worked his way up through the meat packing industry and owned a plant and creamery, etc., of his own.

My mother's parents were both university graduates.  Very unusual for their time. They'd met at McGill University.  But, their parents certainly were not.  Like my grandfather, my great grandfather had not completed high school (or whatever the Canadian equivalent was). Rather than do that, he left home about age 16, again with his parents permission, and traveled out to Western Canada where he was an office boy, and then later an oil man, before returning home to Quebec.  He did very well in life, and I guess part of that must have entailed sending his sons to university.  My grandmother, on my mother's side, studied music in university.  She was the daughter of a jeweler, but I don't otherwise know the circumstances of her attending university.  Anyhow, my mother was actually pulled out of school by her mother, who in spite of her university degree felt that the daughters in the family needed to be employed in order to help the family through tail end of the Great Depression.  My mother's brothers did attend university, save for one who joined the Canadian Army during World War Two.  My father, likewise, was sent to university by his mother, after my grandfather's death, making him the first university graduate in the family.  However, at least two of his siblings also attended university.

My point here is not to trace family history on this topic, which would be pretty dull to anyone other than me, but to note something else.

Here, in my home county, it is frequently noted that the high school graduate rate is "only" about 80%.  "Only".  But in prior decades, and certainly for most of the 20th Century, it was much lower.  And yet that lack of a high school degree did not equate to a doomed economic life.  Rather, it wasn't much of a hindrance for most people.  Like my grandfather, many men (and they were mostly men) who had no university degrees, and often had not completed high school, were able to work their way up to a successful career of one kind or another.  And the educations they had received were seemingly quite advanced, compared in some ways to today.  My grandfather helped his kids with their high school calculus homework when they were in high school.  As he dropped out at age 13, he'd seemingly had that much of a math education by that time, or was a natural mathematician.

And switching career fields was remarkably common at the time.  A university degree of any kind, no matter what it was, tended to equate to an open door with most businesses, so having one was truly an advantage, to be sure.  Notably, however, entire classes of the American population generally did not enter university unless they were pursing a few narrow careers.  Catholics, for example, generally did not go to university until after World War Two, unless they were able to attend a Catholic institution, or if they were pursing medical or legal degrees (medicine and the law were career fields that were otherwise usually open to any one ethnic group, at least within their own ethnicity).

Now, none of this is true.  We live in the age of certification, and not having certificates, including a high school degree, is extremely limiting, it would seem.  Whole classes of technical and industrial work feature certifications that if the worker lacks, he must receive.  And entire career fields that were once open to anyone are now only open to those with degrees.  Law enforcement is one such career.  At one time, most policemen, if they had any pre career training, had probably just been in military service.  Now, in many areas, they at least need to obtain an associates degree.

Conversely, the value of university degrees has remarkably declined.  At least up through the 1970s, simply having a university degree entitled the holder to an open door at most businesses.  So, in that era, having a degree in, say, English, or History, meant you could go to work at Acme Business, or whatever.  Now, those degrees probably only entitle you to pursue another degree.  And career switching is not easy.  In the mid 20th Century you can find some stunning examples of career switches, some of which are nearly baffling. Doctors becoming bankers, and things like that.  Now, and advanced degree entitles the holder to look for work in that field, but not  really anything else.

As earlier noted, the purpose of this blog is to inquire on the topic of history.  So, what, if anything, does this tell us?  I don't really know, other than that it is a big change, to be sure.  But is it good or bad?  Probably some of both.  I can't help but feel that a high school degree should really be worth more than it seems to have become worth, and that it should be necessary for so many to acquire the debt of college, however.