Cheaper, Quicker Degrees

Re “ ‘Four-Year College’ Is Now a Misnomer,” Voices, Oct. 2:

There is a simple remedy for the five or six years that now seem necessary to graduate from college with a bachelor’s degree. No student who graduates from high school without the ability to write a respectable essay and/or solve problems using basic math, algebra and geometry should be admitted to a four-year university or college as a freshman. No remedial courses should be offered at four-year universities and colleges.

This solution addresses the misuse of our universities and colleges as remedial institutions and reduces the cost of obtaining a four-year degree.

Sally A. Graves

Covina

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For decades, public school policymakers have failed to embrace a simple truth: Most high school graduates have, for a multitude of perfectly acceptable reasons, little desire to pursue a four-year college degree.

One critical and telling statistic is that less than 25% of high school graduates go on to obtain a four-year college degree.

We push students through the education system today like something out of a Play-Doh factory, but does it turn out more “skunkworks”-capable graduates than 50 years ago, or just look better on paper? Students wanting to go to college should of course be given the opportunity to do so, and level learning fields are a must. But why are the majority of high school students consistently ignored and underprepared by the system that is supposed to prepare them for life after high school? Why continue a pattern of grinding out a test-taking minority and do little to teach real-world skills to the majority?

Bradley Wolff

Palm Springs

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Tony Waldorf’s article dentifies one of the contributing causes of the widening gap between rich and poor: the unequal distribution of higher education. Waldorf notes, “The Census Bureau estimates that the lifetime earnings differential between college and high school graduates will be close to $1 million.”

The high costs, unreasonable time commitments and outmoded standards of academia scream of social injustice. The unreasonable standards of institutions of higher education must give way to a more level playing field. An exponential increase in the number of degrees would provide an educated workforce capable of wiping out poverty as we know it.

Art Lowery

Troutdale, Ore.