Charles Murray Are Too Many People Going To College Summary

In the essay Are Too Many People Going to College? Charles Murray states that while more people should be gaining a liberal education in their high school years, not as many are so prepared for a college degree. Students are not being given adequate information about the history of the world around them during their formative years, and are instead made to wait until they move on to college. Students who score a higher percentiles are more likely to enjoy the constant research and studying, but for most average students, coursework is a major source of stress over a class that may not pertain to the career the want to pursue.
The actual pillars of what makes a college useful, according to Murray, are becoming less and less of an asset because of modern technology. A school that prides itself on its
This teaches students that a college degree should be strove for no matter what their aspirations are. Students are not adequately prepared for the rigors that a degree brings, so they do not fully understand their goals. When these students do get to college, the have a higher chance of dropping out, but by today's standards, students who drop out are considered dumb or lazy, when that is not the case. Students in the past were taught that having actual job experience was better than having a degree, but now that most people can and do have degrees, the stigma of not going to college has grown greater and greater. This is a system that societally forces students to try to achieve a relatively difficult and arduous task that for most lasts for too long, and when the ones that have been set up in the beginning to fail do, the are marked as black sheep regardless of any other skills or talents that the might posses. Murray states,”there must be a better