The Education Gap
October 22nd, 2009I recently read an interesting article by David Brooks called “The Education Gap.” Published in The New York Times on September 25, 2005, Brooks talks about the ability of colleges to address the inequities between poverty and wealth. He points out the fact that only 28 percent of Americans have college degrees but that most of those with degrees find themselves in social situations where almost everybody has been to college.
Brooks notes that behavioral differences are starting to surface between the groups. According to Brooks, divorce rates are twice as high for high school grads as college grads, high school grads are twice as likely to smoke, high school grads are much less likely to exercise, college grads are twice as likely to vote, college grads are twice as likely to volunteer, and college grads are twice as likely to donate blood.
Brooks maintains that today’s information society has increased the gap between high school and college graduates. In an information society, a college degree is a must. Students need to recognize the importance of that as early as ninth grade in order to prepare for college. Students from families with parents who have attended college have a greater chance of going to college than students from families that don’t have a parent who attended college. Furthermore, Brooks states that students in the lowest per capita income quartile of the population have an 8.6 percent chance of graduating from college versus students in the top income quartile who have a 74.9 percent chance of graduating from college.
