Academia

The notion that college is not worth it is deeply inequitable. Georgetown researchers predict that within a decade, nearly three-quarters of jobs will require some education or training after high school.

I dislike the not-so-subtle assumption that "some education or training after high school" should be equated with "college." He's failing to acknowledge that many of those jobs are skilled trades that are best approached by apprenticeship or vocational school, not college.

In fact, he wears his bias against the skilled trades on his sleeve later in the article:

As someone who was academically tracked to not go to college and instead encouraged to go to a technical school, I find the messaging abhorrent. Black, Latino and poor white students in my high school were consistently placed in remedial courses and vocational courses such as small engine repair, auto repair shop and wood shop. Meanwhile, white students from the affluent part of our little town enrolled in college prep courses.

He -- like many people in recent decades -- was done a disservice by guidance counselors etc. treating trades as second class when they really shouldn't be. As an engineer, one of my biggest regrets is that I was pushed away from hands-on "vocational" classes that in retrospect would've been helpful to me, just because they were for the "bad" students. It's sad that, instead of realizing that problem in messaging, the author is choosing to perpetuate it.

The bottom line is that, while I get that his main point is poor and minority students need to be encouraged to go to college more, I wish he'd at least spent a little time pointing out the flip side, that privileged white students need to stop being pushed towards it to the point that vocational training is demonized.