NY Times: "No Graduate Left Behind"

["ElsaHaas" <ElsaHaas@si.rr.com>]

Has anyone seen James Traub's article, "No Graduate Left Behind", in today's
New York Times magazine section (the section this time is called "The
College Issue")? I haven't noticed any posts about it, but I might have
missed them. 

Oddly, I don't think the article ever mentions the federal student aid that
has been a tool that Spellings wanted to use to get accrediting agencies and
colleges to fall in line with the idea of some kind of "accountability", via
testing, for colleges. (And I think that the idea that the federal student
aid - what's left of it - amounts to a government subsidy is supposed to be
the rationale that makes Republicans seek "accountability" instead of
leaving college education to the free market economy, isn't it?)   

Towards the end, Traub says, "... The self-accountability of our system of
higher education is grounded in the optional nature of college attendance.
But college isn't really optional any longer. The economic value of higher
education, on both the individual and the national levels, has given the
public a stake in outcomes not so different from the stake it has in the
public schools..." 

I left college after three years to work for a homeschooling magazine, and
later traveled and, while living in Spain, became a self-taught English
tutor (for adults), translator and interpreter. Thank goodness the feds
didn't interfere with my "dropping out", because it was one of the best
decisions I ever made.

I shudder to think that my husband and I have liberated our son from school,
only to someday find that college has become compulsory. But maybe that's a
nightmare for the 22nd century. 

Elsa Haas