why aren't more people going to college?

Let's ask Tyler Cowan.

I can only conclude that Altonji, Bharadwaj, and Lange have never taught Introduction to Composition to a large group of freshman in a public university in the United States. Anyone who has taught such a class -- or for that matter talked to anyone who has -- will have some inkling why more people are not going to college. Herein lie the roots of growing inequality -- on the bottom side at least -- and don't let anyone induce you to take your eye off the ball by playing switcheroo and bringing up the (separate) topic of the growing wealth of the top one percent.

factoid: I myself have taught such classes.

Clicking around the web, reading posts about The Race Between Education and Technology, I fear we are in danger of embarking upon yet another round of research papers and newspaper op-eddery finding that parent education predicts, causes, and fully accounts for the educational attainment of children:

Research summarized in Cunha and Heckman (2007) suggests that part of the explanation [for why the supply of skills is inelastic] might be that parental investment during early childhood shapes the potential to acquire additional skills later in life.

The anemic response of skill investment to skill premium growth

That's the kind of thing that will lead directly to Universal Pre-K, if the edu-world has its way.

Which it will:

It is well documented that people are diverse on a vast array of abilities, that these abilities account for a substantial portion of the variation found across people in their socioeconomic success, and that persistent ability gaps across children from various socioeconomic groups open up at early ages before children enter school. The family plays a powerful role in shaping these abilities through genetics, parental investments and through choice of child environments. From a variety of intervention studies, it is known that ability gaps in children from different socioeconomic groups can be reduced if remediation is attempted at early enough ages. The remediation efforts that appear to be most effective are those that supplement family environments for disadvantaged children. Cunha et al. (2006a), henceforth CHLM, present a comprehensive survey and discussion of this literature.
Cunha, Flavio and James J. Heckman, “The Technology of Skill Formation”, IZA DP No. 2550 (pdf file)

Once we've got 3 year olds constructing meaning in public pre-schools staffed by accredited teachers, we can wave good-bye to the skills gap.

Glancing through the Heckman paper, I can see the shape of things to come. Declining high school graduation rates will be viewed as a species of disability, the prescribed treatment being early intervention: universal pre-K.

School has no effect on children born to uneducated parents, but pre-school will.

Because it's early.

I wonder what Heckman thinks of Levitt and Fryer....

Compared with the results of previous studies, our findings provide reason for optimism. We find smaller achievement gaps, in both the raw and the adjusted scores, for children born in the early 1990s than others had found for earlier birth cohorts. It could well be that, as compared with earlier generations of students, the current cohort of blacks has made real gains relative to whites. Indeed, recent cohorts show smaller raw black-white gaps across multiple data sets—a truly promising sign.

Once students enter school, however, the gap between white and black children grows, even after controlling for observable influences. We speculate that blacks are losing ground relative to whites because they attend lower-quality schools that are less well maintained and managed as indicated by signs of social discord. Though we recognize that we have not provided definitive proof, this is the only hypothesis that receives any empirical support.

Falling Behind
Steven Levitt & Roland Fryer

Heckman doesn't seem too crazy about Levitt. So perhaps he disagrees with Levitt's & Fryer's paper.

Be that as it may, I despair.

Has none of these people had a child in public school recently?

Or spoken to a person who does?

Has none of them thought about the implications of rising within-group inequality?

[E]ven within groups with the same level of education, the gap between high and low earners has widened, too. Indeed, the more advanced the degree, the wider the gap becomes. A satisfactory theory must therefore explain not only why the demand for college educated workers has risen but also why "residual" inequality has increased, that is, the part that is unexplained by education and other observable factors.

Economic Inequality in the United States

The "powerful role" I personally have played in my typical child's educational attainment did not begin at birth and end at age 3. Those were the easy years.

Within-group inequality is not a mystery to me.


Steve Levitt summarizes The Race in 2 sentences
Jimmy graduates

The anemic response of skill investment to skill premium growth
The declining American high school graduation rate: Evidence, sources, and consequences
Pushy parents raise more successful kids

The Race Between Education and Technology book review
The Race Between Ed & Tech: excerpt & TOC & SAT scores & public loss of confidence in the schools
The Race Between Ed & Tech: the Great Compression
the Great Compression, part 2
ED in '08: America's schools
comments on Knowledge Schools
the future
the stick kids from mud island
educated workers and technology diffusion
declining value of college degree
Goldin, Katz and fans
best article thus far: Chronicle of Higher Education on The Race
Tyler Cowan on The Race (NY Times)
happiness inequality down...
an example of lagging technology diffusion in the U.S.
the Times reviews The Race, finally
IQ, college, and 2008 election
Bloomington High School & "path dependency"
the election debate that should have been