By Stephen Smoot
Earlier this month, a Charleston journalist known for a less than charitable attitude for all things Republican commented on the relative academic achievements of past Democratic Legislative leaders compared to the current Senate President, Randy Smith and Senate Majority Leader Patrick Martin .
After taking heat from the right and left about the value of advanced degrees in leadership positions, the journalist stated “the tweet in question stated facts. It did not address who does or does not have merit to hold leadership roles.”
That said, even those who have never heard the word “enthymeme” intuitively understand how one works. What’s left unsaid can scream louder than what one explicitly states, but the speaker or writer can always use the “just take what I said literally” defense to escape the consequences of his or her implication.
At one point, college and university education focused on the elite populations of Americans, those expected to lead in their fields, from politics to science. Those lacking the money or connections could access different types of training. John Adams, for example, had only a cursory formal college education, but what he learned there, including Latin, most (like future President Harry Truman) absorbed in high school in later times.
Adams, at his father’s urging but without personal enthusiasm, embarked on studies for a life as a minister.
To learn what he needed for his chosen career, the law, Adams approached learning that topic as a tradesman would, by direct experience. As one of his chief biographers, David McCullough, stated, in 1758 “he signed a contract with a young Worcester attorney, James Putnam, to study ‘under his inspection’ for two years.”
The greatest legal mind in American history next to John Marshall, and one of the great lawyers, diplomats, political theorists, and statesmen in American history, whose presidency was not even his finest, or even his penultimate role, obtained his law education outside of a classroom.
He read Blackstone’s Commentaries and other great legal works. He sat in courtrooms and listened to men of experience and ability. He, under supervision, even argued cases – losing at first, but learning from each.
By the early 1770s, Adams had risen to the point where, against all odds, against all of his friends and neighbors, and against American conventional wisdom, he secured not guilty verdicts for the British soldiers accused of murder in the Boston Massacre. His command of the law and effective communication of it convinced an American jury to free a group of men Bostonians would have preferred to lynch after the incident.
This made him one of the great lawyers in the entire British Empire until the War of Independence.
The Morrill Land Grant Act changed the role of higher education in America. During the Civil War, Republicans passed the first in a series of acts to give states proceeds of federal land sales to establish “land grant” universities that would specialize in teaching agriculture, scientific, and mechanical arts.
West Virginia University and West Virginia State hold this distinction in the Mountain State.
College education in broader fields attracted more interest, but not until World War II and the subsequent G.I. Bill did college education become an attainable goal for millions of Americans who traditionally could not attend.
Alongside these schools, trade schools, union-based and other apprenticeships, as well as on-the-job training, worked side by side with higher education to feed the employment needs of the American economy.
In 1971, the United States Supreme Court tipped the scales farther into the favor of higher education with Griggs v Duke Power Company.
The North Carolina based company was sued by 14 black employees who objected to application of skills and aptitude tests or high school graduation under civil rights legislation. The court stated that if those measures might tend to exacerbate discrimination, even if not overtly used for discriminatory purposes, they are not to be used because they were deemed “unfair to disadvantaged groups.”.
As a result, college degrees served as one of the least problematic credentials to show aptitude, intelligence, or skills because it passes the Griggs test. .From 1971 and over the next four decades, college requirements became ubiquitous, even in fields like information technology where training and experience would show much more.
The tide started to turn in the last decade as the job market became flooded with bachelors degrees, some with limited applicability. In recent years, the earnings potential for four year degrees in total dipped below that of a masters, but also an associates degree or trade school certifications.
Meanwhile college enrollments have started to decline, with colleges increasingly closing their doors in the near future.
Griggs remains a land mine in a number of ways. With racial discrimination much less of an issue than in the 60s and early 70s, conditions have changed enough to allow this case law a reexamination, but that would also open a huge uproar of debate and accusations that would make those over Roe a tempest in a teapot by comparison. .
But the unintended result of that case lay in creating huge disadvantages against qualified people of all ethnicities who, for whatever reason, elected to get experience and skills in a realm other than college.
In any event, it is time to start moving away from college degree requirements unless they are germane to the job, especially since they came about not from objective need, but in response to a court case.
It is also time to recognize that companies need to have broad flexibility in determining hiring and promotion policy – as well as how to determine who deserves those benefits.
And it’s time for society from top to bottom to understand that education can take many paths in life to get to an individual’s destination, whether they want to weld, practice law, or serve as Senate President.