The Two-Income Trap - Elizabeth Warren [23]
Does that mean that publicly supported day care is a bad idea? Not necessarily. If it were part of a package that also improved public education from kindergarten through high school, the bidding-war implications of a day-care subsidy would be muted. Moreover, day-care subsidies could be accompanied by offsetting support for single-income families, such as tax credits for stay-at-home parents, which would help level the playing field between single- and dual-income families. Besides, publicly supported day care would have very real benefits for society at large, not the least of which would be to raise the standard of care for millions of children who currently receive inadequate attention while their parents are at work.
That All-Important Degree
Finally, we come to the other end of the education spectrum, for which American parents are advised to start stashing away money before their little ones can even fingerpaint, let alone choose a major: college.
Americans are a contentious lot. They express an astonishing variety of opinions about politics and religion, sports teams and movies, vitamin supplements and workplace dress codes. They even disagree on the basic facts of history. According to one recent poll, 6 percent of our fellow citizens believe that the Apollo moon landings were faked.76 But there is one topic on which Americans overwhelmingly agree: the importance of a college education. According to a recent survey, 97 percent of Americans agree that a college degree is “absolutely necessary” or “helpful,” compared with a scant 3 percent claiming that a degree is “not that important.”77 In other words, Americans are twice as likely to believe that man never walked on the moon as they are to believe that a college degree doesn’t matter! In a diverse culture full of contrarians who relish their differences with one another, faith in the power of higher education is the new secular religion. Americans now see a college degree as the single most important determinant of a young person’s chances of success—even more significant than getting along well with others or having a good work ethic.78
A generation or so ago, Americans were more likely to believe that there were many avenues for a young person to make his way into the middle class, including paths that didn’t require a degree. I (Elizabeth) recall my parents encouraging me to attend college, since my grades were high and they hoped I might become a teacher one day. But they were equally pleased when my eldest brother joined the Air Force, my middle brother entered a skilled trade, and my youngest brother became a pilot—even though all three of the boys had given up on college. My parents’ views were pretty typical a generation or two ago. Education was valued, but no one in our neighborhood would have claimed it was the “single most important determinant of a young person’s success.”
Today, 77 percent of adults say that getting a college education is more important than it was just ten years ago, and 87 percent believe that “a college education has become as important as a high school diploma used to be.”79 Middle-class parents—obeying the dictate that college is essential in the new economy—have found themselves combatants in yet another active bidding war. Once again, supply and demand are out of balance. The number of students aiming for a spot in a decent four-year institution is rising every year, while the number of openings at the major public and private universities stays essentially the same. This is true not just at Harvard and Princeton, but also at the big state universities. The “open admission” policies that once ensured pretty much everyone a slot at State U. have virtually disappeared. Indeed, many state universities no longer have room even for average students, let alone struggling ones. The University of Wisconsin, for example, recently announced that the majority of its