There's a lot of food for thought in the statistics from that study, in addition to the trends among those with higher education. Here are some examples:

In 1993, 17 percent of men and 13 percent of women were "proficient" in prose and document literacy. In 2003, 13 percent of men and 13 percent of women were proficient. In other words, only men appear to be losing proficiency.

In America as a whole, only about 15 percent of adults are "proficient" in any of the three literacy areas -- document, prose and quantitative. According to the study, then, only 15 percent of Americans have the skills necessary for: comparing viewpoints in two editorials; interpreting a table about blood pressure, age, and physical activity; and computing and comparing the cost per ounce of food items.

Incentives may be playing a part here. The percentage of "proficient" individuals who are employed full-time as DROPPED, while the percentage of those who have only "basic" abilities, as well as those "below basic" who are employed full-time has INCREASED. If being proficient makes you less employable than it used to, why bother?

Finally, whole demographics in this country have virtually NO proficiency. Astoundingly, ony 2 percent of blacks, 3 to 4 percent of hispanics, and -- get this -- 2 percent of ALL AMERICANS OVER 65 are "proficient" at document, prose and quantitative literacy.

Certainly a college degree alone isn't the marker of valuable knowledge, skills or work ethic. But most people, the successful ones at least, know that already. I think that you, Zach, fail to realize that most people aren't looking at college degrees as a sign of that anyway. It's the other things that college degrees bring to the table that matter.

A college degree serves as a qualifier or gate into the very career paths that allow one to have at minimum, a middle class lifestyle. Having the degree doesn't mean you'll get rich -- Bill Gates is a college dropout and a multi-billionaire too -- but for those who aren't exactly born into the middle class, born into the middle-class families based on traditional union jobs or for those without connections, the degree or at least a few years of college, will help get one's foot in the door.

The poor especially need college simply because of where they start out in life: They aren't middle-class and don't have connections. College provides the forum for them to build paths to one and gain the relationships they'll need for continued employment. It also helps in terms of being able to relate to people of different experiences in life. You'll never know when you'll run into a history major-turned-math professor-cum engineering doctorate. And it happens.

Besides having the degree helps with hiring bosses who hold a traditional view that somehow finishing college means you can stick something out and complete it. Now the average person knows that if you have the financial support, a bit of drive and at least some education, you can graduate from college. So it proves nothing when it comes to completing something one starts. But such traditional thinking remains even among those who should know better. Therefore the degree helps neutralize those arguments against making a hire.

RiShawn, I'm confused.

Are you arguing that college degrees are better for poor people than the middle class? Presumably, those poor people would have a tougher time paying for the education.

If I am an average poor person, am I not disadvantaged compared to an average middle class person in terms of access to this degree? Yes, if I get the degree I will be better off, but I presumably have less resources available to get the degree.

Why not just have an employment test like this:
[] Check if your family has access to resources to educate you

Then we can skip the whole education deal and create teen youth work camps, where young people can meet and socialize and choose mates amoungst themselves. Meanwhile, they can be working for society instead of being a net drain in terms of research hours lost and the creation of alcohol related accidents. The elites who actually care about education can go to college, and degrees can go back to standing for more than access to resources.

What I'm saying is that it's actually a far more nuanced argument than most people actually think. The benefits of college not only depends on one's economic status, but even on the kind of careers in which they want to embark. A teen who wants to get into a tech-related career, be it engineering or biotech, not only needs to finish college and grad school, but needs the preparation early on in elementary and high school to even be ready for the rigors of studying for those careers. An actor, on the other hand, doesn't really need it.

And while first-generation middle-class children would probably benefit as much from college as a poor kid, it's not exactly the case for a kid such as a Bill Gates, whose parents were in the upper middle class. His parents' status, along with his ultimate career choices (entrepreneurship) essentially made going to Harvard a waste of time save to meet future partners Steve Ballmer and Paul Allen.

What makes the issue more confusing is that the real problem isn't college, but the poor preparation most kids receive in the public school system. Consider for a moment that in Indiana alone, 23,000 eighth-graders who made up the original class of 2005 didn't likely graduate high school (some will argue they may have moved, but in most cases, mobility accounts for 5 percent of those students; the rest eventually didn't graduate). That's just the tip of the iceberg. Social promotion, along with a system under which students aren't given the same level of rigorous education because teachers choose who can get into those programs and who can't without any sort of objective evidence, means that students are poorly prepared even before high school. And I'm not even mentioning the achievement gap that starts long before schooling begins.

While poor kids do have the limits in resources, so do the middle class. Yet as Jay Greene has pointed out, the biggest reason why most kids don't go to college or complete it has little to do with money, but with adequate preparation at the elementary and high school levels. Solve those problems which involve literacy, and the quality of attending collegians will improve.

But back to college: It isn't exactly the waste you argue it is, Dave, nor is it as much a drain as you think. For those who are poor, the high sums actually offer long-term benefits, none of which show up simply in dollars and cents.

For my grandmother, the first person in my family to go to college, it was the first step she took out of the real tough Depression-era poverty she experienced as a child into a world where knowledge and culture was valued. This in turn was imparted to her daughters, including my mother, who was the first to graduate from college. That helped my mother give my siblings and I the solid educational experiences that have kept us out of jail and in some cases, do well for ourselves.

But again, college is beneficial for its attendees based on a complex number of factors.

As for your suggestion of teen camps? That sounds nice. But improving educational opportunities for all students, not just elites, is the way to go.

Alright, I was being a little silly about the whole camps thing.

My main point is that I think college has turned into a form of discrimination between those who can (and are willing) to go and those who can't (or are unwilling). I read a statistic somewhere that 3/4 of pizza delievery drivers in DC have a college degree.

My point is such: If that pizza driver was hired over some other (otherwise perfectly qualified) person because he had a college degree, then I think college is being abused as an indicator of things that might not be true. Presumably, there is very little that a pizza driver would learn in college that is directly applicable to his job (I suppose he can write poetry on the box lid). Of course, you can argue that he demonstrated staying power and Iron Will in order to get through the system. None of that means that the non-degreed guy would be unable to do the job in the same fashion, he is just much less desirable as an employee for reasons that are possibly beyond his control.

I'm not arguing that we should shut down colleges. I just find the arguments that college should exist as a social networking platform and a teacher of life experience lame. College should exist for people who want to learn a profession or learn about human knowledge. It should not be used to discriminate against those who don't attend for reasons possibly beyond their control, in situations where the degree doesn't matter.

Obviously, you hope the guy who designed the bridge you drive over has a degree in engineering. The same is not true of your pizza delivery driver, his degree is a social status marker in some sense.

I also take your point that the whole idea of college is complex. I just wish there were more alternatives for people other than "Must go to college because everyone says that's what I should do".

From your strawman example of the pizza drivers in DC, one would think that they are simply getting a degree to get a menial job. That's not likely the case, especially if you know the DC culture.

Many of them, if your 3/4 of pizza drivers example is so -- and there's no evidence of that in any census or demographic reports I have -- are either trying to get those plum legislative assistant/thumbsucker jobs on the Hill or have those jobs -- which tend to pay poorly -- and have taken second jobs in order to pay the high price of living in one of the nation's most expensive housing markets. Or they are simply community college grads who are working while finishing up at Georgetown or George Washington.

Just as likely, they are the folks that went to college and got their degrees, but didn't understand that getting the sheepskin alone won't get you a job. There are things you have to do -- do internships, join clubs and organizations, write for student-run newspapers or similar outfits -- that help build the resume and build the relationships that are among the keys to getting on the career track you want.

The latter, having done nothing more than simply go to school and graduate, find out after getting out that hiring executives have long-ago realized that a degree alone doesn't connote talent or ability. Hawking ads for the school newspaper proves that as does as does the internships.

Now you argue that college shouldn't exist for social networking. One would argue that college, be it the Socratic agora of the Athenian Golden Age or the Harvard of today, has always served that purpose. The reality is that educational institutions, like all organizations, serve multiple purposes because they are social organizations by nature; you end up rubbing shoulders with many different types of people, some of whom are quite willing to help you in a pinch in exchange for help in return when they get into a similar jam.

This is even true in the case of say, restaurants. My local eatery is a wonderful place for brunch dining. At the same time, it's also a local hangout where one can find the chairman of the local political party, engineers working on chips for DirecTV set-top boxes, authors of books and even the history major-cum-math professor-turned-engineering doctorate I mentioned in my earlier comments. The same is also true if you eat at the Daily Grill in Beverly Hills (talent agents, movie stars and behind-the-scenes players) or New York's Four Seasons. Any organization in which mass numbers of people get together are bound to be forums for rubbing shoulders. Nothing to be done about it and frankly, nothing should be done about it.

While I understand your argument that college has become a sort of discriminatory device, that's always been true. The kid who went to college always got a better shake than the kid who didn't. It's even more true now because of the nature of today's economy: Highly-specialized knowledge. But discrimination exists in one form of another; that's the real world. The question is whether it should be one based on tribalism (racial bigotry for example; Hoosierism or whether you were born in Indiana or not, is another) or should it be based on some marker of quality. College education, whether one graduates or not, is a marker of quality, not so much of academics or skills, but of the ability to realize how the world actually exists and of high or low culture.

The reality is that, as Jay Greene has shown in his recent book "Education Myths," most kids can get the money to finance college. Some 933,000 White kids in the class of 2000 were well-prepared academically for college; 1 million Whites actually did so. 112,000 Blacks in the class of 2000 were well-prepared for college; 152,000 actually did so. The point of all of it, as Greene notes, is that kids who want to go to college more often than not can do so if they are academically prepared for the rigors of that academic experience. Those who can't don't do so largely because they either dropped out of high school or didn't leave secondary education with the preparation necessary to get into one.

The problem, as I've said earlier Dave, isn't access to college, but the woeful system of public education in this country where students are socially promoted despite their lagging performance, then allowed to whither on the vine by senior year of high school. That problem is also why college graduation or attendance has become something of a marker of skill for those not sophisticated enough to realize that it isn't so; employers are trying to find potential employees who can read, write and do math, the type of preparation that public education are failing at.

Solve the elementary and secondary education problem Dave and college will be less of an important marker. Period.

Solve the elementary and secondary education problem Dave and college will be less of an important marker. Period.

On that, I agree.