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Is college for everyone

That means about 600,000 students each year will not complete their bachelor's degree, concludes a new US Department of Education study. And it asks: "Is there too much emphasis on getting a four-year college degree?"

It is almost a heretical question. A college degree has never been more coveted - or sought after. A record 14.9 million students enrolled this year. More than 96 percent of high school seniors say college is important - and two-thirds expect to earn a bachelor's degree.

It's a significant change from the early 1980s, when just 52 percent of seniors discount gucci handbags expected to enroll in any college. Now, "College for all" is the 1990s mantra - urged by parents, guidance counselors, and political leaders of all stripes.

Yet something is not quite right with this picture, some contend. The bachelor's degree is being discount gucci bags oversold to many high-schoolers who do not truly want the experience or have only a slim chance of attaining a four-year degree, these critics say. As a result, many students end up on campus without a clear sense of what they expect to gain from a college education. And that can affect everything from choosing the right school at the outset to picking a major or setting a career path - or even dropping out, as growing numbers are doing.

"College has become a default decision," says Kenneth Gray, professor of education at Pennsylvania State University at University Park.

"Tons of unprepared high school graduates are shoveled into four-year gucci bags on sale colleges," he continues. "But they just don't know why they're there."

Just ask Rick Kimminau. He wishes he had had better high school guidance counseling and had taken time after high school to work. Instead, as a high school senior in 1993, he was focused on the bigger paycheck a college degree offered. His prospects seemed good, as he graduated near the top of his small high-school class.

But he found himself ill-prepared for college. So after two months at the University of Kansas, Mr. Kimminau

quit to avoid racking up thousands more in student-loan debt. He then donned steel-toed boots and a hard hat and began polishing aluminum aircraft skins in Wichita.

"I discovered classes at KU were a lot harder" than high school. "It's so tempting," he says. "You're sitting in a college class and you're thinking: 'I could be making $30,000 a year working.' "

It's a choice that would have seemed astonishing just a few generations ago. Before World War II, college was just a dream for most Americans. The GI Bill, which offered war veterans scholarships for education, changed that. And in the past two decades, demand for college graduates has increased with the growth of the service and high-tech economies. Today a bachelor's degree yields a 12 percent return on investment over a lifetime, says the Department of Education report.

Perhaps as significant a factor in boosting Gucci republic bags the "college for all" view has been a shift in college counseling. In the 1960s, high school counselors viewed themselves as gatekeepers. Criticized for elitism, they changed. One study shows counselors recommending college to 66 percent of high school seniors in 1992, double the rate of a decade earlier.