When we think of college as career preparation, we make a mistake. Except for a small number of professions, college is perhaps one of the slowest, longest, and most expensive routes to career success a person can take.

I was fortunate enough to have five and a half years of college across three universities. I finished with a BA in English and had a bunch of other credits in other disciplines. By all accounts, I ended my academic career with a broad education and wonderful experiences with many world famous award-winning teachers.

Then I needed a job.

I was interested in publishing, so I bought a Macintosh computer and an Apple LaserWriter. I was up and running with my own publishing business in a month. Dollar cost: about 10% of my college education. Time cost: about 2%. Making a living doing something I loved: priceless.

Later, I pursued a successful career in the music industry. Again, buying some hardware, learning the business, making connections, and developing simple career goals, got me up and running fast. Again, dollar and time costs were a fraction of those of my college degree.

My next career was in software development. True, I had some programming classes in high school and college. But they were useless for professional work—out of date, no real-world work ethic, no connection to the business of software product creation and marketing.

So, again, I bought some tools, read some books, talked to some people, and a few years later my company was acquired in an IPO. Big payback for me, small initial investment in time and money relative to what I’d burned at college.

Finally, here I am today with my best and longest-lasting career ever in education. How much college did I get prior to entering the profession? Zero. I learned how to teach by teaching. I learned how to create research-based educational practice by reading research, creating tools, and practicing with them. I came to run a small national consultancy because I had run one before. Life experience, not college experience, was the key, and self-knowledge, not college knowledge, led me to what has been my life's work for the past 15 years and what I will continue working on forever.

College education and career preparation are not mutually exclusive, of course. But when we attempt to ram them together, as though there were one and the same, as we do so often today, we set kids up to fair poorly at both.

I’m not saying my college education wasn’t valuable. I value it tremendously. It just wasn’t very valuable as career preparation—especially on the day I graduated from school. Career preparation is a relatively simple undertaking assuming you've chosen a career you are passionate about. Becoming well-educated is much more complex, and this is what kids can get at college that they can’t get in many other situations—but only if they know what being well-educated is and that this is at least part of why they're going to school. Career preparation, by contrast, can be had in almost any circumstance, and at many other times in a person’s life.

Parents ask for my advice all the time about college for their kids. In general, making sure their kids get good jobs is more important to them than educational quality issues. I tell them very simply: “You’ll likely spend $50K to $100K (or more) on a BA. If what you’re most concerned about is making sure your kids can support themselves, bank the money and have them spend a year working and researching the things they’d like to do for work. Then, once they’ve picked two or three, give them $10K to spend on each.”

Nobody takes this advice, of course, even though they agree it’s very logical.

So clearly, college must be about much more than just career preparation. I would argue that almost any kid can find his or her way into a great career in two years or less with a few cracks at the “$10,000 Challenge” I lay out for parents.

Yet nobody takes the deal. So we all must want something else out of higher education.

Since a college degree takes most kids 4+ years, and costs, on average about $80K, I’d say that more than half of college is not at all about career preparation. The problem is that we’re not talking about what this huge chunk of higher education is. And because we don’t talk about it, we don’t understand its value, or how to make it more valuable.

As such, college will become less valuable as time goes by, costs go up, the post-2008 global economy tightens, and future generations have to learn to scrap like their great-grandparents did back in the not-so-good-old-days.

Too many kids head off to college with nary a clue of why they’re going—other than the fact that they’ve been told (by their parents, their President, and their culture) that they must.

They don’t know which school to choose, so they choose the most prestigious one they can get into whether it suits them or not. They don’t know what they want to study, so they waste years on an odd patchwork of courses even if they do eventually find their way to a great major.

And if that major happens to be one like mine—something they dearly love but with no easy career path attached—they walk away with debt they can’t deal with and guilt they can't get rid of. Then they end up in the self-help section of Barnes & Noble reading a copy of “What Color is Your Parachute?”

And then guess what? As soon as they color in their parachute, they either need to go on the “$10,000 Challenge” or they need to go back to school.

So here’s my idea: Let’s stop telling every kid to go to college. A large chunk should never be there in the first place, and another chunk end up there in the wrong place. Raising the aggregate BA rate in the US isn’t going to solve any problems.

We need young adults with skills, knowledge, passion, and career direction—four things college isn’t optimized to provide. At the K-12 level, we must educate kids to be college-ready so that if they decide at some point later in life to get a degree, they’ll have the basic skills necessary to succeed. But educating kids for college and sending them all there are two very different things and we would do well to keep them separate.

Next, let’s start a new mantra: There are great ways to have a great life by not going to college if you’ll do a few obvious and sensible things and spend a little money in some obvious and sensible ways.

Finally, let’s start an honest national dialog about the function of college in the 21st century. We do not at this time know what college is or should be. If we keep selling everyone on college as career training, we’re selling a lie. We’re also selling college—and kids—way short.

In my late 40s now, I can finally see how college shaped me and how fortunate I was to luck into some great opportunities. Most of my friends weren’t so lucky. But most of them weren’t as individually directed as I was. They sought out great programs, I sought out great teachers regardless of the programs they were teaching in.

College for me was about a certain type of life experience—an experience I benefited from in ways that had nothing to do at all with career. My only regret is that I didn’t know that at the time because even back in the 1980s, the pressure to connect college to career was huge. Finishing with an English degree, and about three other near-minors in completely unrelated subjects, I thought I had failed.

Fortunately for me, I was a somewhat enterprising young person then. So borrowing a little more money, investing it in some tools, and then leveraging those tools into a modest living (and later several serious careers) worked out well.

But I don’t see this haphazard approach working out well for many kids today. I came out of school in the mid-1980s, living in Boston and lapping up every drop of techno mojo running down Route 128, the famed “high-tech highway”. At that time, you couldn’t throw a rock on Massachusetts Avenue and not hit a tech entrepreneur who had some work for you.

Today, things are different. I like to think that if I graduated this year, I could still luck into some interesting activity that paid my bills. But I think my student loan payment would probably be a lot higher than the $90 a month it was back in 1986, and that I could throw a lot of rocks down a lot of big city streets and hit nothing but out-of-work college grads scrapping for anything they can get.

Let me start by agreeing with the thrust of what Jamie Merisotis says: Debating whether the purpose of a college education is to contribute to personal growth or enhance job prospects may be a good discussion-starter but it’s a false choice. It has to do both—and more. As Jamie so eloquently puts it, “The primary purpose of a higher education is to obtain high-quality degrees and credentials that enable students to contribute to the workforce, improve society and provide for them and their families.”

Is it worth what it costs? In monetary terms, almost certainly so. If we assume, as the question posits, that the average college graduate earns $20,000 more per year than the average non-graduate, than an average public university graduate earns back tuition and fees in less than two years, according to College Board tuition estimates. The average private school graduate takes a while longer, about six years. Either way, a strong return on investment. (Honesty compels me to point out that students at UNCF’s member private colleges earn that return much more rapidly, the result of their more affordable tuitions.)

All that said, in several very important ways, our colleges are not getting the job done. The outlook for low-income students of color, for example, is much bleaker than the overall picture. The difference between what they and their families can invest and the full cost of four years—or, more commonly, five or six years—at college is large and growing. They are much more likely to have gotten a pre-college education that does not prepare them to succeed in higher education. As a result, they are much more likely to have to take remedial courses—for which they pay college tuition but receive no college credit—and much less likely, as a result, to graduate.

This litany of failure is costly on many levels. It is, obviously, costly to the students who miss out on getting a college education and so miss out on the large and increasing number of jobs and careers that require a college degree and on the higher salaries they bring with them. It is costly to communities. They need the increased civic involvement that college graduates have been shown to have, not to mention the higher taxes college-educated professionals can afford to pay. It is especially costly to employers and the larger economy whose competitiveness is dependent on a college-educated workforce. As President Obama has said, “The country that out-educates us today will out-compete us tomorrow.”

What’s the answer? To start with, more college-ready students. Students--all students, not just some students—need to be given a strong academic education, an education that begins in pre-school and prepares them to succeed in college.

But we also need more student-ready colleges. The world and the workforce have changed immeasurably in the past few decades. College education? Not so much. That needs to change. Students don’t attend college only to get a job, but if a college degree doesn’t prepare them for a career, it has failed. So, yes, colleges need to work with the business community as well as with government and non-profit employers to make sure students are being educated for jobs and careers that really exist. Colleges need to be ready to respond to the special needs of the low-income learner, of the learner of color, and to the older learner—the learners the economy leaves behind and may need to go to college in their forties and fifties.

That will require innovation. It will, moreover, require government support for innovation in higher education that is as ambitious and aspirational as the Obama Administration’s Race to the Top approach to pre-college education.

Above all, we cannot allow our perception that American college education is, at least, better than our pre-college education system distract us from making college better for everyone and more responsive to the needs of those who are not now on the track to college completion. We cannot, in other words, allow the adequate-for-some be the enemy of the good, or even great, for all.

America’s higher education system needs to be strengthened if we are to reach the goals set by the President, a growing number of governors, foundations, and others to dramatically increase degree attainment in the U.S.

What has changed is that higher education is no longer about sorting the winners from the losers. Until very recently, through hard work and a little bit of luck anyone could aspire to the middle class – with a secure job, benefits, retirement, and a chance to put your own kids through college. But the Great Recession proved conclusively that the future will be radically different. Now, the only reliable path to the middle class is through education beyond high school. With more than 60% of American jobs requiring postsecondary education by 2018, it’s also incredibly urgent.

Of course, low skill jobs aren’t going away. But now, low skill jobs leave you in the working poor. The problem is that the only way to move out of the working poor into the middle class is by getting the skills and knowledge that only a postsecondary education can provide. That’s a huge change, and tough for a lot of people to accept. But it’s true. This is what a knowledge-based economy is all about.

In this environment, arguing about whether the purpose of higher education is to prepare people for good jobs or to help them grow personally and intellectually is an even bigger waste of time than arguing about whether access to adequate health care is about improving current quality of life or contributing to greater life expectancy. The same skills that you need to be successful in life are almost always the same ones you need to be successful in a job—the ability to solve problems, think critically, communicate, etc. Sadly, the only people likely to pay attention to the argument against college are low-income and other historically disadvantaged populations—the very groups for whom dramatic educational attainment gains is a necessity for our collective well-being.

What is behind this transformation is that skills and knowledge actually matter. Assuring that students learn what they need to be successful is essential, especially with the growing cost of college. This means more students should complete college, what they have learned should be clear and transparent both to students and employers, and their education should prepare them for future employment. This is especially true for the nation’s fast-growing minority, first-generation, and working adult populations.

Our postsecondary system is the engine for developing our nation’s human capital. Business leaders must do all they can to help that engine run smoothly. Business and community leaders can help by supporting workplace practices that benefit us all: tuition reimbursement programs, flex time for employee/students, incentives and recognition for training and education.

Policymakers should reward colleges and universities for graduating students, not just enrolling them, as most states currently do in their funding formulas. They also should reward students who receive aid to complete their courses. Colleges and universities can prioritize efficiency; costs can be cut without cutting quality. Using technology, streamlining processes, reallocating existing resources, as well as sharing programs and faculty with other institutions can alleviate financial burdens on both students and administrators. Schools must also expand their efforts to measure and communicate performance and outcomes and make cost, price, and accreditation information readily available.

But how do we know if the skills and competencies that students receive actually matter--in the workforce and in life?

The answer lies in coming to agreement about what students should know and be able to do in order to earn an associate’s, bachelor’s or master’s degree. This agreement can be achieved through broad adoption of a framework that actually describes these competencies--no matter what the field of study.

The first draft of such a framework has been developed by Lumina Foundation and it's called the Degree Qualifications Profile. This new model uses established research to describe the knowledge and skills degree holders must possess and be able to apply in the real world. The Degree Profile is now being tested--by professors, accrediting agencies, and others. It's a bridge between employers and higher education around the kinds of competencies that make people successful.

The primary purpose of a higher education is to obtain high-quality degrees and credentials that enable students to contribute to the workforce, improve society and provide for themselves and their families. By tackling this issue head-on, we will be able to curb costs, bring much-needed transparency, reestablish the utility of postsecondary credentials, and regain the public’s trust in the higher education process.

We Americans love polarization, even as we strive for building some sort of national consensus. I understand that public policy is all about making difficult allocation decisions about scarce resources. But all too often, we pose false dichotomies and minimize nuances in order to spark lively debate and draw out real tensions.

Case in point: Should higher education be about work-related skills or intellectual and personal development?

The very question implies that work doesn’t require intellectual, ethical, and personal maturity. I doubt that was ever true, but in a global economy where productivity, efficiency, entrepreneurial instincts, and complex decisions and risks keep getting driven further down our organizational structures, the dichotomy doesn’t make sense. Sometime the debate gets framed in terms of liberal arts versus focused occupational and technical learning—or as Bill Gates versus Steve Jobs. However it gets framed, it is increasingly a dead-end discussion.

There is another reason that the question of “what college is good for” is less than helpful. College can mean many different things: a one-year certificate for retraining or upgrading one’s skills; a degree from an elite residential school; a two-year nursing degree; an online business degree at a for-profit institution; etc. When we talk about the value of college, the purpose of college, or the mission of higher education, we need to disaggregate. When a one-year technical certificate can have a bigger earnings payoff than a sociology degree from a non-selective four-year school, it sheds little light to talk about “college” in the abstract. The more we talk about programs of study—about the pathways that are available to and chosen by participants in different college settings—the messier and more polarizing the conversation is. But that conversation also helps move us toward improving the benefits of postsecondary education to individuals and our nation as a whole.

Higher education has not changed its basic structure and delivery model because it has lacked sufficient incentive to do so. Protected by government regulations and accrediting bodies, supported by taxpayer subsidies and guided by a risk-averse culture of shared governance, its institutions have largely failed to address “the fundamental issues of how academic programs and institutions must be transformed to serve the changing educational needs of a knowledge economy,” according to a report released today by the Institute for a Competitive Workforce at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, College 2.0: Transforming Higher Education through Greater Innovation and Smarter Regulation.

There has never been greater need, or pressure, to transform this out-dated business model. Increasing international competition, a decline in government funding, changing demographics, an increasingly mobile population, new-tech savvy students that expect anytime, anywhere customized learning, and the emergence of new commercial providers are just some of the forces threatening the status quo.

Innovation can help higher education meet new challenges, but it has to be allowed to thrive. The Institute for a Competitive Workforce’s new College 2.0 report identifies some of the most transformational offerings from “edupreneurs,” who are proving that higher education can be affordable, reach more people, and enable students to learn faster and at higher levels. The report also looks at how smarter policymaking can help bring these innovations to the market.

To effectuate change, we need to identify clearly the barriers that stand between what students need and what private entrepreneurs and visionary campus leaders can deliver. These barriers include:

· a state and federal financing system that funds enrollment instead of completion and fails to provide incentives for efficiency and quality student learning outcomes;

· an antiquated accreditation system that stymies new providers and is based largely around educational inputs instead of educational excellence;

· a complex 50-state regulatory structure that is poorly suited for the reality of online education; and

· federal regulations that discourage new entrants, prevent innovation, and drive up costs.

Creating a climate that fosters innovation in higher education will require policy reforms in a number of areas, including:

· aligning higher education’s regulatory framework with the national priority of raising attainment levels and increasing access;

· rationalizing the federal and state rules governing interstate education—particularly distance learning—to accommodate the pervasive presence of internet-based e-learning;

· applying federal quality assurance regulations fairly to all sectors and focusing on providing the consumers of education with useful tools to compare institutional performance;

· overhauling accreditation to focus on educational outcomes and make it easier for new providers and new products to enter the postsecondary education market; and

· restructuring the financing of higher education to reward productivity and performance.

In order to meet the goal set by President Obama – which sees the U.S. leading the world in college completion by 2020—all players must be welcome. The private sector and those non-profit innovators who are disrupting how traditional higher education operates are key to providing more access, lowering costs, and increasing productivity – all of which aren’t likely to happen if we continue to wait for traditional institutions of higher education to make the needed changes.