I've known quite a few people who just weren't cut out for college.  Not that they weren't "good" enough, just that they had no interest and honestly it's hard to be good at anything that you really aren't interested in doing.  That's one reason I've always found the phrase "He only went to community college" to be offensive and frightening.  Offensive because it implies that university graduates are superior people, when in fact all it says is that someone had the wherewithal to get through four years of higher education.  (Let's be honest: the vast majority of the jackholes who ran our economy into the ground have college degrees. Can we say MBA?) Frightening because our society needs young people to understand that the ability to earn an honest day's wage as a carpenter, electrician, computer technician or car repairman is honorable, and when we belittle vocational education we send the opposite message.

This column in The Economist looks at the problem:

America has a unique disdain for vocational education. It has supported such training since 1917; money now comes from the Perkins Act, which is reauthorised every six years. However, many Americans hate the idea of schoolchildren setting out on career paths—such predetermination, they think, threatens the ethos of opportunity. As wages have risen for those with college degrees, scepticism of CTE has grown too. By 2005 only one-fifth of high-school students specialised in an industry, compared with one-third in 1982. The share of 17-year-olds aspiring to four-year college, meanwhile, reached 69% in 2003, double the level of 1981. But the fact remains that not every student will graduate from university. This may make politicians uncomfortable, but it is not catastrophic. The Council of Economic Advisers projects faster-growing demand for those with a two-year technical-college degree, or specific training, than for those with a full university degree…

In the meantime, a bold new programme is inching forward. The National Centre on Education and the Economy (NCEE), a think-tank, is developing a test that students may take in their second year of high school. On passing, they could proceed to a community college or stay in high school to apply to a four-year university. Those who fail would take extra courses to help them pass. A pilot programme, supported by the Gates Foundation, will begin in eight states next year. Some parents are already outraged by the imagined spectre of tracking. Marc Tucker, who leads the NCEE, argues that a path to a community college might keep students engaged. Such a system would provide students with more opportunity, not less.