Colleges, that is enough out of you

[Carmen813]

What the hell is "education"? Do you really think everyone who went through college is more enlightened than people who haven't? I'll tell you this from my personal experience: For 50+% of the students who go to college, college is nothing more than a place to get wasted and get laid. People aren't there to get an education. They don't care about knowledge. They just want a piece of paper that (they think) will get them a good job, be a CEO and play golf all day without working.

That would probably explain why about 50% of students who enroll in college never graduate.

I do not think "everyone" who goes to college are more enlightened than people who have not, but I think "most" who graduate are more intelligent than those who never went to college. Of course there are exceptions, and you certainly don't need a college degree to be intelligent, but I'm guessing my opinion isn't that radical.

To those arguing that degrees in "fluffy" majors or having to take "fluffly" classes are worthless, I suggest you start utilizing those critical thinking skills your "real" major supposedly taught you. A lot of you are also assuming that all the greatest ideas in the world come from the "best and brightest." Perhaps if you had paid more attention in your "pointless" history class you'd understand why that isn't true...

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Part of our problem is that we view education as a means to a job above all other things.

Well there's no denying that the employment issue is very important, but what your tuition money does is also give you an opportunity to live in a larger world.

I've learned a great many things during my many years of higher education which I'll never use again to make money and I don't regret it a bit. From antiquities to zoology, I've been fortunate enough to get at least a base understanding of our world and beyond.

I'd rather live modestly with understanding than with great riches and ignorance. I wish more people took advantage of the opportunities they have, but we are a acquisition oriented society focused on the banality of wealth.

Their loss.

 

[Zebo]

Is it a waste? That depends on whether or not an available job makes use of those skills. Somehow, amazingly, a great many of these jobs were filled by people who merely had high school educations decades ago yet the nation did not come apart at the seams.



This is the real policy issue. Let's suppose that the government stepped in and reduced the number of college degrees issued to what is needed plus five or ten percent. How would we decide who should be able to go to college? Let the best-and-the-brightest in, I say. However, the other side of the coin is that it could further cement class stratification and completely contradicts free market principals.

So, the issue is, is it better to have more economic efficiency and fewer people whose lives have been destroyed by college education for which they cannot find employment or is it better to have college education opportunity for everyone while also having hundreds of thousands if not millions of angry and indignant people who (perhaps somewhat rightfully or at least understandably) feel entitled to solid middle class jobs who cannot pay of their student loans?

It's a choice between (1.) having a better economy (less economic waste and inefficiency) and fewer suicidally unhappy people while having people who feel they have been denied opportunity and (2.) a worse economy, huge numbers of unhappy people, but opportunity for all.

I think we would be better off with the first option. Also, there would be opportunity for people--just prove on various standardized tests that you should be part of the group of people who are allowed to go to college.

Then I would have never got in nor got a BS and MS after graduating HS with a 2.5. I was typical jock - there to play sports and chase womez. Then after .mil stint and a series of dead end jobs I realized I needed a "union card" so to speak for a middle class lifestyle I buckled down. Many people are like this I know a friend going to medical school at 44 - should we just cast them off into installing insulation (one of my jobs) for life because no options are available?

 

[Zebo]

Another thing whipper - is life and success is 99% about relationships. So the broader spectrum of knowledge and communication one has, which college can provide, the more opportunities will open up by being able to take an interest in others interests.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

To those arguing that degrees in "fluffy" majors or having to take "fluffly" classes are worthless, I suggest you start utilizing those critical thinking skills your "real" major supposedly taught you. A lot of you are also assuming that all the greatest ideas in the world come from the "best and brightest." Perhaps if you had paid more attention in your "pointless" history class you'd understand why that isn't true...

I wrote a whole paper as an Econ major on those pointless classes and why not only were they useless, they were potentially detrimental to one's overall education. Yes it was a bitter rant stemming from having a surprise pointless class thrust upon me my final semester but it got me an "A" where it counted.

 

[BoberFett]

That is probably true. Many people who enroll in four year degree programs do not matriculate. What this does show us, however, is just how little of a real economic need their is for college education. Only a percentage of those 30% of the people who have college degrees actually make use of them in their jobs and we even have people with "useful" college degrees who cannot find work in their fields because we have an oversupply.

Perhaps we as a society would be much better off if we cut the number of people earning college degrees in half and stopped wasting so much time and money on unneeded higher education that lacks economic value.

To do so, high schools need to again become a place of education rather than day care for teenagers.

I've long advocated the German approach, where things branch off in high school rather than waiting until college.

 

[Zebo]

To do so, high schools need to again become a place of education rather than day care for teenagers.

I've long advocated the German approach, where things branch off in high school rather than waiting until college.

Germans are trapped after 13 into what they are going to be doing forever. More efficient to be sure but less freedom. USA was founded on individual liberty and I think our educational system works on that philosophy as well.

 

[BoberFett]

Germans are trapped after 13 into what they are going to be doing forever. More efficient to be sure but less freedom. USA was founded on individual liberty and I think our educational system works on that philosophy as well.

Really? Is it freedom to be trapped in high school learning nothing while you could be learning a skill? Not everyone wants or needs to be college ready. I certainly wouldn't want to tell someone they couldn't decide later that they change their mind, but I'd hardly call the current K-12 system "freedom."

 

[WhipperSnapper]

I am not sure if it's the number of degrees that's the problem or the quality of them. I think that if most graduates were getting degrees in nursing and engineering we'd have less of an issue here than the number who are getting degrees in philosophy and sociology. Those are what I call "me-too" degrees; i.e. "Oh, you got a degree? Me, too!"

It's the number of degrees. If we had enough college-education-requiring jobs we wouldn't be discussing this. Also, if everyone got nursing and engineering degrees we would have a huge number of unemployed and underemployed-involuntarily-out-of-field nurses and engineers. Nursing and engineering jobs would not magically materialize out of thin air merely because people have degrees in those fields.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

I'll appreciate it if you don't call my degree in womens studies garbage

Good luck trying to convince folks that a degree that teaches you all about how evil and filthy men are and how they mistreat women in society is not garbage.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

We should get some kind of certificate that says we post on web forums. This is better writing practice than most university students will see over four years.

lol u srs?

I actually think that posting on forums had decreased the quality of my writing. Since we don't need to follow any grammatical rules, since we can post in a stream of consciousness, and since we don't need to reread, edit, and restructure what we write, I think that forum posting might actually result in decreased quality.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Many businesses use those college degrees that aren't in the field as a proxy for having an independently verified set of fundamental skills necessary for business along with a good enough attitude and sufficient commitment to stick with something over a period of years to accomplish a goal, all very economically valuable traits.

If you can find a better way to accurately verify things like that, I'm sure many businesses would be very interested to hear about it.

I understand that, but should the ability to attain a four year degree be the test for that? Surely there must be a less time-consuming and less-expensive way of testing for IQ, responsibility, and work ethic.

 

[MotF Bane]

I actually think that posting on forums had decreased the quality of my writing. Since we don't need to follow any grammatical rules, since we can post in a stream of consciousness, and since we don't need to reread, edit, and restructure what we write, I think that forum posting might actually result in decreased quality.

tl;dr

 

[WhipperSnapper]

It's not a sick society, it's a testament to the earning power of a degree. Businesses know that if they hire someone with an advanced education that they will likely be able to land a significantly higher paying job in the near future and will quit. Businesses usually want to hire people that will stay on a year at a minimum, and so they want to avoid people with such a low probability of sticking around.

If the person will find a better job in a year then what the hell are they doing trying to obtain the job they are interviewing for? Obviously it's not that easy for them to find jobs in their fields and their ability to obtain work in those fields will only decrease as time passes and as they are underemployed-and-involuntarily-out-of-field.

I can understand it from the businesses perspective, but at the same time it reeks of injustice--choose a lesser qualified person, a less motivated and ambitious person with fewer skills and reward them for that. (As I understand it, this type of mentality deeply offended even heavy pro-capitalist philosopher Ayn Rand.)

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Then I would have never got in nor got a BS and MS after graduating HS with a 2.5. I was typical jock - there to play sports and chase womez. Then after .mil stint and a series of dead end jobs I realized I needed a "union card" so to speak for a middle class lifestyle I buckled down. Many people are like this I know a friend going to medical school at 44 - should we just cast them off into installing insulation (one of my jobs) for life because no options are available?

You could always prep for the qualification exams and if you can prove that you are worthwhile you could allowed entrance to the university system. My position on education and the value of economic efficiency does not exist in a vacuum. As I've made clear in my other posts in other threads, my view is that we also need to fix our nation's economy so that people wouldn't feel as great of a need to go to college; you shouldn't need to have the "club card" in order to be able to earn a solid lower middle class living for yourself and people would have opportunities to work their way up just as people did in decades past before a large fraction of the populace had college degrees.

 

[mmntech]

Chiming in late as usual but from my experience, a university degree proved to be the next best thing to useless. I graduated in 2008 when the recession hit. Despite being a grad from one of the top schools in the world (University of Toronto) with a fairly decent GPA, nobody would take a second look at me when it came to entry level positions. I could write, I had job experience in the business world. I applied for everything just to get something. I didn't want or expect to start high up so I aimed low and still nothing. After months of searching, I eventually ended up working as a detailer for a car rental company part time.

They trick you into thinking university degrees, no matter what it's in, will open up all kinds of doors. They don't. Believe me, I didn't have the parents that thought the sun shone out of my backside. Even they were fooled into it though. I had a political science degree for example and I couldn't even get a job cutting grass in front of city hall. Still, job ads for any white collar work all want you to have university.

So what I did was go back to school to get technical training. I'm doing a one year grad program in new media journalism at a community college. I've become quite good at audio, control room switching, and non-linear editing on FCP. My advice to anyone is to get marketable skills, especially trades. The abstracts may expand your mind, but nobody gives a rats behind if you know the difference between Kant and Hobbes. But if you know a dove tail from a scarf joint, then you're laughing.

For some reason though, the kids have been shamed into avoiding trades. Ironically, that's where the big bucks are. When my parents had their construction business (retired now), they were screaming for skilled workers.

Next piece of advice. If you can't decide what you want to do, focus on the personal services industry. Jobs that cannot be outsourced. Once again, trades, medical, law, transportation, stuff like that. That's where the future is.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Germans are trapped after 13 into what they are going to be doing forever. More efficient to be sure but less freedom. USA was founded on individual liberty and I think our educational system works on that philosophy as well.

Is it possible that having too much freedom in one aspect of life could lead to a large loss of freedom in other aspects? Are graduates who don't have jobs but who do have large student loans to pay off really "free"? What about people who have to remove degrees from their resumes because the education mills produced too many graduates in their field? Do they feel "free"?

Maybe we would have more net freedom overall if we had less educational freedom and an overall stronger economy (time and money not wasted on education that does not have economic value).

What I have come to realize in the past decade and perhaps what Americans will come to understand is that "freedom isn't free" and that often having freedom in one area of life may mean having less freedom in other areas. How we maximize real "freedom" is our challenge.

 

[DrPizza]

For 50+% of the students who go to college, college is nothing more than a place to get wasted and get laid. People aren't there to get an education. They don't care about knowledge. They just want a piece of paper that (they think) will get them a good job, be a CEO and play golf all day without working.

That would probably explain why about 50% of students who enroll in college never graduate.

Actually, 25 years ago, someone would have asked "remedial math? At college? What are you talking about?" Now, virtually all colleges offer remedial level math and English classes - many sections of these courses.

Colleges are businesses now. They'll happily take money from someone who thinks they're smart enough to make it through college, but actually isn't.

 

[ShawnD1]

Germans are trapped after 13 into what they are going to be doing forever. More efficient to be sure but less freedom. USA was founded on individual liberty and I think our educational system works on that philosophy as well.

Try to keep in mind that most jobs do not require official education. If you're a mattress salesman or a guy who installs carpet, then it really doesn't matter what you took in school. You could switch from carpets to mattresses, and it wouldn't make a difference which path you took.

It's not like the US style offers more freedom, anyway. If you decide you want to change from electrician to welder, you still need to retake the entire apprenticeship. Your high school education was totally worthless, and you'll need to start your training from scratch.

Good luck trying to convince folks that a degree that teaches you all about how evil and filthy men are and how they mistreat women in society is not garbage.

You're just angry because women are realizing the benefits of becoming lesbians who are not shackled to crotch spawn and a lazy husband who can't give oral for more than 3 seconds without complaining!!!

I actually think that posting on forums had decreased the quality of my writing. Since we don't need to follow any grammatical rules, since we can post in a stream of consciousness, and since we don't need to reread, edit, and restructure what we write, I think that forum posting might actually result in decreased quality.

In high school, nobody corrects your grammar. You could write something that is virtually unreadable, and it will still pass. Here on the internet, your grammar will be torn apart by people with self-diagnosed assburgers.

Example:

 

[Fenixgoon]

I had a political science degree for example

i found your problem.

 

[ShawnD1]

Colleges are businesses now. They'll happily take money from someone who thinks they're smart enough to make it through college, but actually isn't.

This seems like a uniquely American problem. Private universities basically don't exist in Canada. The list of private universities on wiki is only 11, and that's for the entire country. The state of California has roughly the same population as Canada, but California has lots of private universities. All of them waiting to jack your money and give you a worthless piece of paper.
I live in Edmonton and I get a lot of TV channels from Spokane, Washington. The shit on there is unbelievable. Apollo College? Devry? ITT Tech? Are these real schools? Do they even have accreditation? University of Phoenix Online, that one sounds legit. Let's not forget the best university in history, Collins College.

I don't even know what the legal status for private schooling is in Canada, but it's one of those kinds of businesses where the chance of succeeding is nearly impossible. My entire yearly tuition for electrical engineering at one of the largest technical schools in Canada was only $4200, and the rest is government subsidized. If a private university were to setup shop and charge $30,000 for the same level of education, nobody would sign up. It keeps the market very small.

I'm not quite sure why it would be any different in the US. As far as I can tell, both countries have the same system. Public university in the US is somewhat cheap; Washington State University's tuition (including mandatory fees) is $8500 and the remaining cost is covered by the government. Private universities are not subsidized, so you end up with crap like MIT costing $36,400 per year. Why are these private universities profitable in the US and not Canada? I have no idea. Maybe some people just like paying an extra 20k per year for no good reason.

 

[alphatarget1]

Germans are trapped after 13 into what they are going to be doing forever. More efficient to be sure but less freedom. USA was founded on individual liberty and I think our educational system works on that philosophy as well.

One of the profs in our department went to Realschule and ended up getting a doctorate.

If you start from Hauptschule... well, there is no chance.

 

[BoberFett]

This seems like a uniquely American problem. Private universities basically don't exist in Canada. The list of private universities on wiki is only 11, and that's for the entire country. The state of California has roughly the same population as Canada, but California has lots of private universities. All of them waiting to jack your money and give you a worthless piece of paper.
I live in Edmonton and I get a lot of TV channels from Spokane, Washington. The shit on there is unbelievable. Apollo College? Devry? ITT Tech? Are these real schools? Do they even have accreditation? University of Phoenix Online, that one sounds legit. Let's not forget the best university in history, Collins College.

I don't even know what the legal status for private schooling is in Canada, but it's one of those kinds of businesses where the chance of succeeding is nearly impossible. My entire yearly tuition for electrical engineering at one of the largest technical schools in Canada was only $4200, and the rest is government subsidized. If a private university were to setup shop and charge $30,000 for the same level of education, nobody would sign up. It keeps the market very small.

I'm not quite sure why it would be any different in the US. As far as I can tell, both countries have the same system. Public university in the US is somewhat cheap; Washington State University's tuition (including mandatory fees) is $8500 and the remaining cost is covered by the government. Private universities are not subsidized, so you end up with crap like MIT costing $36,400 per year. Why are these private universities profitable in the US and not Canada? I have no idea. Maybe some people just like paying an extra 20k per year for no good reason.

In the US, even public colleges are businesses. More money means higher salaries for upper administration. The presidents of public schools here make a shit-ton of cash. More students, more expensive classes, more sports, more stadiums, more everything. It's not about education, it's about money.

 

[charrison]

Really? Is it freedom to be trapped in high school learning nothing while you could be learning a skill? Not everyone wants or needs to be college ready. I certainly wouldn't want to tell someone they couldn't decide later that they change their mind, but I'd hardly call the current K-12 system "freedom."

Every high school student should learn some sort of trade before leaving school. Even the college bound will be helped out by this.

 

[stateofbeasley]

Part of our problem is that we view education as a means to a job above all other things.

Well there's no denying that the employment issue is very important, but what your tuition money does is also give you an opportunity to live in a larger world.

I've learned a great many things during my many years of higher education which I'll never use again to make money and I don't regret it a bit. From antiquities to zoology, I've been fortunate enough to get at least a base understanding of our world and beyond.

I'd rather live modestly with understanding than with great riches and ignorance. I wish more people took advantage of the opportunities they have, but we are a acquisition oriented society focused on the banality of wealth.

Their loss.

After giving this some more thought, I think that college/higher education should do two things:

(1) Give people the opportunity to learn about the wider world and issues relevant to different ways of life. I think it is necessary for people to be aware of the wider world in order to participate fully as citizens wherever they are. I also think that an informed person who knows how to look for answers to problems in society is an asset to himself and others.

(2) Give people the opportunity to acquire skills/knowledge to improve their economic well being. There has to be some Return On Investment for the tens of thousands of tuition dollars spent. Being a good citizen is a noble cause, but it makes no sense for an education system to create lots of good citizens who cannot support themselves.