Posted on 05/31/2013 7:24:55 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
A year ago, I came across Aaron Clarey's "Worthless", a book that brings you down to earth about the value of a college degree in today's marketplace. I'd definitely recommend Aaron's book to parents & high school students. It will make you think about the huge investment that you are about to make by starting college.
Young people today are finding a tough marketplace, i.e. the GDP is still weak.
We can blame the slow economy for the tough jobs outlook. However, the changes are more profound and will continue until we finally can enjoy a recovery.
As Thomas Friedman pointed out, getting a job is about bringing value not a degree to a future employer:
"Underneath the huge drop in demand that drove unemployment up to 9 percent during the recession, there's been an important shift in the education-to-work model in America. Anyone who's been looking for a job knows what I mean. It is best summed up by the mantra from the Harvard education expert Tony Wagner that the world doesn't care anymore what you know; all it cares "is what you can do with what you know." And since jobs are evolving so quickly, with so many new tools, a bachelor's degree is no longer considered an adequate proxy by employers for your ability to do a particular job -- and, therefore, be hired. So, more employers are designing their own tests to measure applicants' skills. And they increasingly don't care how those skills were acquired: home schooling, an online university, a massive open online course, or Yale. They just want to know one thing: Can you add value?""
Translation: What can you do for me, young person? Or, what can you do to make my bottom line come alive?
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Outside'o 'readin', rattin' 'n 'rith'matic ...
High screwel also.
Modern liberal arts education would be a joke if it were not so expensive and worse than worthless.
What would you do with a resume from person indicating they held a Bachelor’s Degree in Women’s Studies or a Master of Fine Arts? Both resume stains, imho.
Kill all lawyers who hold bachelors degrees in liberal arts and you eliminate the majority of the problems in the country.
I know an engineering manager who desperately needs a half dozen machinists. One hundred plus applied for the jobs. After corporate HR finished with the Psychological Screening, there were three applicants left. He has no idea which questions are disqualifying the candidates.
BTW, this is BEFORE the drug screening, so that’s not the problem.
Reading stuff like this continues to tell me that not going to college was the better choice.
There was a great post on “The Corner” by John Derbyshire before they canned him, posting a wedding announcement between two Ivy League accredited NGO types, whose parents were all working for ever-so-precious high tone not-for-profits and various superfluous government agencies like the National Endowment for the Arts. Derbyshire’s comment was priceless: “How many parasites can the host organism survive?”
Not that long ago many lawyers did not go to law school. Lincoln, Coolidge, Earle Stanley Gardner.
I have a master’s in Electrical Engineering and the work suits me. I would not have gotten my job without an academic degree, but almost everything I’ve learned that is worthwhile, I learned after getting out of school.
I got my best education when I started FReeping. My high school years were terrible for a variety of reasons.
“I got my best education when I started FReeping.”
I agree. My writing skills were horrendous when I started here four years ago. Thanks to a lot of the books I bought due to recommendations on FR and thanks to all those FReepers who corrected me when I needed it I’d like to think my writing skills have improved.
At the very least, my THINKING skills have certainly improved!
I think the worst part of my high school was the more or less comprehensive incompetence of most of my teachers, with certain exceptions.
American “education” is too diffuse and poorly designed to serve much useful purpose. In Japan and Germany (at least as late as 1980) only about 5% of the population attend what we would recognize as a high school, the rest attend trade school and for most part are probably better off for it. The 5% who can even benefit by taking algebra are not slowed down by the 90% who are openly hostile and the 5% who struggle to keep up.
In America we have an inverted triage system where the greatest amount of resources and attention are concentrated where it is least likely to do any good. We lavish money and attention of the uneducable, and slight those who would actually benefit. This is largely because the uneducable are concentrated in politically favored ethnic groups.
I’ll second that my thinking skills have improved, though due to endocrine problems that affect my brain, I’m not sure I’ve seen a noticeable, tangible improvement.
Both home and school environments weren’t friendly to me asking for help, or an explanation of something, because then I’d be yelled at in an angry, questioning tone asking why I don’t know the subject matter. Most of my high school teachers were mediocre to bad. Very, very few I had were actually good.
I certainly learned a lot about careful writing, brevity, proof reading and fact checking from my brother and sister Freepers.
Much more than I ever learned in high school or college. One of the best influences on my literary style was National Review on dead tree. I really learned a lot about clear thinking and presentation reading it.
I’d like to hear thoughts from other FReepers about the state of education in America and its usefulness.
I applied to Sprint 3 times in my career.
Twice they used some psych test and what looked like a military “Solve this problem” test.
Somehow I failed the “Solve this Problem” test. Have no idea how. I feel I probably finished 2/3rds of test and answered most questions correctly. I’m like that.
Both times, the manager who had solicited me to come work for them expressed disappointment. They told me that not only did I answer more questions than most, I answered to man correctly.
They frickin called me out of the blue to come to work for them. I had always been Presidents Club for each of my employers and I frequently came up on my competitors radar.
I’ve been asked to come to work for them several other times and I just won’t. I always if they still doing the stupid psyche eval and military testing and they always say yes.
I then decline, telling them I ain’t interested in that moronic test that always fails me, a high achiever.
I found out later that they testing showed that while I am likely to be a high performer I am not good at taking direction.
Can’t fault them there. I am a self starter and I don’t strive to be President’s Club performer. It’s just how I work.
10 years later everyone at that gathering who steadfastly claimed their college degree would get them or had got them good paying jobs are not working in the field that they got a college degree in.
3 of them never got a job in their chosen field 2 did and then got canned after a couple of years.
Bottom line they wasted a lot of time and a lot of money.
Yet guys like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerburg, Ray Kroc, Dave Thomas all managed to create Billion Dollar Empires without getting a college degree.
And there are a lot more average American Businessmen and Businesswomen who become quite wealthy starting a business sans college degree.
You can rant about the educational system all you want, but the educational system we have is the system parents tolerate. It can never be a substitute for good parenting.
Parents must push their kids to take the difficult courses and study. If they do, their kids will do well in our educational system. Parents must also demand that their school system provide quality education. There are outstanding school districts in our country, mostly because the parents who live in the community insist that it be so. If the parents don’t care, the educational system becomes like any other ineffective government bureaucracy.
So I get back to the original point: the education system is not a substitute for good parenting.
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