Posted on 09/07/2010 2:39:26 AM PDT by Scanian
Imagine a product whose price tag for decades rises faster than inflation. People keep buying it because they're told that it'll make them wealthier in the long run. Then, suddenly, they find it doesn't. Prices fall sharply. Bankruptcies ensue. Great institutions disappear.
Sound like the housing market?
Government-subsidized loans have injected money into higher education, as they did into housing, causing prices to balloon. But at some point, people figure out they're not getting their money's worth, and the bubble bursts.
Some think this would be a good thing. Charles Murray has called for the abolition of college for almost all students. Save it for genuine scholars, he says, and let others qualify for jobs by standardized national tests.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Standardized national tests are a good idea.
College is completely overrated and in many careers totally unnecessary.
I often wonder what my degrees have gotten me at times. Even though I attended an aviation related university. The majority of the curriculum had little if any bearing upon what I do today which is fly for a living.
All my pilot training took place outside the college classroom and as far as the FAA is concerned they have never, not once asked to see even so much as my HS diploma, muchless my college transcripts.
But at the time I came along nearly all jobs in my field required a college degree just to apply. And the HR folks didn’t care what the degree was in either, just as long as it was from an accredited university.
Later on in my life I had to obtain my Masters just so I could be promoted to the position of Aviation Department Manager. I returned to my alma mater via online study and yet again, the actual job had nothing to do with my degree. Everything I applied to that job I learned either during my commercial flight training days or from my years of OJT experience.
The degree requirement for many jobs is just that, a requirement that some lutz placed upon the job years ago... I guess to justify his or her degree...
I, for one, think it would be an excellent thing. Get rid of all the post-modern “professors” of feminist studies and get back to giving the kids real educations!
Having the benifit of WWII G.I. bill, I’m glad and satisfied with a life based on a tech degree from a world class university. However, my view of the general use of the G.I. bill is not all that good.It started an academic puffery that has resulted in wasteful government costs/spending. There is a need to clearly define a structure of education which satisfies the need for structured knowledge e.g. medicine,physical sciences. The learning of social skills courses can be done without high paid fsstest talkers who know whats good for everyone else. College education today has become the pablem for youth fed by those milking the public money trough.
End the government subsidies and loan programs and college costs will fall back to earth rather dramatically.
If the liberal arts curriculum at institutes of higher education included proper grounding in classical Western Civilization, and in proper, responsible economics, I’d say it would be a horrible thing to lose.
However, I don’t think giving up on the whole shebang is the approach to take. It’s better to use this as an opportunity to reform and cost-control higher ed., not ditch it.
A HUGE proportion of “higher education” programs are utterly worthless liberal arts degrees. Then there are the business degrees which IMO are mostly ego-building fluff. IMO, higher-ed degrees in health care and the hard sciences and engineering disciplines are the only degrees of any real worth.
A degree in African American Studies is a prerequisite for government employment.
I am so glad this idea has gone mainstream. People didn’t even know what to say when I posted that college profs were overpaid, college educations were not worth it three or four years ago. Bottom line for conservatives. As this shakes out it’s time for state legislatures to seize back our universities at the state level and get rid of the left wing profs and administrators that ruined the universities and their value. Boot them out and pass a law that the state can’t be sued for it.
don’t for get about mexican american studies too.
Parents spend years teaching their children morals and ethics and then turn these kids over to the whack-job professors for brainwashing. The parents even save their hard-earned money to pay for it.
I have been attacked for calling for starving universities of parents' hard-earned money.
Maybe the common people are finally catching on to the scam.
I graduated in the top ten per cent of my graduating class at a public university but I was fighting the on-campus commies even in the early seventies. The damn communists have really taken over now.
Only commies can get tenure as professors.
Look what has happened to our beloved country with these assholes now in charge in Washington.
They have ruined our wonderful, successful system and, as they survey the vast destruction, they think the country hasn't had a large enough dose of their poison!
They think America needs even MORE redistribution of wealth to really fix things permanently!
The problem with "real educations" post 12th grade is that only 5-7% of the 18-year old population is capable of getting them.
The government tit is dry your on your own.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2583846/posts
You wouldn't have found it in search because of the different title, but same article.
This may be true but when there are thousands of responses for every job opening, justified or not, a college degree keeps one's resume out of the "forget it" pile. The one thing a college degree does show, I suppose, is that someone finished something they started.
This doesn't work for everything, but it would certainly provide some much-needed competition for the education monopoly we now face.
If there were a true free market in higher education, the costs would not have risin at such an extreme rate for the last 10-20 years. How much does it really cost for the business professor to teach a class of 35 students 4 hours a week? The price tag far, FAR outweighs the actual cost.
How about tech schools?
If these lefty profs lose their jobs the welfare roles will increase dramatically. They can’t do anything worthwhile in the real world.
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