This concept has been drilled into our heads that a college education is a must in order to live a normal life in America today.
Every Presidential speech or State of the Union always includes that old cheer-leading pep talk about how “folks should be able to send their kids to college” and many other platitudes.
Debt be damned! What me worry Alfred E. Newman? The college loan program (that went bust decades ago) is a way of taking away personal responsibility for students and their families. Attend now, party today, pay later, live the collegiate life now.
No, I think we've come too far, made too many promises, attached too much importance to an undergraduate degree to call the whole thing off now.
How can we alter this monstrous concept in an age of entitlements? It's worse now than when I graduated in 1982!
How can the clock be turned back. This is like asking the government or private sector to stop over spending, stop living the good life when you do not have the funds to back it up. Nope, we're used to “having it all”.
Try taking away these “rights” and you'll get full scale revolution similar to what we saw at the Wall Street rallies - the Left, unhinged.
Or, by transforming college.
That is, additional school beyond high school that is related to learning hands on how to work in a lab or perform specific functions on a computer or many many other fairly specific hands on jobs. That is , trade schools.
In our area the industry demanded and assisted State schools are doing just that and producing what the local industries require. Additionally, there is some English and Math thrown in to assure minimum skill level.
The biggest and best such school has grown by leaps and bounds and has taken students away from the local university where many would have enrolled and dropped out. Students alwayshave the option of continuing their education when they graduate from the trade school.
As a University graduate, my first answer is ‘No’ and my second answer is ‘Hell, No!’
And this is from someone, who actually thought he was taking a useful degree when I went in, namely in the biological sciences. How was I to know that I would be finishing my M.Sc. several months before Wall Street looted all the banks, and that I was about to get the double whammy of my degrees suddenly becoming as worthless as dirt, and at the same time making me almost unemployable?
/and no, I’m not looking for sympathy - it was my own fault for being a stupid rube that fell for the lies of the snake oil salesmen of so-called ‘higher education’.
And the SAD part: most people are not suitable for college. Back in the late 70’s, when I was an undergrad, we lost ~40% of our freshmen by Junior year. That was EXPECTED.
Nowadays, trade schools are mostly gone, supplanted by Community Colleges, that STILL pad curricula with useless “distribution” requirements that are merely there to support departments and faculty headcount. . .
The way things are now, you've got unqualified and disinterested college students strangling job and education opportunities for those who belong there. Besides that, there aren't enough qualified to do real work.
Is college worth it? Not unless someone is paying the bill. Otherwise, it's best to take night courses, online courses, or whatever else ones budget can absorb. And learn a trade.
JMHO
I could never understand why everyone has to go to college. Not everyone is qualified for college and parents having the money to send their off-springs to college does not guarantee that they have the brain that is needed. There are plenty of educated idiots around anyway
I know several electricians and plumbers that earn very good money, set their own hours, and will probably never run out of work. Just sayin’.