FReegards!
How right you are.
bkmk for later
College graduates serve me and my crew in restaurants and bars.
FReegards!
As a retired college professor, my first lecture always addressed this issue. Simply put, college does not supplant motivation and if higher education is a matter of making more money (or getting a ticket punched), crewing a crab boat may be a better option.
I agree with this.
Also, if not noted, FOUR YEAR electrical engineering degrees became FIVE YEAR degree chasing, making those who were already two years or three into that particular program, scrambling for the next classes, at the additional cost of the new five year curriculum. That happened to me, while I was attending Dowling College, in the ‘80’s. I had to make the choice to keep being broke chasing a degree, or just let it all go, which I did, in my third year.
I’ve done fine, since. I was the-guy-in-the-basement rebuilding PC’s for a HUD office. I’ve been an office administrator and a published columnist. I wrote my acceptance piece for, and graduated from the Long Ridge Writers Group writing course. I had more of a mentor, than an instructor, along the way. A sight better than a college professor, I tell ya.
Along the way, I have seen those who have used their college degrees like bludgeons, too.
The sad fact is that since the gov't has screwed up the economy, earning a living is no longer available.
One of the recent changes to policy is that if you want to even be considered for certain jobs you HAVE to have a college diploma.
In the past someone could work his/her way up from the bottom, and if they showed good people and management skills they could become a manager even without a college degree.
No more. Now we live in a "credentialocracy" where we are being nagged, cajoled, harangued, and badgered by those with the "proper" credentials.
Street smarts and good ole' fashioned commonsense are no longer valued. Instead we get twits who still have zits and a degree from MIT that tell us how to do our jobs.
I would expect this if I were working for some namby-pamby green energy outfit, but not the company I work for.
Sad. Sad. Sad.
For the last few decades, students have been fed a whopping lie. This falsehood is that you’ll need a college education to succeed in the marketplace and have a successful job or career.
If you want to have a successful job or career, you need to have that piece of paper to get into the door. You can be successful without it, but you are going to have to own your own business. The federal government won’t even hire you without a degree in most cases. Yes some military personnel can get in the door with years of experience, but most likely in the lower GS pay grades.
Somebody is making a killing off of textbooks. They change them each year just enough that you can’t buy used books. Quite a scam.
The sad fact is that colleges do not prepare students for earning a living. They're only about enriching themselves as much as they possibly can.
As a B. S. Engr., M. S., Ph. D., and post-doc, retired Golbal corporation senior research scientist, I wholly agree.
I was in and out of universities from 1954 on, until retirement in 1993. I saw the whole corruption brought on by government-backed student-loan bloated academic regimes taken over by power-hungry administrators, to the exclusion of reliable creative learning and advancement of intellectual frontiers.
The whole school/college/graduate educational system used to be to assuredly prepare the able youth to become a self-sustaining adult, viable as a citizen able to support oneself through value added by measured success in applying educational tools and discipline.
That function has been lost through misplacing the level at which further advancement is functionally limited for any given individual, and ought to be terminated.
My thought is the concept of introducing a justice system/tort law by which the purchaser of the product of an institution who finds promised employment elusive, to be able to have his/her tuition refunded by the institution when the degreed product is not economically viable.
Or something like that, a sort of killer factor against "hypereducation."
If your degree is in a hard science or in a useful soft one eg Economics you will tend to do all right if you apply yourself. If you go for fun and a poly sci degree or such you will flip burgers or be a pole dancer most likely
I think you’re completely missing the significance of the caliber of student involved in, for example, employees with a bachelor’s degree making more than workers without a college education. Likewise, smart history majors do just fine in the employment marketplace.
The problems are with marginal students not studying for a trade or profession. That’s where the cost/reward ratio is off.