Posted on 08/11/2024 3:42:13 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
The wild and unsubstantiated promises of six figure incomes right out of school are grossly unfair to the vast majority of students in the bottom 90%. They all get told to demand it, that their education makes them valuable. No brand new grad is worth six figures. EXPERIENCE on top of education is what creates value.
But they will keep basket weaving, ancient Egyptian lesbian art studies, and DEI …
Cut some useless racist majors like math, English, and engineering
I graduated from SDSU in 1978 with a degree in Music and a plan to get a certificate in Music Therapy. I mainly wanted to work with the mentally retarded because my brother was retarded. Once I got into the program, however, I found out jobs were fleeting and could be cut suddenly depending on budgets and the whim of hospital administrators so I ended up dropping out after the first semester. Music therapy has been proven to be very therapeutic for the mentally retarded and the elderly and it’s sad that it’s one of the first casualties whenever budget woes arise.
I agree with you. Music is part of a civilized society. Except rap.
They cut the physics program? As an Engineer (not PE) I was required to take physics. I was also required to take some BS classes. Odd that the BS degrees people were never required to be in a calculus, physics or engineering class. So we were forced to subsidize the humanities or other BS classes. Granted I had a very robust HS education from AP science & math but also HVAC, construction, auto repair …. Back in the dark ages my school had 2 floors. First was trade type classes and the second the more traditional ones. I think I was the only AP Calc student asking HVAC also.
Well... it is the AP...
I think the concentration camp guards will be Chinese, Arab, and Latino.
(c)rap isn’t music. Its just talking in bad rhymes I’d have been embarrassed to come up with in the 3rd grade, with a jackhammer in the background.
The number of bizarrely specific majors offered...
____
I had a neighbor who had gone back to college to get a degree in Grant Writing. Really???!
Physics is the study of reality - they’ll get rid of that long before daring to touch Queer Theory. :)
It’s also amazing how many basic composition courses, with students who after 13-14 years of government schooling haven’t grasped basic grammar, require the students to write a grant proposal as a major assignment.
It was guilt that made people go to college. Too much pressure from the families to go.
Now it’s the EV’s. Is it guilt over global warming or have the music grads given themselves something to feel superior about?
But in Classical Greece music was considered to be deeply connected to a mathematics education. Try that today and you would have few music graduates.
The music grads are, not surprisingly, aiming for a career in music.
Or, at least enjoying themselves while racking up a minorly valuable credential.
Smart grads are. They also would largely have been without the time in college, but it is harder and more rare to find them on another path.
Instant Unemployment Degrees/IUD’s are expensive and basically worthless in today’s world.
Universities have entirely lost their way.
The ideal was to raise up a thinking human being, adaptable to any situation, who could do anything from lead people to write novels, solve human dilemmas or technical challenges.
A few people with dedication would be professors; for the students, the major would be almost an afterthought.
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” — Heinlein
Two things happened, not both at once, but very related.
- Industry figured out that it didn’t have to hire an expert and the materials to support him if it could farm out the work to an academic. Efficient for both; the university people do what they do best for company A today and B tomorrow, and the company doesn’t have to incur the overhead.
Problem is that this means money, which isn’t bad in itself but $millions is quite compelling, so grants and the pursuit of grants overtook increasing human knowledge. (IMO back to the patronage system and good bye to independent thought).
- The industrial and technological ages have required a multitude of specialized skills to advance their fields — whether aerospace or chip design, the generalist isn’t going to just jump in and create the next new wave. So while on one hand the research $$$ tells academia to abandon people and deliver product, on the other hand market demand tells academia to produce marketable resources, not rounded human beings.
Between these two the idea of inculcating a human being capable of having moral thought other than that force-fed, the knowledge to build on the foundations of history and literature, and the skills to apply them in the world is gone.
THEN, into that vacuum the left, already strong in academia where they liked getting paid, stepped in. Thus whatever-studies majors and other tripe, who being indoctrinated into communist activism now also run HR departments and DEI departments and artificially create demand (from the same diploma mills) for more activists.
Since those people produce net negative value, it’s collapsing on itself with this result (and, as with company layoffs, first the valuable people who were too busy producing to prioritize CYA above all else).
Frankly as a very experienced professional, having seen “must-have” requirements from applicants which are then stale and useless two years later, the whole system is garbage now.
If companies just want a skill, use an apprentice system as many firms again do, and bake into your financials the cost to keep people skilled — or bake into your financials the massive cost of losing domain knowledge and hiring people anew.
If as a person you rightly see the need to be more than an ant, the resources, without the indoctrination, are now abundantly available without enriching sniveling socialist departments at U of Whatever.
WVU went publicly went through it’s financial crisis last year. (There’s more to come!) They shed some worthless poorly subscribed degree programs and two programs that make one question as to whether WVU should be considered a serious university. (Note they kept without review their 12+ 6-figure + senior vice president administrators. Also note 15 years ago they had only 3!) WVU dropped foreign languages completely! (Not even an undergraduate program!) & graduate mathematics. It did add e-sports and sports leadership programs. They tried to drop their flagship mining & petroleum engineering programs. Industry stepped in with grants and stopped that. They also announced chemistry, chemical engineering and computer engineering were under scrutiny for future cuts.
Many of the worthless programs are administered through the College of Education. Those programs are demanded and protected by the state educrat establishment and teacher’s unions. Both are very powerful in this state!
I knew a creepy doctor years ago who got his medical degree from a ‘university’ in Italy. I said ‘must have been a bonus to learn to speak Italian’. He laughed and told me the truth. It’s a ‘pay big bucks’ for a medical degree scam. He learned just enough to practice here.
As a library worker (though not a librarian), I see library & information science the new “law school” — a refuge for liberal arts majors who might pursue a dual degree program of library science and a specific subject (i.e. Jewish studies, Black studies). Libraries now are being specialized; “servicing marginalized communities” is the mantra. This hybridization is the only way humanities and social science departments (or anything outside of STEM) can survive.
However, my co-worker, who started library school, complained about its infiltration by leftists, who push Critical Race Theory and other garbage. He is biting the bullet, trying to finish his courses in order to get a higher-paying position. Sadly, as a white conservative male, he will find himself shut out.
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