Posted on 02/19/2009 9:08:08 AM PST by Notoriously Conservative
Is college a scam? When it comes to careers like engineering, law, medicine, etc., of course an education is paramount. But answer me this: would an intense series of exams to test the knowledge of applicants for certification as say, a lawyer, not be just as effective as requiring 6+ years of college credit and passing the bar? They both would effectively measure knowledge of the field, but the aforementioned series of exams would not require the credit hours, and better yet the money to acquire those hours. Why is college credit required? Why can't self study, and proof of the necessary knowledge suffice?
I spent four years attaining my degree in a field that has nothing to do with my current occupation. Was it necessary? Well, yes, in order to get my job. But should it be? Perhaps not, it is not as if I am using any of the skills or knowledge from my degree, in a field that is totally unrelated. I could certainly do without the tens of thousands of dollars in debt my education blessed me with.
I'm not advocating the abolishment of the current higher educational system. I am simply posing the question for further thought; simply as an excersize in questioning the status quo.
So, back to the question, is college a scam? Kathy Kristof of Forbes seems to suggest it is. In this intriguing article, Kristof argues that with student loans with terms worse than what you can get from the mob, and with the overinflated importance of a college degree, higher education can actually mean a financial disaster.
Mindy Babbitt entered Davenport University in her mid-20s to study accounting..
(Excerpt) Read more at notoriouslyconservative.com ...
Sorry Mindy, 41k is a decent living here in Michigan. -IF you live WITHIN your means. When you graduated, you should have worked to PAY YOUR DEBT before settling down to a lifestyle.
Most HR people know nothing about the position for which they’re screening applicants. So they use a requisite degree level like a big dumb filter.
In the companies I'm familiar with, the HR people do the payroll and administer the benefits and the 401k and add new employees to the list. But they don't do the hiring. That's up to the managers who need to fill the positions. They should know what they're doing, but sometimes they nevertheless make comically bad mistakes!
Right on the money analysis! Specifically what happened is that the Supreme Court essentially banned the IQ tests for the reason you state. So parents get to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to send their kids to Harvard to major in womyn's studies just to prove to a future employer that yes, their children really are very intelligent and therefore will readily respond to on the job training.
Still, I have to admit that I enjoyed college and learned a lot. That is, the college of the past, not the America-hating insane asylum of the present.
Maybe you can. Maybe I'm not as bright as you are, because I really benefited from the structured reading, the discussions, the discipline of writing heavily-referenced papers, and the novel ideas I encountered in university. In college I learned how to teach myself. Part of the trick is to avoid commie professors, of course. Or to do as my daughter does, and let the commie professors sharpen your debating and writing skills.
If college is the answer, I would hate to know what the question is.
Some states allow persons who didn’t get a degree from law school to take the bar, I believe. California is one of them, unless I’m mistaken. That’s one of the reasons why the pass rate is so low.
“Why can’t self study, and proof of the necessary knowledge suffice?”
That is the real kernel of truth. Because the college scam is NOT about knowledge. Neither is the public school system. They can give a d*m about knowledge.
So yes college is a scam. Because the acquisition of knowledge has nothing to do with it. If it HAD ANYTHING to do with knowledge, this post would not have been written.
After the 1971 Griggs vs Duke Power, where the Supremes held:
The Court found that under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, if such tests disparately impact ethnic minority groups, businesses must demonstrate that such tests are "reasonably related" to the job for which the test is required.it became a violation of federal Civil Rights laws to use an employment test which had more whites passing than blacks. This is also the point where college degrees became an effective substitute for such tests.
“In college I learned how to teach myself.”
That is a shame. It is one of the main reasons I homeschool my daughter. So that she can acquire the skills to become a self learner BEFORE college. It used to be considered the goal of education. Alas, that is no longer true. in public schools or colleges.
Student loans are awful. You pretty much have to take them out, especially if you want an advanced degree, and they are a millstone around your neck for years and years.
And, you have a group of young professionals making good money, but most of it is non-discretionary because they have to pay a mortgage-level sum every month. So they aren’t out there “consuming” the economy, which further drags everything down.
Let’s pay off all the student loans while we’re getting the mortgages. :) (kidding, sort of. I think that would actually help out more than the mortgages)
You make a good point there.
How many of the college grads of the past five to ten years are going to be unable to pay off those loans?
Or have money to have a down payment?
How many young adults are having their futures destroyed by the demonrat welfare state that they are forcing down this nations throat?
Is this the beginning of slavery for us all?
I agree, for the most part. As some have said, though, college went from a privilege to a right, and as a result become much more expensive and much watered-down. It needs to go back to being something for the great thinkers, and not a 4-year post-teenager party time.
It is fun, though. :)
I agree with you that college should be a privilege, and neither a right nor a necessity. I also see that kids in college seem to have way too much time for drinking and screwing around, and if they have that much time then they aren’t working enough.
Would you want a heart surgeon or an oncologist that was self-taught?
Understood.
But sometimes they do the first pass filter of incoming resumes.
Yeah, I’m an engineer myself (ex ME, no SE).
And I’ve done allright for myself. But guess what? I never completed my ME degree.
Does that limit my job opportunities? Yeah. Not because I can’t do the work, but because sometimes its difficult (mainly with larger companies) to get past the filter.
I (4 yr military, then got an Associates) was working on a program where a degreed engineer took parts designed overseas and converted the drawings to inches. He sent the parts out for manufacture and received about $250,000 worth of parts that had been converted from mm to inch using 24.5 as the conversion factor. OOOPS!!! Dumba$$
I drank and screwed around in college. I just did it after I had spent hours studying. I usually tried to keep Thursday evenings free to go country western dancing. We didn’t go out until 8 or 9, so it still would give me hours to study beforehand.
It’s about managing time well. You can’t go out before a test, but you can after a test. The week before finals was about studying, the weekend after was about playing.
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