Because it is a protected industry! With a lousy overpriced product too!
Of course its a scam. My husband and son’s all have jobs that have nothing to do with their degrees. The degree helps you get the job because of elitist hiring practices but the required course work has no practical application. It is just the liberal establishment attempting to keep control of our children’s thinking.
I think it would be a grand idea if people could just take the ‘certification tests’ (i.e. the bar) without having to go to college. The purpose of the test is to verify a certain level of knowledge. If an individual can attain that without spending the dollars for college, why not?
I have a 4 year degree, and I’ve discovered you learn a lot more a month listening to talk radio than you’ll learn 4 years in college.
From that point, people with these abilities can learn to do just about anything. Why not go back to apprenticeships like in the old days?
Not everyone is cut out to go to college.
Not everyone SHOULD go to college.
Trade schools, military training, even self study will suffice for many jobs.
Yes, young people are mortgaging their future to get the education that they would have gotten with a high school diploma 100 years ago. College should be for specialized degrees like doctors etc. And high schools shouldnt be pushing every student toward college. Some (dare I say most) have no need for a college degree and would do better with an internship in a job that suits their personality and talents.
But it seems to me that the whole world is being turned upside down:
Bernie Madoff? Scam
Social Security? Scam
Bank bailout? Scam
Housing bailout? Scam
Universal healthcare? Scam
I think that people might start saying: "You know what? Don't bother with college, we all know it's a joke, and you can't afford to waste the money."
Ah, maybe it’s a scam, but it is what it is. Until there’s a fundamental paradyne shift, nothing will change. As the author and several posters noted, they needed the piece of paper to get their entry level job.
Our solution was to seek out ways to lower the cost of the “piece of paper.” Our kid’s about to get his Master’s and so far it’s all been tuition free. Find ways to make that happen and you don’t feel as “taken” by the system.
I have a cousin who has a masters in history (yeah i know), huge debt and works making sub sandwiches. He is never going to be able to pay off those student loans. If it were a mortgage we would say he is upside down and the government would force the bank to re-negotiate, but since it is a student loan he is SOL. Not complaining for him, just saying don’t let this happen to your kids/family.
Education is mostly just another big business. The institutions don’t care in the least if decent educations are had by their customers.
The two biggest scams in America today are the Education Establishmen and the Legal Mafia.
Teachers are robbing out students/parents/tax payers of money and common sense, while lawyers either act as parasites on the capitalistic system or run for public offices and pass laws to restrict us or give excuses for more lawsuits.
Of all the human qualities, the one I admire the most is competence. A tailor who is really able to cut and fit a coat seems to me an admirable man, and by the same token a university professor who knows little or nothing of the thing he presumes to teach seems to me to be a fraud and a rascal.
...school teachers, taking them by and large, are probably the most ignorant and stupid class of men in the whole group of mental workers.
- H.L. Mencken
I find it almost laughable that Mindy decided to enter Davenport to study accounting but only "figured" her increased earnings would allow her to pay off her student loan. I would have expected her to realize that $35,000 at 9% interest would require her to pay $4,446.48 year just to service the debt and to compute she would need to put aside $85.51 a week to pay the interest. If she put aside $171.02 a week to pay the interest and the principal down, she (and I will assume she owed $49,405.36 which is the principal plus four years interest) would have been able to pay down the loan completely in 394 weeks which is less than 7 years and 7 months.
In short, Mindy apparently did not know much about dollars and cents before she went to college and learned very little about dollars and cents in college! Gee, isn't accounting about dollars and cents?
It is people like Mindy who have contributed to the credit crisis. She does not know how to manage her money and probably does not believe she should be the person who pays off her just debts.
My final comments are to read Charles Murrays book Real Education. You will learn that college is not for people of moderately above average intellectual abilities because those people will get a dumbed down version of education or will pay for what amounts to little more than a trade school education. Mindy probably paid for courses in accounting but apparently was either unable to comprehend the content of those courses or received courses in bookkeeping which lacked any information related to how to manage financial resources.
College is not for those who are too dense to manipulate complex concepts.
The professional associations also push the college myth. They don’t want the competition. It gets so silly that they split hairs over the type of degree. Take The IEEE. These guys push to keep people with EET degrees, for example, out of engineering jobs, and keep them exclusively for EEs. It’s pure BS, as in 30 years I’ve seen no indictation that one is better than the other. If anything the EETs have more practical training that makes them better new hires, since you start out at the bottom anyhow no matter what degree you have. And the two programs are almost the same, just a bit more calculus and less lab for EEs. I lost count of the EE grads that couldn’t turn on an oscilloscope. Too many were trained as if they were going to start out as senior developers. LOL!
Think of it this way. Anyone who could self-train himself well enough to be a lawyer or engineer is going to be a lot smarter and better motivated than someone who slept through classes. The people already in the industries wouldn’t want to face such stiff competition.
YES. It’s a scam. You must spend tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to teach YOURSELF, in spite of your leftist idiot professors, in order to get a certificate which allows you to possibly get a job making lots of money. Maybe.