Posted on 01/08/2020 7:33:08 AM PST by wintertime
Discard brick and mortar universities!
1) Free or nearly free education exists **NOW**! The missing ingredient is private systems of certified testing.
Should it cost a quarter of a million to become a doctor or engineer? The more reasonable cost is a tenth of that.
Most of the material needed to be mastered in the STEM fields is**ROTE** and changes little from year to year. It can be learned at home through the Internet and used textbooks.
Yes, some fields require laboratory and clinical rotations. These need a brick and mortar setting....BUT... these experiences can be found or created outside of a university, as well.
2) Encourage employers to use SAT/ACT scores, internships and insurance company input to determine levels of literacy and numeracy to safely and successfully do a job.
Most jobs are learned on the job. If a job didn't need a college degree in 1950, it doesn't need one today.
3) The above can apply to K-12 education, too. The missing key is private systems of certified testing.
Well, all of that and four quarters will get you a dollar.
Online colleges will solve the problem of colleges being indoctrination centers.
And parents won’t have to spend a fortune enriching Democrats to ruin their treasure.
Well, that's racist.
More seriously -- the US needs to do something along the lines you offer. The Education System as it stands is terrible. It needs to be re-invented and shifted away from Social Engineering. It should almost all be vocational.
I have a Liberal Arts degree. Today, I would say that such degrees are pretty stupid. I would suggest that if you want to study History, English, Lesbian Dance Theory or whatever, you need to pay cash for the education. No loans for fields of study which do not have obvious employment.
Two guarantees with this proposal.
1) Lawsuits based on disparate impact on minorities.
2) Declared unconstitutional by courts real fast because of 1).
I think things are evolving this way under the radar. I went to Stanford. Not pushing my niece that way because for the same cost we can hyper educate her everywhere from state university to junior college to tutors. Tons online, I learn a lot from youtube. Plus on the job training at the uncle’s businesses and her own jobs. If we want to splurge, send her to Europe, Egypt, ancient sites worldwide.
Cost less than 50% and no crushing debt.
One young lady in my office just got her degree. Mostly on line courses. It was still super expensive and paying hundreds of dollars for textbooks was still the norm.
But she works full time and has two children under 5. I commend her.
Around six years ago, I had to fly into a southern city late at night, and there was just one car rental shop still manned. So I stood there with the young lady and she worked out the paperwork. Along the way, we chatted.
She was the ‘boss’ of this rental car shop, and had graduated from college (four-year degree) the previous year. This was the only job that she’d been able to find, and she was still making less than $24k a year, with college debt near $45,000.
I didn’t want to say anything to her, but back in the 1980s...this ‘boss’ position would have been occupied by a 45-year old guy, with no college. Total waste of four years, if you end up just running a rental car shop at the local airport.
Ever try to learn calculus or differential equations from a textbook? How about physical chemistry or advanced physics?
Most of the material needed to be mastered in the STEM fields is ROTE and changes little from year to year. It can be learned at home through the Internet and used textbooks …
Excellent!
Doing this from home does not allow liberals to isolate and brainwash, and failure to comply won’t result in social ostracizing.
We need to break their indoctrination factories.
And the same thing is being done to school children too, and the same solution should also be applied to them.
Don’t let liberals have access to your children, or anyone else you love. They will be ruined.
Do they even teach calc and advanced physics in college anymore?
I wonder if Hunter Biden passed calc and phys at Yale.
Stop supplying them taxpayer dollars and they won’t be able to support the indoctrination time.
First - just stop the massive money train from Government-supported student debt.
Second, for public universities, “higher education” is now a highly political-bureaucratic-progressive voting bloc, like welfare, who will always have a strong voice for more money. That’s even more thorny. I suppose we can only pray for economic collapse to wipe out the money for these progressive clowns in places like CA, IL, or NY.
Just yesterday I read that here in NY, the state budget includes $1 million to hire “diversity officers” for just one of the podunk state college branches. These people are trained post-modern marxists who have no other skills, except to to promote post-modern marxism to others. They’ll get paid $150K per year, with gold-plated benefits.
I worked with a couple of very good Brit engineers who came up through a system that almost reminds me of IBEW’s apprenticeship program, where you work as an electrician during the day and take night classes.
They in fact did work as electricians as part of the program, and took their tech classes at night. They were very good engineers as you can imagine.
They didn’t graduate with any student debt at all.
No engineering is not totally memorization. The curriculum that works is to be taught the tools and then demonstrate that the student can use them to solve a problem presented to the student as a word problem.
If the student cannot parse the language to define the problem and then choose the proper learned tool set to solve it, they will not pass and are NOT an engineer.
Having said that most of this learning can be done from the web. What is missing is the lab work where the student must show that they understand how to use these tools. Without the hands on it all is wasted.
>
Ever try to learn calculus or differential equations from a textbook? How about physical chemistry or advanced physics?
>
Textbooks? Hell, “TEACHERS” usually can’t convey knowledge well enough.
Personally, I had a diff. time w/ calc ‘back in the day’. Took me & teacher MANY days after class before she hit upon that ‘magical’ way before the light can on in my head.
IMO, she was RARE. Not many would care enough or even attempt to come at teaching from different angles so everyone can understand. Most, still my $.02, if it’s not in the teacher planner, & there’s still ‘deer in the highlights’, are CLUELESS & just continue on as normal.
Least w/ online, there’s more chance of chat-groups, communities, forums, etc. that can\might help in that regard.
Yes. Saxon Math books are excellent.
For those who need private tutoring, then it, too, is available.
Also,....The physics and chemistry courses for math, science, and engineering majors that I took as an undergrad were mastered nearly entirely **in the home**. It was the TA ( teaching assistant) who helped with the rest. The classroom lectures were nearly worthless.
By the way, my “fall back” plan for graduate school was engineering.
It shouldn’t cost a quarter of a million to practice a profession. A tenth of that is reasonable.
Re:” What is missing is the lab work “
I agree. Laboratory and clinical rotation experience is necessary in the STEM fields. These require brick and mortar settings and professional supervion. But....Even these don’t need to be university based.
The cost to become a STEM profession should NOT be a quarter of a million. A tenth of this is entirely possible.
Re: The dollar
Ideas are the most powerful agents in the universe. That we exist at all began as an idea in the mind of God.
The main thing stopping that is the 1971 Supreme Court Griggs v Duke Power decision, which held that any test which produced "disparate impact" (fewer minorities passing than whites) was a violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Pass legislation which explicitly says that standardized testing is NOT discriminatory, and the whole educational establishment's power comes crashing down. Especially if anyone publishes standardized test scores of graduates of colleges, by major.
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