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.
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 …
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.
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.
Post/thread BUMP!
DEFUND socialist/totalitarian collectives, foreign and domestic.
Universities are being run like a bloated, democrat party run government with large payrolls for an increasing number of unnecessary positions. Call them what they really are, Leftist indoctrination camps. Eventually, the Administration will outnumber the student body. Wait, I just checked. Some already do.
“...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....”
I really don’t understand your use of the term “** ROTE**”!
“Rote” from the dictionary -” mechanical or habitual repetition of something to be learned”
If you think that STEM education is just spitting back what was said in class. Its clear you’ve never taken a STEM class. (I hate the term STEM!). Try taking a calculus test and just write back (as in rote!) as answers the last couple of days of notes.
At the undergraduate level of STEM about the only subjects that you might be able to be present the material completely on-line is mathematics and/or computer science. Even then its just a presentation, something will be missing. The student will know that on some level. Engineering, physics, chemistry need labs at the undergraduate level! For most its the only way that one finds out that reality and textbook only have a passing acquaintance. At the graduate level many of the courses are more theoretical and more of that could be on-line then currently is. However some courses are simply inadequately taught if done all online. I had some grad course like that, and I went away feeling I was missing something.
“....changes little from year to year....”
Electrical Engineering undergraduate education has changed a lot since the 1970s (When I was first familiar with it.). And not necessarily for the better. A lot of EE/physics, etc. departments have been moving toward simulating labs in software. Why? It’s cheaper! O&M costs are very low if labs exist as compiled programs to be called up. University/college administrators like those low costs. (Let’s the university/college upper administrator echelon hire more “diversity” goofballs!) Also safety is no longer an issue or another expense to be monitored & maintained!
I’ve hired engineer/scientists who had undergraduate educations with real labs & those who didn’t. Huge difference! The one’s without weren’t permanently crippled, but they were missing something and they soon knew it. The good ones worked to overcome that deficit, those that didn’t want to went into sales.
I have multiple degrees in mechanical and chemical engineering from higher universities
And I can clearly state , without hesitation , that anything you want to learn the matter how technical you can learn online
Now to be fair , I had multiple Nobel laureate’s in my chemical engineering time at UC Berkeley , and these gentlemen were absolutely brilliant , engaging and I learned a lot from them
But here’s a little secret for you college-age types: you can audit any class you want at any university!
you can walk in sit down with the notebook and listen any class anytime nobody can stop you
Loosening Social Justice’s Iron Grip on Academia
https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2020/01/loosening-social-justices-iron-grip-on-academia/
I’ e spoken to Xers that say they’ll not push their kids into universities and big debt. They said trade schools, community college and living at home would be better.
They’re learning from life.
Cutting funding from schools that discriminate or censor in any way will help some.
Universities have become a huge education employment program, just as politics has become a huge lawyer employment program. Starve them.
Insurance company input?
Just need a testing company to coordinate with some big insurers and start up testing for those who study online, but not with an accredi-bloated institution.