Posted on 09/21/2022 11:09:16 AM PDT by karpov
President Biden recently announced a controversial, half-trillion-dollar student-loan-forgiveness scheme in which his administration would use a minor provision of the post-9/11 HEROES Act to excuse student borrowers from repaying roughly $500 billion in federal taxpayer funds. This regressive, unnecessary, and perverse maneuver promises to steer vast sums to affluent college-goers, even as it encourages colleges to be ever more cavalier about raising tuition and future borrowers to take on additional debt.
Biden is sticking taxpayers with a half-trillion-dollar loss in order to subsidize borrowers who’ve decided college wasn’t worth the cost. That’s a pretty damning indictment of higher education. Even in an economy with 11 million unfilled jobs, where employers are desperate for workers, millions of borrowers say student loans feel more like a mandatory expense than a personal choice.
This all raises the question: Why are borrowers going into so much debt in the first place? Some of it is the product of dubious choices (buying a fine arts or women’s studies degree from a pricey private school should be viewed as a luxury purchase, not an investment). On the other hand, there are also lots of examples of students who have been encouraged—by counselors, popular culture, and parents—to see attending college as an obligation.
Why is that?
Well, today, thousands of employers routinely use college degrees as a convenient way to screen and hire job applicants, even when the credentials bear no obvious connection to job duties or performance. Indeed, researchers from Harvard Business School have documented troubling “degree inflation,” with employers demanding baccalaureate degrees for jobs that don’t obviously require one. Employer preference for degrees has risen even for entry-level occupations, like IT help-desk technicians, where the job postings don’t include skills typically taught in college.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
There goes the “HS diploma or GED” requirement.
Whereas if you hire based on a candidate's performance during a job interview, or your gut instinct, or a friend or relative's recommendation, well, how do you quantify that? How do you defend your hiring decision if hit with an employment discrimination lawsuit?
Loan forgiveness is still not a sure thing. The university is already bleeding credibility. Loan forgiveness will dilute it double.
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers has a training facility on the road I use to drive home.
The parking lot is always full.
From the requirements it seems like a Master Electrician has as many years of education and apprenticeship as does someone with a Master’s degree from some university.
The government shouldn’t be in the student loan business to start with.
I agree. I don’t want my heart surgeon to have a college degree. An online course from the University of Phoenix should suffice...
The problem isn’t that degrees are “mandated,” its that degrees are used as a first level weeding out process by lazy corporate Human Resource (or the more stylish “Talent Management) departments for their hiring processes.
No degree, automatic rejection of resume.
Sorry, I owe you all a closing “ after “Talent Management.
Except that an electrician is useful to society. Can't say the same for an MA, MFA or MBA.
The use of the college degree as an entry requirement started when companies were discouraged, and some times prohibited from having a skills exam for new hires.
Just saying.
Imagine arguing that an IQ test is discriminatory against you.
You have two hours to type up a rental agreement form.
Pretend my daughter has to learn to use Word. Type up a quick start guide for her. You have three hours.
Type up what you know about the Revolutionary War, including its causes, in four hours.
Pretend I don’t know how to use program W. Pretend to teach me how to use it.
MFA...
You’re either a musician or an artist or you’re not. A friend of mine was an excellent artist and illustrated medical literature, books and journals.
He never went to school to learn art, he was born with the talent.
Many years ago, back in the 80’s, Frito-Lay decided that the old fashioned route salesman had to go. They started replacing the route drivers with idiots with marketing degrees.
Yes, that experiment fell apart just as quickly and spectacularly as you might expect.
The average person with a degree doesn’t want to get their hands dirty.
It was rumored that he thought of the questions on the walk to the classroom. Always consisted of 5 essay questions.
Here's the kicker: the first sentence of your answer on two, if not three of those questions started with, "based on the information you've given me, I cannot answer the question." Then you explained why.
I had that professor for over 30 semester hours. Not only did I receive a major in public accounting, I earned an unofficial minor in critical thinking. Oh yeah, he never used numbers, either.
Now I deal with managers and owners who think all you have to do is let QuickBooks do the work for you. There is little or no thought that goes behind the numbers with canned programs.
Accounting is a dinosaur, thanks to AI and computer programs.
Where I worked the hourly employees with a trade made far more money than their salaried managers. Like 50% more. Granted they worked rotating shifts and had little vacation, but it was sometimes embarrassing. An electrician or machine operator making $125K and their supervisor(must have degree) making only $85K.
Another reason to hire collage graduates is it is easier to make the claim they are exempt from overtime rules whether are actually performing that type of work.
I should get the degrees for the student loans I’m being forced to pay off.
It started, as many things do, with a Supreme Court decision
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.
The 1971 Griggs case decreed that companies could no longer use tests on applicants if it resulted in “disparate impact” (fewer blacks passing than whites)
Take that away (either through legislation or another SC decision) and companies can go back to having applicants take tests of literacy, math, and reasoning instead of having a diploma.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.