Posted on 04/16/2025 5:59:28 AM PDT by karpov
For the entire existence of the James G. Martin Center, we have been arguing that, due to governmental policies, higher education has been badly oversold. That is, many students have been lured into college even though they have little interest in or aptitude for advanced academic studies. The notion that a college degree was a sure-fire investment that would pay off handsomely after graduation was erroneous, but great numbers of students and their families were taken in by that siren song. Moreover, a stigma somehow attached to students who didn’t go to college—if you had to “settle” for working after high school, that was a mark of shame.
The apotheosis of college reached its peak under President Obama, who declared early in 2009 that it must be our national goal to lead the world in the percentage of citizens who have graduated from college. Anyone who disagreed with his idea that college is a national elixir was scoffed at.
One writer who dared to raise doubts about college was Charles Murray. In his book Real Education, he argued that the bachelor’s degree was being forced to do things it was never meant for. He observed that a high percentage of the students enrolling in college weren’t seeking advanced learning; what they wanted and needed was hands-on training for the jobs they would later do. Four or more years of classes and papers and exams were mostly a waste of time and money for them.
In the years since Murray’s book was published, a lot of evidence has come to light that supports his point of view, especially the large number of college graduates who have ended up working in low-paying jobs that call for no advanced study.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
One of my student at the Maine Maritime Academy in Castine graduated with a degree in marine engineering. He also had a Maine lobster license. With the earnings that he had from lobstering and his future earnings as a third assistant engineer, he was able to walk into the bank and at age 21 get a $500,000 loan for a new lobster boat.
A Princeton graduate told me outside of her science and math classes it was mostly just fluff.
Same exact thing for me when I got my BS in computer science in the 1990's at a local public university. My son later said it was the same for him. We heard exactly zero of the liberal/woke stuff in our math and CS undergrad courses, but a ton of it in our liberal arts "core" courses. And that's in red state Alabama.
That's also why I didn't get a master's or phd in CS. I could tell that the grad work was starting to get overtly political even back when I was young, even in CS, even in Alabama. Back then I was too young and impressionable -- I didn't want to be regularly influenced by the world if I was in an environment where they taught me, not the other way around. I'm comfortable being immersed in the world only if any culture changes happen from me to them (i.e. Jesus hanging out with the sinners).
Universities and colleges have made themselves irrelevant. I remember when I was a young person that we were told that the primary reason to get a liberal arts degree was to teach people how to think critically. This is no longer the case. And this has not been the goal of colleges and universities for decades. They currently produce graduates who not only cannot think critically but who can only read at a mediocre level.
Other than the catastrophic waste funding these institutions, our country is fortunate that nearly all of the top institutions have excluded so many super bright young people through DEI discriminatory entrance procedures. This has meant that the cream of their generation has had to find other ways to obtain the skills and education that they need.
They have now become largely irrelevant because of nonsensical policies and practices... at this point few people are going to care when their staffs are axed and their DEI students are sent on their merry way.
Pam Bondi just announced a civil lawsuit against Maine’s Department of Education for violations of Title 9 - Men competing in Women’s sports. Your Governor is fighting this, not because she supports the few trans boys who want to annihilate girls in your state, but because she wants to resist Trump at all costs. It is an 80/20 support for restricting women’ sports to women, but this Governor should be pummeled by the public. I hope enough Maine normal people write her some nasty letters and forward them to the media.
One of my regrets at age 74 is that I passed on the Maritime academy in
1969 for a large state University.
I’ve had a great run - but always wonder what would have been.
My parents wanted me to go to the large State University. Kids listened to
their parents then.
Take away the taxpayer funding!
Poor students? Let them take basic classes at the community college, spending their evenings studying at the local library.
Little more wasteful than the college sports, dorm, entertainment, tutoring, bureaucrat, etc., etc., industry.
I have a BS degree from 1980. In 2014 I got the bright idea to take a math class at my local community college in the evenings for personal enrichment. After that more classes followed and next thing I know I’m getting an associates in biology. A few things stand out in my mind, the first is most of the just out of HS students in community college do not want to be there and should not be there. The second was that the students in the 2 liberal arts classes I had to take were far different from those in STEM classes and the same goes for the professors. I remember one incident we were waiting in the hall to begin a biology lab when a fat chick with purple hair stopped by to inform us that gender was a man-made construct and that she personally had no intention to breed with any man. This was of course appreciated by us males that were worried about having to do the deed against our will.
Yes, but there’d be the hope of a glimpse are true education being restored, at least.
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