What proportion of higher education is outdated, obsolete, and/or detrimental to this country?

5/5/2025 | millenial4freedom

[millenial4freedom]

I'm referring to not just the curriculum or majors offered, but also the administration and staff roster.

My guess: 75-80% can be eliminated without material impact to the American economy (in spite of the insistence by liberal arts professors that this won't be the case).

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TOPICS: Business/Economy; Chit/Chat; Education; Society
KEYWORDS: academia; college; education; obsolete; vanity

[joe fonebone]

Anything that ends in studies

[Tell It Right]

An old saying: Math and science courses are meant to teach you math and science. Liberal arts courses are meant to make you think that the liberal arts course is important. LOL

[DIRTYSECRET]

Easy. K-12.

Do the kids still spend the summers on the farm?

[9YearLurker]

I’d say 85-90%.

[millenial4freedom]

the remaining 20-25% constitutes the areas of college curriculum that society still values and requires discipline: nursing, accounting, finance, engineering, science, and maybe English if taught by those without a political bias.

and of course, the necessary staff for basic college operations: cafeteria staff, janitors, quality academics, 10% of current administrators, etc.

[maddog55]

Based on those graduating I’d say all of it.

[packagingguy]

Correct. My old university where I studied engineering (decades ago) has morphed into a jobs program.

They recently made national news for having more administrators than faculty, staff, graduate and undergraduate students.

The place looks like a resort now (I lived in what looked like a housing project, long torn down for more parking).

Higher ed is going to crash.

[BenLurkin]

What proportion of higher education is not education at all?

[9YearLurker]

It is also largely an up to 6-year taxpayer-funded holiday for students who come in with a middle-school level of education and leave without much more than that, other than
a continuation of heavy indoctrination and some vocational training for the relatively diligent few.

The amount of actual studying and learning involved is quite small.

Then we’re surprised that their and their employers’ experience after they graduate is not great?

[PIF]

Add English literature, US and World History, & Art History gives students an appreciation of the country, the culture and were we as human beings have been so we know enough not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Without those, the schools are just churning out little mush heads who have no idea who they are or where they are going, and will believe whatever they are told, true or false, aka perfect Dem voters.

[woweeitsme]

I’m guessing anything that doesn’t involve true sciences or mathematics is probably a waste. I would like to think that some forms of critical thinking could be useful, provided that they truly are “critical thinking” and not just liberal ranting.

[T.B. Yoits]

[Myrddin]

My degree was in molecular biology with healthy servings of math, chemistry, physics and biology. There was also "humanities", arts and language. Having spent the last 40 years doing software engineering, I've noticed that some people are incapable of writing complete sentences or composing cogently organized prose. When I was recruited as a technical subject matter expert, it was critical to have excellent writing skills. Those who lacked good reading and writing skills were never invited to participate in a proposal again. Proposals are what wins business and employs people.

My project hired a double major from Rutgers with a near perfect GPA. A very smart guy. Unfortunately, his code was littered with spelling errors e.g. "nesasary". The source code was a customer deliverable. I had to find editor plug-ins that would flag spelling errors in source code components.

Foreign language skills are useful even to a software engineer. I had to do deliveries in France, Germany, Belgium, Italy and Turkey. I'm adequately capable in all of the languages spoken in those countries. It helps in customer meetings and travel. In my duties as an electronics bench tech, I had to repair a German VHF radio. No problem reading the manual in German and doing the repairs.

I've seen the results of a less comprehensive education. It limits opportunities. Education/learning should continue until your last breath.

[Dick Bachert]

QUESTION: What proportion of higher education is outdated, obsolete, and/or detrimental to this country? ANSWER: PER THE GRAPHIC BELOW, DAMN NEAR ALL OF IT!!

[Dick Bachert]

[cyclotic]

The apartment building at my kid’s college was literally falling apart. One of his roommates put his foot through the bathroom floor. That’s when they finally got serious about a new apartment building on campus.

Did you catch the word Apartment?

Yep. it was on campus but it’s not a dorm. 6-8 students shared a large apartment. Wanna eat? There’s the kitchen. Hope you got your groceries.

Wanna watch the college football team? Can’t. We don’t have sports. We’re a college. y’know academics. I’m sure you’ve heard of them.

Left handed, kinky haired lesbian studies? Yea, go somewhere else. We only teach Engineering here.

[verum ago]

What proportion of higher education is not education at all?

Last time I checked, Yale had more administrative staff than it did faculty members or even undergraduate students. And it's not even the school with the worst ratio.

This still gobsmacks me.

If a typical American institution of higher learning was an airline flight to Omaha, tickets would cost $7000, and it'd have 10 passengers, 15 crew, plus a couple highjackers instructing the gleefully compliant crew to go to Havana instead.

[Twotone]

Get the federal gov’t out of funding research & school loans & you can immediately reduce the administrative staff at universities. A lot of them are there to maintain compliance with fed regulations & complete federally mandated audits.

[Languager]

Here’s an interesting experiment... we can look to see what kinds of bachelor’s degrees are held by current US political leaders, from Pres Trump on down. Here are the first ones I’ve looked up, from off the top of my head, before I got tired of googling. None of these folks majored in engineering, true science, or mathematics. The people who are running the US, and thus the world, majored in other subjects. Draw what conclusions from this that you will.

Pres Trump: BA in Economics
VP Vance: BA in Political Science and Philosophy
Mike Johnson: BA in Business Admin
John Thune: BA in Business
Pete Hegseth: BA in Political Science
Pam Bondi: BA in Criminal Justice
Ken Paxton: BA in Psychology
Ted Cruz: BA in Public Policy
Ron DeSantis: BA in History
Greg Abbott: BA in Business Admin
Gavin Newsome: BA in Political Science
Tulsi Gabbard: BA in Business Admin
Tom Homan: BA in Criminal Justice
Marco Rubio: BA in Political Science
Kristi Noem: BA in Political Science
Sarah Palin: BA in Communication
John Fetterman: BA in Finance
Sarah Huckabee Sanders: BA in Political Science
Kari Lake: BA in Communication