Higher education in America has become largely “vocational.” This is because years past aptitude tests by employers were all but shut down because of racial and sexual discrimination concerns. Hence the higher education filled the void in certification and licensing of what in the past was simply a hands on test by an employer or vocational trade learned on the job.
The number of math, science and engineering degree seeking Americans is flat or declining with many of the students in US schools being from China, India, or elsewhere. Americans want to study the soft sciences like sociology, psychology, anthropology, womyns studies, history....... fluff. The types of degrees that many pursue are a waste of time.
Our education system has many egg heads in it. Inbred idiots that never actually worked in the field they are instructing. You have kids going straight for a masters and PhD to then teach without ever having any real experience. Completely theoretical and largely lacking any applied knowledge or skills they then turn around and teach nonsense.
Our education system is infested with social theories and dogma that has caused the relevant to be superseded by the irrelevant in the name of diversity. Major art goes untaught (Gericults Raft of the Medusa) for the sake of presenting a female, Asian, black or whatever else artist, example Artemisia Gentileschi (who until the feminist movement had faded into obscurity but was recesitated when we went on a crusade to find a “female” painter in that era). Think of it this way: An American kid will graduate from college today and will not have read Mark Twain (who helped shape our language and was the most influential writer in his time), they will live in a Republic but never have read Plato's Republic, they not even know that Beowulf was an epic poem (The first written in the English language), nor will they have read the Odyssey etc. However, they will have read the Story of Pi (Asian), some poems by Maya Angelou (Black). Things are taught with a revisionist spin such as Malcolm X where all the hate and criminal behavior is brushed off as racist. MOST IMPORTNATLY, we do not teach kids how to think. There is no teaching of formal logic nor even what a fallacy is and since math skills are inherently weak among American kids, they essentially “can't think.” The need to be “current and “diverse” in race, sex, national origin, sexual orientation etc has led to the over valuing of the irrelevant at the expense profound works.
Ethics vs. Morals. Our education system is secular, for the most part even the formerly religious schools that are only hollow shells of what they once were. Ethics is a meaningless term, created by secularists where the true nuance meaning is the teaching of right and wrong in the ansense of the “G” word. It's situationally dependent and unfortunately it is the result of a society that embraces diversity vs. assimilation. The problem is that even on a behavioral level our education system is a complete failure. Kids don't learn right and wrong in grade/high school or higher education. You can't even expect someone with a certain attitude, code of conduct, work ethic etc if they have a masters degree. It's not like 100 years ago where you could expect someone to be a “scholar and gentleman” if they had a higher education.
Standards are extremely low. Today a kid in his second year of college and going for a degree will have the same math that my father in 1961 was “required” to have just to graduate from high school. You can get a degree without ever really learning much. Just pay your money, spend the time and eventually you'll have the degree.
What does a degree mean? Not much.
My father learned to be an electrical engineer by on the job training and by having his company send him to night school ( Drexel). He never earned a formal degree in engineering, yet, he was awarded the highest recognition by Exide for his inventions and worked for this company for his entire, and extremely successful, career.
It was **common** when I was a child for companies to train their own chemists, engineers, and technicians. This training was coupled with selective training at a local college or university. As an incentive to stay with the company the companies offered very good health benefits and a retirement package that grew exponentially as they reached retirement age.
It isn't even that. They still need to be trained on the job.
For example:
In my health clinic most of the work done by the employees required a solid 8th grade reading and writing skills and a mastery of 6th or 7th grade arithmetic.
If an applicant for a job in my office merely graduated from high school they did NOT get an interview. Why?...It was because I had wasted far too much time interviewing high school graduates that were nearly illiterate and innumerate. If their application showed some community college courses or graduation from college, they likely had the intelligence and reading and math ability to **begin** the training needed to do the job.
If any applicant had come into my office with a Charles Murray-style credential showing mastery of reading to the 8th grade level and math to the 6th or 7th grade level, I would have given them an interview. I would have know that they had enough of a foundation to begin training.
Everyone, who had not had experience in our field, needed to be **trained**. It didn't matter if they finished 8th grade or graduate school.
By the way....I once hired and trained a homeschooler who was only 14. She was a GREAT employee! She never went to high school or college, but went on to be the manager of a very large and busy health clinic. She literally has made a good career for herself.