Posted on 09/11/2011 12:13:03 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Well obviously we need the govt to step in and keep people out of college. Heaven forbid people should want to go.
***American colleges would have us believe that the skills they purport to teach, the critical thinking and higher levels of reasoning and all that, are crucial to competent performance in the workplace.***
Critical thinking and reasoning are crucial - but they are not taught in college. They are learned in life, in the military and in the work place.
If language, science and math were taught more thoroughly in high school - instead of social studies etc., there would be more scientists and fewer global warming bureaucrats.
You need a four year degree for most jobs today. Sorry but that is just the case. Is it right? Maybe not, but that is just the facts. I am very glad that I have an MBA today because without it, I probably would not even be in the position I am today. A Bachelor’s is ok to get in the door of a company. I guess because I have not tried to get a job without a degree I don’t have that experience. Maybe you guys think it is a breeze and want your kids to go that route. I will guide my children towards getting a degree. They can join the military first if they want to but other than that. I will guide them towards college.
The truth is, however, that many employers require a bachelor’s degree, at the least. They see it as a sign that the applicant for a job has some ability to stick to a task for four or five years. If you want a job that’s indoors, clean, safe, at a desk, you need to have a degree.
My daughter went through her university’s graduation ceremony several months ago but in fact she needed one more course to get the magic paper. She had a LOT of work experience and glowing tributes from past and present employers, and had a summer job, but when she applied for serious jobs the hiring people all said, “You look fantastic, but come back when you actually finish that last course.” So she did. She was instantly inundated with job offers and just accepted one. (No, she is not in a technical or health field.)
And I find that increasingly that the master’s degree is what the BA used to be. If you want to advance in a lot of ordinary jobs you need a master’s. I have a bachelor’s degree, but my competition in the job search often has a master’s.
So while I do have family members who have a great career and are very prosperous without a college degree, the fact is that they started their careers many years ago, before the recession, before employers could be so darn fussy. This is certainly the case with those people the article cites who are CEOs without a college degree: they either started their own business and picked up the know-how elsewhere, or they got a job in the company and worked their way up starting many years ago, when the standard wasn’t so high.
The most valuable skill you must learn for this economy is how to look busy.
Education is important but a solid moral work ethic is essential.
I see many kids going to College not so much looking at what kind of field of work they want to ultimately be in but rather an extension of the high school partying days.
JMHO
It is considered discriminatory to give aptitude tests as part of a job application. Thus, employers are reduced to the poor proxy of hiring those with college degrees.
And now that so many have college degrees, it is suggestive of below average drive and intelligence not to have one.
I understand his point, and much of what he says is true... but the real problem with this college-fever is the cost. There’s nothing wrong with young people getting four more years to mature, nothing wrong with them actually reading To His Coy Mistress and My Last Duchess, nothing wrong with a couple years of a foreign language, nothing wrong with a closer, more in-depth look at some era of history, or a particular line of thought in Philosophy, or a few more courses in Statistics... nothing wrong with learning to write 12 page papers, reading heavier stuff than you could handle when you were 16 and distracted by the girl in the tight jeans sitting in front of you... the financial burden is the only drawback. Well, that and the liberal slant most humanities are infected with.
The Higher Education Industrial Complex, probably a bigger scam than the Social Security ponzi scheme.
Cut bachelor degree programs to 2 or 3 years, stop government subsidization of worthless majors (80% of them), and move away from the “college is for everyone” mindset. Undergraduate education has long become the replacement for high school at most colleges and universities. There’s a reason this country is failing compared to other first world countries academically.
I'd like to draw a distinction between needing the degree to get hired and needing the degree to do the job.
A college degree (for mid-level positions, as described in the article) is mainly used as a screening tool, a way for lazy people to whittle down the number of resumes they need to look at.
There used to be a far more efficient way to narrow the field, a simple IQ or aptitude test. It is a MUCH more efficient predictor of workplace performance than a degree.
But such tests have "disproportionate impact" on minorities and were therefore made illegal. So employers started using a degree as a rough and inefficient way of weeding out the same people they used to weed out with the IQ test.
My personal experience has been that while a degree may be necessary to get hired, once you're hired most organizations care a bunch more about what you accomplish for them than about your formal education.
BTW, the studies in question are probably severely flawed by not adjusting for variables.
Yes, a degree may provide additional income over a lifetime. But you cannot really determine whether it does until you compare similar people who have and don't have a degree. For instance, same IQ and class background.
What I assume this study does is compare all people with a degree in a particular field with all people in the field without a degree, which violates numerous rules of statistical analysis.
Personally, I work in a technical field and have been quite successful. I never had the chance to go to college, for a variety of reasons. While I never make any attempt to hide my educational background, most of the people I work with assume I have at least a masters and probably a PhD. When they find out otherwise, it is quite amusing to watch their prejudices take a big hit. But by this point they have generally decided I'm pretty darn good at what I do and that I'm an exception to the rule that people without degrees are incompetent.
Could I have gone farther and faster with a degree? Almost certainly. But this notion that one's life is over without a degree is just silly.
Except for technical, medical, engineering, etc. type fields a bachelors degree is worthless. That said, the artificial requirement is for a bachelors degree. That said, it is best to shop around and find the cheapest educational resource to get that degree. Using community college, online universities, part time while in the military, etc. Above all, do it without ending up with student loans and ending up as a slave to debt at the get go. Additionally, you will be surprised of how much cheaper it is when you forget about the partying, live at home and actually study. It’s amazing that parents will actually pay for some idiot kid to get a 4 year degree in 6 years. Most will find they will get the same pay whether the degree is from a no-name university or from a big time party school. Work experience while going to school is a definite plus for two reasons: first, you will have work experience to put on your resume; second, you probably would fall for the liberal BS that befalls most of the lazy student body.
I strongly believe that we should have more vocational education options for children, and they should begin in high school. We are doing them a disservice by insisting that everybody needs the same education to succeed. If a person wants to go to college, that is wonderful, but a college education shouldn’t be required to become a secretary or a paralegal. Job specific training would be much for valuable in those instances.
Children who are strong academically should have the option to begin a bona fide college level education at 16 or so, and we should work to ensure that those capable of a rigorous course load are given the opportunity to do so, and those who have no interest in pursuing high education should be guided in a vocational classes in a field that interests them. Basic, fundamental subjects should be mandatory, but many of the basics should be covered in the younger years. Nobody should be leaving elementary school without the ability to read and solve basic mathematical problems.
The problem is that American colleges are indoctrination centers for communist thinking. Actual academics are downplayed or eliminated.
Many careers don’t actually need college degrees, engineering, architecture, biological sciences or physical sciences excepted.
Most students are getting business degrees with an overdose of critical theory and communist indoctrination via ‘diversity’ and ‘economics’ training.
The addition of these courses and the bureaucratic overburden to administer,and the pensions that follow are why college costs so much.
The ‘establishment’ is keen on getting all children into college because it is needed to put the finishing touch on their indoctrination. Skip college and you just might have a freedom loving individualist on your hands to muck up the transformation of America into a communist hellhole. That’s the last thing these collectivists want.
Paulson and Kyle Bass made billions shorting RMBS/CMBS/and subprime shares last decade.
IF anyone knows how to short American institutions of higher learning, it would be the trade of this decade.
Really? You mean a Doctorate in Social Justice from the University of Massachusetts Freak Show may not get you the job you want??
Critical thinking and reasoning are crucial - but they are not taught in college. They are learned in life, in the military and in the work place.
Fixed that for you.
Ramped-up education and creeping credentializing requirements are rampant. How do you land jobs when you have to have a license and certification for even blue collar work these days (think plumbing, electrics, barbering, etc.)? How do smaller towns and institutions fill slots requiring this crap when they must hire at above-average wages to fill slots with such folks to begin with?!?!
If there were one leftist juggernaut I would derail in this country--and I'd tackle it before anything else to stop the cycle of despair--it would be public funding for ALL forms of public education. Sell off all the educational properties, set up voucher systems if you must, and let the free market have at it again. Our problem isn't that people don't want to work or value it, it's that they are trapped going through the motions in systems that require them to do no more than go through the motions, in so many cases, for YEARS.
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