Education has lost its ability to teach people to think logically.
The more you have of something, the less each something is worth.......................
This is from over a century ago, but still makes sense today:
THERE LIVED A KING
From “The Gondoliers”
(Libretto by William S. Gilbert / Music by Sir Arthur Sullivan)
Don Alhambra, Marco, & Giuseppe
DON ALHAMBRA.
There lived a King, as I’ve been told,
In the wonder-working days of old,
When hearts were twice as good as gold,
And twenty times as mellow.
Good-temper triumphed in his face,
And in his heart he found a place
For all the erring human race
And every wretched fellow.
When he had Rhenish wine to drink
It made him very sad to think
That some, at junket or at jink,
Must be content with toddy.
MARCOS. and GIUSEPPE.
With toddy, must be content with toddy.
DON ALHAMBRA.
He wished all men as rich as he
(And he was rich as rich could be),
So to the top of every tree
Promoted everybody.
MARCOS. and GIUSEPPE.
Now, that’s the kind of King for me.
He wished all men as rich as he,
So to the top of every tree
Promoted everybody!
DON ALHAMBRA.
Lord Chancellors were cheap as sprats,
And Bishops in their shovel hats
Were plentiful as tabby cats—
In point of fact, too many.
Ambassadors cropped up like hay,
Prime Ministers and such as they
Grew like asparagus in May,
And Dukes were three a penny.
On every side Field-Marshals gleamed,
Small beer were Lords-Lieutenant deemed,
With Admirals the ocean teemed
All round his wide dominions.
MARCOS. and GIUSEPPE.
All round his wide dominions.
DON ALHAMBRA.
And Party Leaders you might meet
In twos and threes in every street
Maintaining, with no little heat,
Their various opinions.
MARCOS. and GIUSEPPE.
Now that’s a sight you couldn’t beat—
Two Party Leaders in each street
Maintaining, with no little heat,
Their various opinions.
DON ALHAMBRA.
That King, although no one denies
His heart was of abnormal size,
Yet he’d have acted otherwise
If he had been acuter.
The end is easily foretold,
When every blessed thing you hold
Is made of silver, or of gold,
You long for simple pewter.
When you have nothing else to wear
But cloth of gold and satins rare,
For cloth of gold you cease to care—
Up goes the price of shoddy.
MARCOS. and GIUSEPPE.
Up goes the price of shoddy.
DON ALHAMBRA.
In short, whoever you may be,
To this conclusion you’ll agree,
When every one is somebodee,
Then no one’s anybody!
MARCOS. and GIUSEPPE.
Now that’s as plain as plain can be,
To this conclusion we agree—
ALL.
When every one is somebodee,
Then no one’s anybody!
Only if it is in something useful.
We have way too many folks with advanced degrees in women’s studies and gender theory.
Stick with STEM related degrees and you will be fine. I have 2 Masters and my career opportunities are wide open. Lesbian dance studies? not so much. Most liberal arts degrees are completely worthless.
Rigid tier-binning (like Germany) won’t help either. It locks in an education path versus allowing flexibility like the US.
one of my best friends recruited me into the business i presently work in and for the company we have both worked for the past 31 years...
he has a masters and all these other professional designations next to his name and hanging on his wall...
i struggled to get through college as i was not a good student...
i work half as hard as him yet consistently out-produce him, sometimes by a margin of 2-to-1...he’s a great guy but just because you have dozens of degrees hanging on your walls does not mean you are a smart person...
These days kids read and do math at a 5th grade level at high school graduation, and probably no more than an 8th grade with an undergraduate degree. Technical schools make more sense to me with the degrading education system that was dumbed down to accommodate the less learned in society.
If you actually have the education that is supposed to go with the degree, you will do well. I don’t see liberal arts degrees as a problem, if you really are educated.
I have one. It’s utterly useless.
Kurt Vonnegut’s vision of the future in “Player Piano” has an interesting take on this. Jobs that previously required a high school diploma now require a bachelors degree or higher.
Unless we are developing Masters degrees in plumbing, electrical repair and maintenence, carpentry, HVAC repair and maintence, and other similar career areas then more Master’s degrees are a waste of time and tuition. As for high level business jobs... I know two guys who retired as VPs from JP Morgan Chase home office in NYC. One has a BA in History, the other in English. That’s it, no Masters nothing more.
Our country would be better off if productive citizens started having babies instead of abortions and masters degrees.
If you pursue a degree in anything with the words “studies” or “science” in the title not only are you wasting everybodies time but are guilty of an egregious waste of an opportunity that 99% of all humans throughout all time would have killed for. It still stuns me the amount of knowledge available at your finger tips to everybody unprecedented and unimaginable through the scope of world history is used primarily to view porn, look at cat pictures, and to push propaganda. there is university level and beyond resources that you can use to learn any subject for free.
bkmrk
When I was a young man, I ‘hoped’ I could qualify and be able to ‘get in’ to graduate school for a master’s degree. Today, people talk about getting a master’s degree as if they were going to the store for a loaf of bread.
I don’t have a master’s degree, but multiple bachelor degrees in 5 different engineering fields keeps me employed and sought after.
Compulsory education past eighth grade is a cancer destroying everything in its path.
Until non-students are gotten out of schools, nothing else matters.
This is all the result of the “equality of outcome” bunch completely misinterpreting a data set, in a classic correlation does not equal causation situation. Way back when, they looked at people who were more successful in their careers, and discovered that those people typically had at least a Bachelor’s degree. They immediately assumed that it was the presence of the degree that attracted more-lucrative job offers, rather than the capacities, abilities and skills necessary to acquire a degree back then. And thus began the great push to make a Bachelors accessible to all, on the presumption that this was all anyone needed to get a better job and a promising career.
And at first, it looked like it was working. People who had most of the capabilities, but maybe not the resources, to get those degrees were the first to benefit from the easier access to education, and they went on to do pretty well in the job market. Additionally, while there was a jump in the number of people who probably shouldn’t have been able to get a degree, those people got jobs too, because the employers still had the impression that a Bachelors was an indication that the person was pretty smart and capable.
The problem is that now, the employers are starting to figure out that a Bachelors degree isn’t the reliable indicator it once was. Additionally, the surplus of degrees had pretty much made it necessary to require a degree just to be qualified enough to apply for positions (because those who still couldn’t manage a degree even with the easier access were not generally going to be able to do the job). Add in a big cohort of kids who now just see a Bachelors as a checkbox on their way to a job, and so go for the least-rigorous program they can cobble together, and the value of the Bachelors is fading fast.
Masters aren’t Bachelors, and still have some clout. Not only do you have to be capable of more independent study, but a Masters is typically only useful within its discipline i.e. a Masters in Biology is essentially useless to someone trying for a senior information technology job. I don’t think Masters degrees will ever become the must-have that Bachelors degrees did, if only for that latter reason.