Posted on 09/13/2007 6:21:03 AM PDT by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus
First, it isn’t true that the economy is undergoing some dramatic shift to “knowledge work” that can only be performed by people who have college educations. When we hear that more and more jobs “require” a college degree, that isn’t because most of them are so technically demanding that an intelligent high school graduate couldn’t learn to do the work. Rather, what it means is that more employers are using educational credentials as a screening mechanism. As James Engell and Anthony Dangerfield write in their book Saving Higher Education in the Age of Money, “the United States has become the most rigidly credentialized society in the world. A B.A. is required for jobs that by no stretch of imagination need two years of full-time training, let alone four.”
Second, the needless pressure to get educational credentials draws a large number of academically weak and intellectually disengaged students into college. All they want is the piece of paper that gets them past the screening. Most schools have quietly lowered their academic standards so that such students will stay happy and remain enrolled. Consequently, they seldom learn much — many employers complain that college graduates they hire can’t even write a coherent sentence — but most eventually get their degrees.
(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
This is NEWS???
I’m taking classes at college and they’ve had to start a special reading program there because so many of their students can’t read!!!
Keep in mind that I was in engineering school, too -- not some liberal arts curriculum of questionable value.
I've long suggested that nobody should go right from high school to college without first working a year or two in a menial job of some kind. Nothing does more to focus one's energy and help him establish his priorities.
For those of you in college now ... some words of wisdom if you are willing to listen.
As one of your FIRST classes, take both typing (sometimes called keyboarding) and speed reading. This will cut your college work load in half.
In your 2nd / 3rd year take some basic computer functional courses ... spreadsheets, word and presentation skills are required for most jobs in the marketplace.
If you have not done so by the time you graduate, take an accounting course and a sales course. To understand any business, you must understand the basics of both. Take these even if you are getting into a technical field because the managers you work for will speak the language of business ... not the tech speak of your profession. Being able to communicate effectively with them will boost your career far more than being the best in your technical field.
Great advice!
8th grade was the general education level, once upon a time. Students graduated with the knowledge necessary to be functional and employable. Grammar, mathematics and often even an understanding of either classical Greek or Latin.
Then high school became the general education level. Junior High began to devolve into a holding facility.
Then, after WW2, college became the general level and high school has become a holding facility.
If we invent a level of education that is made generally available above college, then college will devolve into a holding facility.
As long as there is another tier to which students must pass to become “finished” the lower tiers will become places to store, keep warm, and pass on their product for the next tier to apply the finished shine and gloss.
If I may, I’ll give a couple of pieces of advice, along a little bit different lines from taxcontrol’s:
1) It’s more important that, in your chosen field and vocation, you do what you LIKE, even if you don’t get paid as much to do it. Making money really isn’t everything. Being in a well-paid grind job is still being in a grind job. If you like your job, if you like what you do, if you wake up in the morning and actually look forward to do what you do, you will have a lot less stress and a lot happier life than if you wake up and dread going to the same old job again today. If you can get paid well to do what you really, really like to do - great! Doesn’t happen for most people however, so you’ll probably have to make some concessions somewhere.
2) Education is a lifelong process. It doesn’t end when you put on a gown and get a piece of paper. I’m not just talking about continuing education in your chosen field, either. If you don’t like to read for pleasure, learn to start liking it. Develop and nurture your curiosity. Allow your interests to be broadened by exposure to subjects you don’t have time to deal with right now in school. In so many areas outside of my own field (chemistry), I’ve learned 100 times as much about dozens of different subjects through independent reading and study in my 7 years since graduating from grad school than I ever learned in my “liberal arts” education in college.
I see college grads coming into our company every single day that believe they are the ones with the new and fresh ideas. Then I watch as they try to implement the very things that were tried and abandoned because these things proved to be non-productive. When the new kids fail their assessment of the reason for that failure is that it did not work because there are too many old timers here who are stuck in the old way of doing things. What a laugh. It did not work before because it was a bad idea then...and it is still a bad idea.
And I thought college was a place where you learned how to learn. I guess not.
I work as a recruiter in the engineering field, and what I’ve always found funny is that it seems there are more guys without a degree who are more capable designers and engineers than those with.
Not to mention, those with a degree straight out of college some how believe they’re entitled to 80+ thousand a year with no “real experience” (I say real experience since they believe an internship, being a research scientist in a college for 8 years, or a co-op are real experience, they’re not).
I do see some real odd requests come in from time to time, my favorite is the company looking for a network admin who has a BS in Computer Science, I always get a chuckle at that one.
None the less, you actually see allot of companies in my field (HR and recruiting) looking for people with a degree in Business or Human Resources to fill open positions when in reality, a high school grad could do the job easily with minimal training, problem is that HR people don’t want companies to realize this (creates job security)
Excellent advice, and nearly exactly the advice I give to most young people. I tell them to get more business classes than you have recommended, but overall it’s still excellent advice.
The real problem is institutional within the education industry - it's just that, an industry.
Iron clad unions, overloaded administrations, thought police (liberal bias), and cash flow don't make for a system that helps the kids or even socializes them.
If the system were honest it would act to route at least half of today's college freshmen into decent trade schools and force all advancing students to show proficiency in the basic subjects.
Fat chance.
PS: Best advice so far is that everyone needs to work in or at least understand the other aspects of a business, sales/accounting/contracts and such, because the single dumbest hinderance I encountered over the years was the otherwise perfectly capable "team member" who believed that only his or her tasks counted and consequentially had no concept of how their actions could afflict the rest of the program.
I agree!
You sound like a true didactic.
“This is NEWS???”
Why, sure. I remember GIs coming back from the Korean war in ‘54 or ‘55 complaining that “You have to have a high-school diploma to drive a milk truck these days.”
Now, if that’s not a red-hot, front-burner issue, I don’t know what is.
We seem to have 3 or more subjects going at once here. Tips and advice need to differentiate between...
TRAINING - accounting, business skills, etc.,
EDUCATION - lit, philo, history, etc.,
LIFE SKILLS - saving, what job to take, what’s important in life, etc.
Just a thought.
There is more than one interpretation of didactic, but I’m using it in the context of “self-taught through reading”.
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