The article states:I am not discounting the merits of a liberal education.
At least they admit that liberals are running the colleges.
To get a degree in engineering takes 5 years instead of 4 because of this. This is exactly the wrong solution. The man is an idiot.
This is just liberal 0bama infatuation. Both the writer(and every other reporter at the New York Times) and 0bama used their “elite” education with the associated Bachelor’s Degree from the “right” school to get where they are today. Eliminating the college degree as a job qualification would mean that they would face competition from far more qualified applicants with more common sense and real world experience than the establishment with their Ivy League pedigree will ever have. 0bama won’t change this, and the writer is delusional for thinking he will even consider it. After all, 0bama scammed the current system for all it was worth. Besides, that would also mean that college degree-less Rush Limbaugh would be on equal footing with the reporters from the NYT.
“...I am not discounting the merits of a liberal education....”
That, NYT, is part of the problem. Concatenating those two words (liberal and education) has become a modern day oxymoron, thanks to you lib’s propensity to remove all things difficult and of historical importance from that curriculum.
I suggest that the economy itself will reign in the hopelessly bloated, overextended, and expensive higher education system. Since many large corporations already have to subcontract re-education for their new hires and continuing employees, there are strong advantages to getting four more “front end” years of work out of them—when they are at their most productive.
A group of large corporations could get together and create their own school, that would function like DeVry, where faculty run the place, and a small handful of administrators facilitate what the faculty want. The corporate school could help to support itself by subcontracting educational services to businesses outside of the group.
In turn, only the faculty of the school need to continue their education at a university. As soon as they learn a subject, they turn around and teach it at the corporate school, at a much lower per student cost.
As far the the group of corporations are concerned, they win in several ways. First, they know that their employees know how to do their jobs. Second, their employees are getting the education they need to improve in their jobs. Third, that they are saving a lot of money in their training budgets. Fourth, that they are getting four more of the most productive years of their employees careers.
Fifth, that their employees get their education when convenient to the business cycle. Sixth, that they are being taught with an up to date or even forward looking curriculum. Seventh, that employee morale is much higher when they are not saddled with huge debts. Eight, that new hires are being evaluated in a far more objective way than by some HR guy with little understanding of the business.
Ninth, the school might even charge tuition, refundable after an employee works for their chosen corporation for a few years.
There are some who are not “made” for college. There are some vocations that need to be preserved and college doesn’t always provide that. There is also a misconception that a college educated person is better suited for a position based strictly on that piece of paper. I ran circles around the bozo’s coming out of college and yet they were hired in a higher pay than me.
That's correct, but college has been dumbed down by relaxing admission requirements and by grade inflation. Having a degree these days is not the indication of some higher level of educational accomplishment it once was.
Still, we have politicians going around saying everyone should be able to go to college, and even that it should be free. Murray is right about this and most things he says. There are many jobs, particularly in marketing and sales, that now require college degrees, but did not twenty or thirty years ago.
I have always felt that specialized degrees were a way to lower the talent in a particular field and provide job security. I think public school teaching is a wonderful example of that. The fact that someone failed to take the proper classes while in the dumbest years of their life (college) should not punish them for the rest of it. If they have the ability to do a job, give them a chance with or without a degree. Will it come to having a B.A. in burger flipping and without a burger flipping degree you cannot work for Burger King?
And among those who do have the intellectual ABILITY, many do not have the drive and work ethic to accomplish it. They must be pushed, prodded, and provoked until they graduate.
That is not academic and it's not 'liberal' (in the sense of universal) education.
Is it "intellectual ability" these students lack, or is it something else? Desire? Ambition? Perserverance? Motivation?
There are no doubt some majors that require a greater amount of "smarts" in which to complete a degree: engineering, chemistry, pre-med, computer science, to name a few. But I would suggest that with the right attitude, even some of those degrees could be obtained by average students.
In fact, I would suggest that beyond understanding some of the "core" principles within a field, the ability to complete undergraduate programs (BA, BS), is more about proving you have the tenacity to commit yourself to something for four years. It's about showing up, completing assignments without supervision, and performing some of the other (possibly) mundane tasks required for one to go from a first-semester freshman to a degree-holder.
Make no mistake, an undergraduate degree provides some of the basics in which to enter a field. It gives the student a vocabulary within their profession, and hopefully some basis with which to learn more about their field upon taking an entry-level position somewhere.
There is a temptation to say that those basics could be obtained through a certification program, but a such a minimal program may not be as successful in weeding out lesser job candidates. This is an important distinction for companies, because they do spend a significant amount of money trying to find the best candidates.
And without sounding elitist, I think we need to recognize that from an intellectual standpoint, not everyone can be a doctor, lawyer, or engineer. The world does need ditch-diggers, plumbers, longshoremen, and other professions for which a degree is not required. These professions can, and do pay living wages, and I think that is where the author should focus, not on dumbing down professions.
“It’s what you can do that should count when you apply for a job, not where you learned to do it.”
That is so correct.
Rush Limbaugh used the term “Big Education” as compared to “Big Oil Companies” etc.
Obama will NOT do as the author suggests because Obama wishes to reward the “Big Education Industry” that awarded him soooooo many votes. Expect the “Big Education Industry” to grow and grow and grown under Democratic-Marxist **rule**.
I have to laugh at the notion that those abilities aren't very malleable. Does Murray actually believe the best athletes and musicians weren't nurtured in their abilities? The truth is, it's all about nurture, including linguistic and logical-mathematical ability. However, the nurture required cannot be given by the government; it comes from a stable family where children are encouraged to excel.
Thanks, Happy New Year!