Posted on 07/30/2010 7:25:01 AM PDT by reaganaut1
Spending as much as $250,000 on a bachelors degree from world-renowned U.S. universities such as Harvard University and Yale is a waste of money, a new book asserts.
"Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money And Failing Our Kids - And What We Can Do About It," urges parents and students to consider colleges that spend on teaching instead of sports and which encourage faculty to interact with students instead of doing research, taking sabbaticals and sitting on campus committees.
"Undergraduates are being neglected," author Andrew Hacker, who co-wrote the book with Claudia Dreifus, told Reuters in an interview.
"Higher education has become the preserve of professors ... (who) really have lost contact with the main purpose of higher education, which is the education of students."
Hacker and Dreifus are critical of many U.S. universities, noting the cost of a 4-year degree has doubled in real dollars compared to a generation ago. But education, they say, has not become twice as good as many colleges lost their focus.
Many Ivy League professors don't teach undergraduates at all and at many colleges teaching is largely farmed out to low-cost adjunct teachers, Hacker said.
And, he said, many undergraduate degrees are vocational -- from resort management to fashion merchandising -- and vast sums of money have been spent on deluxe dining and dorm facilities and state-of-the-art sports centers. As the number of administrative staff has risen, he said, $1 million annual salaries for college presidents have become common place.
"Bachelor's level vocational education is, I don't want to say a fraud, but close to it," Hacker said.
"Undergraduate business classes ... are just a charade; 19-year-olds play as if they are chief executives of General Electric. It is a waste of time and money."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
My objection is to the indoctrination...so much of that and very little real education.
Yup, I agree 100%. College in particular is a waste of time and money for most people.
Having worked in academia for a while, let me say that EVERYTHING described in this article is TRUE!!!
Here is a good summary:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO8x8eoU3L4
The biggest waste is paying Ivy League money for a school that no one ever heard of. Corporate recruiters go after kids from about a dozen schools. You’re much better off going to a good inexpensive school and getting excellent grades. However one of the biggest determining factors that corporate recruiters look at is the SAT, and those kids that score the highest tend to go to those dozen or so schools.
When the ‘institution’ becomes a graduation factory just to assure professors and other ‘educrats’ their jobs... then yes, it has failed and is a fraud.
Hmm - I guess I’m a product of one of those “vocational” degrees, i.e. I’m an Electrical Engineer. I went to a Polytechnic University which happens to be a “State” school.
So my first question is - where do you draw the line between what is a “vocational school” and what is a university?
Now the advantage of the CA State system is that they don’t do much research, so all my classes were taught by professors, even the labs! It also helped that they only had 5 grad students in the engineering MS program in a school of 2400 students. So I saw the professors all the time.
I guess I believe I really went to University and received a BS degree (you CAN figure out what the BS stands for I assume ;-) At the time the uni also had BS in Engineering Technology. This degree created “super techs.” Was it a Uni degree? Well -it took 4 years, again the reader can decern what they will from that point. I imagine the recepients of said degree felt they earned a University degree in any case.
I also think there are some good points to be made in that you aren’t receiving what you pay for at a 4 year Ivy league college if you aren’t seeing the profs. So maybe it is a case of buyer beware!
The university is the only system that survived the middle ages... and if you think about it what is the outcome or goal of the university?
The transfer of knowledge from one person(professor) to many (students). Here is the thing. Technology is now such that a student can search and acquire the knowledge they need. Before knowledge could only be accessible by getting it out of one persons brain and intentionally passing it on in the correct sequence. The lecture classroom is completely run with the same presupposition. That the only way to transfer knowledge is by word of mouth.Unless you are talking the sciences where hands on experimentation can be taught. (However educational technology is going a long way to solve that)
I worked in one of the west coast premier universities. I have many friends that are professors. I can tell you that the university is nothing more than a club with a 4 year initiation. The idea to industry is that you are willing to defer gratification so you can work in our company. Seriously most students could acquire all the knowledge in a more effective way in 18 months (most likely 12) through educational technology rather than sitting in repeatable lectures and books.
The problem is that people in business cant stand up and make that assertion, and say they would accept someone that went through an alternative program at the same level as someone with a 4 year degree.
Half the people in college probably shouldnt be, imho. . •
If anyone wants a winning political issue with ordinary folks all they have to do is go after the continuing/explosive growth in tuition to colleges.
The Libs/Dems offer to make interest rates more affordable for tuition. Gee, thanks for NOTHING. What needs to happen is colleges/universities need to LOWER real tuition rates.
Shame them by hauling them in front of Congress and accuse them of “hating” the children of hardworking Americans by making higher education un-affordable.
“All undergraduate education should be a liberal arts education where you think about the enduring ideas and issues of the human condition,” Hacker said
They lost me here.Who exactly hires liberal arts graduates outside of sales?These kids will be saddled with six figure student loans they have to pay back when they graduate. What is the value of a “well rounded thinker” in today’s job market without a technical skill.Most technical degrees have a core of liberal arts courses as a foundation. In today’s market, it would seem that would be to way to go.
“Half the people in college probably shouldnt be, imho. . •”
Exactly. College isn’t for everyone and our current paradigm of trying to get every kid into college by dumbing down standards and jacking up class sizes is a joke.
Hotel management, no; engineering, yes. And I would take an engineering degree (vocational) over a liberal arts degree any day....and I did.
During my tenure at State U I saw many students that just plain didn't belong in college, and wouldn't have been there had it not been for the "free" money made available and the lie that you can't get ahead in life if you don't go to college.
“Spending as much as $250,000 on a bachelors degree from world-renowned U.S. universities such as Harvard University and Yale is a waste of money, a new book asserts.”
Not if you are there to further your political ambitions and make contacts that will help you advance your goals. Obama is the perfect candidate of what the university can do to ensure your station and rise in today’s elite. It’s not about marks or being brilliant — nobody knows Obama’s marks — it’s about speaking the language and making contacts.
Online education will destroy the brick & mortar universities and their bloated tuition, liberal indoctrination and useless social life.
I hope you are right...
Anyone hiring someone who has OJT knowledge but wants someone management capable in the future. A liberal arts degree is fine for many if not most positions because the company can provide specialized training that is much more intense and directly applicable to the problems at hand.
There are exceptions. Funny, the examples these folks give are pretty close to the exceptions which makes their argument so much weaker. You need an engineering education to make it in engineering and the various specialties provide the background and context needed to hit the ground running so that they can access specialized training. A company would have to invest two years getting a candidate up to this level and the engineering program sorts out those who have the math and science aptitude that a Liberal Arts degree wouldn't.
A better example of a complete waste of time is Computer Science. I quit hiring programmers with CS degrees because they are ruined before I ever see them. Better to find a hacker who loves programming and train them OJT and encourage a Liberal Arts degree in any area of concentration that fascinates them. They learn how to learn and think in Liberal Arts program and that is essential. The rest changes too fast for the University to keep up. Undergraduate degrees in Business are also pretty much a waste, though I have seen some restaurant management and focused programs like this that equip students well for a career.
The biggest mistake is to believe that a college can impart "technical skill." In advanced technical fields, they do provide language and foundation concepts that allow people to access the real technical knowledge of the field that is acquired in the first few years on the job. A college graduate without significant work experience in their field is just plain ignorant but has potential. Their first and most stunning recognition normally is when they figure out everything that they have learned thus far is just the entry point. That their job performance most normally is based 80% on how well they get along with their co-workers and adapt to the corporate culture. As this is the real standard, a Liberal Arts education actually is a great starting place.
Just a thought.
Alvin Greene has a University diploma.
If it is a joke, the joke is on those who are paying the bill. The game is not education, not any more. It's all about the Benjamins, as usual.
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