The higher-ed bubble: ready to burst?

NY Post ^ | September 6, 2010 | Michael Barone

[The Magical Mischief Tour]

Standardized national tests are a good idea.

College is completely overrated and in many careers totally unnecessary.

I often wonder what my degrees have gotten me at times. Even though I attended an aviation related university. The majority of the curriculum had little if any bearing upon what I do today which is fly for a living.

All my pilot training took place outside the college classroom and as far as the FAA is concerned they have never, not once asked to see even so much as my HS diploma, muchless my college transcripts.

But at the time I came along nearly all jobs in my field required a college degree just to apply. And the HR folks didn’t care what the degree was in either, just as long as it was from an accredited university.

Later on in my life I had to obtain my Masters just so I could be promoted to the position of Aviation Department Manager. I returned to my alma mater via online study and yet again, the actual job had nothing to do with my degree. Everything I applied to that job I learned either during my commercial flight training days or from my years of OJT experience.

The degree requirement for many jobs is just that, a requirement that some lutz placed upon the job years ago... I guess to justify his or her degree...

[Ronin]

I, for one, think it would be an excellent thing. Get rid of all the post-modern “professors” of feminist studies and get back to giving the kids real educations!

[noinfringers2]

Having the benifit of WWII G.I. bill, I’m glad and satisfied with a life based on a tech degree from a world class university. However, my view of the general use of the G.I. bill is not all that good.It started an academic puffery that has resulted in wasteful government costs/spending. There is a need to clearly define a structure of education which satisfies the need for structured knowledge e.g. medicine,physical sciences. The learning of social skills courses can be done without high paid fsstest talkers who know whats good for everyone else. College education today has become the pablem for youth fed by those milking the public money trough.

[Neidermeyer]

End the government subsidies and loan programs and college costs will fall back to earth rather dramatically.

[Yossarian]

If the liberal arts curriculum at institutes of higher education included proper grounding in classical Western Civilization, and in proper, responsible economics, I’d say it would be a horrible thing to lose.

However, I don’t think giving up on the whole shebang is the approach to take. It’s better to use this as an opportunity to reform and cost-control higher ed., not ditch it.

[Zeddicus]

A HUGE proportion of “higher education” programs are utterly worthless liberal arts degrees. Then there are the business degrees which IMO are mostly ego-building fluff. IMO, higher-ed degrees in health care and the hard sciences and engineering disciplines are the only degrees of any real worth.

[anton]

A degree in African American Studies is a prerequisite for government employment.

[November 2010]

I am so glad this idea has gone mainstream. People didn’t even know what to say when I posted that college profs were overpaid, college educations were not worth it three or four years ago. Bottom line for conservatives. As this shakes out it’s time for state legislatures to seize back our universities at the state level and get rid of the left wing profs and administrators that ruined the universities and their value. Boot them out and pass a law that the state can’t be sued for it.

[television is just wrong]

don’t for get about mexican american studies too.

[NoControllingLegalAuthority]

I have been arguing for several years on this site that parents should stop spending their life savings on the communist indoctrination camps called universities.

Parents spend years teaching their children morals and ethics and then turn these kids over to the whack-job professors for brainwashing. The parents even save their hard-earned money to pay for it.

I have been attacked for calling for starving universities of parents' hard-earned money.

Maybe the common people are finally catching on to the scam.

I graduated in the top ten per cent of my graduating class at a public university but I was fighting the on-campus commies even in the early seventies. The damn communists have really taken over now.

Only commies can get tenure as professors.

Look what has happened to our beloved country with these assholes now in charge in Washington.

They have ruined our wonderful, successful system and, as they survey the vast destruction, they think the country hasn't had a large enough dose of their poison!

They think America needs even MORE redistribution of wealth to really fix things permanently!

[Jim Noble]

get back to giving the kids real educations!

The problem with "real educations" post 12th grade is that only 5-7% of the 18-year old population is capable of getting them.

[Vaduz]

The government tit is dry your on your own.

[Vide]

The "solution" touted in the article (whatwilltheylearn.com) is part of the problem. Kids shouldn't be at college to make up for the deficiencies in their middle/high school education.

[MichiganMan]

Double post:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2583846/posts

You wouldn't have found it in search because of the different title, but same article.

[rhombus]

The degree requirement for many jobs is just that, a requirement that some lutz placed upon the job years ago... I guess to justify his or her degree...

This may be true but when there are thousands of responses for every job opening, justified or not, a college degree keeps one's resume out of the "forget it" pile. The one thing a college degree does show, I suppose, is that someone finished something they started.

[meyer]

I'm all in favor of standardized tests, not just for college but for high school as well. There are a lot of classes that are not needed - that if the student were allowed to show adequate proficiency on a test, they could skip and move on to the next level. In fact, I could see entire degrees, at least at the 2-year level, being completed without ever stepping into a classroom.

This doesn't work for everything, but it would certainly provide some much-needed competition for the education monopoly we now face.

If there were a true free market in higher education, the costs would not have risin at such an extreme rate for the last 10-20 years. How much does it really cost for the business professor to teach a class of 35 students 4 hours a week? The price tag far, FAR outweighs the actual cost.

[huldah1776]

How about tech schools?

[Dr. Sivana]

Part of the problem is that the word "college" has been changed in its meaning, just as for the word "marriage" has.

What used to be known as technical schools, vocational schools and business schools have now been rebranded "college."

A Liberal Arts Degree is not worthless if the program is properly taught. The purpose of a college education had not been to train you for a job, like those technical, vocational and technical schools. The purpose had been to round out the man, to develop him in a general manner. There are graduates from Hillsdale, Christendom College, Thomas Aquinas College, Regents University and others who are better men because of the Liberal Arts education they received. There are others who go to leftist-run schools who manage to find some first rate professors and use their own resources to benefit despite the problems in the environment.

Developing the man should be the primary purpose of a Liberal Arts education, but it is not the only route to get that sort of development. One of the greatest writers in the English language ever, G.K. Chesterton, didn't learn to read until he was eight, was an art school drop out, and went on to greatness without the degree. He was chosen by Britannica to write the entry for Dickens in the encyclopedia, proving that you don't need a Liberal Arts degree to judge literature.

But these days, with the emphasis on college as training for jobs, we see cosmetics colleges and truck driving colleges. I suspect this is done for several reasons. First, it allows a buy-in to the whole guaranteed student loan mess. Second, it gives an added veneer of respectability to the institution. Third, the would-be student perceives increased value.

Of course, the fall-out from these institutions, and even more the degree churning mills is that all college degrees fall in value.

I have been successful in the IT field for two decades, even though my degree is in Political Science and Economics. Right now, I face constant weeding out for positions that call for a "Computer Science" degree. When I enrolled at the University of Chicago in 1982, no such program existed. Computer programming courses were grouped under Math. Conceptually, I would maintain that Math and Philosophy (especially Logic) would be the ideal double major to prepare as a programmer. The people doing the hiring think differently, as they probably are working off of those sham degrees.

A course in "Systems Administration" would be best part of a technical program, not a college as such. True college disciplines are the unchanging truths. Physics, language (the principles for using language do not change even if the language itself does), history, philosophy, mathematics, biology, and even music theory, among others. The student taught by Socrates, Albertus Magnus, Sir Isaac Newton or Booker T. Washington could wake up in the 21st Century or any other era and use his education. The same cannot be said for the charges of Peter Singer and Shana Alexander.

Configuring Cisco devices should not be part of any college program.

So, we do have a lot of people who are going to places now called "college" that would not be recognized as such by Samuel Johnson or John Randolph of Roanoake. We have others spending four years in places that are the Wonder Bread of college, looks like the real thing, but not much substance.

I do request that some of the posters who write off Liberal Arts degrees as useless make the distinction between sham degrees, sham students (Alvin Greene, who would probably make a decent assembly line foreman) and those who manage to find a good program or supplement a bad one on their own to become truly educated men.

[TangoLimaSierra]

If these lefty profs lose their jobs the welfare roles will increase dramatically. They can’t do anything worthwhile in the real world.