Yes. Don't go $100,000's in debt for a degree unless it's in Science, Engineering or Finance.
A lot of unqualified people are going to college. Look at how many have to take remedial classes. Why are these students allowed into college if they aren’t really for college-level courses?
Yes. Don't go $100,000's in debt for a degree unless it's in Science, Engineering or Finance.
WAY too many of them go to college.
Most should go to a trade school or something like that. They would be far better off.
Government offers a BLANK CHECK all the the name of EDUCATION and the colleges are all too willing to take those checks.
Colleges and universities can increase tuition every year and the government just gives the student more money to spend 5 1/2 years on their undergraduate degree.
No politician wants to be charged with denying anyone their right to an education. Truth is that so many of these young people would be better off not wasting the time getting a useless piece of paper.
So many young people have never worked a day in their lives before they’re 25 - 26 years of age. That is unbelievable and such a waste.
Before the 1970s....the typical programs that a college offered was: engineering, science, history, medicine, and business-related. You could take any of these and generally find work. I suspect that we’ve come to a point where there are worthless degrees, and someone ought to explain that to a kid before he finishes high school.
But another topic here....is how a college operates. If you take $18k as normal tuition now for a college, and you have 20k students at this state-run university, then you ought to generate around $360 million a year. Now, as Chancellor...if you figure in some income from sports, some donations from alumini, and the state giving some funds for construction....you ought to be able to run that college easily for $360 million. In fact, you ought to be able to hand back $1k to each and every kid easily.
I’m of the mind that Chancellors need to start explaining how they spend their $360 million a year and where the operational costs really sits. Once you understand how their “business” is structured....we might come to agree that it’s really screwed up and states need to retake the operation and run colleges with cost emphasis in mind.
The question is rather pointless. It’s like asking ‘Do too many young people play sports?”
College/University attendance is their choice. A better question would be: “Do too many people get their education or activity of choice subsidized by the federal government?”
Captain Obvious is writing for WSJ?
Yes, college should be reserved for those who can afford it and those who can win corporate and philanthropist funded scholarships.
We need more low cost trade schools and apprenticeship programs.
my degree has taken me to Puerto Rico, England, Germany South Korea and China for work... something a degree in Angry Minority Transgendered Homosexual Studies will never do.Do you mean the Communist Indoctrination Centers?
Or the Overpriced Diploma Mills?
I can only think of two “colleges” that are neither military nor religious academies.
There needs to be more trade schools, technical schools, and more of a push for students to do those instead. Only about a third of high school students actually have the ability to go to a university, assuming they are studying real subjects instead of crap like Diversity Studies or Advanced Lesbian Outrage.
“Do Too Many Young People Go to College?”
Yes!
The problem is not that we have too many people in college. The problem is that so very few are going to college for math and engineering.
The problem is not that we have too many people in college. The problem is that so very few are going to college for math and engineering.
In a word, yes.
The problem is that America has no system of polytechnics of the sort Europe has. Such schools provide a job-oriented education deeper than that offered by trade schools here in the U.S.
Instead we suffer under the delusion that the point of a college education is job skills. It is not. The point is to be educated, which might lead to a job, or might simply make one more urbane and cultured. Pushing essentially everyone to get such an education chiefly has the effect of diluting the benefit to those who would genuinely benefit and leaving a lot of folks in debt for credentials that do not guarantee a job, and bitter that they misspent their time.
Now it's regarded as the equivalent of a High School Diploma./not sarc
2. Skill testing employees can open one up to litigation. That has been the case ever since the civil rights acts and landmark case Griggs vs. Duke Power. Best push the onus into colleges and other certification programs where “general knowledge” in some area suffice.
3. Higher education in America is a “Right of Passage” in the literal sociological meaning of this term. Without a higher college degree you are looked down upon, you're a lesser human and in this society everyone who has educated parents and lives in a community where all the neighbors are educated, they too need a higher education in order to be accepted and fit in. The rise in soft science degrees, i.e. history, sociology, psychology, anthropology... follows from a demand in people seeking degrees but not really willing nor having the aptitude for a course of study that requires math and basic analytical skills. The suburban kid is told already in elementary school how they have to go to college, even if they have no interest or aptitude.
4. Colleges and universities as well as other institutions have created barriers in the trades or professions that made them the gate keeper even though these skills might best be learned hands on, i.e. nursing, law enforcement, etc. Not a bad deal for higher education, since they essentially help create the standards that then have to be achieved by paying for their services in order to pratice this trade or profession.
Higher education in America has become littered with on-line degrees, junk programs in womyns (not a misspelling) studies, art history etc. Many junior and community colleges have basically become the vocational educational programs that once were in high schools and taught people a skill they could use if not college bound. It's a time to party, get “some degree” for your parents and community, to show you're smart. Some kids go their to find their husband, yes that happens too. College is a lot of things, but it isn't what we pretend it to be.
When a student takes out a student loan, to whom does the interest go? Is it paid to a bank, or does it go to the government?
not too many going to college imho. If the degrees were doctor/science/engineers then its a good thing, yet we subsidies too many useless degrees like history/law/art/social studies
Too many go to high school, never mind college.
Until we end universal academic education at eighth grade and start progression by exam, we won't get anywhere.