How about in green technology?
We’ve completely removed free market controls from higher education and then wonder why it’s not working well. If I was loaning money to a student, I’d be very interested in their chances for success, as it would directly relate to their ability to pay back my investment. We don’t do that. We taxpayers basically guarantee a college education to everyone without regard to their choice of degree or ability to someday repay the loans.
We have an over credentialed society, and government makes the situation much, much worse by demanding degrees for a slew of jobs that don’t really require them. Then we hand out money left and right to students who don’t have to do much of anything to earn it. People don’t generally appreciate things that are handed to them, but we have government/education industry collusion that will ensure the status quo is maintained until the country can simply no longer afford it.
I still laugh at my younger sister and her poli-sci degree which she got in 1987. Wanted to go into the foreign service. Yeah right. Ended up going to the Peace Corps in Africa for 8 months of living in a shithole and then to a travel agency for a year. Great investment sis.
college can serve students in at least 2 very valuable ways.,..
1. real job/career preparation, and/or
2. real “liberal arts” to better understand and enjoy life, such as the more significant writings of Greece, Rome, Judea/Israel, British and other significant literatures which have addressed significant issues in people’s lives and their societies, etc.
Unfortunately, many students enroll in “liberal arts” or similar type programs that are not designed for purpose number 1 above, and which, regrettably, fail miserably to deliver on purpose number 2 (due to being so “watered down” or “diversified” as to either not study what counts .. or only give it a “social science type” general brush-over treatment ... while instead reading a completely different, often deliberately “diverse” (racist, communist, revolutionary, etc.) syllabus.
It is no wonder nobody who still is able to offer any well-paid employment wants to even touch graduates of such krapsated programs of “study.” Quite frankly, so many of the immigrants have much, much better work skills and especially better attitudes about doing good jobs, too.
So, all these kids spend 4 or 5 years preparing themselves to stand on queue for any available McDonald’s or taxi-driving openings. Nothing wrong with those jobs, they are honest ways of earning money and I respect and appreciate those who do them. But such jobs do not require MA’s in Sociology, Ethnic Studies, Liberation Studies, Queer Studies, or, shudder, even “Community Organizing” (whatever the hell that really is!?)
I put 3 of my 4 kids thru college. I told them I’d not chip in one thin dime for an arts, social or music degree.
Isn’t there a college somewhere that can at least see that their graduates are capable of doing basic math, writing legibly and speaking understandable English?
That would give their graduates a big jump over many of the unemployables churned out by many colleges over the last 20 or 30 years.
At Easter dinner, a guest was explaining how he was applying to grad schools and all of them were “full ride” programs where they actually would pay him to be a “TA” and go to school there. I couldn’t help myself and burst out, “What a racket” and followed up with “all at taxpayer expense”....