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 am one who believes that, in a better world, a BA was worth having for its own sake. Not today. I met an MA in English who never studied a play of Shakespeare. When I got my BA, I at least was familiar with all his works, and learned a few in great depth. Read the Romantics, Victorians, Classics like Poe and Dryden.
But a BA was also much less expensive for me than for the people now! The cost of studying your culture, just because it was worth studying, was in the loss of earning power for three or four years.
True story. Back in the late 70s when I was in grad school at the U of Wisc in Madison, I took a cab ride home. The driver had a Ph. D. In medieval European philosophy. He was sure that eventually he would get a professorship at a good university. After someone retired or died. He'd been driving for almost five years.