Posted on 01/26/2018 6:51:32 AM PST by Academiadotorg
This is a question being asked on both sides of the Ivy-covered walls.
Charismatic TV host Mike Rowe, for example, strongly suggests that making bricks and mortar could be more lucrative than occupying buildings made of it. "People don't want these jobs because they are under a lot of mistaken assumptions about what they pay and whether or not they're good or bad jobs and all this other nonsense," Rowe said recently. "And meanwhile we've got 1½ trillion dollars in student loans."
"We're still telling our kids that a four-year degree is still the best path for most people."
Tom Quimby writes in The Washington Times that "Mr. Rowe's foundation, mikeroweWORKS.org, has awarded about 1,000 scholarships resulting in certifications for trades like welding, plumbing and carpentry."
An economist from George Mason University is making a surprisingly similar argument. "Typical students burn thousands of hours studying material that neither raises their productivity nor enriches their lives," Bryan Caplan writes in his new book The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money. "And of course, students can't waste time without experts to show them how."
George Leef of the James G. Martin Center for Education Renewal, notes that he has seen this trend even in professions widely viewed as demanding an advanced degree. "As most lawyers will attest, the knowledge they use in their work is rarely anything they recall from law school (see this piece by Hans Bader)," Leef, a lawyer himself, writes. "Rather, it was learned on the job."
"But they are not allowed to just apprentice into law firms any longer; first, they must go through college and then law school. That entails huge social costs that don't bring about any greater legal competence but do drive up the fees lawyers must charge."
College is supposed to teach you to organize, study, and figure out problems. “””
I learned that in high school——in a class of around 95 in a small town in Wisconsin in the 50’s. Total 4 year high school had only about 550 kids.
I would add that there's a whole class of quasi-scientists who earn Ph.D.s but provide minimal benefit to society. People can pay their own way into these professions, but why should taxpayers guarantee their student loans?
Astronomers, archaeologists, climatologists... These careers have not provided benefit to society. I bet most of what Einstein theorized about black holes and stuff in deep space was conjecture based on insufficient evidence.
AMEN
You must be a recruiter :- )
What has become obsolete is believing you’ve at last ‘made it’ if feeling fortunate you now have a CD and ready to conquer the world.
What was given in order to receive that prized paper? Your thought process, your voice, your dollars, your core of inner being.
Whoop de do!
It is remembered that ONCE Shop was taught in public schools. Learning to work on engines, wood, and other crafts and jobs. For gals there was HOME EC which taught them how to cook, keep an orderly home. Yes, women went to study Shop and boys were welcomed to learn to cook. These are the basics needed for a common society to function properly.
What does THIS say about college education?
A POTUS announces in his lecture that being a college grad doesn’t necessarily mean that he has the knowledge to balance his checkbook.....BO’B
Very cool and inspiring lesson on what engineering is about! Thanks.
And I think engineering skills are applied in diverse careers in restaurants, retail, media, music, social work -- you name it.
Just yesterday, I did some micro-engineering.
I was trying to create a PDF document from my web page. Now, because that web page was written in the Microsoft ASP language, Adobe Acrobat and the on-line PDF creators I used could not replicate it accurately -- the PDF it created looked like hell.
So I faced a familiar engineering challenge: there was a tall wall in front of me that could not be scaled using conventional methods. And you could Google to your heart's delight and never find the right advice.
The solution was to simply model my web page in a MS Word DOC and then create a PDF from that. It took a little bit of playing around, but using Word's tables, I could replicated the look and feel of my web page. Then I used the on-line PDF Creator to make the PDF.
Professionals of all kinds, then, practice engineering when they add a little ingenuity to solve their problems.
And maybe one of the advantages of our American culture is we are a people who naturally adapt to new situations, learn what needs to be learned, and get out there and do it.
And of course,President Trump is the prototype of this engineer/builder/doer mindset, raised to its highest level.
Let’s see. What to do with over $100,000 dollars for living expenses, outrageous tuition, fees for books that aren’t used,...? Send them to the brainwashing mill to be possibly beaten, raped, buggered,...?
Help the kid start a business, perhaps. Academics need to be changed out, as do most political and business administrators. It’s going to happen one way or another anyway (see debt spiral related to balance of payments deficits in trade, fuel problems, defense problems ahead).
I have had a good number of former Navy people working for me. Even without the degree, they were technically strong and practical. Enough to handle some engineering tasks.
Good point. You could open up a Jersey Mike’s for less than college costs.
Agreed 1000%.
These people generally are a pox on society, too. Sure, some of them write and are quite happy in their little corner if they can make money off of it, but mostly, they get useless jobs that harm Americans via government jobs, think tanks, advocacy groups, etc.
It is rarer to see someone in one of these harmful jobs when they have a PhD in STEM field. (I know I am generalizing, but it is a rule of thumb...)
My high school taught classes in A/C and refrigeration. In Baton Rouge, Louisiana a good A/C repairman can name his price in the summer months.
Agree. A good course on microcontroller structure is nice too.
Arduino projects are fun. Not a bad way to learn, and there’s lots of tools you can use.
#85 You guys are the reason software has so many bugs!! : )
Good to hear, Fred...
They’re “features” not bugs!
Shop class was great. But there never seemed to be enough time in those shop classes.
There should be shop classes in college! Absolutely. Making things with your hands is needed by so many occupations.
But you learn other things in Shop class like planning your project, dealing with frustration, trial and error.
It also has practical application rather than simpleton video games.
that’s a line of work that always impressed me.
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