Posted on 08/21/2019 1:09:35 AM PDT by Kaslin
For many parents, August is a month of both pride and tears. Pride because their teenager is taking that big educational step and tears because for many it's the beginning of an empty nest. Yet, there's a going-away-to-college question that far too few parents ask or even contemplate: What will my youngster learn in college?
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni provides some answers that turn out to be quite disturbing. ACTA evaluated every four-year public university as well as hundreds of private colleges and universities. That's more than 1,100 institutions that enroll nearly 8 million students, more than two-thirds of all students enrolled in four-year liberal arts schools nationwide. ACTA's findings were published in their report "What Will They Learn? 2018-19." It doesn't look good.
The ACTA assigned grades tell some of the story. Just 23 (2%) of the over 1,100 colleges earn an A grade; 343 colleges (31%) earn a B grade; 347 (31%) get a C grade; 273 (24%) earn a D; and 134 (12%) colleges earn an F. If you're thinking that your youngster will get a truly liberal arts education, you are sadly mistaken. It turns out that less than half of the schools studied require courses in traditional literature, foreign language, U.S. government or history and economics. At some colleges, students can fulfill their humanities requirement with a course titled "Global X: Zombies!" A U.S. cultural pluralism requirement can be fulfilled with "The Economics of 'Star Trek.'" And an Arts and Literature requirement can be fulfilled with either the "History of Comics" or "Game Design for Non-Majors."
Colleges often do not live up to their own promises. In college mission statements, as well as their course catalogs, they frequently exalt the virtues of a "well-rounded" liberal arts education. The reality is something different with only 68% of the schools ACTA surveyed requiring three or fewer of the seven core subjects. Their curricula poorly represent critical subjects such as U.S. history, economics and foreign languages.
The list of schools that received ACTA's "A" grades includes Pepperdine and Baylor, known for their commitment to the liberal arts and academic excellence. But there are some lesser-known colleges such as Christopher Newport University, Colorado Christian University, Kennesaw State University, Bluefield College and Regent University that deserve accolades.
ACTA's "F" list includes prestigious names such as University of California, Berkeley, Bowdoin, Hamilton and Vassar colleges. Ivy League colleges received ACTA's two "Bs," four "Cs," one "D" and one "F." These grades reflect significant overall curricular weaknesses. For example, Yale doesn't require college-level math courses; Harvard accepts an elementary-level foreign language study; and Brown has an "open curriculum," which means students may take whatever classes they want, without strict requirements. Even though some of the best-known colleges earn poor marks for their general education curricula, it doesn't necessarily mean they do all things poorly. A student can get an excellent education at these schools if classes are chosen wisely.
There's another college-related issue not given much voice and that's how important is a college education in the first place. That's an issue raised by a Market Watch article, "Half of young Americans say their degree is irrelevant to their work."
Parents think a college education is necessary for success. Their youngsters think differently. According to the TD Ameritrade study, 49% of young millennials said their degree was "very or somewhat unimportant" to their current job. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, in an October 2018 report, found that many students are underemployed, filling jobs that can be done with a high school education. More than one-third of currently working college graduates are in jobs that do not require a degree, such as flight attendants, janitors and salesmen.
The bottom line for parents and their youngsters is that spending four or more years in college and accumulating tens of thousands of dollars in debt is not the only road to a successful life.
Several years ago, I came across the mandated classes of a small private college in the 1880s period. Latin was mandatory....as were engineering type classes....and various math classes. Then you kinda noticed by the third and fourth year, you were required to take debate classes, and present a debate as part of the class curriculum. Roman and Greek history? At least one class in each.
The point which I came to realize is that these were all thinking and reasoning class topics. You needed to assemble data, reason through the complex nature of things, and come to a conclusion. This is often missed in today’s world.
The thing that concerns me most about a modern college education is that students are no longer taught to think, they’re taught to conform. We’re educating a generation of mindless robots that can only spout leftist propaganda. As Patton said, if everyone’s thinking alike then somebody’s not thinking.
And because they are not taught to think, they turn out as nothing but educated idiots
They’re taught to be college students...And there are so many different kinds of college students to be! /s
For those who are white, to hate thier whiteness and to hate America. For those who are not, to hate America while living in a safe, generous and accepting country who is giving them an opportunity they will not find anywhere else on this planet.
These comments and statistics are certainly discouraging, but even worse is the percentage of people who attend college, often racking up debt, but never earn a degree.
Ronald Reagan, Virginia Mayo, “She’s Working Her Way Through College”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5Tncnesgmc
I once owned a single High School text that had Latin, Greek, ALL the maths, Geology, and much more. Printed in the 1930s, it was a college-level text read at a time the World was watching the beginnings of the devastating World War II.
I often wondered why I finished in the bottom half of my HS class. I know now, my colleagues had their pick of five languages. Most took Latin and Portuguese. :-/ and aced them. Back then, this was a heavily Catholic-immigrant town!
In today's leftist college, those are subversive ideas and must be destroyed. Any student who exhibits analytical skills must be suppressed. The Left only wants propagandized robots who will be cannon fodder in the culture wars.
In today's leftist college, those are subversive ideas and must be destroyed. Any student who exhibits analytical skills must be suppressed. The Left only wants propagandized robots who will be cannon fodder in the culture wars.
Soon the phrase ‘college educated’ will be a sarcastic remark used to insult someones’ intelligence.
The problem is that if you eventually work for any sort of multinational corporation or government bureaucracy the lack of a college degree will kill any chance you may have for upper tier promotion. You will never be elevated beyond a lower level staff employee to a management position thereby limiting your professional advancement and future pay scale. Even those who acquire college degrees by attending classes later on through night school are cut from the fast track of kids who went right from high school to college before they started to work. This sucks and is surely why our companies are going bankrupt left and right, but it is the way it is, like it or not.
They’ll learn nothing... ‘colleges’ have an agenda to ‘invalidate’ every single thing the kid walks in their with.
Their parents won’t recognize them when it’s over... unless mom and dad are bonehead Liberals to begin with
But when they graduate, they will be some of the proudest morons on the planet.
I have spoken to some who received an undergraduate degree in History in recent years and found them unable to pass my EIGHTH grade history final. In other words they would not have qualified to ENTER high school in 1958. When you ask a young man who holds a bachelor’s degree in History who was the sixteenth president and he doesn’t know, who was the only president of the CSA and he doesn’t know and it gets worse from there, it is truly mind boggling.
I worked with an Air Force officer with a history degree...but it was fairly specialized...Civil War history. Virtually the only thing he was into....was Civil War stuff. Of course, this was fascinating to me, and we’d get into 20 minute discussions daily about dozens of Civil War topics. If you wanted any other period of US history, he was at a loss.
Now, they teach you "what to think"....
It's a shame.....
Excellent post.
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