Posted on 04/14/2014 7:10:24 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
In its recent ruling that athletes at Northwestern University have the right to unionize, the National Labor Relations Board cited the case of senior quarterback Kain Colter, who naively thought that he could pursue a pre-med degree while also playing on the school’s football team.
When he attempted to enroll in a required chemistry class during his sophomore year, “Colter testified that his coaches and advisors discouraged him from taking the class because it conflicted with morning football practices. Colter consequently had to take this class in the summer session, which caused him to fall behind his classmates who were pursuing the same pre-med major. Ultimately he decided to switch his major to psychology which he believed to be less demanding.”
In other words, despite the fact that Division I athletes are making oodles of money for their schools, their interests are not being served by coaches or administrators. Athletes’ academics and future career prospects are being sacrificed for a few more points on the field.
But athletes are not alone. Regular students are also contributing to the university’s bottom line through tuition payments and the spigot of federal financial aid — yet their interests are not being served, either. In exchange for their eye-popping tuition checks, students are getting a dizzying array of pointless classes that don’t prepare them for the real world.
Colleges have gotten more and more esoteric in what they teach, more specialized to the point of being useless to anything but . . . academia.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
“...until you realize that 18-year-olds don’t know what they don’t know.”
Just the reason that I told my son that he would not borrow money to go on a sojourn to discover his future self while party at college.
If you don’t know what you want to do, why go to college to figure it out?
Waste of money.
I am 59 and presently taking 4 classes online on Old and New Testament history. Got grants and these courses are helping me a bunch giving me a organized overview of the Bible. I tend to jump around alot and every preacher I ever listened to does also. If they hadn’t had the grants available would not have been able to do this. Still don’t feel right about taking em but I figured I needed them more then some crack smoking dummy who takes the grants and gets the loans and promptly drops out. Who knows, I might even do some good with what I learn.
I tell students to never take a student loan.
Take a grant, a scholarship or gift but never a loan
It is better to take 8 years to graduate than to graduate in debt.
RE: I am 59 and presently taking 4 classes online on Old and New Testament history
Just curious, which university or seminary offers this and how much does it cost? Thanks.
The University / Bank Loan Complex...
I was a college athlete some 30 years ago. Apparently Northwestern has sane policies regarding the treatment of student-athletes. My coaches were able to change my schedule when it went against the practice schedule. Classes that were filled, were open to me. And while it never went this far, I think they could change the time of classes. However, I don’t think this is right and I would have arranged my schedule to fit athletics and academics even if it took me longer to graduate. I never thought a union was the solution. Coulter is simply making up stories for his liberal views.
Sounds good. May God bless your study!
Yes, the current system does screw everyone. But the fact is that young people need a true education—knowledge of Western Civilization, not just a degree in some career field. Universities were once places for the very brightest and most serious students to consider philosophy, learn to do scholarly research, pursue the life of the mind, and generally carry forward all that mankind has learned through the millennia. In the past thirty years, however, colleges and universities have been turned into very very expensive trade schools and sports teams.
We need a much more diverse system in which you can decide you want to be (let’s say) an editor, or a chemical engineer, or a plumber, or a meteorologist, or God forbid a lawyer, and you go to a school which is dedicated to that trade or group of trades and study to get your work credentials for a relatively modest sum. People should not have to go a quarter of a million bucks in debt to get certifications to get a job.
Somehow we also need a parallel system in which the increasingly ignorant kids turned out by our high schools get taught about Western Civilization. Even my daughter, who is just 26 and didn’t go to an Ivy university, is appalled by the ignorance and stupidity of the young interns who are aent to work under her. Maybe this would be a good place for online education since it mostly involves reading and reading and reading.
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