Posted on 05/24/2009 12:42:08 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
As Nicole Marshall posed for photos on the eve of her commencement, someone joked, "Smile -- think of all the loans you took out for this!" She says she chose St. Michael's, a Catholic liberal arts college near Lake Champlain in Colchester, Vt., because it offered the biggest aid package, "but I'm still leaving with quite a bit of loans" -- about $20,000.
Her debt is a little lighter than the national average for graduates of private, four-year schools who borrow: nearly $23,800 as of 2007, according to the College Board in New York.
But if there's any time that students and parents can take such costs in stride, it's during the heady rush of commencement, when the campus is fragrant with fresh blossoms and abundant hope. For added inspiration to help them focus on the value of learning, these families heard a commencement speech from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
Standing head and shoulders above the others on stage, clad in academic regalia, the former basketball player and superintendent of Chicago's public schools acknowledged the costs:
"With those college loans to pay back, you're probably wondering, 'Just how much is a liberal arts education really worth?' Albert Einstein said the value of a liberal arts education is not to learn facts, but to train your mind to think about things that cannot be learned from textbooks. So now you're probably wondering why you spent all that money on textbooks. The point is not that the facts are useless; it's just that the facts alone don't make you educated. It's how you put those facts together and what you do with them that matters. The real value of a liberal arts education is that it teaches you ... how to analyze a situation and make a choice."
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
That's terrific. Who's paying $10-$20/hour for website design? We could use the extra cash ourselves... ;-)
Of interest to homeschoolers, but not directly a homeschool related article.
So, *ping*
You are correct, there is always a need for someone to change oil down at the local truck stop and to run the tire change service on the highway’s.
“How I wish I could be an engineer.”
LOL, me too, but apparently I smile too much.
So I dunno. As an economic bet it probably isn't a very good one, but there's a lot more to it than that. Some holders of liberal arts degrees fade into a deserved obscurity and become ditch-diggers, others turn out to be David Petraeus. Ya never know.
In 1980 when the economy was bad like it is now I worked part time in a grocery store deli along with about 14 other girls. All f the other girls had diplomas from liberal arts colleges. I’m sure there were not the size loans then that there are now but when I quit to move home 3 years later most of them were still working there.The value of liberal arts degrees in a bad economy IMHO just isn’t there.
That's right, especially if you want guaranteed income and likely a six figure one at that. There will be cars around for a long time and will always be the need for them to be repaired.
A good car mechanic is in high demand these days since there has been a tendency in the public schools to downplay non-college degree programs.
When the economy tanks as it certainly appears to be doing, those who earn money and eat will be those with practical skills.
If universities were succeeding in their aim to graduate critical thinkers, the world would be filled with young economic conservatives. Instead there is a glut of professorial clones who must spend years in the school of hard knocks undoing their mind pollution. I’d say that the universities are failing at their purported aim and succeeding wildly at their subterfuge.
“For any liberal arts degree, a majority of their classes will be taught by determined Marxists feeding them disinformation or worse, and they will leave either you, or worse themselves in a great deal of debt.”
And ignoring the liberal arts is a great way to ensure that the Marxists take over everything, and that the voting generation is too stupid to do anything about it. I’ve been teaching college English (literature and composition) for three years now, and can tell you that (a) there are still plenty of humanities teachers still interested in actually teaching the humanities and (b) the ignorance of history, literature, philosophy, and the inability to think critically about anything else, is a far greater threat than Marxism.
I find it rather distressing that among all the conservatives who have responded to this thread so far, not a single one seems to care about the value of education.
What does he need a stupid college degree for?
What does he need a stupid college degree for?
You are right, and there are a few great places
New St. Andrews
Thomas Aquinas College
Patrick Henry
And among secular colleges, St. John’s in Annapolis and Santa Fe certainly teaches the books that make up our civilization.
I agree with you 100% - most of the anti-college crowd either don’t want to pay for their kids to go to college, or don’t have a degree themselves and have some kind of chip on their shoulder about those who do.
It’s really funny how engineering students are expected to take and do well in fairly advanced humanities courses, but we can’t ask the liberal arts majors to take calculus. I wonder why?
I used to really annoy the liberal arts/humanities majors I went to class with by openly referring to my history/English/artistic classes as “easy A’s”.
The applied engineering courses don’t require much math.
A good understanding of algebra and a year of basic applied calculus (no theorems or proofs).
I have found that even students who have done poorly in math in high school can with some additional work do well as they get older. I for one did rather badly in high school algebra II.
I don’t understand how some people qualify for Pell Grants - if your daughter lived with you don’t they consider your salary as part of her ability to pay?
Not at her age and circumstances. She is considered an independent student. She applied through FAFSA, and that org determined what she qualified for.
When she was 18 - 22, FAFSA did demand our income and outgo figures. But after she reached 23, she completed the app as an independent student. (I think those are the correct ages relative to those results.)
Read the applications and qualifications carefully.
My goal is to have my son on the other side of that desk asking those questions of potential hires. That's the whole point.
I find the jobs for him online, email them to set it up, and then give it to him. He is a real wiz. As long as the clients and the state bureaucrats don't know, it's ok. As he ages, he can learn to deal with clients himself and handle the accounting.
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