Posted on 06/24/2012 7:18:04 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
A college education was once regarded as a first-class ticket to a better life.
But the rising costs of higher education, the burden of student loans and a less-certain job market have left many wondering: Are too many young people going to college?
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
These are full-time gubmint jobs, with benefits. Meanwhile, college grads are jerking coffee at Starbucks. I mean, how qualified do you have to be to be a city park ranger? We're not talking Yellowstone here. Go figure.
Wow. Good luck.
“A lot of unqualified people are going to college. Look at how many have to take remedial classes. Why are these students allowed into college if they aren’t really for college-level courses?”
That’s easy - colleges now are being used to actually EDUCATE kids, since the NEA, the feds, and the rest of the left own the public schools, but have, more or less, left junior colleges alone (at least so for).
People still need to be educated, and we don’t seem to have the political will to do that until they’re adults.
There needs to be more trade schools, technical schools, and more of a push for students to do those instead. Only about a third of high school students actually have the ability to go to a university, assuming they are studying real subjects instead of crap like Diversity Studies or Advanced Lesbian Outrage.
“Do Too Many Young People Go to College?”
Yes!
Just, for heaven’s sake, tell your brother/sister to NEVER co-sign for their loans. They don’t deserve that sword hanging over them and the kids may learn a lesson if no one will lend to them without a co-signer.
Private history teacher says hello. :)
The problem is not that we have too many people in college. The problem is that so very few are going to college for math and engineering.
The problem is not that we have too many people in college. The problem is that so very few are going to college for math and engineering.
It can be done for a fraction of the cost that colleges charge. You can pay a good tutor about 4, 500 dollars over a summer and make up the ground that they need to get in.
And yes - so many who are in university aren’t prepared, aren’t being taught what they need to know. Most professors in college simply don’t have the time to actually teach the students.
I should know, I ran my own tutoring business for about 5 years. Tutored pretty much everything other than foreign languages.
Friend’s son took a two year trade course at a small four year college in Kansas and is now an electrician. Able to live almost anywhere in the U.S. and never has trouble getting a very well paying job. He also had the benefit beginning when he was a young teen of learning the “how to” part from his dad who worked full time in a non-related field but made sure all the kids in the family knew how to fix everything in their house and keep their own car running. Blue collar jobs are linked to the redneck, NASCAR portion of the population and aren’t glamorous enough for some.
In a word, yes.
The problem is that America has no system of polytechnics of the sort Europe has. Such schools provide a job-oriented education deeper than that offered by trade schools here in the U.S.
Instead we suffer under the delusion that the point of a college education is job skills. It is not. The point is to be educated, which might lead to a job, or might simply make one more urbane and cultured. Pushing essentially everyone to get such an education chiefly has the effect of diluting the benefit to those who would genuinely benefit and leaving a lot of folks in debt for credentials that do not guarantee a job, and bitter that they misspent their time.
I would say don't go $100,000s in debt for a significant number of ‘science’ degrees as well. There are dwindling job opportunities for Ph.D. scientists in the life sciences, especially with biotech and pharma hurting.
Universities are also generally very stingy with their endowment money. Several have multiple billions of dollars in endowment money, but they hardly ever dip into it. They want their endowments to keep growing.
Now it's regarded as the equivalent of a High School Diploma./not sarc
“The problem is not that we have too many people in college. The problem is that so very few are going to college for math and engineering.”
The real problem is that so very few are capable of going to college for math and engineering and then actually graduating.
OTOH, I know more than a few unemployed engineers. You need some kind of industrial base to require engineers.
2. Skill testing employees can open one up to litigation. That has been the case ever since the civil rights acts and landmark case Griggs vs. Duke Power. Best push the onus into colleges and other certification programs where “general knowledge” in some area suffice.
3. Higher education in America is a “Right of Passage” in the literal sociological meaning of this term. Without a higher college degree you are looked down upon, you're a lesser human and in this society everyone who has educated parents and lives in a community where all the neighbors are educated, they too need a higher education in order to be accepted and fit in. The rise in soft science degrees, i.e. history, sociology, psychology, anthropology... follows from a demand in people seeking degrees but not really willing nor having the aptitude for a course of study that requires math and basic analytical skills. The suburban kid is told already in elementary school how they have to go to college, even if they have no interest or aptitude.
4. Colleges and universities as well as other institutions have created barriers in the trades or professions that made them the gate keeper even though these skills might best be learned hands on, i.e. nursing, law enforcement, etc. Not a bad deal for higher education, since they essentially help create the standards that then have to be achieved by paying for their services in order to pratice this trade or profession.
Higher education in America has become littered with on-line degrees, junk programs in womyns (not a misspelling) studies, art history etc. Many junior and community colleges have basically become the vocational educational programs that once were in high schools and taught people a skill they could use if not college bound. It's a time to party, get “some degree” for your parents and community, to show you're smart. Some kids go their to find their husband, yes that happens too. College is a lot of things, but it isn't what we pretend it to be.
If you’re a private history teacher, you’d be one of the good ones.
The problem is that nearly every damn job requires a college degree and if you want to advance to a higher paying position, you need another degree. Years ago it used to be about what experience you had but not so much now a days.
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