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“Education Is The Key?” Assessing The Value Of A College Degree In A Tumultuous Economy
Townhall.com ^ | January 6, 2012 | Austin Hill

Posted on 01/06/2013 3:28:36 AM PST by Kaslin

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1 posted on 01/06/2013 3:28:45 AM PST by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

Mainly today the ownership of a sheepskin merely says that you have been brainwashed by liberal college professors.


2 posted on 01/06/2013 3:51:20 AM PST by Venturer
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To: Kaslin

In Taiwan, high school freshmen are put on 1 of 2 educational tracks. College bound students must take college bound classes. The 2nd track is for learning trade skills. On the trade skill track, you can graduate high school with the necessary skills for working in a factory, garage, or many other blue collar positions.


3 posted on 01/06/2013 3:51:36 AM PST by Tai_Chung
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To: Tai_Chung

Not to mention it is very competitive to get into the high schools that gear toward the college bound students ( and those are even ranked ). Just because you live in the district doesn’t mean you can go to that high school.


4 posted on 01/06/2013 4:13:32 AM PST by TheCipher (Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself- Mark Twain)
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To: Venturer

Bingo. A kid with a degree in “ Peace, Love and Defense Studies” ( no joke, UNC ) is going to flip hamburgers until he is thirty and then he gets to be assistant manager - not that there is anything wrong with that!


5 posted on 01/06/2013 4:30:23 AM PST by gartrell bibberts (Remember always...MORE than 50% of Americans are of below average intelligence today.)
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To: TheCipher

Like everything else liberal, a liberal arts education raises the cost of college significantly with no visible means of usefulness.

An engineer needs college. So does a doctor, lawyer or any professional field.

Problem today is women’s studies program, minority studies programs and other programs that do not prepare a student for the real world, except to work at Starbucks.

Texas has thousands of jobs. We need professionals, not baristas.


6 posted on 01/06/2013 4:36:02 AM PST by EQAndyBuzz (Want freedom? Think WWRRD? Then do it.)
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To: Tai_Chung; All

Most European countries are similar to Taiwan.

Germany does the same....after 9 years of primary school...you go either to a trade school to learn a skill...or go to a Gymnasium...not to work out, LOL...but these are the college prep type of secondary school

The biggest problem we have with our colleges and universities is that we send people to college
/university where such an education was not needed in the position years ago....or where in other nations they are not sent to University (primary school teachers are an example...they usually go to “teaching schools”, not universitites)

Also, years ago businesses acually taught and trained their employees, even in the professional ranks. Our current college/university system is really just an extended welfare program for Multi-National Corporations. 60 years ago my uncle started with GM, and worked his way up to an upper management position, with GM training. Now, they would not consider you for any management position without an MBA


7 posted on 01/06/2013 4:38:41 AM PST by SeminoleCounty (Fiscal Conservatives are Neither)
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To: Kaslin

There are reasons for college degrees. If you want to be an engineer, you need requisted training you are not going to get in the local vo-tech. Same with medical degrees, science, etc. If you want to build houses, you could get a degree in construction management, but then you might not need those skills until you are building dozens of houses. What you really need is carpentry skills to begin with, and those can be gained on the job or in a vo-tech.

For me it was a means to a dream. You needed a degree for Air Force pilot training. That same dream still requires a degree from an insitution of higher learning. O’vomit’s opinion that everyone goes to college, is an astounding pronounement blowing a degree out of proportion to it’s value to a dream, and watering down the entire concept, so what’s new, just one more in a long logn long line of disagreements with the ONE.


8 posted on 01/06/2013 4:39:22 AM PST by wita
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To: All

Basic concept of supply and demand applies here....


9 posted on 01/06/2013 5:14:26 AM PST by CharlotteVRWC
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To: wita
You needed a degree for Air Force pilot training.

Having earned a college degree is a "marker" for reasonable intelligence, diligence, and academic skills. They could test for intelligence and use other factors to judge diligence and academic skills, but it would be much more complicated and perhaps not correlate as closely with success in pilot training as does the degree requirement.

10 posted on 01/06/2013 5:35:48 AM PST by Tax-chick (The paint is in the basket with the skulls in there. Don't tell me you can't find it!)
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To: Kaslin

The four year ‘sleep away’ liberal arts college is dying. Online education and practical skills-oriented advanced education will replace it. Thank God.


11 posted on 01/06/2013 5:45:37 AM PST by AdaGray (squi)
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To: Kaslin

It amazes me how long and how well bricks and mortar institutes of higher learning have held on to their monopoly, with escalating costs.

Eventually, you’d think the old university/college paradigm would give way to more satellite campuses and online learning options. Not for all courses of study, but for a good many.

The cost has gotten far out of reach for a middle class family and current student loan indebtedness is approaching $1 trillion. Default rate is jumping as well because many graduates with a lot of debt cannot find well paying jobs.


12 posted on 01/06/2013 5:49:29 AM PST by randita
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To: Kaslin

“Assessing The Value Of A College Degree In A Tumultuous Economy”

We still have a ways to go before we can accept that some knowledge isn’t as important as other knowledge.

Universities very existence depends upon this obvious truth being kept from a vast majority of students so they will continue to fund University bureaucracy and perks.

Universities and Governments are cannibals that feast on the souls of the young. They assign doom to whomever they choose and tell them its a privilege.

Both will perish in flames when the doomed decide not to exist in the roles assigned to them by the elite.


13 posted on 01/06/2013 5:59:43 AM PST by RFEngineer
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To: Venturer

Someone who can make a living on a single college degree majored in engineering, accounting or something with real world application, therefore they live and work in the real world. Those who majored in the soft sciences like sociology are little more than brainwashed imbeciles.


14 posted on 01/06/2013 6:12:51 AM PST by Ouderkirk (Obama has turned America into an aristocracy of the unaccomplished.)
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To: SeminoleCounty
Our current college/university system is really just an extended welfare program for Multi-National Corporations.

Not quite.... The current need to for a college degree is based on the SCOTUS case Griggs v Duke Power. In it Duke Power could no longer administer tests to prospective and current employees seeking employment or advancement and that those tests were discriminatory. Hence, to get around the Griggs case companies substitute a college degree.

15 posted on 01/06/2013 6:28:26 AM PST by Ouderkirk (Obama has turned America into an aristocracy of the unaccomplished.)
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To: Tai_Chung

We need to do more to support the middle 60%, the kids who aren’t college material but are not “slow”. They need to finish school with either a vocational degree (like hair care, phlebotomy, carpentry, childcare, first level IT certifications) or have the skills for a low skill job but more education (financial literacy, know how to fill out job applications, understand identity theft).


16 posted on 01/06/2013 6:49:28 AM PST by tbw2
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To: EQAndyBuzz
An engineer needs college.

So that's what Steve Wozniak, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, Guglielmo Marconi, did wrong. Someone should have told them.

17 posted on 01/06/2013 6:50:41 AM PST by Reeses
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To: Reeses

Those noted are but a very very few.

One of the most common boasts in industry or the construction site is “and I told that engineer yada yada yada”

The capable but broadly uneducated worker boasts of superior knowledge while revealing inferior intellect.


18 posted on 01/06/2013 6:54:31 AM PST by bert ((K.E. N.P. N.C. +12 .....The fairest Deduction to be reduced is the Standard Deduction)
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To: Reeses

The vast majority of engineers NEED college, to learn the limits of materials, the correct way to calculate stresses in loads, to document the logic behind the code they write.


19 posted on 01/06/2013 6:55:11 AM PST by tbw2
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To: Kaslin

College is not always necessary, especially for the first two years’ worth of courses.
Alternative Sources of Free College Credit and Continuing Education Classes
http://tamarawilhite.hubpages.com/hub/Alternative-Sources-of-College-Credit-and-Continuing-Education-Classes


20 posted on 01/06/2013 6:56:15 AM PST by tbw2
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