[iowamark]

Mr. Reynolds is a law professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. This essay is adapted from his new book, "The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education From Itself," published by Encounter Books.

[MSF BU]

I was and remain involved in higher education to some extent and I see this quite frequently. Young people need to learn to distinguish between a vocation and an avocation. As regards financing, accruing huge debt to put oneself through a “good” school studying something that is marginally useful in the economy is a luxury most people cannot afford. If they are going to do that, students would have been better advised to do it on the back of the military, which still offers fairly generous support for enlistment or officer training.

[Mr. K]

hard sciences and engineering

anythign else is stupid and only good for government jobs and politics

[MisterArtery]

Far too many pursue income-worthless degrees following their “passion” rather having their passion as a hobby and getting an education that is marketable. Doesn’t need to be a four-year college degree either.

The two most sought after degrees here at Texas universities are psychology and distributed studies (learn a little about a lot and not a lot about anything.)

I recently read in the San Antonio paper about a young woman that was thrilled to finally get a $15k/yr job in Dumas, Texas, way up in the God-forsaken panhandle. She has a masters in museum science.

[Stosh]

Reynolds covers most of the key points, but one he misses is grade inflation - at Harvard, as I recall, the most common grade is an “A”, and the the average grade is an “A-”.

I doubt all those Harvard kids are busting their humps - at schools like the Ivies, admission is essentially a guarantee of graduation, as long as the kids at least show up for the exams - the amount of value added from class attendance is tough to determine.

As regards majors, the fundamental sciences and engineering fields typically do maintain some standards, and often rigorous ones - a student will generally have to put in some effort to get through majors in those areas, and will generally have a leg up in looking for a job after graduation.

And in general, almost any major with the word “studies” in it is border-line worthless (although I was kind of amazed to find out that one of my favorite authors, Tom Wolfe, earned his degrees in “American Studies” - that doesn’t exactly fit in the “victim studies” category, however).

Majors in the fine arts and traditional liberal arts are viable for kids who have a real passion for those fields, as long as they realize they probably won’t be able to make a living in the theater or pursuing history - they need to make sure they develop their analytical and communicative skills (especially writing and communicating orally) so they can sell their talents outside their major field.

[Ouderkirk]

Someone who can make a living on a single college degree majored in engineering, accounting or something with real world application

[RKBA Democrat]

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[GeronL]

Remedial English, Remedial Math, Remedial Science, Remedial Reading, Remedial Social Studies... heck some of those affirmative action kids probably needed remedial sex-ed.

lol