Well, sorta. I can’t speak for public universities - I went to a private school. There are lots of things that might be classified labor market inefficiencies - tenure really, and the apportionment process between departments.
I don’t think if you got rid of job security for Professors it would help much, though. The reason is because this sort of basic, error-free writing proficiency should be learned in secondary school, and isn’t. Professors aren’t supposed to teach the A-B-Cs and they don’t care much about them- a good school will have some sort of intensive writing seminar for freshmen, but often students will get poor feedback or idea-oriented feedback.
So, why are a bunch of borderline-functional teenagers going to college? A lot of it has to do with student loans and government subsidized education, I think. Lots of kids that can’t and never will write end up at school because they’re supposed to. If anything, we ought to be subsidizing (much cheaper) loans for trade and technical schools to make sure our industrial base doesn’t evaporate completely. College is a lousy career path for lots of kids. We still need to make things, but crappy guidance counselors and the conventional wisdom is to just shove everyone to college that has a pulse.
The result has not been better kids, it’s been much worse universities.
Well, that sheep skin sure helped the scarecrow, and he didn't even have a brain.
Children come already prepackaged, fully self absorbed and feel no difference in wants and needs, no surprised then they end up at a local college without basic skills.
A few years back one of the part-time girls at our store told the boss that she was going to be going to college. We were more than a little surprised because this girl was far from the sharpest tack in the pack. She got a Pell grant that paid for her tuition and books and she even had enough money left over to buy a pretty decent used car.
Well, come to find out her first year in college she was taking all REMEDIAL courses. Why, why would a state college be offering remedial courses?!? Well, as expected she bombed out of her first semester, but still she received more Pell grant money for the next semester. She ended up dropping out of that semester.
What we find to be totally unbelievable is that the next year she got yet another grant and went to a technical school. We lost track of her, so I don't know what ever became of it, but this is how the government wastes our money and drives down the average literacy score of all the college students.
Amen! With the government subsidizing college tuition, more people can go to college, and the status of a college diploma has been diminished. It’s not special anymore. It also doesn’t guarantee a good job.
If the government is going to subsidize tuition, I always thought financial assistance should be limited to (1) people who serve in the military, (2) jobs the government needs to fill in national defense and infrastructure, like college majors in science, engineering, etc., and (3) a service needed by a community but too few qualified people can fill. For example, say a region does not have enough medical doctors. In return for tuition assistance, a student would agree to work in that region for a specified time period.
I did go through college without any financial assistance. I did well, but I think I wasted my time and money. College is an option, not a necessity. Some people go through shorter certificate programs and end up in solid, well-paying careers. Also, there are different kinds of intelligence. Some people are booksmart. Others are better at constructing and building. I wish I’d been the latter. I never considered one gift to be superior to the other, nor one to signify more intelligence than the other.