Today, a college degree is usually a ticket to join the college club. A club that the only requirement is to have a piece of paper (like the one the scarecrow received in Oz) that says that you are smart while those who can’t join the club due to finances or personal responsibilities are too stupid to be hired by members of the club.
Not long ago most did not attend college but had to go out and work for a living. Today, college is almost the 13-16 extended grades of public education (student loans and grants). Worse yet, a high school education back in 1965 was equal to most degrees obtained today.
What happened?
The majority of the youth of yesterday worked as children. It was thought of as a way to earn an income (rather than an allowance) and taught both a lesson in responsibility and work ethic. I started at 9 sacking groceries after school and summer. From there I worked at many different jobs and with each gained knowledge that has lasted a lifetime.
Many of my generation did the same and in the end, started and owned businesses (like myself), invented new products and procedures and prospered from it. In every case, we started at the bottom and worked ourselves to the top.
The moral of the story is that my generation started at the bottom and worked ourselves to the top. In today’s generation, all that is needed is some type of college degree (in most cases the type does not matter, what matters is that they have that piece of paper issued by the Wizard of Oz) and expect to start in the middle rather than the bottom where they gain knowledge of the actual mechanics and processes of they will have to manage at the mid-level.
We need to go back to letting the parents determine at what age their children work and we need to go back to the way it has always been done since the dawning of time...apprenticeships.
It is so bad here in the U.S. that it against the law to hire anyone younger than 17 years old unless it is a family member.
Don’t get me wrong for college is required for the “disciplines” (Technical, engineering, medical, and related fields along with the legal professions).
Most degrees handed out today are not worth the paper they are written on. No wonder these new graduates can’t find jobs. They have the education in fields that are not really important and there is no demand for them. When they graduated from the 16th grade many found employment flipping burgers and exercising the proper English phrases they learned at college like “would you like fries with that sir?”
America used to be a manufacturing giant in the world and now we are an assembly midget putting foreign parts together. Back then a college education was normally in a field that really meant something and our country flourished. Today a college education is nothing more than a ticket to the college club (with the exceptions noted earlier).
Our current dictator is one of the outstanding members of the college club...and he has the Nobel Prize too. Not only does he have a piece of paper but he has some gaudy looking round hunk of metal to show for it too.
Today, college is almost the 13-16 extended grades of public education
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I taught at a community college about 7-8 years ago and was astounded at the inability of most students to write a coherent paragraph. Not elegant prose, just a simple development of a response to a straightforward test question. All they had to do is explain why.
Stringing a couple of sentences together was too much of an intellectual hurdle. I quickly learned there wasn’t much utility in trying to incorporate an essay type of question into the tests.