Posted on 05/27/2015 4:47:03 AM PDT by Kaslin
It's graduation time! Have we learned much? No.
College has become a scam.
Some students benefit: those with full scholarships and/or rich parents so they don't go deep into debt, those who love learning for its own sake and land jobs in academia and those who get jobs that require a college credential.
But that's not most students.
Half today's recent grads work in jobs that don't require degrees. Eighty thousand of America's bartenders have bachelor's degrees.
Politicians such as Hillary Clinton promote college by claiming that over a lifetime, college graduates "earn $1 million more." That statistic is true but utterly misleading. People who go to college are different. They're more likely to have been raised by two parents. They did better in high school. They'd make more money even if they never went go to college.
Economist Bryan Caplan argues that there isn't much evidence that college grads are paid more because they learned anything at college that is valuable to their jobs.
Getting into elite universities and graduating from them is mostly a "signaling" device, he says. It tells employers you're a smart person, so employers can begin teaching you things you really need to know. Employers, not the colleges, turn out to be the ones making students valuable contributors.
This suggests college is more like a hurdle than an investment. It would be better if companies found cheaper ways to screen for talent than four years of college.
Most of America's prestigious universities started out as training centers for the priesthood and ways of confirming your status as part of the upper crust. In many cases, that's still true today. Taxpayers shouldn't be forced to subsidize that. But we are.
Now President Obama proposes spending more of your money on "free community college." Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders goes further, proposing "free tuition" at four-year public colleges.
Of course, "free" just means taxpayers are forced to pay.
This is nuts. When government subsidizes services, people supplying those services get wasteful. Colleges now spend millions on manicured lawns and fancy gyms.
A University of Missouri admissions officer bragged to my TV show crew about the university's "day spa" and said when it comes to recruiting students, "more important than reading, writing and arithmetic" is giving "our Tigers spring break every time they step into the student recreation complex."
I'm happy that Missouri's students like their luxurious gym, but I don't want to help pay for it. If the school thinks its "day spa" is crucial for recruiting, let them sucker their own alumni into making voluntary contributions for it. Leave taxpayers alone.
Government subsidies encourage students who don't belong in college to go anyway. Many don't graduate, feel bad about themselves and end up deep in debt. The subsidies also invite schools to increase the cost of tuition.
Democrats complained we need Obamacare because health care costs "were skyrocketing." But while the cost of health care rose 296 percent over the past 30 years, college tuition rose 553 percent. College is now a grotesque spending bubble, funded by government, that's about to burst.
Law professor Glenn Reynolds, author of "The Education Apocalypse," writes, "The rapid increase in college tuition began just about exactly the time the federal government started helping to subsidize college ... (Y)ou don't want to engage in subsidies that make universities more bloated and more inefficient."
But that's what Obama and Sanders propose to do.
A more compassionate move would be to warn people that college is not as valuable as colleges advertise themselves to be.
PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel encourages students to escape the college trap by paying them $100,000 not to go to college and instead to found their own capitalist ventures.
If we really want to build a better future and not just keep going through the same old motions, experiments like that are a much smarter idea than throwing more money at the college bubble.
“Eighty thousand of America’s bartenders have bachelor’s degrees.”
And yet, I’m STILL under-served, LOL!
I told my kids I would not be putting one PENNY toward their education, unless they went to Technical College to learn an actual TRADE. You know, SKILLS that they could TRADE for MONEY?
They did so and are thriving.
for later
I wasted my father’s money for two years in college getting quite good grades but with no earthly idea what I wanted to do with it. I finally said that’s enough and enlisted.
They could make college cheaper and shorter by eliminating prerequisite junk classes and allow students to take only degree specific classes......
I’ll pay tuition for my granddaughter to go to a Christian college within a 100 mile radius assuming that I have full access to her curriculum and grades with veto power and that she keeps a B average on a full time load. I’d like to throw in that she participates in at least one sport. This summer (she’s 14), I hope to get her through the programs available for kids at local shooting ranges for hand gun and rifle. That later is only if I can separate her for any length of time from her two best friends. These girls only travel in packs which I think is a survival technique but still.
The three boys were all always, dirtball, get your hands greasy, I wonder how it works, take it asart and leave it forever broken blue collars ... all working class heroes earning good money with wives and chi'rins
Both girls had sense and taste and chose men to be wives and mothers to and for /8^) ... and have a pretty good life with their families
SOME of their friends that went on to college came back pregnant no husband and can't seem to hold meaningful work
All we ever did was drag them to church and home school them
You’re right.
My brother didn’t finish college and has consistently made more money than other college ‘graduates’ in our family.
LOTS more.
When I think about the greatest teachers in my life most of them were bricklayers.
I'll respectfully disagree with this: Some of the most valuable, lifetime-worthwhile courses I took in college were outside my major. One course, taught by an improbable beret-wearing Jamaican black teacher, was a course around the book "Elements of Style". It made me a far better writer. The second course was "Small Group Theory", which helped me immeasurably when included in small working groups.
Education is a good thing. Education at any price may or may not be a good thing (for the recipient), depending on who is paying for it.
Without any doubt, a $250,000 Ferrari is good car, but a $17,000 Toyota Corolla might be a better choice for more people. Both are cars and can transport the owner between two points on Earth.
McDonalds As School Essay
Go to work for McDonalds and consider it as going to school.
Rather than come up with a bunch of bucks for tuition, Get a job at MD and pay extreme attention to what is taking place. Get paid for your efforts in the process. Set a limit. Go one year or maybe a year and a half. Be dedicated to the task the same as if you were paying thousands of dollars at a college.
The concept involves looking at McDonalds as an industrial microcosm . McDonalds is very much like a factory with hundreds of employees except smaller. MD also has a retail arm in addition to the manufacturing arm. To grasp how things are done in the manufacturing and business world, MD is small enough to observe all the operations that can be studied in detail and the study extrapolated to the world. MD is chosen because it is truly a global company and one if not the very best successful business to be studied.
The big question, the goal of the going to MD as school, is to discover in detail what is MD? Why does it exist?
As a study aid, a laptop computer would be beneficial. The computer can be used to keep notes and to make and record lists. Homework is making notes and expanding the lists, making entries into the big list of things learned and things to be explored further
Most McDonalds employees don’t flip burgers, they are in sales. At McDonalds if you apply your self and study what is happening you can develop a good understanding of sales and customer service. The front line, the people on the counter, have an opportunity to meet and greet a wide cross section of customers, of people. The very act of asking” how can I help you” engages the customer in a business transaction. The customers can be observed and then studied in the abstract. Make a list. What kinds of customers, what do they want, what do they need, how does MD meet their wants and needs, what wants and needs are not met, should every want and need be met?
If you clean up, study the various chemicals and cleaners. Read the MSDS documents and learn a lot about OSHA, chemicals and government regulation. Learn what they do and why they do it. Learn why someone made and effort to obtain each of the specific cleaning products. Understand the process and how it relates to government regulations. Learn why MD wants the task not only performed but the reason for doing it. Learn if there is and external requirement such as a local or federal regulation. Learn about the regulation and why it exists. Learn if MD made the rule and how the rule makes the product better.
Somewhere there are posters. The posters are mandated by the government and outline the various employment laws. The posters are the basis for the interaction of business and government. They might seem overly complex and quite boring but they are a major part of the lesson. Study the posters and develop a total understanding of what they mean. Learn how the government and business interact and why.
Hang out with the manager and study and learn the flow of goods. Learn the basics of purchasing. Study the inventory flow and learn how inventory management keeps the company rolling.
A typical Mc Donalds store is a mega industry on a micro scale. They obtain raw materials hire labor and manufacture a product to very tight specifications. The process is typical of all manufacturing, only the product, the manufacturing equipment and size are different.
The principles of how raw materials are obtained, moved around, stored, and used apply to all business and manufacturing. A thorough understanding of the various tasks and processes involved will be useful elsewhere. The lessons can be expanded to a basic understanding of product quality and quality control. The business and all the jobs there are absolutely dependent on the quality of the product.
Tight specifications, what are the specifications, where did they come from, why have the specifications, how are they met, who enforces the specifications and assures consistent quality? These are all valuable lessons to be learned in the micro factory. The answers can be learned by paying attention and carefully watching what is actually happening throughout the place.
The subject of raw materials is very important area of study. One of the lists or perhaps several of the lists would be of various raw materials or raw material categories. Just what and how many raw materials is required to keep the place running? A list describing the material, where it comes from and exactly how the material is used can provide extremely valuable insights.
Then there is the matter of human resources. A one year study of the flow of people in and out and retained could result in a master’s degree paper on proper use and abuse of labor resources.
The concept of a crew, a team, can be studied. The crew concept is meant to develop a sense of belonging, of common purpose. A study of how the various individuals of the crew interact and depend on each other will yield an understanding that can be extrapolated to a much larger organization. How success or failure of one individual impacts the mission of the crew provides important lessons.
Then there is cash. A study of cash management could provide a detailed insight into cash, banking and the importance of plastic payments to a small business.
The MD school you choose might be near home or across town but it is merely one of many. A whole different course of study is what happens at and to MD outside the local operation? How does your store relate to a regional and national and global network of stores.
Back to the big question. Why does your school exist? Why do we have MD’s. The answer to that question applies to each and every business and manufacturing operation in the country. The answer is to make the owners a profit. Each and every item on all the various lists that will be developed in the school process is there to assure a profit. Proving that statement is the goal of the school and learning the reasons is the way the proof is obtained
It is all there for free. As a matter of fact one can get paid while at this school. All it takes is a proper frame of mind and a desire.
Everything there is something to be learned
An interviewer will be blown out of her shoes when the lessons set out and learned are recounted in extreme detail.
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However, to get most jobs worth a damn, one must be able to communicate and interact with colleagues that might be 3,000 or more miles away. College should teach you to write and interact.
amen
The current situation in education is quite pathetic. College graduates are taking the kinds of jobs that used to be done by high school graduates or even dropouts and I have not met a recent college graduate who would have a ghost of a chance to pass my high school senior final. I have not met one who could pass my EIGHTH GRADE history final and I am including the ones who majored in history!
Can't imagine she has anything against making ends meet as a cattle futures trader (or, if you are not into animals like she is, flipping foreclosed homes).
College has become a scam...
Where’s my shocked face. These poor kids that are coming out of college with debt it will take decades to recover from.
And you probably learned more from them
We **HAD** cheaper ways of screening. But the courts determined that intelligence tests were racist. ..
Did you write that essay? If so, its outstanding. In any case its one of very, very few posts that I’ll hang onto.
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