Posted on 02/03/2013 8:45:55 AM PST by Kaslin
Preach it brother. This is one of the pillars of our secular American faith, and it needs to be knocked down. Viva education! Down with college!
As a college instructor I couldn’t agree more! As companies find it harder to compete (especially in California) I see more and more of their former employees in my classroom, looking for that mythical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
As far back as I can remember, my father told me that the day we started sending everyone to college, America’s future was bleak.
The vast majority of High School graduates should be getting jobs to learn the value of work, not going to college to learn the value of Socialism.
Waaaayyyy to many low income, children who watched their parents raise them on the Government tit, are now being taught by University professors that capitalism is evil and government is good.
I remember bowling parties when I was a kid in the 60’s.
There were no gutter guards.
Ping.
How right you are - my kid wants to be a movie director. Yet he had a run-in with reality by doing an internship with the cities’ PR department as a sophomore in high school. He hated it! I asked him why. He had to do what someone else directed! He hated it! He indeed thought he would go to college and upon graduation be hailed as the next Stephen Spielberg.
Well - it was a VERY valuable lesson. He is now in college majoring in Mass Media Production. He has a National Merit Scholarship, and chose a school that would make that award pay for perhaps 2/3rds of his costs.
He still wants to direct movies, but realizes he won’t be starting at the top. He right-sized his expectations to his financial realities and will graduate from college owning no-one money. Our small savings for his college tuition are going to cover all expenses above the scholarship. He put this all together himself.
Yeah - I’m proud of him. However, the point of the story is more to agree with you that unless more of this current generation opens their eyes - it is going to be a RUDE lesson.
Mama Boucher says College is the DEVIL!!!!!
“Instead of millions of mew college graduates driving cabs, we need TRADE SCHOOL graduates, (since apprenticeships seem to have disappeared) working for themselves and their families instead of working to pay back student loans. “
Spot on.
As homeschoolers, we have always taught our kids that you can learn more from failure than you can from success, so don’t be afraid to try different stuff when solving a problem or making something.
The vast majority of High School graduates should be getting jobs to learn the value of work, not going to college to learn the value of Socialism.
Exactly right. I remember when people had a skeptical attitude about higher ed, back when Professor Irwin Corey was the caricature of a college professor.
There's nothing wrong with a true liberal arts education. But it's not the same thing as vocational training, or learning the value of hard work.
“However, this future college graduate will have an average of $50,000 dollars of student loan debt to pay off. Instead of trying to create a new business, this young man or woman will be worrying about getting a job to pay off their student loans. The weight of these student loans can slowly drag down a young entrepreneur’s vision to create a new business and take new risks in the marketplace.”
WARNING - GOP HACK ALERT! Odd how the schmuck fails to mention that when Dubya and GOP controlled Congress they did squat regarding the affordability of college. Wait, scratch that. They DID do something: they passed a law prohibiting the discharge of student loans. This was a financial payoff for the college loan industry which plenty of us conservatives decried for the very reasons the author lists above. And dum dum’s answer is to skip college? Even money his kids are offered a place at Harvard, they’re damn well going to partake.
You could not be more right!
I was sitting in a restaurant waiting for a table the other night and I overheard two guys sitting next to me who work in the Eagle Ford shale oil/gas fields in TX.
They were talking about the fact that they cannot find enough skilled tradesmen (or even unskilled workers who are willing to be trained) to take the jobs that they have available in the oil and gas fields.
They said that someone straight out of high school could start an apprenticeship (which the employers are willing to pay for) and could easily be making 100K+ within just a few years.
No takers.
But a high school graduate (and his co-signing broke family) will gladly become an indentured servant... going tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars into lifelong, non-dischargable student loan debt, in order to further enrich liberal professors and multi-million-dollar salary college presidents, while being indoctrinated for 4 years in the art of victimhood/entitlements/guilt and graduate with a worthless degree that qualifies him to work at Starbucks.
Then, he’ll cry to his fellow underemployed, over-indebted adult-child “friends” on Facebook and Twitter night and day about how unfair the system is.
Sad, sad days in America.
I heartily agree, but we also need something we don't have all -- polytechnics -- sort of high-end trade schools focused on job training, but giving a broader education than a simple trade school. Let universities go back to being universities instead of misconceiving of their purpose as job training, rather than education. What most people seem to want from college is what a polytechnic offers.
I went to a major state university (in the ACC conference) where I learned to look down my nose at kids who either skipped college for work, joined the military, or went to community college. I had a bit of a rude awakening when I graduated after six years with a double-degree and discovered that the grads from the local technical school were getting all the jobs in my field (graphic design). They were trained on graphics software that my school didn’t even have. I, however, had in-depth knowledge of art theory, socialism, “sustainability,” and keg stands. Cutting-edge computer graphics software skills? Yeah, not so much.
I am a total liberal arts geek, but I am determined that my kids should have both employable skills and “big picture” knowledge, of the kind that college can offer. Not sure how this will play out, but in the meantime, my highschool student is learning all about shop tools in her robotics club. She comes home with a huge smile on her face, because she has been trained on another piece of equipment, or helped do something real, like building shelves. Something good is going to come from this.
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