Posted on 01/27/2023 7:38:02 AM PST by SeekAndFind
In June 2021, comedian and political commentator Bill Maher slammed college as a “racket” on his political talk show "Real Time with Bill Maher" on HBO.
“Now that graduation season has ended and we won’t be spoiling anyone’s big day, let’s talk about what higher education in America really is — a racket that sells you a very expensive ticket to the upper middle class,” Maher declared to wide applause and cheers.
The comedian has not been alone in his criticism.
A few months later in December of that year, partially paralyzed former Republican Congressman Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, who attended a Christian college for one semester before dropping out, urged conservative youth to drop out of college if they aren’t studying medicine, law or engineering because higher education is “a scam.”
“I am proudly a college dropout. If you are not becoming an engineer or a doctor or a lawyer, I highly encourage you to drop out. It’s a scam,” Cawthorn said at AmericaFest 2021.
Like Cawthorn, many men citing the diminishing returns to having a college degree are also now choosing to forgo what many families previously treated as a rite of passage into adulthood.
While some 32% of the U.S. population 25 years of age and older holds at least a bachelor’s degree, according to data from the American Community Survey, new data from a Pew Research Center study show that only a minority of white parents view a college degree as extremely or very important for their children while most minority parents do.
In Parenting in America Today released on Tuesday, Pew researchers Rachel Minkin and Juliana Horowitz highlighted this and other findings collected from a survey conducted from Sept. 20 to Oct. 2, 2022, of 3,757 U.S. parents with children younger than 18. The data was collected as part of a larger survey to better understand how American parents approach parenting.
The survey showed that only about 41% of parents say it’s extremely or very important that their children earn a college degree. When broken down by race, the data shows stark disparities between how white parents and minority parents value higher education.
“When it comes to the importance parents place on their children graduating from college: 70% of Asian parents say this is extremely or very important to them, compared with 57% of Hispanic parents, 51% of black parents, and just 29% of white parents,” the researchers wrote.
Data from a Pew Research Center Survey conducted in 2015 showed that a majority of parents in general, including white parents, said it was either extremely important or very important that their children earn a college degree. According to that survey, 86% of Hispanic parents, 79% of black parents and 67% of white parents agreed on this.
Researcher Renee Stepler suggested at the time that the reason for the gaps in the views on college between the racial groups may be linked to how each group saw “a college degree’s importance in moving up the economic ladder.”
“Roughly half (49%) of Hispanics and 43% of blacks say that a college education is a requirement to be part of the middle class, compared with just 22% of whites. However, white adults are more likely than black or Hispanic adults to already be in the middle class or higher, which may account in part for the fact that fewer whites see college as essential,” Stepler argued.
Jean Eddy, president and CEO of the national nonprofit American Student Assistance, told The Christian Post in a statement that she is not surprised that parents are thinking outside of the college degree when it comes to mapping financial success for their children.
“It’s not surprising that parents are thinking outside of the college degree, as more and more young people are increasingly skeptical of the high school-to-college route and desire more flexible post-secondary education pathways,” Eddy said. “In the spring of 2022, there were 662,000 fewer students enrolled in undergraduate programs compared to the previous year, and a recent study found that just 53% of today’s high schoolers say they are likely to attend college.”
We should encourage youngsters to be pro career planning, being serious about researching careers that they'd like to do and what they pay. Ask the people already in those careers what it's like in the real world, and ask them what kind of training is good and would make them want to hire you years from now.
That's what I did. And to me it's not genius. It's common sense. There's no college course that teaches initiative.
Increasing numbers of white people see “higher education” as a brainwashing scam.
” If you are not becoming an engineer or a doctor or a lawyer, I highly encourage you to drop out. It’s a scam,” Cawthorn said .
To a large extent, Cawthorn is right. But his list is a little short. There are other a handful of other jobs like high-school teacher where they’re not going to let in the door without a bachelor’s degree.
I try to advise all decent white males into the trades.
More specifically Electrical Design, Electricians, and Linemen.
One can educate themselves for free their entire lives.
A college degree is worse than useless if it has the word “studies” in its title. Unfortunately, even in STEM the studies people have infected the curricula with their rotting tentacles of the plummeting standards of diversity and inclusion and they are also becoming less than useless.
Higher education and a push to “be better than the previous generation” is the reason for the low birth rates for whites.
My wife and I are both Gen Xers, and we were pushed hard to focus on studies. We waited too long, and we never had kids. It’s a story so common now that I believe Gen X will be underrepresented as parents overall.
Children and parenting have been portrayed as a burden, not a blessing. That, coupled with the falling away from faith across all age groups, leads me to believe whites, in general, will become a minority before I draw my dying breath. We focused on the wrong things, and demographically we’ll die for it.
Outside of stem degrees, college is a complete scam and waste of money. Back in the day when there were tens of millions of Boomers competing for jobs, college was a good way to get a leg up on the job competition. Now? College is an outdated leftist bloated scam with no real mission any more. With the baby bust college is irrelevant for getting a job. Waste of money.
I believe even police departments require a college degree.
Somewhere along the way people forgot what the purpose of a college education is, particularly a humanities degree like Art History or English Literature.
It is about signaling to the world that your father is so rich that you do not NEED to worry about a career. You do not NEED to go to trade school to learn about how to build bridges. Veblen wrote this in the 1890s and called education one of the most prominent forms of conspicuous consumption.
Why non-rich people get these degrees and then wonder why they cannot find a job is the real tragedy. If you need a job, you need a different degree!
43% isn’t “most.”
49% really isn’t “most” either.
“There are other a handful of other jobs like high-school teacher where they’re not going to let in the door without a bachelor’s degree.”
Agreed—I would encourage any youngster who “needed” the credential to go to the cheapest possible college and not expect to learn anything of value.
If you are just paying for a credential no point wasting a penny more than you have to...
Math is racist you cisgender mansplaining heteronormative patriarchal meat puppet!…
And for the most part it is.
When our kid was part of a "teen police academy" at their high school, sponsored by the county's sheriff department, they mentioned having a college degree was important. When asked by the teenagers which degrees, most stated it didn't matter. They probably were looking for people willing to make the college commitment and see it through, and maybe wanting the kids to gain a little maturity.
Minority only quotas, lower standards and scholarships.
Us crackers will charge them out the ass to fix their toilets and cars.
When you understand the economics of what’s going on here, it’s a terrible indictment of America’s school leadership.
My wife at a public school is under orders not to fail any minority for any reason. 400 out of 1,500 total students are under a “death watch” because they routinely show up to school strung out on opiates. A high-school diploma means absolutely nothing.
For minorities, this means they need a college degree to represent what a high-school diploma used to: they’ve shown they can attend classes and have some marginal level of literacy and numeracy. (Not even that in many states, like California) They have to go into debt for $100,000 to even take jobs as Trader Joes stockboys, office assistants, receptionists, etc. All because it violates some strung out, violent thug’s civil rights to be fail in High School.
30 years in computer security at the U.S. Treasury Department (B.S./B.A.) taught me I would have made more money and would have had a better life as a pipefitter. My union laborer brother made a killing on the north slope of Alaska on the Pipeline Facilities Project. I made chump change I comparison as Staff employee for Wright Schuchart Harbor in Tacoma.
No. It doesn't even help you move classes.
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