Agreed. Education without direction is rather like a ship sailing with no port to dock at.

Have a look at this table showing the fields in which degrees are awarded: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d09/tables/dt09_271.asp

Some interesting tidbits:

2007/2008: the seven most popular degree fields were:
1. Business
2. Social sciences and history
3. Health professions
4. Education
5. Psychology
6. Visual and performing arts
7. Communication, journalism

Most of the people in these top 7 - excluding only the health professions - would be far better off going straight into the work force after high school.

- Nearly all of the people in groups 2 and 6 are unemployable. There few genuinely useful positions in these fields.

- Education is the major with the intellectually weakest people - not the people you want teaching your children. If you want to teach primary school, you ought to have a real degree, perhaps in English, history, or math - with lots of elective courses in other areas. The education component can be covered with a couple of child psychology courses. If you teach at Middle School or higher, your degree ought to be in what you teach.

- Groups 1, 5 and 7 are mixed bags; there can be real careers here, but there are a lot of degree-holding hamburger flippers as well. For example, business degrees at many schools are notoriously undemanding - this is what the athletes sign up for.

If they're so worried about the student loan debt they carry, then they should join a branch of military service.

One of the options is 3/4, (or was it 2/3) repayment of student loans.

Higher education at a lower price was indisputably good. It was great for America that for a very long time, many young people were essentially required to—

• sit quietly for an hour while someone talked about something challenging and unfamiliar

• learn to take notes

• read things they wouldn't have read otherwise

• learn to write concisely

• make patience for competitors with natural advantages in study skills (or grandparental trust funds)

No one could allege that everyone with a degree in postwar America was a scholar. But it's still good that all those things happened for so many people. Let's not allow our hatred for the tumors of this machinery today to hide the important disciplines it brought to us.

So now the price is too high, right? Education is too heavy in administration and overpaid faculty... It's where Detroit was in 1978.

But so what? There's still a need for talented young people, just as people needed cars in the late 70's, when we learned to buy Japanese. Now we'll learn new ways of refining the talent we need.

At this point, I don't think there's anything on the horizon for academia like GMAC and Ford Motor Credit, which allowed factories to keep producing (inferior) product while the companies moved into the financial services business.

Universities may be bloated and incorrigible. But human need and human innovation are always as lithe and adaptable as they need to be.

Not everyone needs/deserves a higher education. Neither of my parents had one, and they raised four boys and are quite content with their lives.

That said, perhaps supply/demand will bring costs down so more people who DO want to go to college can make it easier on themselves. Geez. when I went to a large, state university tuition was $900.00 a semester for 12 plus hours.

"On Thursday, I met a guy down in Zuccotti Park. He speaks six languages, but he has nothing useful to say in any of them. He is the movement's perfect spokesman."

Its a shame that Mr. Cooke's goal was condescending smugness as opposed to really listening to what people were saying. He doesn't have to agree with their message but it seems that he didn't even listen because he was too busy figuring out how to sum it all up with an obnoxious one-liner. Does he really expect me believe that a man who speaks six languages had nothing to say? Because he speaks six languages? Because he believes in education? Really?

The reality here on Long Island is that many customer service jobs are now requiring college degrees. Dick's Sports recently placed an ad in the paper for cashiers. A requirement was 2 years of college. To get hired by the NYPD you need at least 2 years of college and those credits don't have to be in customer service.

K-12 education in the United States has been watered down over the last 50 years to the point where a college degree is now equivalent to what a high school degree once was. It seems as though my 80-year old parents, neither of whom went to college, have more academic knowledge than most college graduates I know today.

50-60 years ago, a college degree (of any type) was a guarantee of a good job and a good life. At that time only a small fraction of the high school graduates went to college, and so the assumption was that these were our brightest and best. Now, with the majority of our youth getting poor secondary educations and college degrees, the reality no longer holds. Yet the assumption (of a good job) still exists, no doubt fueled by the students' parents/grandparents memories and by academia itself.

But I'm not sure how expectations got so far off track. It was well known when I went to college 30 years ago that an Arts degree was worthless. It reminds me of the old joke that a Science major asks "why", an Engineering major asks "how", a Business major asks "how much", and an Arts major asks "do you want fries with that."

What has changed is that public education has by-and-large abandoned the skilled trades concept. It no longer teaches shop, electronics, auto mechanics, welding, etc. as a career (only an elective ... an easy A to fill the time.) The large number of students who used to rely on these programs are now left to their own devices. They fall back on these useless college degrees, at great cost, and have nothing to show for it afterwards. And ironically, the skilled trades are left with a huge shortage of available talent.

The reality here on Long Island is that many customer service jobs are now requiring college degrees.

It isn't a requirement. It is an effort to keep the HR department from being buried under a pile of applications.

And if you could hire someone with some college background instead of someone with none, who are you going to pick?

(Me? the person who shows up at the appointed time, is properly dressed for an interview, and says "yes, sir", "no ma'am", "please" and "thank you" but I'm a cantankerous old bastard.)

I R A Darth, I believe education is important. Don't misunderstand what I was saying. Education, especially college is important. We don't live in the same world that my father lived in. He got a job at 18 with Coca Cola and ended up owning a route. He worked his ass off but it was not something he worked towards. He fell into it. Most 18 year old kids today don't have those same opportunities without college. So I really hate the argument, "my parents didn't need it so I don't."

I've taught my kids to be respectful, show up on time, and dress properly. Unfortunately there's still no jobs. When I was 16, I had my choice of where to apply and what offer I wanted to accept. Its not like that anymore.

Education degrees are not for teachers and were never intended to be. These school have two tracks, admin. and the lauded Mrs. degree.

Trade schools are booming, everything from carpenters, mechanics, and beauticians to divers and lab techs. They a lot more enjoyable and less full of shit (pretentious) than college. Yes I did both and regret my decision for a degree which lead to a master in engineering. Could have really enjoyed my best years which are well behind me. If Crid's shiny outlook is an indicator there will be far worse to come.

I remember the shpeil about well rounded individuals and the quest of knowledge. Then the English prof for my elective gets all pissed when you ask him why I'm paying 40K a year to read and analyses books. Even more angry when you point out that the homeless guy on the corner can give you meaning full insight into the classics for a $12 bottle of cheap rum. Drinking with the homeless guy and pontificating on Socrates and Plato was enlightening. To top it off when you disagreed with him you weren't guilty of heresy.

Mike the free market would help cure this problem if it were allowed. Unfortunately, grants and loans horribly skew the supply/demand curves.
One of the best things they could do would be to completely get the gov't out of student loan buisness.
Just picture a student going to a buisness or loan officer and saying I want a loan for college. The loan officer would slap reality on the student, something so definately lacking now in the entire process. Unfortunately we are currently moving furthur away from this concept.

Treat a student loan like any other loan, like a loan for small buisness. Require a well thought out model of how it will work and succeede before they can get $1.

You want a 100,000 towards a degree in basket weaving? And you currently have a C - average? LOL, why would I loan you a penny.

You want a loan of 100,000 towards a degree in "undecided"? Come back when you have an idea of what you want.

You want a 100,000 loan for a degree in Electrical Engineering? Let's see those grades, hmm B+ average, with AP credits in math and science. Let's talk..

Here is something that I notice is people get degrees both useful and useless - ok fine - but then they expect to get a relevant job to go with said paper. Then when the don't they flounder.

Where I am in Korea we get quite a bit of fresh out of college Western kids and I mean kids. Perfect place to come earn some money and get some life experience, but every once in a while on one forum or at the bar you get these twits.

Somebody wants to get that nice job like for example a journalism student who asked for newspapers or news organizations that would hire them in country. I find it really conceited - never mind most journalist students who are actually from the country want those jobs too or that they do not even know the language. Some think just because they come from the west that the citizen here will fall all over them. No - sorry.

Next, people do not work at it. Great you got your degree in history and now you are teaching kids English - well life sucks. You want better, then what are you doing relevant. History Major, go out and explore, write a book, do a blog relating to Asia and history, research on your own - nope weekends is spent drinking. Journalism student too - you have a country full of stories, you might not sell anything but you can learn and get experience. Getting that degree does not mean all the work is over with. You want more - do more. That do more attitude will very likely get you somewhere.

Of course I should take my own advice.

Ya know, if someone CHOSE to pay upwards of $100,000 to get a Doctorate of Science in Archaeology, with a special emphasis in ancient goat migrations and distributions through Midevil England - ITS NOT MY FUCKING PROBLEM if they cannot find a job that pays them a livable wage!!!

Medieval not Midevil - Yarp! I'm pissed that screwed up the flow.

One reason at least some college has become de rigueur for getting an entry-level job is that too many high schools are graduating illiterate and innumerate students.

Even two years of college successfully completed (an AA degree) lets employers know an applicant can write well enough to make himself understood and do basic math with the aid of a calculator.

It also lets the employer know that the applicant knows how to show up and do the work. Too many high schools graduate students who didn’t bother to even show up for class … just to get them out of the system. Colleges are [for now] less forgiving of students who can’t be bothered to at least do the minimum.

==============================

When I graduated from college, my parents instructed me that I was now qualified to learn how to do a job. I was told in no uncertain terms that I was not actually qualified to do a job - just [barely] qualified to learn how to do it.

Too many students today think a degree equals qualification to do the job. They don’t want to go through the tedious “wax on / wax off” stage of the learning process.

==============================

The list of disciplines that Crid enumerated earlier used to be taught to high school students. The canon of literature hadn’t been watered down at that point and math hadn’t been dumbed down.

My father, not a fiction reader, still remembers and can discuss the books (classics) he read in a rural Southern high school. Very few of the books on his high school list were on my high school list; and only a few were on my college list.

I read them after graduating college – for my own pleasure.

In fact, my sister found his old (1950s) college engineering text books clearer and more concise than the ones used in her 1980s engineering classes.

==============================

Psychology may be a popular degree, but it takes a Master’s degree at a minimum to go anywhere in the field.

Students have been doing stupid things with student loans for years. Picking a major that prepares them for nothing is only the tip of the iceberg.

When I was in grad school back in the 90's I was an instate student at a state school and tuition was never more than about 1800 a semester.
A number of my classmates went on this summer exchange legal program to England which cost about 10k. I wondered how they could afford it.
The answer was, they all used student loans for what was essentially a vacation with a paltry amount of credit towards their degree.

Tweet for Feeb

I actually agree with a lot of what was said here but I don't think that's the entire picture.
At 30 years old I recently just went back to get a degree even though I already make a reasonable middle class living of about 40k. Not great but I'm certainly not asking anyone if they want fries with anything. So, I plan to graduate with a Bachelor's degree with no more than 5k in loans (my work will pay for most with tuition reimburshment). It's a well thought out plan with real job prospects at my current job. Now I'm not the average, completely clueless 18 year old who thinks "$80k-100k will be easy to pay off when I may 100k a year!" No, stupid, it won't! STOP IT! Especially if you get a degree in Art History or Social Work, etc.
One of the big problems I see is that you CAN make 80-100k a year and still HAVE NO MONEY. I'm living it, with a spouse/family in the Midwest. I'm not saying we're not eating, wearing scrubs, etc but after all the bills are paid there is very little extra. I don't pretend to know how to fix that but I think that's what many people I know are pissed off about. They worked hard for years, whether they went to college or not. Worked their way up from starting at $10-12/hr to $20+, had families, bought reasonable houses (seriously 150-200k, tops) and they are still struggling, they still haven't "made it". There are plenty of good, hardworking Americans that aren't ask for a handout, or welfare, or anything. They WANT to work, they want to support themselves and it seems to be getting harder and harder to do.

A high school diploma used to be sufficient to get your foot in the door someplace like the phone company. Years ago these big employers used to give IQ or aptitude tests...now they can't because they're discriminatory according to the Supreme Court. So they reverted to the degree requirement, and the smaller companies followed suit.

I think only some of the govt agencies are allowed to give any kind of test, and even then they are given no end of grief over it.

> They WANT to work, they want to support
> themselves and

THAT'S NOT AS IMPRESSIVE AS YOU THINK IT IS.

This is so fucking infuriating! It's a stupidity that's deeply infected an entire generation of Americans... And these are people from the most dynamic, liberty-loving culture the world has ever known. And it's not only the OWS crowd, though they've got it pretty bad.

Let's break it down. Picture a guy. He's standing there. He's sane... Not drugged, armed or violent. And he says 'I'm law-abiding, and I'm willing to work, so why can't someone give me a job?'

1. We expect everybody to be law-abiding. That earns you nothing.

2. We expect everybody to be willing to work. That earns you nothing, either.

3. The person who "gives" you a job has already found the place for you in the universe of need and fulfillment... Finding those places is a tremendous amount of work! And the results are always, always temporary: Conditions change, so jobs go away. It's a competitive planet.

So demanding a job is ridiculous. What have you done to earn one? The whole point of this post is that buying a college degree is a shallow consumer experience; It demonstrates no commitment to excellence or thoughtful risk. You might just as well demand credit for all those childhood Saturday mornings spent watching cartoons, and then going to the grocery with Mom to buy the advertised cereals.

This is one of the reasons you've been given a motherfucking LIFE ON EARTH: To figure out, with your individual view, how to be of service to others.

No government employee could ever, ever do that for you. Do not pretend that asking for a job is a small thing.

_________________


And in the olden days, you could pretty much experiment to come up with something new, or something that fit your talents snugly. But the encroach of government technocracy throughout society has made that tougher. My great-grandfather was a blacksmith. It wasn't just horseshoes: He'd fix whatever people brought to the shop, usually starting before breakfast. If you opened a business to do that now, city, state and fed regulators would have you closed before lunch.

>>"...In the West, we are hard at work establishing a culture that fetishizes education, and instills the belief that college -- regardless of its content or application -- will, and should, inexorably lead to a better job, or a better life, or even a better America. "

I love this statement. This is the way my Boomer parents presented college to me. My mother used to wax poetic on degrees - any degree could take you anywhere! And my high school counselors were equally starry-eyed about what college does for you.

>>"The list of disciplines that Crid enumerated earlier used to be taught to high school students. The canon of literature hadn’t been watered down at that point and math hadn’t been dumbed down."

Recently, I was reading a children's book from the 1940's. In it, the ten year olds were reading and understanding "A Midsummer Night's Dream". What a disparity between then and now - when my friend's class of eight-year-old's can barely handle 100 page chapter books.

"Recently, I was reading a children's book from the 1940's. In it, the ten year olds were reading and understanding "A Midsummer Night's Dream". What a disparity between then and now - when my friend's class of eight-year-old's can barely handle 100 page chapter books."

When you have a government mandate to "leave no child behind" the best way to do that is to make sure the bright ones don't get ahead.

Part of the problem is the bogus degrees given out. If these idiots that create these degrees would look at reality for 5 seconds they would see how worthless they are. That is a large part of why there are so many unemployed graduates, jobs exist but few meet the high requirements absolutely necessary just to start the job.

Nakkers, doesn't that imply that the job-seekers should be doing other things to get ready?

College is a convenient way to convince yourself you're preparing for the marketplace. You can get into one college or another by filling out some paperwork, and most people can get help to pay for it. There are few surprises in college: Everything's scheduled right there in the syllabus, so you know when the challenges begin and end. The political environment is famously colorless, and academics are mundane. Posner: "Their milieu is postadolescent".

Should an employer eagerly want people for whom college was the greatest formative experience?... Especially when the hirelings expect a salary big enough to pay off an enormous debt in short order?

"Tweet for Feeb"

Would I be the most ungrateful little princess if I wished this site offered us posters an edit button?

Shhhiiiiitttt.

"When you have a government mandate to "leave no child behind" the best way to do that is to make sure the bright ones don't get ahead."

Damn she's good.

And Crid has the best tweet placements and timing.

I want to delete my post(s).

It's been one of those self-centered days for me. Sigh.

Feebie, not for nothing but goats were domesticated in medieval europe and didnt migrate, and ancient England was a primordial forest.

Sure my hitory classes never got me a job, but at least I can crizicise the technically innacurate details of a wholly accurate senemet

Sentiment

"In fact, my sister found his old (1950s) college engineering text books clearer and more concise than the ones used in her 1980s engineering classes."

Don't miss that the textbook industry has exploited the system to make new versions of textbooks mandatory each school year. In fact, the colleges in South Carolina have different versions of the same title customized for the school.

Of course it costs more.

"He doesn't have to agree with their message..."

What message? The only coherent message I'm getting out of OWS dweebs is, "We borrowed a bunch of money so we could party for four years, and now we're expected to pay it back! Not fair! Waaaaah!" All else is just crap they're spouting because everyone expects them to have Deep Thoughts. And they're not trying very hard at that.

In addition to constantly getting new textbooks theres also how easy it is to influence what goes into them - recall the scandal in Texas over whitewashing certain historical figures out of the lesson plan?

Luj, it was a shitty fail. What's your point?

"leeaavve me alone".

I don't know where to get the stats offhand. As I understand the costs for college went up 440% relative to everything else.

For example -- back in the 50's you paid $20 to buy a nice suit. But you were making $100 a week. Now you pay about $200, but you make $1200 a week. So the relative cost has dropped, even though the actual dollar price went up.

At the same time back then you went to college for about $200 a semester and expected to make $200 a week at graduation.

Now you go to college at $20K per semester and can maybe get $50K a year to start, with an effective degree.

As I understand it the cost rise correlated with the advent of government backed student loans, Pell grants, and other similar government interference.

If I'm wrong, please let me know.

> Would I be the most ungrateful little princess
> if I wished this site offered us posters an edit
> button?

If so, then lend me your glass slippers, 'cause it's frog-kissin' time. I want that button so bad I've offered to buy it for Amy if she can find software that has it.

It wasn't meant to tease you, Feebie... It just seemed interesting that you and that tweeter had the same thought at essentially the same moment on different parts of the internet. If I don't make one spelling mistake a day, I'm not even trying to be clear.

_________________

Heretofore, Congress has understood that of all the kinds of debt that we might forgive, college loans should be last on the list. These are people whose incomes are almost certainly going to rise over time. Furthermore, grads are the people most likely to feel a sting of resentment as they enter the workplace and learn they won't get to be Steve Jobs; OFF COURSE they're going to ask for their debt to be forgiven, because they want to believe their lives would be perfect if only they'd chosen a different major.

But today, it's easy to imagine our government spazzing out and indulging the little punks:

The "philosophical starting point" of today's Democrats, as Mr. Cantor sees it, is that they "believe in a welfare state before they believe in capitalism. They promote economic programs of redistribution to close the gap of the disparity between the classes. That's what they're about: redistributive politics." The Virginian's contempt is obvious in his Tidewater drawl. "The assumption . . . is that there is some kind of perpetual engine of economic prosperity in America that is going to just continue. And therefore they are able to take from those who create and give to those who don't."

Wealth can be created.

And if you want some, wealth must be created.

"Even two years of college successfully completed (an AA degree) lets employers know an applicant can write well enough to make himself understood and do basic math with the aid of a calculator."

Nope, not any more. Read today's first post here:

http://collegemisery.blogspot.com/

There is ferocious pressure on instructors and professors to pass students in college, no matter how illiterate or innumerate they may be. AA? Forget it. Even a BA these days means little more than that a student got in somewhere and then got out. To find out whether they can write and do basic math, you have to ask them to demonstrate those abilities. You can't assume anything.

"If I'm wrong, please let me know." Actually if everyone had a realistic view of what college actually means it would not have happened. Not sure why but at some point skilled labor jobs became viewed with contempt. A college educated admin assistant making 25k was viewed as better than a mechanic making 60k. So college became the dream of every starry eyed youth and their parents. They then began to push for loans and grants for lower income families. More demand thus higher prices and "You can't put a price on your future." became the call sign. The results were inevitable. The colleges freaking loved it. Prestige out paced functionality, thus why Nobel laureate who can't speak English are more prized than some one who started their own company and became a multimillionaire.

I majored in history, a relatively worthless degree at a state university and am now in dental school at another state university that is top of the line. Majoring doesn't mean jack - it's what you do with your extra time, your ultimate focus, that matters. Science is not my favorite subject (history is) but I realize the utility in pursuing a health professional track is more than the hippie dippy "follow your dreams" track. I am sure that my parents would like to claim credit for this initiative and probably deserve a lot of credit, but most of it was just common sense. Really.