http://www.educar.org/prehistoria/fosiles/brontosaurus.jpg
Our university system is a dinosaur; and it’s getting awfully expensive to feed this dinosaur. Is it time for college to die out?
In a word–yes.
With over $1 trillion in student debt weighing down our economy, with kids sitting in college classrooms for five years, maybe six, and coming out with degrees in Gender Studies and $200,000 in the hole, what are we getting out of our university system?
According to the Education Testing Service, the outfit that administers the SATs, precious little ( http://fortune.com/2015/03/10/american-millennials-are-among-the-worlds-least-skilled/ ). ETS tested for job skills among persons 16 to 65 years old, in 23 countries; and the scores posted by American “millenials” (born after 1980) were described by ETS as “abysmal.”
What can’t our college students and recent graduates do? ETS found they really stink at literacy (including the ability to follow simple instructions), practical math, and “problem-solving in a technology-rich environment.”
Look, folks, this is what happens when you decide that everybody–yes, everybody–has to go to college and get some kind of degree. So the college system expands enormously to take in millions of students who have no bent for scholarship and really need to be out in the real world, getting work experience. You know they’re not going to be able to earn degrees in engineering or Renaissance poetry or physics, so you keep ’em sitting in the classroom for four or five years of prolonged adolescence until they are rewarded with altogether useless degrees in altogether useless pseudo-subjects.
The university was originally set up for scholarship, and scholarship is not for everybody. Many are desperately bored by it.
So you wind up with these millions of young people who can’t do bupkus, who’ll never get out of debt, who live at home and occasionally work part-time.
You also wind up with a whole class of nudnicks who are good for absolutely nothing but “teaching” useless subjects to students who turn out to be useless.
Please don’t argue that someone needs a college degree to get started in a career in any field, you just gotta have one…
ETS has proved you wrong.
Colleges and universities need warm bodies to fill the seats in classrooms, even if the warm bodies are nudnicks. They somehow have to pay the increasingly exorbitant salaries demanded by the overpaid professors who are not teaching those same warm bodies. Propaganda is free. It’s everywhere. You don’t have to go into debt to get it. Parents, stop sending your children to these dumbing down factories of propaganda if they’re more suited to mechanics or some other service industry!
It used to be that college was the exception, not the rule. If you want to be an engineer, a mathematician or the like, it required college. At one time, even medical school did not require college. Lincoln had one year of formal education and was a lawyer.
Nowadays there are college courses in even the most mundane of subjects. A community college near my home offered courses for people interested in janitorial work, so that they could deal with all of the cleaning supplies involved. Give me a break!
How about the basics? Reading, mathematics and writing legibly would be a good start. The beauty is, this can be taught quickly and can be easily taught in the home. Maybe some interests will emerge, like more serious mathematical disciplines, and interest in science, history, or whatever. Some of these might range beyond the scope of the home, but still don’t require sequestering children for 6-7 hours per day.
Then, for further education, find ways to teach useful skills, once again without locking someone away. Apprenticeship programs are effective at this. The best part is that these can be, at least to some extent, self paced, which allows students to move as rapidly as they are capable of learning and doesn’t hold an entire class to the pace of the slowest learner capable of passing grades.
I could still see room for true “higher education”, but not for every subject and not necessarily involving degree programs. Instead, if students can learn what is important to them and continue to learn throughout life, they will be better off. My father took college courses in his sixties. He was then invited back as a guest lecturer for subsequent classes, because he possessed great aptitude and had real-world experience.
Here’s something college might prepare you for. You could become governor of a state and impose idiotic laws such as this one:
http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/now-its-against-the-law-in-california-to-shower-and-do-laundry-on-the-same-day_06042018
Well, I can’t read that article because they keep slapping some kind of ad over it.
Isn’t it also illegal in California to walk and chew gum at the same time?
Sorry, Lee. I got that ad a couple times too. I think they want you to subscribe, but when I closed the ad, the article was there. In any case, the header is sufficient. Idiots.
FOTM has an article about it too:
https://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2018/06/05/california-new-law-will-limit-water-use-to-55-gal-day-per-person/
“Isn’t it also illegal in California to walk and chew gum at the same time?”
I’m pretty certain it’s illegal to be smart enough to do both at the same time. 🙂
If not illegal, at least frowned upon.
With 46% of the Bay Area residents seeking to leave California, I think it’s safe to same that the dam has been breeched. Tipping points are funny things, but they definitely exist.
Here’s another one for the ‘You Go First’ department:
https://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2018/06/05/art-school-professor-tells-white-males-to-commit-suicide/
There’s actually a video of this guy yammering! Where do these people come from?!
If I tried to blog on all this stuff, I would burn out. I mean, is this some more of that liberal crapola that’s supposed to result in a big Blue Wave this fall, and move us all to turn over the country to Democrats? Winning us over, are they?
It appears to have been taken down, but I’m not surprised it happened. There is an all-out war against decency right now.