You can always line the bird cage with your Bachelor’s degree…
Democrats trot this out for every election cycle: Free college! Give us the power and we’ll give you free college! A college degree for everyone who wants one!
Here’s what it looked like eight years ago.
And once they’ve got it so that everyone has a bachelor’s degree, that degree will have no value and it’ll have to be free masters’ degrees.
Stay in “school” forever!
Killing our civilization, one college course at a time.
We may already have reached the point at which the college degree is worth no more than a HS diploma used to be — which had itself become what a grade school diploma used to be. Many professions now ask applicants for a Master’s degree, on the off chance that at least the applicant will be able to read and write.
Interestingly enough, when I graduated from college in 1963 a Master’s degree was sufficient to be a professor at even many prestigious universities.
And by golly, WordPress has allowed me to sign in as myself on my phone today! (Or at least that seems to be the case. I won’t know until I hit “comment.”) 😛
I was class of 1971. I wonder what a Master’s is worth today.
In business. These days, MBAs are a dime a dozen. During WW II, there were the Whiz Kids, highly educated young men whom invented the logistics necessary to supply the war effort, on the fly. The most famous among these was one Robert McNamara MBA, who became the architect of the Vietnam War.
MBAs became very fashionable in large corporations and a new strata was created in the business world. Talent and ability were all but unrecognized unless there was an MBA attached to one’s name. This cause a stampede of sorts, and degree programs tailored to the needs of working adults proliferated, usually with very high tuitions. Now that the MBA is all but ubiquitous, it has lost much of its meaning. The value of decisions made by MBAs follows the same distribution curve as has always been. I’ve met MBAs who were brilliant, and others whom I would not entrust with the simplest of tasks.
The problem, as I see it, is twofold. One layer is that the standards have slipped. An MBA in 1940 would have been schooled in classical literature and have a good understanding of history, before they even started a Master’s program. Anyone accepted into such a program would have had to have a good academic record. These days, a Master’s candidate needs to have their student loans in order, but little else.
The other layer is that of simple dilution. As the number of people with a given degree increases, the value of that degree to set one apart decreases.
There was a time when a high school diploma was far from ubiquitous, and a high school diploma opened doors. But look at what has happened to a high school education. High school diplomas became much more common after WW II, and the standards have slipped. High school grads who are marginally literate, or in many case, illiterate. The last time I hired an IT worker, education was weighted at 0% while experience and work history were pretty much everything. I wanted to see someone who could keep a job in the field, and wasn’t simply escaping after a few months, before lack of practical skill came to light. Conversely, one candidate had a long work history but had never advanced beyond entry level. Next!
In IT, industry certifications are very popular, but predictably, the value of these certifications has become diluted as they have become more common and the training vendors have zeroed in on the requirements to pass the tests, so it has become more a matter of memorization than of actual understanding.
*Sigh* “Education” is an un-funny joke.
It has become an intractable problem. The pace of change serves to complicates an already difficult situation. Emerging cyber security threats can change the landscape without warning. I don’t see a silver lining in all of this. I fear that there may be a massive breach could cripple many systems without warning. I don’t have an answer, but I know that complexity has become a threat in its own right. IT security has become so complex and multi-lithic that it’s hard to imagine anyone fully comprehending all of it. So security products aren’t always fully compatible with one another. It’s very concerning.
Oh, don’t worry! Science will figure it out. [Laughs maniacally.]
In commercial flying, they’ve learned that even the most alert, well trained and experienced pilots can reach a saturation point, where they can no longer take in information, such as during an inflight emergency, and when that happens, it’s very likely that they will fixate on one aspect of the problem to the exclusion of all other inputs and can literally follow that fixation to their own demise. Modern cockpits with multitudes of warnings can all but paralyze a flight crew. I heard about an inflight emergency involving an engine failure where they remained airborne for hours because they had to complete numerous automated checklists, when the real priority should have been getting on the ground and settling matters from a position of safety.
The same thing is happening in IT, as layer upon layer of complexity is being added by the demands of security on one hand, and nearly ubiquitous communications on the other hand. It’s becoming harder and harder to maintain a mental picture of all of this, and that frightens me. When a system reaches the point of being incomprehensible, it’s all but certain that something will be missed and it becomes the same situation as a pilot whom is overloaded with warnings, and begins to mentally shut down.
A doctor making a serious error might kill one patient, while an aviator making a serious mistake could kill hundreds of passengers. How much damage could be done if a series of interconnected, international, data systems crash and burn?
To me it’s already incomprehensible.
I would have been class of 1962 except that I transferred in mid-year (long story) from a university on the quarter system to one on the semester system and lost a whole year. But it gave me some good work experience, since I worked full-time from Feb to Sep before fall semester began at my new university. Of course, when I took the job I didn’t mention that I’d be leaving in the fall. Shame on me. 😳
I was shocked, upon completion of four years in college, and all sorts of academic honors, by the kinds of jobs actually available to me. If there was one thing college didn’t do, it was preparing students like me for the real world.
A wise idea would be for the federal gov’t to stop funding colleges and universities – let the free-market system reign. Competition not monopolies in education and all forms of business.
Government money has successfully corrupted the colleges and universities.