College is worthless
From The Wall Street Journal:
William Strauss and Neil Howe have recently argued in the Chronicle of Higher Education that with tuition and the resulting debt reaching surreal levels, and colleges and universities failing to reverse the post-1960s collapse of academic standards, parents and students are increasingly skeptical about the value of a college education.Parents born after 1961, Messrs. Strauss and Howe have found, experienced that collapse of standards in their own college educations and are determined not to tolerate another overpriced and underperforming disappointment for their own children. This is the generation that "propelled school choice, vouchers, charter schools, home-schooling and the standards-and-accountability movement."
These parents will be more likely to treat higher education as a market, in which smart buyers exercise discretion.If you're going to blow $100k, you'd do better to buy your 18 year-old a Ferrari and let him drive that to his next job interview. Chances are, he'll get a better job armed with an automotive marker of success than with a degree.
What the upset little college kiddies, whose angry missives show up here from time to time, don't understand is that their vaunted educations don't mean a damn thing anymore. So, you've got a 3.8 General Prize for Attendance, so what? I have spoken with individuals holding economics majors from major universities who have never heard of John Maynard Keynes, I have spoken with political science majors who have never read Plato's Republic or Marx's Communist Manifesto, much less Cato, Aristotle or the Federalist Papers. English majors who can neither read nor write effectively are as ubiquitous as Philosophy majors incapable of rational thought and foreign language majors who can't actually speak the language they have supposedly mastered.
An art director at a major game studio once complimented the art in our game and asked me how such a small development house had managed to acquire such a strong art team. Our answer was pretty simple. We gave the prospective artist a piece of paper, a pencil and told him to draw something. If he could do it well, we hired him. Most of the time, they couldn't and we didn't. I seldom bothered to look at resumes, much less diplomas or transcripts.
Colleges these days produce pieces of paper, not educated individuals. Unless you wish to work for a government or in a government-regulated profession - medicine, the law, hair-dressing - there is no longer any point to wasting four to seven years in a university system, and going into debt to do so.
Learning and education are tremendously important, but they have increasingly little to do with paying money to an "academic institution" for a piece of paper falsely claiming you know something that you demonstrably do not.
5 comments:
I hate to admit that I totally agree with that, but I do. I have a degree from a solid University in International Affairs. The other day while talking to a friend I realized that I didn't know if Nepal was a city or a country. I spent the last week in Spain and people kept talking about when Franco was in power. Who? Sad but true. Luckily, I have my good looks to fall back on.
So what do you do? I think the same things, but at the same time, a degree is still required for many jobs. My aunt and uncle are apprenticing their 10 kids, but it seems weird.
It's easy to agree that college is useless, but it's pretty hard to actually not send your kids to college.
In my experience having a particular degree from a particular university can and will get you better jobs. However, I saw first hand in corporate america how this does not translate to a good or necessarily qualified employee. I guess companies have to draw the line somewhere, but I feel like they often miss out on the best "person" for the job by opting for the best "resume." I thought things would be different in education, but I'm not convinced it is.
Good to hear from you Eric, I keep checking your blog looking for updates, how are things going?
You both bring up great comments, in my humble opinion, college is a necessary evil, you are both right that there is really no alternative in our society at the moment. However, the attitude of those in college I think needs to change. Today's college kids just feel they need to go through the steps laid out in front of them and some great job will await them. Au Contraire Mu Fraire! I am mentoring one young man now who is ready to enter college next year, and the focus of our discussions has been on the need to do the classwork, but then to also balance that with practical work, maybe through a job, an internship, however you choose to put what you are learning into practice. The academics are good, but too often they are utopic, one needs to find out how play out in the real world and one's personal manifesto, not just believing every word we get in the classroom.
I like what Vox says at the end, if one is an artist, they need to be able to create, if they are a teacher, then need to teach, if an accountant, to balance the books. We've all seen too often where a person is trained in a field, they know nothing about it when it comes to the real world. That is the problem we must prevent in those that we have an influence on.
I need to dust off my blog, but I've been really busy with work and family.
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