Blogs
Jul 6, 2012 at 8:43 am
Comments
Please wait...
Comments are closed.
Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.
Editors' Picks
is a proud member of the
media network
media network
All contents © Index Newspapers LLC
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
Yes.
Hence it should cost more and at the same time the bearers of this valuable commodity should be willing to mortgage more of their lives for it...same with high school.
In some sense the world of a subsidized education was needed because auto workers used to make more than nerds.
Now meeting your Zuckerberg at college can lead to untold riches. At worst, your income is nearly guaranteed to be multiples of that same auto worker in today's literate, numeric web world.
I think that over simplifies things too much. Fact is, most kids come out of the public high school system with a roughly equivalent mediocre education. College education, on the other hand, is incredibly variable (even within the same institution). UW (for instance) cranks out Engineering Majors and Women’s Studies Majors at about the same cost, but those degrees do not have the same actual value (i.e. earning potential/return on investment).
I think it would be more accurate to say: “we either value a useful college education, or we don’t.”
Shockingly, an education in applied arts is not equivalent to an education in applied sciences.
Do tell, why? In what fields? Don't propagate that FUD myth that everyone needs to go the full four year bachelor's route, or deeper into masters or doctorate territory. It is entirely dependent on a laundry list of factors and considerations. The idea that everyone HAS to have paper is as nonsense as the myth started in the Bush administration that everyone had to be a home owner.
A lot of people who were never going to have a terribly high earning potential anyway--for lack of motivation, work ethic, or just plain old aptitude--waste four (or more) years in college, not earning any money AND usually racking up considerable debt, and at the end of it only marginally improve their prospects, because their degrees are barely worth the paper that they are printed on.
Your art history/women's studies/film studies/English literature degree is only worth something if you either 1) use your time in it to cultivate a truly marketable skill, like writing well, 2) get it from a sufficiently elite school that you have the opportunity to plug into that school's network (and aggressively take advantage of that network), or 3) are sufficiently talented in your field of study to pursue graduate studies and make a modest living in one of the very few academic positions available teaching it.
Easily 50% of the undergraduate student body of this country would be much better served by spending that time in focused occupational training, or simply by entering the workforce full-time.
You obviously don't have kids or have not gotten involved in there education. Or maybe you live somewhere else with a uniformly poor public school system.
When I was 15 in contrast, at my first job at a snack stand at a public sports center I showed up with a clipboard ready to take notes from my boss. And no, nobody told me to do that.
Being socially smart and capable is not even something they teach in college. The value of some degrees is "not much" in my opinion, and going the German way of actual skills training would be better for about 40% of all college students. Along with the higher taxes. Oh wait, Inslee isn't for higher taxes, so we got a choice of two republicans this election anyway.
You should read "Coming of the Third Reich" by Richard Evans to explore just what this "heavy emphasis on technical education" helped to lead to.
A well rounded liberal arts education is vital to the well-being of a democratic republic.
The German system today provides for a strong middle class and working class. So strong Germany is able to bail out greece, etc. the choice is not (a) well rounded liberal arts citizen philosophers versus (b) teaching skills which leads to naziism. it's a choice between, basically, (a) the american system in which the upper class gets the real full on liberals arts deal and reproduces itself, while the working class gets ghetto failure education, or the kind of community college masquerading as a state university that doesn't even teach the guy to keep a fucking to do list. THAT is failure. What with 30% dropping out, another 30% not knowing to keep a to do list, and only 40% making it to the middle class and upper middle class professions. of whom some are smart citizen philosophers and most are just greedy doctors and business owners. versus the (b) German system today which is:
- a mature democracy. not a third reich like you imply. gee, how authoritarian can you be?
-with middle class and working class that's still on the upswing not the stagnation and wage losses we have in america, all the result
--not of the germans you cite but of our american new deal which we imposed on germany by kicking their ass in a war then taking over. we set up their worker councils. we made them go social democrat in effect, to block the commies. we tried full on employment oriented poicies there, not here in america. we should learn from germany today. people like you are just wine supping liberals who let the working class rot while your snobby noses are in a book you're reading while the society around you fails working class people. bo bo's.
Students are assessed during their early years, and selected for one path or the other, college or trade school, whichever is most appropriate for their abilities and intelligence.
Why we don't have such a system here is mind-boggling. 'Murrican exceptionalism at its dismal worst.
@17: We do not have that system here because our nation was founded on the idea that a person should be able to lead their life to wherever they want. The government giving you your career path in your youth is pretty close to the antithesis of that.
Now as to whether or not that is a good thing is another issue I suppose. I just wish we as a society did not demonize working with our hands so much. We teach a generation that anything other than a white collar job is a failure, and wonder why no one wants to go to trade school.
We have an interest, and a big one. Is it as big as K-12? Nope
4 more years of academia would not have been a good outcome for him. And kids like him are terribly underserved by the American system which assumes college education after graduation for everybody.
I mean, let's talk about K-12 funding before we even begin to talk about higher education.
Degrees in physics and chemistry aren't a magic ticket to employability, you know -- don't you know any unemployed scientists?
Ohhh boy... How I'd love to hear you actually say that to the thousands of new graduates of schools like Hampshire College and Umass Amherst with liberal arts degrees desperately searching for a way avoid living with their parents for the next decade without resorting to homelessness.
I wonder, how many Slog commenters have a college education versus only a high school diploma? I suspect we're a pretty well-educated bunch.
I never said there was anything magical about a science degree, but honestly...no, I don't think I do know any unemployed scientists. And I know an awful lot of scientists, since I am one.
I also don't know any unemployed engineers, plumbers, or auto mechanics.
But I also know a hell of a lot of (really smart, talented, creative) people with liberal arts degrees who tend bar. I'm sure many of them derive personal satisfaction and enrichment from their education--I'd love to have the time and money to study literature myself!--but I also think that they would be doing as well (or better) financially without those degrees.
I think a liberal education is a fine thing, as long as your expectations of what you're actually going to get out of it are grounded in reality. I don't think that they are, for many, many people.
4 year degree isnt always as valuable, in fact, it might complicate things later on in life. Go to a community college instead, because while my sisters co-worker had a degree, she was also as dumb as a sack of hammers, she had zero work ethics.
There are a lot of people out there like me. Telling them to study science or technology is not going to help them, or the society their education is supposed to ultimately benefit, one bit.
@31, thank you for posting that. My partner and I discussed the original article when it came out, and it further convinces me that if companies were willing to provide training, then more people could go off and get their Humanities or social sciences degrees (or spend a year travelling, or work in another field, or whatever), and then bring that knowledge to a company that will give them the more specific skills for the job at hand. This, I am convinced, results in healthier companies. I've never met an effective business owner or CEO who didn't have wide-ranging intelligence and knowledge outside their field.
I'm fully convinced that, once the economy recovers, employers are going to start whining that they can't find "well-rounded" employees, only people who specialize in specific fields and can't write or reason worth a damn.
Second, I don't know where people get the idea that everyone is rushing to get worthless liberal arts degrees in unheard of fields is coming from. According to stats pulled from Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce; Business is the most popular major in the country (Business Management and Administration to be correct, followed be General Business, Accounting, Nursing, Psychology, Marketing and Marketing Research, Communications, Elementary Education, etc.). People aren't going to school in droves for fine art degrees or degrees in Shakespearean Literature. That's a fantasy you cling to for God knows what reason.
Having said that, I notice barely anyone in this thread tackled the problem of employer expectations. You put all the blame on the College Grad. I'm fine with saying some of that lies on their door step. No problem there. I've known college grads who have assumed the degree was a golden ticket (although part of that societal expectations as well). That's not a smart move. But how can you completely bypass the reality that employers these days seem to have completely unrealistic expectations? Entry level clerical positions want a BA and 3-5 years experience in the field. For what? Filing? Billing? I could take a McDonald's worker with a High School diploma and train them on a system like EPIC (which Hospitals around here use) in a week or two MAX and they'd be doing just as well as the average employee at their business is currently doing. I recently saw a posting asking for a Masters and 3-5 years experience in Community Organizing.... For a part time college position paying $17,000/year with their Diversity House to engage Student Clubs. I don't care how you cut it, that's ridiculous. Employers are being picky because they *can* be with a such a massive amount of people looking for work, not because people lack the skills. We can put up a position for entry level and where we used to get maybe 30-40 qualified people applying we now get anywhere from 150-400 (we had one posting grab 500 applications, most of which were plenty qualified, some of whom were actually *overqualified*).
Too many graduating students have this vague notion that a job will be given to them, as if there's a second podium on the risers: right after the person handing out the diplomas is the person handing out the jobs, right? Employers want experience, these students should be interning during their summer breaks or finding volunteer opportunities that are relevant to their field of study. Employers aren't willing to invest in training; they want new hires that can walk in, sit down, and do the job. Training was one of the first functions cut in many organizations. It's up to the person who seeks entry into a given field to find the means of obtaining that experience by whatever means possible. Very often that means taking a position several rungs down the laddder from where that person feels they should be. I recently had a conversation with a newly graduated Masters degree holder who felt that his MS entitled him to a CEO or director level position, with no real working eperience. I had to eplain to him that pride goeth before an empty belly.
Air and water are more valuable. Yet they are cheaper. Far cheaper.
It is not the value of the item that determines its price. Econ 101 fail.
Brown eggs served with crispy bacon are vital to the well-being of a democratic republic!
My statement has as much to support it as yours.
It just hasn't been demonstrated yet.
If it is common to find college grads doing low level clerical jobs most high school grads could handle, then perhaps employers have too high expectations?
If it is common to find college grads doing low level clerical jobs most high school grads could handle, then perhaps too many non-college-bound high school graduates can barely read and write?
If it is common to find college grads doing low level clerical jobs most high school grads could handle, then perhaps this economy is fucking shit?
So here's what we have: millions of 22- and 23-year-olds with degrees who have no plans, no connections, no idea. And then we have even more employers who want real people, preferably with degrees, that are competent, enthusiastic, and hardworking. But for many grads, the party's not over when they get their degree. Also, they hadn't the foresight to befriend professors or get internships if they didn't have to or volunteer or get involved in research groups. And a few years later, they still have no skills because they've worked somewhere they didn't even need a degree to obtain employment at. In fact, they probably have even less, because their brains aren't even straining to cram for finals anymore. And then their confidence begins to wane and their interest starts to pile up. It's a shame.
In my opinion, college needs to be more challenging, and schools need to regularly require students to get more involved in the field they think they want to go into. The degree is not a means to an end, but a small piece in the repertoire of what makes one a desirable candidate. A lot of students don't understand that until it's too late.