That, and the fact that most faculty don't want to risk a bad evaluation from a student, or a grievance or worse being filed against them. This is especially the case with part-time faculty, who pretty much outnumber the full-timers at many colleges and unis (PTs have the same degrees and qualifications but don't cost as much to pay--and that goes to the bottom line mentality as well). It's not right, but it's understandable.Resolved: The American people should significantly decrease the number of people attending colleges.
Yes. It’s hard to imagine that someone who could finish high school not knowing about the founding fathers, the constitution, the electoral college, the relationship between the states and the federal government and how elections work would know much more after another four years of college.
Quite. I worked as a consultant to Hallmark Cards in the mid to late 1990s in several areas - built their first web site, did 3D modeling and visualization of products, etc.
I have a GED. The only time college came up was when they wanted to hire me as a full-time employee. Turned out that they couldn’t pay me any significant percentage of what I was getting as a consultant because their pay rates were based on college degrees.
Some are having to do that anyway. gotpasswords posted that his/her employer was running internal training to teach Cobol and Fortranbecause schools weren’t teaching those languages anymore.
About the plumber discussion earlier? My brother is a Master Plumber. He got out of the trade because it is so physically wearing and is selling HVAC, but his last full year as a plumber in Kansas City, he made $120,000. The guy he worked for could buy a $200,000 car with no major difficulty.
I have seen studies that suggest that once you take into account the lifetime costs of college, cost of living differences and whatnot, the economic advantage of going to college vs just graduating high school are slight. The problem is compounded by the fact that a degree from the more expensive (and therefore “best”) schools is often required to land those high-paying careers and those jobs are often in expensive cities like New York.
Personally I don’t agree with these studies. Yes, they are accurate if you just look at the financial numbers or living area sq ft. A high school graduate in the middle of Pennsylvania can probably live at least as well as an college graduate in Manhattan. But the college graduate has more opportunities and thus more choices over the kind of life he will lead. That is an intangible quality that I believe allows one to lead a more fullfilling life, if not a more lucrative one.
Ergo they are more well respected as academic institutions.
The problem with looking at the average is some people aspire to more than “average” lives.
Are we? Because I graduated with a degree in engineering over ten years ago and it was very difficult to find high paying jobs in engineering. Half of the engineers I know went to work for IT/management consulting firms like Accenture or went on to law or business school after they graduated .
So what is your point?
But all these statistics are layered on top of the assumption that degrees are valuable for something other than a crude measure of intelligence. The degree only allows you to earn more because of the aforementioned collusion between employers and colleges.
When I left school at 16, a lot of my friends also left at the same time to get high-flying jobs in finance in the City of London. That would be impossible in America because you would need a degree to sweep the floors of trading floor, never mind actually become a trader.
Employers don’t “collude” with schools for no reason. They do it because they have found highly educated people tend to be more succesful at their companies. It makes sense to work with those schools to help better prepare students for future careers with their firms.
I have two candidates I can hire for my trading desk. One is a Wharton grad with an MBA in finance, the other is a 16 year old high school dropout. Which one would you hire to handle millions of dollars?
Wall Street jobs are competetive. Lots of smart people want to be traders or i-bankers. If that’s a job you want, you need to demonstrate that you are smarter and a harder worker than the other candidates. I don’t see how you do that by dropping out of school at 16.
And somehow I doubt it’s any easier to find a high finance job in London than it would be on Wall Street.
What if you got rid of the prejudice that someone who leaves school at 16 is a dropout? What if the norm was to hire high flying students at 16 (or 18 or whatever) and educated them on the job?
Try this analogy on for size.
About 20 years ago, when I got my tattoo, the only people who got tattoos were criminals and other ne’er-do-wells. Everyone told me I was crazy because only ne’er-do-wells got tattoos and people would therefore think I was a ne’er do well. Well, that taboo is gone now (hey! two Polynesian words in one paragraph!) and all kinds of people have tattoos.
I have been pretty successful in my career despite leaving school at 16 (I didn’t drop out. That’s normal school leaving age where I come from). I don’t think I could’ve been more successful with a degree (most places I have worked, I have worked alongside Cambridge Firsts and Harvard MBAs) and the lack has not held me back at all.
But in the USA, I could not have even got started because no one would hire me straight from high school. I would loved to have gone to college but I don’t think it would have made me smarter or better at my job.
In the current system, of course an employer is going to hire the one with evidence - they would be crazy not too. And I already acknowledged that employers are happy with the current system. An MBA in finance is additional evidence that a candidate is smart. They don’t have to take a chance on an equally smart 18 year old - in fact it’s not even an option because “Everyone” apparently knows that people who leaves school at 18 is stupid. It’s better for the colleges too. It’s not better for the individual though and it’s not better for society.
Obligatory caveats: I think there are some professions (teaching, doctoring, and lawyering come to mind) where a degree is pretty much essential; also careers in science and some forms of engineering. There is also value to society and individuals in college-level literature and art and philosophy and political science and history aside from any vocational goodness.
But - and this is my main point - the vast majority of blue-collar worker and most white collar workers (office workers, managers, software engineers, retail, bankers) would thrive under an apprenticeship system at greatly reduced cost. It’s only the prejudice that degree=smart, no degree=stupid that keeps the current, inefficient system going.
One more point on the drop-out thing…my son is in high-school now. It’s unthinkable that he would not go to college - as it is for most of the kids (smart and otherwise) at his school.
By contrast, I came top of my class in a fairly exclusive school (at the time it was one of the best state schools in the country) and left at 16. Most of my friends left school at 18 to high paying gigs in the City (mostly banks and other finance institutions). At that time and place, banks actively poached the best students at 18. Go figure. As high school kids, we knew who was smart and who was not and 25 years later, the smart ones have been successful. I doubt there is any correlation with college attendance.
I’d roll out another analogy between the top sportsmen in the UK going straight to a professional team (versus 4 years of college first in the US) but I have already used up my analogy quota for the day.
It has nothing to do with prejudice. A 16 year old is typically not going to have studied the same material that college grad has. And some of that material is actually relevant to the job.
And that is the difference between having an education and not having one. You don’t even know what you don’t know.
I believe most professions require a certain basic amount of knowledge on subjects one does not typically acquire by the time they graduate high school. And it doesn’t make sense for a company to spend 2 years teaching it to you so you can take it to another employer in a few years.
Also, as an employer, I want people who can bring their outside knowledge and experiences to the table. I don’t want blank slates I can program as drones.
It has nothing to do with being stupid. Firstly, there is no such thing as a profession called “office worker” or “manager”. I work in an office and I’m a manager but that office provides a specific service for specific industries and I’m a manager because I happen to know a lot about it (and I’m good at getting other people to do stuff) and it’s my title.
I’m not sure what you mean by “bankers”. When people say “bankers” in the US, they typically are referring to investment bankers like those who work at Goldman Sachs or who used to work at Lehman Brothers. They tend to be highly educated guys who need to know a lot about finance. They typically not only have college degrees but MBAs and professional certifications like the Series 7 or CFA. If you are referring to tellers and loan officers who work in the local branch offices of commercial banks, they typically don’t need to be Harvard whiz kids. In fact, I don’t think you need a degree to be a teller.
And you certainly don’t need one to work in retail.
My point is that it has nothing to do with being “stupid”. It has to do with learning tasks and mastering knowledge necessary to perform a job.
That’s where you’re wrong, and that’s what people are complaining about.
These days, you frequently DO need a college degree to get a job in retail or as a bank teller. It’s a “weed-out” tool often used by employers regardless of the job requirements. That’s not just a problem of the current sucky economy and unemployment levels - it’s been going on a long time.
So all of that expensive knowledge that you feel is needed for your profession, you agree is NOT needed for other professions - and yet those professions (these days) won’t hire without the degree.
That’s exactly the problem being discussed.
Not to be snarky, but I don’t understand the point of your comment.
I contend that too many American high school students go on to college.
Who do I think should consider not going? Basically, people who are unprepared and/or unmotivated, and/or plan to earn degrees unlikely to increase their earning potential enough to be worth four years’ work and tuition*.
If standards were raised, I am assuming that many such students would either not be admitted or flunk out early**. In the past, when standards were higher, this happened more often. Such students were forced to consider other, less expensive options like trade schools or just getting a job.
Instead, the lower-standards colleges take these students’ money and give them a degree that is IMO not worth what it costs them.
Statistics you might produce claiming that college graduates earn more than non-grads could be simply lumping doctors, engineers and MIT grads with these people receiving sociology or general studies degrees from low-standards colleges. It’s not worth their time and money.
As former labor secretary Robert Reich (who is 4’9" due to a spinal condition) said in trying to illustrate income disparity: “Shaquille O’Neille and I have an average height of 5’10"”.
The fact that college paid off for you (and me) is not proof that it will for everyone with a pulse, a high-school diploma and a student loan application.
*This does NOT include people who are aware of the limited earning potential of a subject like literature or music, and accept that it may not lead to a job. I’ve been a frustrated musician all my life. But I decided early on that it was best to make music my hobby, and I have spent many happy, ‘unproductive’ hours practicing on a nice, full stomach. My hat is off to people with the guts for such risks.
**And I don’t agree with some people who claim that raising standards will result in all of these students’ preparing better and working harder. Some might. This was the idea behind ‘No Child Left Behind’. But there are too many other things (family influence, exposure to benefits of education, access to academic resources, etc.) that influence how academically prepared and motivated a child will be. Snapping your fingers and saying, “Everyone will become a good student”, has not worked. If you don’t believe me, ask a teacher about NCLB.
You’re equating having a high school degree with being educated. That’s a very strong assumption, and not one that you’ll be able to support very long if you start looking at data. And it’s the same sort of issue with bachelor’s degrees that is largely spurring the discussion in this thread. I’ll have more to say later, but yes, I very strongly agree that many people would be better off not going to college in our current system, and I don’t see any way to disagree with that unless you’re operating on the assumption that college is what it’s supposed to be and not what it is.
its another topic, but I don’t think private prestigious institutions offer many advantages over in state institutions.
Perhaps for an MBA program, or a PhD if you want to become a professor. But if you want to do an undergrad degree doing it in state for 25k is probably the best option compared to 100k for a prestigious private institution.
And of the professions that require a degree, which of them require knowledge that a typical graduate acquires in college?
Agreed. The current system benefits employers and colleges more than students. There are other systems.
Yes. I have worked at several investment banks in the City of London and on Wall Street. I know what they do. For the average 18 year old, destined for finance, they would be better off with on-the-job training and evening classes. The fact that these opportunities are not available in the US - or that the existing system allows employers to get what they need more cheaply - does not alter my argument that it would be better for the student.
Again, I acknowledge that some people destined for finance are better off going to college but - not all of them.
Are you sure?
Right.
I’ll add that a high school education is largely tuned for people who are destined for college. If it were tuned for a majority not going to college, we might design it quite differently and - dare I say? - better for the needs of most people.
Maybe not for lifetime earnings, but I’d definitely beg to differ in terms of quality of education, if only based on class size. My friends who went to the University of South Carolina took required classes in lecture halls with 200 of their closest friends; I went to Agnes Scott and the courses were capped at 30. I took classes with fewer than three people, and that was undergrad. If you don’t think you get a better education that way, you’re nuts.
I bet there’s a pretty damn strong correlation.
I went to a public university and most of my classes had 30 people or less. Naturally the intro level courses tended to have far higher numbers of students, but pretty much any class level that didn’t being with a 1 (ie 100, 101, 120, etc) had 30 students. Except for a few 300 level chemistry courses that all the pre meds/vets/pharmacy/dental students had to take, all my 200, 300 and 400 level courses were smaller class sizes.
You can’t assume that public universities all have 200 students in all the classes, and private universities do not.
A plumbing contractor could own a major local business employing numerous assistant and subsidiary plumbers, assistants, and so on–and easily afford that car. I suppose there are other scenarios where that might happen, like a single operator who is very good at upselling, has a gold plated client list, and so on. Granted it’s exceptional, not typical, but I imagine any type of building trade contractor can do very well if they are gifted as businesspeople.
They don’t hire high school kids to work in The Gap or Banana Republic anymore?
You said that it’s more common for less exclusive, public institutions to lower their standards to maintain enrollment. And I agree. Podunk Tech can’t attract the talent that MIT can. That is why MIT is more respected. I understand it’s a bit of circular reasoning, but that’s how the system works.
I would say the problem isn’t that too many high school students go on to college. I would say that only a portion of them receive an education that has the quality and prestige to position them for a career that justifies the high cost of their education. If you want to design spacecraft for NASA, you should probably go to MIT. If you just want to teach high school science, is it worth the cost of going to such a prestigeous school?
Off the top of my head:
Accountant, Architect, Banker, Biologist, Chemist, Computer Programmer, Doctor, Engineer, Nurse, Lawyer. Any academic job. Any job that requires advanced math or any sort of specialized knowledge. Even “soft” jobs like Advertiser, Journalist, Marketing Analyst, PR Rep and son on can certainly benefit from having a much broader knowledge base.
And many of these fields you never stop learning.
I’m asking you. What sort of banking are you talking about where a high school degree and some on the job training are enough to get by? Selling equities over the phone Boiler Room style or something? I’ve certainly encountered plenty of sales jobs (not just in finance) where a college degree is probably no particular advantage.
The problem is while yes, I’m sure a smart 18 year old can learn many of the tasks to perform many high-level jobs, someone who has studied that field appears more desirable and less of a gamble to an employer.
Absolutely. It’s pretty arrogant to think you know all there is, especially without much of a formal education. The reason a lot of “self educated” people think they don’t need a formal education is that they have never had their views particularly challenged.