I know of some pretty expensive schools whose business model is to take in not very bright children of the wealthy, and give a nice college experience without a lot of stress.
But some high prestige private schools have advantages over reasonably high prestige public schools in that the private schools see their customer as the student and his future earning power, where the major customer of the public school is the state legislature. In California there is no way you can stay in a dorm for all four years at a public college, but private colleges pretty much makes this possible.
This is assuming they don’t have any prior work experience or portfolios, which in my experience, were instrumental in getting me my jobs.
The problem is their work experience likely consists of stuff like working in McDonald’s or The Gap. College is a good way to get some of those skills and experiences and connections if you don’t have them already. Provided you take advantage of it. If you use college as a 4+ year party then you’re just wasting time and money.
True, but my point is that one who’s motivated–that is, one who wouldn’t otherwise spend 4+ years parting anyway–could also use that time to invest in skills/work experience related to their field of interest. Myself, for instance, spent those years freelancing for other websites, eventually creating one of my own, which helped secure me my first real, salaried job. The same job that the aforementioned coworker also obtained, except without the 4+ years of college and massive debt.
It is interesting, but I suspect there is one big flaw in their methodology. They are not taking into account the fact that you generally can’t get a Master’s or Ph.D. (or a medical or law or MBA degree) without first getting a bachelor’s. That artificially lowers the value of a bachelor’s. But I do agree that paying full tuition at a private school is a questionable investment. It does tend to be a luxury lifestyle purchase. Then again, the people I knew who did that made a lot of luxury lifestyle purchases.
I actually do think every adult should plan to spend at least 4 years in near-full-time study during their lifetime. Maybe more of them should do more of it later in life, rather than 18-22. But it is really not going to work to have people think they learned everything they needed to know in a US high school. We see this now with factory workers who appear to have had no idea that their skills were becoming completely obsolete, and to have no idea how to go about learning how to do something people will actually pay them to do. If you don’t know how to read and write and speak to a business standard today, you’re pretty much screwed. How do you figure out that you need to become a self-employed plumber and how to go about it if you’ve been turning screws on widgets since you were 18? And even if you get a 2-year degree, a lot of those train you in a skill that is marketable at the time, but where the technology becomes obsolete. Those folks should probably plan to retool once or twice in the course of their career.
This ought to tell us something. What it ought to tell us is that essential skills are increasingly not being rewarded monetarily - ie: not recognized as essential, because other skills are sexier or more cutting-edge.
A decent basic level of written communication ought to be one of the basics in any field of information-age employment. A given, like knowing how to brush teeth and tie shoes.
Definitely not. You should only go if you really know why you are going. Unless you have money to burn in which case in can be a valuable social experience.
People also forget that many blue-collar jobs come with loads of physical risks. A spry 20-year-old will do well as a roofer, but what’s he going to do when he’s 55and his back and knees no longer work? Heaven help him if he’s an independent contractor and can’t afford insurance.
Of course not everyone should go to college. Just as long as everyone has access to college and all capable students are encouraged and assisted in that direction, then I’m fine with just a fraction of the population getting a bachelor’s. The question is, what kinds of opportunities are there are for people who don’t want to go to the military, become a tradesman, do people’s hair and nails, become a nanny, or work the register at Golden Corral. Nowadays most “good” jobs require, either explicitly or implicitly, a college diploma. Unfair or not, that’s life.
A college student can make poor choices (picking the wrong major, not studying hard enough, going to the wrong school, etc.) that will make their degree worthless compared to a hard-working, well-connected, dedicated blue-color laborer. But there’s no guarantee that that college student would be the best blue-color laborer either. Too many times people mistake lazy and stupid with lazy and smart, just because of who that person is and what they look like. And thrusting someone in the vocations just because writing isn’t his strongest point is stupid too. College develops real-world, practical skills, not just ivory tower ones. I’m more impressed by someone who tackles their academic weaknesses to accomplish their dreams rather than catering to them and settling for something less than what they wanted in life.
I am currently attending a Community College for an Associate of Applied Science in Business degree with 4 certifications in IT (the degree requires atleast one technical certification). The points in this thread (if I missed any let me know):
degree inflation
unneeded classes
cost
student may not get much out of it
students need vocational training, not college per se.
Here’s my own experience so far on these points:
First off I don’t think degree inflation, while bad in some ways, is bad over all. An over educated workforce is better. It makes us more competitive. A company can set up shop here and know it’ll have a large pool highly skilled employees to draw from. This offsets some of the higher costs of doing business here. On the flip side I can certainly understand why it’d be frustrating to invest time and money in a degree for a job you could have dropped out of high school and still did okay. However overall I think this a fairer system. Jobs are more likely to go to people who work the hardest for them.
Unneeded classes could an issue. Almost all the classes I’ve taken will be useful on the job, except “Windows XP Utilities”. Winxp, while the best OS MS ever put out, is dated technology*, and besides the class is bloody obvious stuff I already know.
That said I could certainly see the need to make sure people know this stuff. At my school, and most I’d imagine, you have the option of testing out of a class. You take a test and if you pass you get credit for the class. I’m just doing the class the normal way because it’s an easy 4.0.
The electives work out good too, and if they’re “unneeded” that really falls on the student. So far electives I’ve picked include Basic Electricity, and currently doing English Composition 1. The first, Basic electricity, at one point, featured a Tesla coil at IIRC 85,000 volts. Pure unrefined awesome. It smelled like a thunderstorm. The class taught you basic electricity terminology, safety, and equipped you with everything you need to know to take the American NEC (2008 edition) test to become a certified apprentice electrician. I didn’t take the NEC test, but it was good stuff to know anyway. I’m better able to protect expensive computers from surges, and know to keep cords separate because of inductive heating, and how to check electrical cords for load characteristics to be sure they’re upto the task.
A quick search of my posts will show I can benefit from English Composition very much. The class also teaches about researching for papers. This is part of “that learning how to think thing”, I think;).
My biggest worry is not being able to find a job using my skills. I really want a job in computers.
Another point about community college is cost effectiveness. The credits I’m earning will transfer to a 4 year school anywhere in the state. I’ve talked with a few private 4 year schools and they say if I follow through with my plans I’ll be able to transfer from the Community college and finish off a Bachelors in a few semesters. 4 year school is expensive though so really hoping I can find something to use my certs and Associates degree for to pay for 4 year school.
Also I’m going to take out a student loans to pursue private certifications in computers (compTIA, MSCA, etc.) as I complete relevant school classes. I’m hoping that’ll give me an edge on the job market. Thinking about maybe going for NEC test too. Don’t want to be an electrician but it might give me an edge as a safer hiring choice.
Also the certifications I’m taking are vocational school pretty much. They only have classes relevant to the job. They have certifications for electrician, medical assistant, mechanic, and all manor of things. here’s(Pdf) my school catalog if you want to examine the cert and degree requirements for yourself.
*WinXP, out of the box, won’t even install on most current systems because it doesn’t have SATA drivers. Most computers don’t have a floppy to load the text mode, SATA, drivers during install. You have to either get a USB floppy or make a modified XP disk ISO with the right SATA drivers added and burn it. Luckily there’s a tool to make that easy.
I don’t think you understand what degree inflation means.
The basic reality is that not everyone is capable of making it through a rigorous program and earning a degree that certifies that they did so. If they’re going to get a degree, then either existing programs have to lower their standards so that these people can succeed, or new programs with lower standards will have to be established. Either way, the degrees given to them are not as valuable as those given to the more capable, and the more capable are no longer distinguished by having a degree. That’s degree inflation.
Ahh I see now. A very understandable problem. Right now I’m doing 14 credit hours and getting good grades in all my classes, but English Composition is really giving trouble keeping up. To the point I have to focus on it over all the other classes. I pretty much spend half a day on stuff for the other 4 classes, and the rest of the week on English Comp stuff. If one or more of the other classes was harder I’d really be in trouble. I’m just lucky I happened to take when I did. It’s just not a skill that comes easy.
As Charles Murray said in his book Real Education,
In contrast to most of the rest of the industrialized world, we’ve demonized “tracking” students by ability and nearly abolished vocational education, insisting that everybody be on the college prep track. Just think of how little is spent through secondary education on gifted programs as opposed to hugely expensive remedial programs trying to squeeze every last low-ability student into college.
In contrast, our European and Asian economic rivals have largely resisted the urge to junk tracking The rest of the world understands what America’s educational leaders refuse to admit publicly: with teens with two digit IQs, failure is always an option. We insist that every student stick around until age 18 doing academic work that many despise. Hence, millions just stop coming to school. Over the last four decades, the high school dropout rate in America has increasedfrom about 1/5th to 1/4th, according to Nobel laureate economist James Heckman.
The amount of money that Japan, for instance, invests in training high school students for skilled blue-collar careers is astonishing by today’s paltry American standards.
You may recall the tragic collision off Hawaii in 2001 between a U.S. Navy submarine and a 191-foot Japanese fishing vessel, the Ehime Maru, which killed nine Japanese. This became a sizable international incident in part because the U.S. government didn’t immediately grasp how upsetting this accident was to the Japanese public. After all, Americans assumed, everybody knows that ocean fishing is a dangerous business.
What we didn’t get: this 500-ton trawler, for which the Navy eventually paid $9 million in compensation, was a floating classroom, part of Japan’s elaborate system of vocational education. To contemporary Americans, it was almost inconceivable that a country would spend so much on their non-academic kids. Yet the Ehime Maru was"on a planned 74-day voyage to train high school students who were interested in pursuing careers as professional fishermen." Four of the dead were high school kids.
The short answer: yes. But not for the most popular reasons. There’s a time and a place for everything…and it’s called College. It’s a time to experiment and play and learn and grow. Do you need to go to be a successful human being? Not really. I went to a Christian college to study religion and become a missionary, decided it wasn’t for me and found a field I truly enjoy (voice over) and in which I am successful. Do I consider the semester I spent at college a waste? Not at all! I discovered the Internet, found out that I was a Wiccan, and learned how to inject watermelons with vodka and serve chilled.
~September
Is that worth tens of thousands of dollars?
If you make the best use of it, yes. If not, then no.
Which Asian economic rivals?
In China, students are usually lumped hodge-podge into classes, which they generally stay with for the remainder of their time at that school. These classes will move together as a unit, learning the same subjects for their entire educational career. Even on a university level, there are rarely even electives, much less honors and remedial classes. Everyone learns the same thing.
Which rarely means anything, since grades in classes are not considered that important. At my school, a student who fails a class simply re-takes the final until they pass. I know a girl who has failed 23 classes- and is still graduating. Since giving and re-giving tests is a pain in the butt, most teachers simply automatically pass students or else they turn their back on cheating.
The real measure of your education are the major tests, which almost entirely test rote memorization. There is very little in the way of problem solving, reasoning, original thought, etc. It’s all about regurgitating information, which their education system is quite attuned to. Your test results determine your life- including what school you go to, what major you can choose, which professional exams you are allowed to take, etc.
As a result, there are thousands of kids in majors they have no interest in. And changing majors is nearly impossible, as is transferring schools. Nor is it possible to enter school as an adult. My students lives are already pretty solidly planned for them by middle school (unless they can pay the right people to get them on a different track.)
Many of my students hate English, lack English ability, will not study (after all, they can still pass their classes) and graduate with almost no English knowledge. I have graduating senior students come to me with interpreters, asking why they failed my tests.
I don’t know a single foreign teacher who thinks this system is better. Don’t believe all of the things you read in Newsweek.
Does Japan still have something like community college? I had horrible grades in high school and lower. Would miss too many classes and lose credit. Never understood that. You could pass all the tests and get all the work done but if you missed more then 3 days unexcused it was automatic fail. They said it was “to prepare you for work”, but what it amounted to was otherwise intelligent people wouldn’t make it through high school due to family, and personal problems. As long as you can get the work done and show you know the covered subject who cares?
Anyway in Japan would college have still been an option for me as an adult?
I think this thread is focused WAY too much on the financial aspects of college (as an investment of money and time) and on jobs (as a return on that investment). As others have said, there’s a lot more involved in a job than simply the amount of money you earn. For instance, I’m often asked why I still work where I do when I could make considerably more working for someone else. While this isn’t my dream job by any stretch of the imagination, there are certain perks that are worth taking less money than I’m “worth”. Job satisfaction is absolutely real and, unless you have trouble making ends meet, I would actually say it’s the single most important aspect of a job.
So sure, chances are you can make more money with a college education than without one, but if money were the only determining factor, then everyone should be pushing for degrees in the highest paying fields. If you want a career in a field that doesn’t really require a degree, then don’t go.
I also have to disagree with some of the sentiment about “unnecessary classes” I’ve seen in this thread. I even saw someone say English isn’t really necessary for programmers. I have to thoroughly disagree. One of the most important skills for just about any job is the ability to communicate, and if a person with a 4-year degree in programming can’t effectively document his software, he may have gotten a fine education in programming, but for as much as they succeeded there, they failed him in teaching him other important skills. In fact, I would argue that a lot of the math I took in undergrad is far less useful in my career than the English courses. Sure, I use some of that math now as I’m working toward my PhD, but I would definitely put a course in good technical writing as WAY more relevant than a course like Calc 3, at least as far as a BS in CS is concerned.
I think the real problem here is, as others have said, this almost neurotic approach that everyone needs to go to college. If a kid knows at 15 that he wants to be a mechanic, a plumber, an electrian, or any number of other fine, well-paying jobs that don’t require a degree, well, stop friggin’ putting them through a college prep course load. They probably don’t need any highschool match beyond some algebra and geometry (since I do think they’re both relevant to everyday life), but they can probably take stripped down versions that cover what they need to know for everyday life in much the same way that I’ve seen college courses like “Algebra for the Liberal Arts” or some such.
So, sure, I do think everyone could benefit from college or, rather, some form of higher education beyond High School. The current paradigm just isn’t working, and we’re creating a lot of unnecessary debt for people to figure out that it isn’t for them, and a lot of unnecessary burden for schools to accomodate these people. Maybe the solution is to have greater granularity in degree opportunities. Maybe there’s a way to make an accreditted “Mechanic’s Degree” that is essentially worth the same as an AS/AA, and perhaps provides a little bit of the basics like some Math and English, but is primarily vocational. With a system like that, someone can get the whole “college experience”, while actually getting relevant training toward their desired career path.
I suspect what he’s talking about is not “degree inflation” but rather “credential inflation” - where ever more occupations require a college degree as a necessary but not sufficient requirement for entry.
The one tends to drive the other.
You know thinking on it. If the inflation metaphor holds true eventually the bubble will burst. People can only spend just so much of their lives at college. So eventually inflation will mean there’s not enough people that fill the requirments and they go back down.
Also if it’s important to finding a job as current trends say it will be then there will be movements to to further integrate college into the standard school roster. Like high school, mark 2. Maybe it’ll be blended with high school to form a school system kids don’t graduate from till they’re 24. Actually with FAFSA and the like they sort of have that now.
Finally if it gets too ridiculous the government will step in. Not sure how it could help, but in democratic society you can be assured if enough voters are bothered the government will act. Even if it acts to the detriment.
Anyway the point is it can’t keep going up forever. Once it levels out it might even start to bottom out as companies realize a bigger hiring pool increases the chances for better employees.