I wasn’t referring to Ann at all, or anyone in particular. However there are plenty of signs of the self esteem issue in people. They think their degrees and/or the jobs that they have based on that degree make them superior to others. I admit to my own feelings of superiority, to all those who couldn’t educate themselves. That doesn’t mean everyone with a degree either. Sorry if you’re feeling inferior, try again.
I’m not a tradesman, and I didn’t get that feeling from anyone here.
90% of the people who have college degrees are just technicians, competent or not, and many aren’t well educated despite that degree. Those who haven’t learned to educate themselves are uneducated IMHO. Not pointing at anyone in particular here either.
I agree with that part.
Since we don’t stay in school forever, what school does is to teach you how to learn. And the most important thing about learning is self analysis and critical thinking. Schools give tests for a reason - to force students to confront what they don’t know. Judging from the letters in the newspaper and the number of people who believe stupid things out there, lots of people are not doing a good job of learning out of school, or knowing how to learn.
I graduated from college 40 years ago, and almost every fact I learned about computer science is now out of date. But I’ve done pretty well from having been taught how to learn. When I left grad school I moved into a totally different field, which I’m now an acknowledged expert in. Never learned anything about it in school. But I learned how to learn.
I wish I could say I started freshman year know all about how to learn I’d need to - but I didn’t. And I did pretty well in high school. I’ll grant that there are a few exceptional people out there who know it all, but they’re pretty rare.
You know, tradespeople don’t educate themselves either. There is a large body of knowledge and a large set of tricks to learn to be good at it, which you’d know if you ever watched a plumber solve a problem. My grandfather was a plumber, and a good one; he kept his family fed during the Depression.
I’ll take intelligence in anything. The people who owned our house before us used a handyman who is a real nitwit (we used him once.) On the other hand when we did renovations we used a guy who quit a tech job to go into business for himself, who was really smart, and who was a pleasure to work with. People who think they can teach themselves plumbing wind up with water on the floor, just like the kids who used to think they taught themselves programming in high school were the bane of my professor friends. I think I respect the skill of good tradespeople more than you do.
You are making my point there. There are plenty of college graduates writing those letters to editors. What school should do is teach you to learn, but it’s not in the school’s best interest to do that good of a job. I suppose I may see this differently from many people, but why aren’t schools spending more time teaching their students to test themselves instead of doing the testing for them?
Making my point again. Do you really believe it took all of the schooling up to your graduation to learn how to learn? I think probably not, but at what point did your ability to learn turn school from teacher to the resource?
Do you think you could not have arrived at freshman year with that ability better developed?
I don’t think anybody knows it all, though certainly some know a lot more than almost anyone, and are better at learning more than others as well. Lucky folk, those people. Well, luckier anyway. Almost all of us could have done worse.
This is a VERY important point, and something the country should be very concerned about. Yet, you rarely hear a peep about it from politicians. They just speechify about college educations and competing in a global marketplace with the best and the brightest. It serves society well to have ample jobs for those who have limited skills and talents.
The “repairman” who replaced the failing capacitors in my $1700 LCD flatscreen will be dismayed to hear this. On the bright side, I guess I’m due a refund for the service he pretended to perform.
I get that feeling any time I see people try to minimize or diminish the role of higher education.
Well, I put a lot of effort and hard work into getting accepted into a top engineering college and later an MBA program. I spent a lot of long hours studying to complete my programs in order to obtain both degrees. I also had to work through a lot of courses that were challenging for me. So yeah, I feel pretty pleased with myself.
Does that make me “superior” to other people? I don’t know. Maybe. But if so, I think that also means there should be greater expectations of me.
Well congratulations. You’re the first person I’ve heard of in 20 years to hire a TV repairman. I had no idea anyone did that any more. My point is the same. I’m pretty sure you don’t see a lot of appliance repairmen these days.
Just out of curiosity, what did that set you back?
I think that’s the biggest driver; right now, it may take someone with a lot of technical skill and insight to design and install one of these computer A/C system, but in 10 years, it’ll be color coded, use keyed plugs and the software component will be plug & play, so that illegal aliens and high school dropouts can do it while building tract homes in the suburbs.
This is how the personal computer/mac world went down as well- at first, it took a lot of specialized knowledge and insight to set up a non-standard PC from parts and get the OS to actually work correctly. Now it’s just about idiot-proof. You don’t need to know about IRQs or anything more complicated than plugging in the appropriate cables in, putting the disc in the drive, and starting the computer up. It installs itself.
Yes, I wanted to post that too. A friend of mine is a plumber, and currently looking for an apprentice. Basically, he’s searching for someone who his 1) Willing to work 2)Reliable 3) Willing to learn 4)Not an idiot, even though he doesn’t require him to have an IQ of 130. He would surely add 5)“humble” to this list (he isn’t particularly humble himself, but don’t think you can learn if you aren’t, and has been many times irritated by people who were presomptuous about their abilities)
He’s a bit of a perfectionist which helps him secure contracts (Because he fixed something another was unable to fix or is able to work with some unusual materials and features; contrarily to the painter mentioned above, his specialty is old stuff rather than super modern one).
Anyway, he’s still looking. I’m pretty certain he’s more selective than most French universities and that the guy he’ll finally hire will be more willing to learn than most students entering college.
Which, by the way, doesn’t solve the issue of people who, for whatever reason, aren’t able to reach his standards anymore than academic standards.
Interestingly, former Secretary of Education William Benett said that only the top 150 schools show a positive ROI. You can also show a positive return on lesser schools by studying an in-demand technical field.
Here’s the full list.
I don’t know if it’s necessary to “do” anything. People can figure out for themselves if it’s worth it to go to college or if they might be better off learning a trade in community or technical college.
The problem with self-education alone, IMHO is that unless you are Albert Einstein, Mark Twain or Leonardo da Vinci, you typically have a fool for both a teacher and a pupil.
Probably not as high a percentage as the almost uniformly literate letters that appear in the Times.
Why is it not in the best interest of schools to teach you to learn? In fact, some CIOs seem to be mad at schools not teaching the currently hot software packages. The schools insist on teaching the basic principles instead so that people can pick up the packages. Learning how to learn doesn’t change with software upgrades, and so is easier for the school to do.
Test themselves? How are they going to do that. If people could test themselves we wouldn’t need peer review.While we’re at, why not have directors and authors review themselves also?
Every minute? Maybe not. But my last term was involved with my bachelor’s thesis, and that was really quite helpful. You need to learn basic principles also. I learned some languages which were only vaguely useful in later life, but learning grammars was very useful. In any case, if I could have graduated six months earlier does not make the first three and a half years useless.
No. And it was better developed than in most people. My SAT and Achievement Test scores were pretty damn high, and I got into every college I applied to. Yet I still had tons to learn.
To make it worse, one reason people with college degrees have a relatively low unemployment rate, even today, is that they are pushing those with less education down to lower paying jobs so that the people of which you speak are getting pushed out of the labor market. More jobs opening at the top will tend to open some jobs at the bottom. But not all, so I totally agree with you.
No wonder my bias is towards going to college. My school is high up on that list and indeed, it paid off big for me.
That ranking puts various DeVry campuses at #74, #75, and #79. Yale is #92.
I am unconvinced that DeVry is a better investment than Yale.
There are A LOT of issues with this list. My graduate school, which is obscenely expensive and not particularly rigorous (for undergrads…the grad school is great), is ranked pretty well. Well, duh, I guess. What kind of person goes to a stupendously expensive but not exceptionally great East Coast private universities? Why, it’s people with rich families. Specifically, it’s people from the kind of rich families where trust funds, inheritances, and family connections pretty much guarantee that you will continue to be rich.
I’m not surprised that they ultimately end up with more than people who went to schools like my undergrad, a large state university that primarily takes kids from middle class families and, more or less, prepares them for middle class jobs.
Yes, but he paid off the undergraduate loans before starting the master’s program and his plan was to avoid acquiring any new debt in grad school. Not a bad goal.
Take a look at the financial aid numbers. They contradict your assumption. When I went to MIT, back when it was only absurdly expensive, not obscenely so, I knew a Dupont and a princess of Thailand. But I also knew people who were the children of house painters, carpenters, beauty supply store owners, and other jobs which did not come with trust funds. (I somehow misplaced mine also.) Heck, a guy we recently hired who graduated from MIT really was born in Kenya, and his parents were middle level workers at the UN - which I can testify from family experience does not make you rich.
I think it depends. If you graduate from Yale’s School of Nursing vs graduate from DeVry and get a higher paying IT job for a fraction of the tuition, it might be a better deal.
A perfectly fine goal, but personally I would prefer an approach that didn’t render me homeless.