I (conditionally) agree. Your premise is correct for the liberal arts major who needed a vocational education. As one girl I communicated with, she has a LA degree, but only ever wanted to continue working in a noodle shop.
I started with Community College and never graduated, but that's because I started working as an electronics technician, and it paid very well. I retired early and returned for a BSc in geology as a second career, one where I get paid to travel a lot. This works well for an older person, as the kids are grown. Geologists who are tied to town typically don't earn nearly much as us field geos.
As an older person with kids, I want to reiterate that having children is a great blessing that should not be avoided for any reason.
Andy Breckman, the creator of the show Monk and host of Seven Second Delay on WFMU is an example of somebody who dropped out of college early and went on to success. An interview of one of his classmates at the time said it was obvious to the rest of them how far ahead he was. I don’t think this would work for everybody.
I have a couple degrees, my latest in art which is completely useless in the credential sense (you can get an art degree without learning to draw) but also full of classes that are actually very useful if you work at them.
I found the college marketing fairly honest in the sense that they never said much about your job prospects, but art is strangely entrepreneurial. Stars are very rare. I tell people who ask that it’s a job, and if it was an easy route to middle income then the doctors and lawyers would be doing it. Likewise, if you want to approach their income levels be prepared to work as much as a doctor or lawyer.
The political nature of academic arts was not pointed out, I do know a lot of women who based their presentation on being a white woman from the suburbs who were then stranded as that tide went out. But the danger of being an identity star is that somebody cheaper with a better identity comes along.
The biggest negative failure of US colleges is the Open Secret discrimination against hiring Republican professors.
The polarization, and the acceptance of politically correct lies, is based on not having Republican, pro-life, pro-Christian Professors and lately not having pro-capitalism ones.
The US gov't should cut off money to such colleges, and this discrimination would change. Gov't loans or guarantees; Fed research; tax-exempt status: Harvard is a ginormous hedge fund connected to a college.
The anti-Republican colleges getting gov't money must change.
Interesting thoughts, but you missed something very important. If students get an education to signal to employers their human capital (whether acquired during schooling or merely demonstrated during it), that signal needs to be credible. Schools do a great job at making the signal credible, e.g. through tough admissions, grades, etc. Open courses and other online alternative fail miserably because employers can’t be sure students were the ones who did the work - cheating is too easy. If what I’m saying is correct, fields in which competence can be easily demonstrated to employers will tend to value education less (think coding competitions). I think we see that empirically.
See Also:
https://hwfo.substack.com/p/burn-the-universities-and-salt-the
I (conditionally) agree. Your premise is correct for the liberal arts major who needed a vocational education. As one girl I communicated with, she has a LA degree, but only ever wanted to continue working in a noodle shop.
I started with Community College and never graduated, but that's because I started working as an electronics technician, and it paid very well. I retired early and returned for a BSc in geology as a second career, one where I get paid to travel a lot. This works well for an older person, as the kids are grown. Geologists who are tied to town typically don't earn nearly much as us field geos.
As an older person with kids, I want to reiterate that having children is a great blessing that should not be avoided for any reason.
Andy Breckman, the creator of the show Monk and host of Seven Second Delay on WFMU is an example of somebody who dropped out of college early and went on to success. An interview of one of his classmates at the time said it was obvious to the rest of them how far ahead he was. I don’t think this would work for everybody.
I have a couple degrees, my latest in art which is completely useless in the credential sense (you can get an art degree without learning to draw) but also full of classes that are actually very useful if you work at them.
I found the college marketing fairly honest in the sense that they never said much about your job prospects, but art is strangely entrepreneurial. Stars are very rare. I tell people who ask that it’s a job, and if it was an easy route to middle income then the doctors and lawyers would be doing it. Likewise, if you want to approach their income levels be prepared to work as much as a doctor or lawyer.
The political nature of academic arts was not pointed out, I do know a lot of women who based their presentation on being a white woman from the suburbs who were then stranded as that tide went out. But the danger of being an identity star is that somebody cheaper with a better identity comes along.
The biggest negative failure of US colleges is the Open Secret discrimination against hiring Republican professors.
The polarization, and the acceptance of politically correct lies, is based on not having Republican, pro-life, pro-Christian Professors and lately not having pro-capitalism ones.
The US gov't should cut off money to such colleges, and this discrimination would change. Gov't loans or guarantees; Fed research; tax-exempt status: Harvard is a ginormous hedge fund connected to a college.
The anti-Republican colleges getting gov't money must change.
Interesting thoughts, but you missed something very important. If students get an education to signal to employers their human capital (whether acquired during schooling or merely demonstrated during it), that signal needs to be credible. Schools do a great job at making the signal credible, e.g. through tough admissions, grades, etc. Open courses and other online alternative fail miserably because employers can’t be sure students were the ones who did the work - cheating is too easy. If what I’m saying is correct, fields in which competence can be easily demonstrated to employers will tend to value education less (think coding competitions). I think we see that empirically.