https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...or/546590/

Author's thesis: the primary benefit of college for the vast majority is simply a credential. Should be required reading for any politician making decisions on education.

It also explains some of the mind-numbingly stupid comments and actions you see from supposedly educated people these days.

"...In 2003, the United States Department of Education gave about 18,000 Americans the National Assessment of Adult Literacy. The ignorance it revealed is mind-numbing. Fewer than a third of college graduates received a composite score of “proficient”—and about a fifth were at the “basic” or “below basic” level. You could blame the difficulty of the questions—until you read them. Plenty of college graduates couldn’t make sense of a table explaining how an employee’s annual health-insurance costs varied with income and family size, or summarize the work-experience requirements in a job ad, or even use a newspaper schedule to find when a television program ended. Tests of college graduates’ knowledge of history, civics, and science have had similarly dismal results...."

(12-09-2017 09:52 AM)bullet Wrote:  https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...or/546590/

Author's thesis: the primary benefit of college for the vast majority is simply a credential. Should be required reading for any politician making decisions on education.

It also explains some of the mind-numbingly stupid comments and actions you see from supposedly educated people these days.

"...In 2003, the United States Department of Education gave about 18,000 Americans the National Assessment of Adult Literacy. The ignorance it revealed is mind-numbing. Fewer than a third of college graduates received a composite score of “proficient”—and about a fifth were at the “basic” or “below basic” level. You could blame the difficulty of the questions—until you read them. Plenty of college graduates couldn’t make sense of a table explaining how an employee’s annual health-insurance costs varied with income and family size, or summarize the work-experience requirements in a job ad, or even use a newspaper schedule to find when a television program ended. Tests of college graduates’ knowledge of history, civics, and science have had similarly dismal results...."

I do not disagree generally with the premise of the topic..but..the example highlighted above has less to do with college and more to do with basic education. Those are things that a person generally learned decades ago from their parents or picked up simply by being curious and through self education. The breakdown of the family...poor primary government education and a general lack of curiosity among todays youth would be more to blame for this IMO.

Again...I agree that a large portion of college education is useless gobbledegook. Unless you are going to college to earn a skill based degree..ie..engineering, medicine, technical, math or science it is often a waste of ones capital and a poor decision to incur debt over. We see way too many college graduates come out with liberal arts degrees working at Starbucks. Obviously it does not require a degree to work as a barista.

(12-09-2017 09:52 AM)bullet Wrote:  https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...or/546590/

Author's thesis: the primary benefit of college for the vast majority is simply a credential. Should be required reading for any politician making decisions on education.

It also explains some of the mind-numbingly stupid comments and actions you see from supposedly educated people these days.

"...In 2003, the United States Department of Education gave about 18,000 Americans the National Assessment of Adult Literacy. The ignorance it revealed is mind-numbing. Fewer than a third of college graduates received a composite score of “proficient”—and about a fifth were at the “basic” or “below basic” level. You could blame the difficulty of the questions—until you read them. Plenty of college graduates couldn’t make sense of a table explaining how an employee’s annual health-insurance costs varied with income and family size, or summarize the work-experience requirements in a job ad, or even use a newspaper schedule to find when a television program ended. Tests of college graduates’ knowledge of history, civics, and science have had similarly dismal results...."

I love economists. In this case he has discovered something that everyone else in the country already knew.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G870A using Tapatalk

(12-09-2017 10:17 AM)Fo Shizzle Wrote:  

(12-09-2017 09:52 AM)bullet Wrote:  https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...or/546590/

Author's thesis: the primary benefit of college for the vast majority is simply a credential. Should be required reading for any politician making decisions on education.

It also explains some of the mind-numbingly stupid comments and actions you see from supposedly educated people these days.

"...In 2003, the United States Department of Education gave about 18,000 Americans the National Assessment of Adult Literacy. The ignorance it revealed is mind-numbing. Fewer than a third of college graduates received a composite score of “proficient”—and about a fifth were at the “basic” or “below basic” level. You could blame the difficulty of the questions—until you read them. Plenty of college graduates couldn’t make sense of a table explaining how an employee’s annual health-insurance costs varied with income and family size, or summarize the work-experience requirements in a job ad, or even use a newspaper schedule to find when a television program ended. Tests of college graduates’ knowledge of history, civics, and science have had similarly dismal results...."

I do not disagree generally with the premise of the topic..but..the example highlighted above has less to do with college and more to do with basic education. Those are things that a person generally learned decades ago from their parents or picked up simply by being curious and through self education. The breakdown of the family...poor primary government education and a general lack of curiosity among todays youth would be more to blame for this IMO.

Again...I agree that a large portion of college education is useless gobbledegook. Unless you are going to college to earn a skill based degree..ie..engineering, medicine, technical, math or science it is often a waste of ones capital and a poor decision to incur debt over. We see way too many college graduates come out with liberal arts degrees working at Starbucks. Obviously it does not require a degree to work as a barista.

There is a lot of science, history and math taught, even in high school, that has no relevance outside that class for 99% of the students.

(12-09-2017 10:17 AM)Fo Shizzle Wrote:  

(12-09-2017 09:52 AM)bullet Wrote:  https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...or/546590/

Author's thesis: the primary benefit of college for the vast majority is simply a credential. Should be required reading for any politician making decisions on education.

It also explains some of the mind-numbingly stupid comments and actions you see from supposedly educated people these days.

"...In 2003, the United States Department of Education gave about 18,000 Americans the National Assessment of Adult Literacy. The ignorance it revealed is mind-numbing. Fewer than a third of college graduates received a composite score of “proficient”—and about a fifth were at the “basic” or “below basic” level. You could blame the difficulty of the questions—until you read them. Plenty of college graduates couldn’t make sense of a table explaining how an employee’s annual health-insurance costs varied with income and family size, or summarize the work-experience requirements in a job ad, or even use a newspaper schedule to find when a television program ended. Tests of college graduates’ knowledge of history, civics, and science have had similarly dismal results...."

I do not disagree generally with the premise of the topic..but..the example highlighted above has less to do with college and more to do with basic education. Those are things that a person generally learned decades ago from their parents or picked up simply by being curious and through self education. The breakdown of the family...poor primary government education and a general lack of curiosity among todays youth would be more to blame for this IMO.

Again...I agree that a large portion of college education is useless gobbledegook. Unless you are going to college to earn a skill based degree..ie..engineering, medicine, technical, math or science it is often a waste of ones capital and a poor decision to incur debt over. We see way too many college graduates come out with liberal arts degrees working at Starbucks. Obviously it does not require a degree to work as a barista.

This is also my impression. Years ago I thought this same thing but still considered college good for expanding a young person's awareness of other opinions and cultures. So there was still some value in that at least. Now, I think the opposite is happening. There seems to be an effort to limit diversity of speech and thought to a certain approved path.

Life is messy and you have to be able to deal with that w/o pissing yourself.

(12-09-2017 10:25 AM)bullet Wrote:  

(12-09-2017 10:17 AM)Fo Shizzle Wrote:  

(12-09-2017 09:52 AM)bullet Wrote:  https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...or/546590/

Author's thesis: the primary benefit of college for the vast majority is simply a credential. Should be required reading for any politician making decisions on education.

It also explains some of the mind-numbingly stupid comments and actions you see from supposedly educated people these days.

"...In 2003, the United States Department of Education gave about 18,000 Americans the National Assessment of Adult Literacy. The ignorance it revealed is mind-numbing. Fewer than a third of college graduates received a composite score of “proficient”—and about a fifth were at the “basic” or “below basic” level. You could blame the difficulty of the questions—until you read them. Plenty of college graduates couldn’t make sense of a table explaining how an employee’s annual health-insurance costs varied with income and family size, or summarize the work-experience requirements in a job ad, or even use a newspaper schedule to find when a television program ended. Tests of college graduates’ knowledge of history, civics, and science have had similarly dismal results...."

I do not disagree generally with the premise of the topic..but..the example highlighted above has less to do with college and more to do with basic education. Those are things that a person generally learned decades ago from their parents or picked up simply by being curious and through self education. The breakdown of the family...poor primary government education and a general lack of curiosity among todays youth would be more to blame for this IMO.

Again...I agree that a large portion of college education is useless gobbledegook. Unless you are going to college to earn a skill based degree..ie..engineering, medicine, technical, math or science it is often a waste of ones capital and a poor decision to incur debt over. We see way too many college graduates come out with liberal arts degrees working at Starbucks. Obviously it does not require a degree to work as a barista.

There is a lot of science, history and math taught, even in high school, that has no relevance outside that class for 99% of the students.

Yes...At some point students need to be tracked into things that excite them not bore them. Learning facts that have no real world application is a waste of teaching time. We all have computers in our hands now and can access information instantly. Knowing the basic skills of mathematics and communication fully and being able to apply them is what is important now. No student should leave HS without a total mastering of the basics. We should spend more time insuring this using methods that work for individuals...not a one size fits all format.

(12-09-2017 10:37 AM)Siborg Wrote:  

(12-09-2017 10:17 AM)Fo Shizzle Wrote:  

(12-09-2017 09:52 AM)bullet Wrote:  https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...or/546590/

Author's thesis: the primary benefit of college for the vast majority is simply a credential. Should be required reading for any politician making decisions on education.

It also explains some of the mind-numbingly stupid comments and actions you see from supposedly educated people these days.

"...In 2003, the United States Department of Education gave about 18,000 Americans the National Assessment of Adult Literacy. The ignorance it revealed is mind-numbing. Fewer than a third of college graduates received a composite score of “proficient”—and about a fifth were at the “basic” or “below basic” level. You could blame the difficulty of the questions—until you read them. Plenty of college graduates couldn’t make sense of a table explaining how an employee’s annual health-insurance costs varied with income and family size, or summarize the work-experience requirements in a job ad, or even use a newspaper schedule to find when a television program ended. Tests of college graduates’ knowledge of history, civics, and science have had similarly dismal results...."

I do not disagree generally with the premise of the topic..but..the example highlighted above has less to do with college and more to do with basic education. Those are things that a person generally learned decades ago from their parents or picked up simply by being curious and through self education. The breakdown of the family...poor primary government education and a general lack of curiosity among todays youth would be more to blame for this IMO.

Again...I agree that a large portion of college education is useless gobbledegook. Unless you are going to college to earn a skill based degree..ie..engineering, medicine, technical, math or science it is often a waste of ones capital and a poor decision to incur debt over. We see way too many college graduates come out with liberal arts degrees working at Starbucks. Obviously it does not require a degree to work as a barista.

This is also my impression. Years ago I thought this same thing but still considered college good for expanding a young person's awareness of other opinions and cultures. So there was still some value in that at least. Now, I think the opposite is happening. There seems to be an effort to limit diversity of speech and thought to a certain approved path.

Life is messy and you have to be able to deal with that w/o pissing yourself.

I can't count the number of times Ive asked a recent HS graduates what were they planning on studying in college and getting the response..."I don't know." I always tell them "Maybe you should consider going to a community college first until you figure it out. Im sure your parents will appreciate you not wasting their money."

(12-09-2017 10:25 AM)bullet Wrote:  

(12-09-2017 10:17 AM)Fo Shizzle Wrote:  

(12-09-2017 09:52 AM)bullet Wrote:  https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...or/546590/

Author's thesis: the primary benefit of college for the vast majority is simply a credential. Should be required reading for any politician making decisions on education.

It also explains some of the mind-numbingly stupid comments and actions you see from supposedly educated people these days.

"...In 2003, the United States Department of Education gave about 18,000 Americans the National Assessment of Adult Literacy. The ignorance it revealed is mind-numbing. Fewer than a third of college graduates received a composite score of “proficient”—and about a fifth were at the “basic” or “below basic” level. You could blame the difficulty of the questions—until you read them. Plenty of college graduates couldn’t make sense of a table explaining how an employee’s annual health-insurance costs varied with income and family size, or summarize the work-experience requirements in a job ad, or even use a newspaper schedule to find when a television program ended. Tests of college graduates’ knowledge of history, civics, and science have had similarly dismal results...."

I do not disagree generally with the premise of the topic..but..the example highlighted above has less to do with college and more to do with basic education. Those are things that a person generally learned decades ago from their parents or picked up simply by being curious and through self education. The breakdown of the family...poor primary government education and a general lack of curiosity among todays youth would be more to blame for this IMO.

Again...I agree that a large portion of college education is useless gobbledegook. Unless you are going to college to earn a skill based degree..ie..engineering, medicine, technical, math or science it is often a waste of ones capital and a poor decision to incur debt over. We see way too many college graduates come out with liberal arts degrees working at Starbucks. Obviously it does not require a degree to work as a barista.

There is a lot of science, history and math taught, even in high school, that has no relevance outside that class for 99% of the students.

I thought that about math and chemistry.........until I ended up in a job that was all math and chemistry.

(12-09-2017 12:22 PM)Fo Shizzle Wrote:  

(12-09-2017 10:37 AM)Siborg Wrote:  

(12-09-2017 10:17 AM)Fo Shizzle Wrote:  

(12-09-2017 09:52 AM)bullet Wrote:  https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...or/546590/

Author's thesis: the primary benefit of college for the vast majority is simply a credential. Should be required reading for any politician making decisions on education.

It also explains some of the mind-numbingly stupid comments and actions you see from supposedly educated people these days.

"...In 2003, the United States Department of Education gave about 18,000 Americans the National Assessment of Adult Literacy. The ignorance it revealed is mind-numbing. Fewer than a third of college graduates received a composite score of “proficient”—and about a fifth were at the “basic” or “below basic” level. You could blame the difficulty of the questions—until you read them. Plenty of college graduates couldn’t make sense of a table explaining how an employee’s annual health-insurance costs varied with income and family size, or summarize the work-experience requirements in a job ad, or even use a newspaper schedule to find when a television program ended. Tests of college graduates’ knowledge of history, civics, and science have had similarly dismal results...."

I do not disagree generally with the premise of the topic..but..the example highlighted above has less to do with college and more to do with basic education. Those are things that a person generally learned decades ago from their parents or picked up simply by being curious and through self education. The breakdown of the family...poor primary government education and a general lack of curiosity among todays youth would be more to blame for this IMO.

Again...I agree that a large portion of college education is useless gobbledegook. Unless you are going to college to earn a skill based degree..ie..engineering, medicine, technical, math or science it is often a waste of ones capital and a poor decision to incur debt over. We see way too many college graduates come out with liberal arts degrees working at Starbucks. Obviously it does not require a degree to work as a barista.

This is also my impression. Years ago I thought this same thing but still considered college good for expanding a young person's awareness of other opinions and cultures. So there was still some value in that at least. Now, I think the opposite is happening. There seems to be an effort to limit diversity of speech and thought to a certain approved path.

Life is messy and you have to be able to deal with that w/o pissing yourself.

I can't count the number of times Ive asked a recent HS graduates what were they planning on studying in college and getting the response..."I don't know." I always tell them "Maybe you should consider going to a community college first until you figure it out. Im sure your parents will appreciate you not wasting their money."

My oldest is a senior in HS right now and he will be going to a branch college of Cincinnati next year and living at home. For half the price he can knock out a bunch of his prerequisites. He can transfer in after two years once he figures out what he is doing.

(12-09-2017 12:47 PM)CliftonAve Wrote:  

(12-09-2017 12:22 PM)Fo Shizzle Wrote:  

(12-09-2017 10:37 AM)Siborg Wrote:  

(12-09-2017 10:17 AM)Fo Shizzle Wrote:  

(12-09-2017 09:52 AM)bullet Wrote:  https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...or/546590/

Author's thesis: the primary benefit of college for the vast majority is simply a credential. Should be required reading for any politician making decisions on education.

It also explains some of the mind-numbingly stupid comments and actions you see from supposedly educated people these days.

"...In 2003, the United States Department of Education gave about 18,000 Americans the National Assessment of Adult Literacy. The ignorance it revealed is mind-numbing. Fewer than a third of college graduates received a composite score of “proficient”—and about a fifth were at the “basic” or “below basic” level. You could blame the difficulty of the questions—until you read them. Plenty of college graduates couldn’t make sense of a table explaining how an employee’s annual health-insurance costs varied with income and family size, or summarize the work-experience requirements in a job ad, or even use a newspaper schedule to find when a television program ended. Tests of college graduates’ knowledge of history, civics, and science have had similarly dismal results...."

I do not disagree generally with the premise of the topic..but..the example highlighted above has less to do with college and more to do with basic education. Those are things that a person generally learned decades ago from their parents or picked up simply by being curious and through self education. The breakdown of the family...poor primary government education and a general lack of curiosity among todays youth would be more to blame for this IMO.

Again...I agree that a large portion of college education is useless gobbledegook. Unless you are going to college to earn a skill based degree..ie..engineering, medicine, technical, math or science it is often a waste of ones capital and a poor decision to incur debt over. We see way too many college graduates come out with liberal arts degrees working at Starbucks. Obviously it does not require a degree to work as a barista.

This is also my impression. Years ago I thought this same thing but still considered college good for expanding a young person's awareness of other opinions and cultures. So there was still some value in that at least. Now, I think the opposite is happening. There seems to be an effort to limit diversity of speech and thought to a certain approved path.

Life is messy and you have to be able to deal with that w/o pissing yourself.

I can't count the number of times Ive asked a recent HS graduates what were they planning on studying in college and getting the response..."I don't know." I always tell them "Maybe you should consider going to a community college first until you figure it out. Im sure your parents will appreciate you not wasting their money."

My oldest is a senior in HS right now and he will be going to a branch college of Cincinnati next year and living at home. For half the price he can knock out a bunch of his prerequisites. He can transfer in after two years once he figures out what he is doing.

Those statistics are sad and telling...
The college grads who were just proficient or below proficient are examples of kids who were likely passed through college just to collect their tuition. Grades are inflated by legit universities and diploma mills to keep retention rates up and tuition money rolling in. Kids who flunk out, drop out. Drop outs hurt retention rates. Poor retention rates hurt the universities USNWR ranking. Ergo kids get passed through.

College should be to train you for a future profession but by graduation you should also be a critical thinker, well-rounded intellectually and be able to speak intelligently on a broad number of subjects.

I'm 100% in agreement.

For most, a college degree is actually useless--other than the need for the credential.

It's funny though that so many attack Wall Street and yet don't give a crap about the massive wealth redistribution to the university complex.

(12-09-2017 12:18 PM)Fo Shizzle Wrote:  

(12-09-2017 10:25 AM)bullet Wrote:  

(12-09-2017 10:17 AM)Fo Shizzle Wrote:  

(12-09-2017 09:52 AM)bullet Wrote:  https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...or/546590/

Author's thesis: the primary benefit of college for the vast majority is simply a credential. Should be required reading for any politician making decisions on education.

It also explains some of the mind-numbingly stupid comments and actions you see from supposedly educated people these days.

"...In 2003, the United States Department of Education gave about 18,000 Americans the National Assessment of Adult Literacy. The ignorance it revealed is mind-numbing. Fewer than a third of college graduates received a composite score of “proficient”—and about a fifth were at the “basic” or “below basic” level. You could blame the difficulty of the questions—until you read them. Plenty of college graduates couldn’t make sense of a table explaining how an employee’s annual health-insurance costs varied with income and family size, or summarize the work-experience requirements in a job ad, or even use a newspaper schedule to find when a television program ended. Tests of college graduates’ knowledge of history, civics, and science have had similarly dismal results...."

I do not disagree generally with the premise of the topic..but..the example highlighted above has less to do with college and more to do with basic education. Those are things that a person generally learned decades ago from their parents or picked up simply by being curious and through self education. The breakdown of the family...poor primary government education and a general lack of curiosity among todays youth would be more to blame for this IMO.

Again...I agree that a large portion of college education is useless gobbledegook. Unless you are going to college to earn a skill based degree..ie..engineering, medicine, technical, math or science it is often a waste of ones capital and a poor decision to incur debt over. We see way too many college graduates come out with liberal arts degrees working at Starbucks. Obviously it does not require a degree to work as a barista.

There is a lot of science, history and math taught, even in high school, that has no relevance outside that class for 99% of the students.

Yes...At some point students need to be tracked into things that excite them not bore them. Learning facts that have no real world application is a waste of teaching time. We all have computers in our hands now and can access information instantly. Knowing the basic skills of mathematics and communication fully and being able to apply them is what is important now. No student should leave HS without a total mastering of the basics. We should spend more time insuring this using methods that work for individuals...not a one size fits all format.

And somewhere along the line teach them how to change the oil, flip a breaker switch, set up a ladder and adjust an adjustable wrench, swing a hammer.

Maybe a few other niceties along the way.

Ancient Roman sculpture for a 1000 might be nice and all, but too many are still clueless diaper wearers.

Learn a skill or vocation, you’ll never go hungry.

We're stuck between a rock and a hard place right now. The university degree isn't needed for the nuts and bolts of a good deal of jobs, but companies use HR software that eliminate non-degree holders before they even get to recruiters.

Our companies are as much to blame as colleges. One of the parties has to budge.

(12-09-2017 12:25 PM)TechRocks Wrote:  

(12-09-2017 10:25 AM)bullet Wrote:  

(12-09-2017 10:17 AM)Fo Shizzle Wrote:  

(12-09-2017 09:52 AM)bullet Wrote:  https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...or/546590/

Author's thesis: the primary benefit of college for the vast majority is simply a credential. Should be required reading for any politician making decisions on education.

It also explains some of the mind-numbingly stupid comments and actions you see from supposedly educated people these days.

"...In 2003, the United States Department of Education gave about 18,000 Americans the National Assessment of Adult Literacy. The ignorance it revealed is mind-numbing. Fewer than a third of college graduates received a composite score of “proficient”—and about a fifth were at the “basic” or “below basic” level. You could blame the difficulty of the questions—until you read them. Plenty of college graduates couldn’t make sense of a table explaining how an employee’s annual health-insurance costs varied with income and family size, or summarize the work-experience requirements in a job ad, or even use a newspaper schedule to find when a television program ended. Tests of college graduates’ knowledge of history, civics, and science have had similarly dismal results...."

I do not disagree generally with the premise of the topic..but..the example highlighted above has less to do with college and more to do with basic education. Those are things that a person generally learned decades ago from their parents or picked up simply by being curious and through self education. The breakdown of the family...poor primary government education and a general lack of curiosity among todays youth would be more to blame for this IMO.

Again...I agree that a large portion of college education is useless gobbledegook. Unless you are going to college to earn a skill based degree..ie..engineering, medicine, technical, math or science it is often a waste of ones capital and a poor decision to incur debt over. We see way too many college graduates come out with liberal arts degrees working at Starbucks. Obviously it does not require a degree to work as a barista.

There is a lot of science, history and math taught, even in high school, that has no relevance outside that class for 99% of the students.

I thought that about math and chemistry.........until I ended up in a job that was all math and chemistry.

I'm pretty sure I've never used calculus since college. I don't think I've used geometry since high school. Now as an accountant, I use Algebra all the time and Statistics frequently, but not those other maths. I doubt my son will ever need to know which Roman consul supported plebians or my daughter will need to know the different types of RNA used in creating proteins (and those are both from high school courses).

My 2 college educated children are well versed and successful in their areas of study but are blissfully ignorant about virtually everything else. It sure would have been cheaper for them to go for 1 year apiece to take those major classes because they were either never taught anything nor learned anything the other 3 years.

Now I will say I didn't personally find much wasted in my college education. My business, economics and programming courses were all beneficial in my double major of accounting and management. My intro to Petroleum Engineering course helped me as I worked with O&G clients (I took it in case I wanted to switch majors from accounting). My chemistry class was for non-majors and dealt with energy issues.

Calculus was about the only class I had no use for. It was pretty easy for me even though I took it in the math department (I can only imagine how easy the business calculus class would have been), but I never used it again. I guess the English wasn't real useful. In my Expository writing class I finally learned how to write. Then when I got out of school I had to unlearn it. In business they want noun-verb-subject, KISS. None of this vary the sentence structure stuff. I guess it helped a little in the classes that had term papers, but its usefulness ended upon leaving school.

(12-09-2017 03:18 PM)mptnstr@44 Wrote:  

(12-09-2017 12:47 PM)CliftonAve Wrote:  

(12-09-2017 12:22 PM)Fo Shizzle Wrote:  

(12-09-2017 10:37 AM)Siborg Wrote:  

(12-09-2017 10:17 AM)Fo Shizzle Wrote:  I do not disagree generally with the premise of the topic..but..the example highlighted above has less to do with college and more to do with basic education. Those are things that a person generally learned decades ago from their parents or picked up simply by being curious and through self education. The breakdown of the family...poor primary government education and a general lack of curiosity among todays youth would be more to blame for this IMO.

Again...I agree that a large portion of college education is useless gobbledegook. Unless you are going to college to earn a skill based degree..ie..engineering, medicine, technical, math or science it is often a waste of ones capital and a poor decision to incur debt over. We see way too many college graduates come out with liberal arts degrees working at Starbucks. Obviously it does not require a degree to work as a barista.

This is also my impression. Years ago I thought this same thing but still considered college good for expanding a young person's awareness of other opinions and cultures. So there was still some value in that at least. Now, I think the opposite is happening. There seems to be an effort to limit diversity of speech and thought to a certain approved path.

Life is messy and you have to be able to deal with that w/o pissing yourself.

I can't count the number of times Ive asked a recent HS graduates what were they planning on studying in college and getting the response..."I don't know." I always tell them "Maybe you should consider going to a community college first until you figure it out. Im sure your parents will appreciate you not wasting their money."

My oldest is a senior in HS right now and he will be going to a branch college of Cincinnati next year and living at home. For half the price he can knock out a bunch of his prerequisites. He can transfer in after two years once he figures out what he is doing.

Those statistics are sad and telling...
The college grads who were just proficient or below proficient are examples of kids who were likely passed through college just to collect their tuition. Grades are inflated by legit universities and diploma mills to keep retention rates up and tuition money rolling in. Kids who flunk out, drop out. Drop outs hurt retention rates. Poor retention rates hurt the universities USNWR ranking. Ergo kids get passed through.

College should be to train you for a future profession but by graduation you should also be a critical thinker, well-rounded intellectually and be able to speak intelligently on a broad number of subjects.

The problem with lots of colleges now is they are infested with ultra Liberal Profs that care zero about critical thinking.

Somewhere along the line we decided that in order to be successful you need a 4 year degree. As with anything that you artificially inflate...you cause a bubble. We have a bubble now in higher education that has lowered the standards to meet the least common denominator. The net result is the devaluing of everyones degree. The scarcity of college degrees is what made them important in the past. Not any more. To come out of college now and be successful you must obtain a degree that still is scarce to come by and in demand. Liberal arts degrees are no longer as valuable.

I think there's some real value in the liberal arts, but the problem is that you can do insufficient work to really get anything out of it and still make a 3.0.

The real problem is that we have people who should probably be welders and plumbers going into four-year colleges

College isn't for everyone. Never has been never will be.

College is what you make of it. I learned a lot in college because I challenged myself to take the toughest classes and the toughest professors. I struggled in a lot of classes because many of them went against the things that I was brought up to believe. That made me a much better person because I saw things from a different perspective.


College isn't for everyone because there are people in this world that do not want to challenge their beliefs. They don't want to be told that they way they grew up isn't the only way to live life.

College is also about getting the credential. Many jobs require college not because of what you learned but because of what you did to accomplish that credential.

Having a college degree means you know how to meet deadlines, follow through on your goals, invest in your future etc. etc.

You don't know those things from someone without a degree from just an interview.