7 Years of College Down the Drain?
In his new book, Charles Murray doesn’t just break down the “any child can do anything,” “soft bigotry of low expectations” illusions of modern education, but he makes a cogent argument for why few people should go to college--not simply because only a small percentage of high school grads can handle the intellectual rigor, but because college is generally a raw deal for most people in terms of debt and wasted time.
I go into more detail about all this at the aWEARness blog.
Fifty years ago, it was perfectly normal for highly successful people to lack a BA (Harry Truman didn’t have one), but now everyone’s pushed to go to college. But what is this vaunted BA anyhow?
It’s true that without one, it’s nigh impossible to get a high-paying job, or even get in the door for a job interview. But then, does this mean that most employers think it necessary that all workers have spent four years of their lives in some Arcadian locale, played a little beer pong, and taken a course on the construction of gender in Milton? Of course not. The BA serves as a kind certification that one was bright enough to “get in” and diligent enough not to flunk out. Not bad. But then for most people, is this college experience really more valuable than working for a couple of years as a manager at a small grocery or doing an apprenticeship with a master electrician? Probably not.
Murray’s plan is to put greater emphasis on skill-certification exams and apprenticeships, which seems to me the makings of system that’s much better suited to average Americans--and much more practical than forcing everyone to attend a bunch of ‘organic chem’ lectures while on a hangover.
In the past year, we’ve seen how the notion that everyone should own a home (and that the government should subsidize the whole project) has had rather bad unintended consequences and created a lot of pain for middle-class families. Political programs in which more and more Americans are pushed into taking on loans and wasting time would seem to have implications than are no less harmful.
Comments
I actually hope my son doesn’t want to go to college. In fact I intend to encourage him to follow some other more profitable pursuit. The notion that everyone needs a college education is intended to herd the masses into what have become liberal indoctrination camps. Individuals come out with a warped sense of reality that leads in its most virulent forms to participation in the Democratic Convention. This sickness is so pervasive that it has even infected the Republican Party who are contending in nuttiness with the Dems who were almost untouchable in this area.
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As a National Merit Scholar and product of the University of Chicago and UT Austin, one of the legitimately academically gifted, best and brightest (please, make me laugh), let me tell all of you something: COLLEGE IS STILL A BIG WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY, EVEN FOR THE “GIFTED”, AND EVIL TO BOOT.
Seriously, what did I go to college for? I Already knew how to drink, f&ck;, and eat salad with my fingers before I went to college. The best skill I learned in college was how to draw well, and that only came about on a bet: some one asked me if there was any course I couldn’t get an ‘A’ in if I had done the prerequisites and I said “well, Ballet, obviously”. So as a bet, I ended up taking an Art class. (It was actually both fun and useful, whouda thunk.) My Economics Major \ Math Minor was useless, and any one who tells you that Math skills will get you a job is either a damned liar or a complete moron. Whatever college is about, it isn’t learning.
The whole point of having a BA is not just that is a key indicator for a bland, homogenous white collar orthodoxy, but that it is a key indicator for an orthodoxy of pure moral filthiness. The belief system of the American University System is the same at every school, founded on virulent Anti-Christian belief, and saturated with drugs, drunkenness, gross promiscuities, sodomy, the ensrinement of Academic cheating as an Art Form, and always leavened with the (un)holier than thou belief that somehow collegians are better than other people. The system isn’t just wrong, it is actively evil, and anybody who ever spent 5 minutes an an American College Campus knows this.
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There are two aspects of higher education. One is preparation for white-collar employment which requires specialized knowledge beyond that provided by high school. The other is enlightenment in the sense of learning to think outside one’s box and becoming a better person. Modern American institutions of higher learning aren’t much good at the latter, and most of us could take a course or two at a business or trade school in lieu of the former. What we’ve got is a sort of pseudo-elite certification system for the masses, and it really is a joke.
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When you burn your diploma I would take you seriously. To me college has too much filler material. I just want to go study what my major is about and that’s it.
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I didn’t attend college. Instead, I spent a decade living in Prague (while still communist), Paris, Riyadh and Muscat. I can say, honestly, no college “experience,” academic or recreational, can top what my experiences brought me.
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I can’t wait until the Ph.d degree is the barrier to entry for secretarial jobs.
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It is interesting that in purported free and open society that we have created such levels of economic exclusivity as provided by degrees that a free man or woman must buy his or her office or remain a peasant for they can have no natural intelligence or value apart from that given to them by institutions and valued by industry.
Socrates is an alumni of what university or college?
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True story. A friend and I went to a Chili’s restaurant and I remember being impressed by all the well-spoken waiters and waitresses in their mid to late 20’s. My friend pointed out that they were probably liberal arts grads.
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