United Liberty

Tell me about it :P

I agree with some of your sentiment, but have a few different life experiences. I am definitely one of the typical WASP kids raised on the assumption of college being a necessity, a fact of life. I went to a great engineering school and learned a lot, granted all of the book knowledge could have been gained without the aid of the professors, and even most of the labs and experiments could have been done at home, with parts bought on ebay and other large electronics websites. There is, however, some kind of intangible trait gained by college attendees. Its definitely not a given, but many of the people who I have interacted with post-college who did not attend college can do their jobs just fine, but lack some of the big-picture thinking, or teamwork skills that I find are more common in those with degrees. People who go to school have the experience of debating, discussing, disagreeing, failing, succeeding, and many other things all wrapped up in a nice $40,000 package. It’s overpriced for sure, but its worth something.

So I guess we actually agree :) Having to go outside of your comfort zone, or read a few books you wouldn’t have otherwise, or live away from home; these are all valuable experiences. They could be more focused, and they could be more economical, and I guess that is what you are ultimately concluding.

After all, would I have really read the works of Homer and other great Greek and Roman poets without being forced to? Probably not, and that would be a sad loss of historical and mythological perspective :)

Having gone to an Ivy League school, I wanted to test your idea and did some paper-napkin calculations…I weighed the cost of my education at the current interest rate I’m paying my loans back against my salary (which is considered average for a recent graduate at my school) at my current rate (factoring in 0 raises or bonuses for the next ten years - some of you may consider this to be optimistic at best to assume that the salary will remain constant, I consider it conservative to assume my salary will not grow at all as my skill-set widens), and I weighted this against the average salary of someone with 0 college experience and an additional 4 years in the workforce…I win. :-). That being said, anolomies like Bill Gates are out there, but for every adult without a college degree who starts a company like Microsoft — there are hundreds who mow my lawn, make my sandwhiches, and scrub my toilet.

On some level I agree that the certificate doesn’t necessarily mean anything…but I can see why it’s so important. You “could” learn the stuff on your own, but your employer will have a basic idea of what you’ve learned by that certificate. On top of that for Bachelor’s programs oftentimes you take a lot of classes unrelated to your major which could signify a more well-rounded person.

This doesn’t guarantee these things will happen, but in my experience as an employer my employees have always been much better if they had a college degree. The people without it are oftentimes laughable (I work in video production).

“We live in an age of unrestrained information. Anyone can learn anything, about anything, within seconds.”
While you can, most people don’t.
unrestrained access to information on health, most people prefer eating McDonald’s and driving; unrestrained access to news, most people prefer watching American Idols; unrestrained access to free education online: most people prefer spending their internet time on Myspace or Facebook, etc…
Most people don’t have the will unless there are sticks and carrots or competition. Paying for college, with compulsory attendance, homeworks (sticks), and grades (carrots and competition). Very few people are self-motivated.
We live in an era of intellectual laziness: obesity, lack of intellectual curiosity, overleverage, etc are all proofs of that. We live in an era of generalized “Dont Ask Don’t Tell” about food, money, education, etc, like ostriches with our heads in the sand.

I think the article title is a little misleading—education is absolutely essential, but college institutions are becoming obsolete, at least for academic learning.

College can be very personally rewarding though—I studied music theory and performance, and being around world-class educators is something you can’t get from a book or online.

That being said, learning my current trade skills had nothing to do with college, just with having a computer and internet. I always thought college was a scam… but that’s coming from a person that loves to learn “solo.” Knowledge alone doesn’t replace a degree though: it needs to be demonstrable. Applied knowledge trumps the best of degrees in my opinion!

This is an interesting topic. I would definitely put myself in the group of people who loved the college experience and find it invaluable. At most institutions, class attendance is not required to pass. As long as one does the research and shows that they know the material through testing they receive credit, and as a previous commenter put it, this certificate of having mastered the material (by whatever means) is an efficient way for employers to choose workers without having to pick their brains. Universities are also a great tool for immersing people into their particular work environment and creating the networks that they will need as a professional. There are a lot of industries that don’t readily accept unsolicited applications.

Because of my appreciation of the university model I have a lot of criticism of the K-12 education system. I am a public high school teacher and I can tell you first hand that the compulsory, one-size-fits all model hurts a lot of kids. I could expound here on the different ways that freedom could help our education system but nobody does it better than Matt Hern, a leader of the De-Schooling movement. The option he offers, and I think a free, non-compulsory society would offer, is an a la carte system of education on demand. People do not all have the same educational or cognitive needs, a fact that centralized schooling has never been successful to overcome. The main argument for compulsory schooling has been that people will not go to school unless they are forced to, and Hern counters that people have a natural desire to learn things. I completely agree, and I would further point out that most people do not have a natural desire to be involuntarily packed into a quiet room with 30 other people for 8 hours a day.

NPR did a show featuring Hern recently and it’s very eye-opening. There is also a segment on the episode with a person named Jonathan Mooney who discusses how decentralized communities are the best environments for people with mental disabilities, another fact I can attest to after having worked with special needs students who are quite often, in the public school system, expected to meet the same requirements as every other student. Here’s a link to the episode…

http://www.wpr.org/BOOK/080309a.html

The objective of college should not be to teach you specific facts, but how to think critically.

College education was so expensive especially if you are enrolled in very exclusive school. Most parents are having a difficulty on how to sustain the educational expenses. When financial emergency is needed in order to fix the account payable in schools the last resort was to avail personal loans. These are loans made for a non-specific purpose, such as for a business or for a sudden expense or to pay off other debts to get lower interest rates. Personal loans are often popular because of their convenience and speed, depending on the lender. Small amount and short term personal loans, or payday loans are an effective tool against a sudden and small expense. If you have something that you need financing for, payday loans or personal loans may be the thing for you.

Just read this and thought I’d add a note.

I agree with the article that college is a scam, and my experiences in school were probably similar to the authors. I was an *atrocious* student in high school… my cumulative GPA was about 1.9, and I was the only member of the chess team (probably any chess team, anywhere) that was academically ineligible to compete. I got a 1360 on my SAT, then went to community college and gave up after a year because I was fed up of it all. I’m now in my 30’s and make 60k a year in IT. For someone without a piece of paper, I do pretty well.

America supposedly has one of the finest and certainly well-funded collegiate systems in the world… yet we have to import many of our doctors, scientists, and IT people from Asia. If our collegiate system is on the right track, then why would we need to do that?

Our bloated college system also indirectly hurts us in a lot of other ways. For example, people also complain about the price of medical care. If doctors in America weren’t starting out with $100,000 student debt, wouldn’t that help lower costs to patients?

I think people who defend the collegiate system forget 2 important things:

1. Grads make more money not because they’re necessarily more qualified, but because companies are often conditioned to believe that anyone without a degree should be sweeping the parking lot. In fact, I believe a company could do better by hiring ‘uneducated’ people with some aptitude, paying them less (it works out because such people aren’t paying off exorbitant student loans), and training them from within. I don’t know why this isn’t done more often.

2. The pool of people who attend college tend to be on the upper scale of intelligence and motivation BEFORE they get to college. Given that, can it be fairly said that college improves such people into something that they couldn’t have become on their own?

Some occupations obviously require higher education… doctors, rocket scientists, and so on. But the idea that any job that doesn’t involve pushing a broom requires a 4 year, $60,000 degree has completely run amok in our society. I think this idea is doing much more harm to us than we believe.

lol… my comment is longer than the article, and likely no-one will read it anyway. But I had to say something. :)