Tag Archives: college

Get an Education, by Jeff Thomas

There’s a huge difference between being schooled and being educated. From Jeff Thomas at internationalman.com:

Get an Education

Back in the ’60s, an interviewer asked the “King of Folk Music”, Bob Dylan, what his goal in life was. Bob answered something to the effect of:

“I want to make enough money to go to college, so one day I can be somebody.”

Bob had a good sense of irony. And certainly, he was always more inclined to think outside the box than to follow the well-trodden path. That was part of what made him so interesting and part of what made him so successful. A similar sentiment was expressed in a song by his peer, Paul Simon:

“When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it’s a wonder I can think at all.”

In those days, just like today, the customary idea of success was that you attended university for a number of years, you received a degree, and then you would be given a job where you could wear a necktie and receive a salary that had an extra zero behind it.

Then, as now, that’s quite true for anyone who seeks a career in engineering, medicine, law, etc., but less so for virtually everyone else. Those who pursue a degree in gender studies or 18th-century French literature are likely to find that, after they graduate, they’ve learned little or nothing that translates into potential income.

Of course, universities value such courses highly and professors love to teach them. After all, they never really left school themselves. They went straight from being students to being teachers and never had to learn to be productive in the larger world. As such, they are the very worst advisors to students wondering what courses to take in order to one day seek employment.

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The Higher Education Bubble Has Popped, by Rikki Schlott

Covid-19 and remote learning at high-priced colleges may have been the last straw. Many prospective students and their parents are asking if they are going to get anything out of higher education remotely approaching its cost. From Rikki Schlott at The Epoch Times via zerohedge.com:

The higher education bubble has been rapidly inflating, threatening to pop at any moment. Over the past several decades, our culture has tipped the scales from praising and valuing education to downright socially mandating it. As a result, enrollment has skyrocketed to levels never before seen.

While broadening access to higher education is, of course, an ideal to strive for, we’re doing a cultural disservice to young generations by stigmatizing alternative options such as trade school. Increasingly, students feel as though they must get a degree to get a halfway decent job—or even just for the sake of social acceptance.

As a result, more and more students are phoning it in with degrees in increasingly bizarre and niche fields. These curricula equip them with a handle on abstract theory rather than tangible professional skills. After all, how many scholars of gender studies are actually sustaining themselves outside of the higher-ed bubble?

The status quo, which posits that a college degree is a de facto necessity, has enabled the higher education bubble to inflate … and inflate … and inflate even more.

In the past 20 years, tuition at private universities has jumped by 144 percent, out-of-state public tuition by 165 percent, and in-state public costs by 212 percent.

That is until the COVID-19 pandemic took the world by surprise—and especially blindsided the higher education establishment.

Suddenly, students were forced to attend Zoom University from home, and many schools were so out of touch that they charged their pupils full tuition for remote learning.

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The Pros And Cons Of Going Into Crippling Debt To Acquire A Useless Degree

From The Babylon Bee (sponsored by Praxis):

College is more expensive than ever! Many young people are going into debt that will crush them for the rest of their lives to attend college– all for a degree that ends up being totally useless! But is it worth it? You betcha!

We want you to be as informed as possible before you decide to go to college. Here are some pros and cons:


Pro: You’ll learn to master genderqueer feminist intersectionality! Yay!

Con: Genderqueer feminist intersectionality isn’t as useful as burger flipping.


Pro: Grandma cares about your degree.

Con: No one else does.


Pro: You won’t have to work with your hands when you graduate.

Con: You most likely won’t find any work when you graduate.


Pro: Bernie promised debt forgiveness.

Con: He lost the election.


Pro: Your diploma will look great in a frame.

Con: It will hang on the wall of your room in your parent’s basement.


Pro: Getting out from under your parents’ roof

Con: Dave, your 500-pound roommate who wants the top bunk


Pro: College Football games

Con: Sitting in the nosebleed section, behind all the people with money and jobs


Pro: Meet exciting new people!

Con: They all have chlamydia.


Pro: The satisfaction of knowing you helped fund the education of the next generation

Con: Realizing all your money went to a new trampoline park for next year’s incoming class


Pro: You get to learn PowerPoint!

Con: You now have to use PowerPoint.


Pro: You’re learning from the world’s best

Con: Pretty much everything you learn is readily available online and free

Successful Without College, by John Stossel

There are at least three ways you can lose should you go to college. You can learn the basics of a low earning occupation that will never allow you to repay your student loans. You can fill your mind up with idiotic propaganda and collectivist rot. And should you do so, you will college dumber than when you went in. From John Stossel at theburningplatform.com:

Successful Without College

Americans took out $1.7 trillion in government loans for college tuition.

Now, some don’t want to pay it back.

President Joe Biden says they shouldn’t have to. He wants to cancel at least $10,000 and maybe $50,000 of every student’s debt.

“They’re in real trouble,” says Biden in my latest video, “having to make choices between paying their student loan and paying the rent.”

Poor students!

But wait: Shouldn’t they have given some thought to debt payments when they signed up for overpriced colleges? When they majored in subjects like photography or women’s studies, unlikely to lead to good jobs? When they took six years to graduate (a third don’t graduate even after six years).

Shouldn’t politicians also acknowledge that it’s taxpayer loans that let bloated colleges keep increasing tuition at twice the rate of inflation?

Yes.

But they don’t.

“Dirty Jobs” host Mike Rowe points out that students’ demand for loan forgiveness is “kind of self-involved.”

“I know guys who worked hard to get a construction operation running. Some had to take out a loan on a big old diesel truck. Why would we forgive the cost of a degree but not the cost of a lease payment?”

It’s a good question.

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What America Has Done To its Young People is Appalling, by James Ostrowski

Perhaps some of the problems young people face are caused by dysfunctional family situations and our failing education system. From James Ostrowski at lewrockwell.com:

Critics are perhaps too quick to judge America’s young people, citing declining SAT scores, obesity, drug overdoses, addiction to smart phones, bizarre alterations of personal appearance and high rates of (alleged) mental illness.  It’s just too easy to be annoyed at how some of the cashiers at the local grocery store seem unable to carry on a conversation or have chosen to mutilate their faces with pieces of metal.  We are perhaps too quick to condemn the crazed behavior of young protesters in recent years without fully considering what our government, society and culture have done to these poor souls.

Let’s begin at the beginning.  Forty percent of Americans are now born out of wedlock.  Single parent families are associated with a long list of social maladies:

“Children who grow up with only one of their biological parents (nearly always the mother) are disadvantaged across a broad array of outcomes. . . . they are twice as likely to drop out of high school, 2.5 times as likely to become teen mothers, and 1.4 times as likely to be idle — out of school and out of work — as children who grow up with both parents. Children in one-parent families also have lower grade point averages, lower college aspirations, and poorer attendance records. As adults, they have higher rates of divorce. These patterns persist even after adjusting for differences in race, parents’ education, number of siblings, and residential location.” Sara McLanahan, “The Consequences of Single Motherhood,” American Prospect (Summer 1994).

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The Many Ways Governments Create Monopolies, by Mike Holly

Almost all effective monopolies are created, blessed, and sustained by governments. From Mike Holly at mises.org:

Politicians tend to favor authoritarianism over capitalism and monopoly over competition. They have directly created monopolies (and oligopolies) in all major industrial sectors by imposing policies favoring preferred corporations and preferred special interests.

In 2017, University economists Jan De Loecker and Jan Eeckhout found monopolies behind nearly every economic problem. They have slowed economic growth and caused recessions, financial crises and depressions. These monopolies restrict the supply of goods and services so they can inflate prices and profits while also reducing quality. In addition, monopolies have decreased wages for non-monopolists by decreasing the competition for workers. This has led to wealth disparity, underemployment, unemployment and poverty

Monopolies have also led to many societal problems. Unlike truly competitive firms, institutions that enjoy monopoly power have more freedom to discriminate against outsiders, especially women and minorities. They block innovation, the key to long-term prosperity. Monopolies have led to imperialism and wars .

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11 Rage-Inducing Facts About America’s Wildly Out Of Control Student Loan Debt Bubble, by Michael Snyder

Michael Snyder exposes the student loan/higher education scam. From Snyder at theconomiccollapseblog.com:

Higher education has become one of the biggest money-making scams in America.  We tell all of our young people that if they want to have a bright future, they must go to college.  This message is relentlessly pounded into their heads for their first 18 years, and so by the time high school graduation rolls around for many of them it would be unthinkable to do anything else.  And instead of doing a cost/benefit analysis on various schools, we tell our young people to go to the best college that they can possibly get into and to not worry about what it will cost.  We assure them that a great job will be there after they graduate and that great job will allow them to easily pay off any student loans that they have accumulated.  Of course most college graduates don’t end up getting great jobs, but many of them do end up being financially crippled for decades by student loan debt.

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The Biggest Fools on the Planet—–Reflections On A University Graduation Day, by Bill Bonner

First-rate cynicism from Bill Bonner on a subject that begs for far more cynicism, satire, and scorn than it gets. From Bonner via davidstockmanscontracorner.com:

Gassy Hacks and Big Quacks

Today, we recall the “commencement” at the end of four years at the University of Vermont. The university itself is imposing and a little intimidating. The rest of the world works in warehouses or common office spaces. Academia labors in hallowed “halls” and prestigious “centers.”

People in the Main Street world work for profits… and are subject to market economics. The professoriate is above it all; no profit and loss statements… no profit motives or incentive bonuses… and (for those with “tenure”) no chance of getting fired, no matter how incompetent, irrelevant, or wrong they are. The private sector depends on output and results; academia harbors gassy hacks who may never produce much of anything at all.

The ceremony on Sunday opened with the procession of the university luminati, led by bagpipers of the St. Andrews Society. Ordinary people – even presidents of the United States of America – wear common coats and ties; the academic elite are gussied up with all manner of robes, funny hats, cowls, tassels, honors… and a line of capital letters following their names like baby ducks behind a waddling quack.

“All that brainpower… working on our Justin… it must have done him some good,” parents say to themselves. Then, they have their doubts. Justin seems to think that “diversity” is what really matters, that Bernie Sanders has the right idea, and that eating gluten is a sin.

Privately, they wonder if they haven’t just been the biggest fools on the planet, spending more than $100,000 to put their boy through four years of brainwashing, with no visible improvement in his critical thinking. But this is no time to say anything. It’s too late. So, they take their seats, along with thousands of others. At least, those were the dark thoughts gathering in our mind as we sat in a plastic chair on the green, waiting for the festivities to begin.

 

Criticism and Cynicism

Mr. E. Thomas Sullivan, university president, must have seen the clouds over our head.

“Criticism and cynicism will not lead to a constructive solution,” he said, looking right at us. But criticism and cynicism are just what the University of Vermont most lacks. Without them, the Yankees allow themselves to believe any self-congratulatory bunkum that comes along.

They say on Wall Street: When everyone is thinking the same thing, no one is really thinking. That’s the problem with the institution of higher learning on the banks of Lake Champlain. If anyone is doing any thinking there, they didn’t let him say anything on Sunday.

To continue reading: The Biggest Fools on the Planet—–Reflections On A University Graduation Day

Failure To Get Into Private College To Be Most Financially Responsible Act Of 17-Year-Old’s Life

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO—Saying the turn of events will greatly benefit the 17-year-old’s economic security, sources confirmed Friday that local high school senior Emily Harrison’s failure to get into the University of Southern California, a private academic institution, will be the single most financially responsible act of her entire life. According to reports, Harrison’s rejected application, which she spent weeks preparing in hopes of spending four years at her “dream school,” will save the young student a total of nearly $370,000, including $205,768 in tuition, $3,714 in fees, $57,392 in room and board, and $101,670 in student loan interest payments. The rejection, which led a visibly devastated Harrison to agonize over whether she should have participated in more extracurricular activities or obtained additional letters of recommendation, will reportedly allow her to avoid a period of 10 years or more in which she would have struggled to repay her loans, inevitably racking up credit card debt to cover basic necessities and ultimately leaving her unable to buy a home. Sources said the teen will still face financial disaster if she follows through on her long-term plan to enter a PhD program, which would require her to spend approximately one-fifth of her adult life bringing in little to no income.

Via The Onion via The Burning Platform

http://www.theburningplatform.com/2016/04/01/failure-to-get-into-private-college-to-be-most-financially-responsible-act-of-17-year-olds-life/

He Said That? 7/1/15

From noted education critic Fats Domino:

A lot of fellows nowadays have a B.A., M.A., or Ph.D. Unfortunately, they don’t have a J.O.B.