36% of Americans have confidence in higher education

I'm not sure what your solution is, then. You can't unring the bell. We have to make a decision to support higher education or continue down this destructive path.

 

support the people seeking higher education by cutting the insane wastefulness. I’ve been in HE since 1990. It’s a cost problem, not a support problem.

 

LOL ... looking at the ratings on your post it's easy to tell who has the $80K liberal arts degree and works as a Starbuck's barista.

 

OP lost me when they talked about antisemitism on campus

 

I'm not sure if it's still the case but when I was at UF you could get a BA in Economics or a BS in economics. I always thought that was fairly strange. I opted for science.

 

Higher education is overvalued in America, but that doesn't mean it has no value.

Wasteful administrative expenses and political BS have made higher education worse. Higher education shouldn't be streamlined to attract and retain anyone and everyone.

Work experience, and frankly failure, especially during youth, is heavily undervalued in America.

 

Who is to say you cannot continue intellectual growth outside of a college or university? In fact, most of my projects and homework required independent research and analysis. In other words, I could have learned a lot of it on my own without paying a cent or going through the rigors of spending sometimes hours in traffic to get to class, high tuition costs (can't complain too much as they are much higher now) and I mustn't leave out the professors who had the godlike complex and if they didn't like you, they didn't like you.

I've seen and heard from too many successful people that college was a waste of time and money. I can attest to the same. When I was in college, it wasn't uncommon to hear "this is useless, but you have to do it to get a call back on your job application." There were always fear tactics like "nobody will ever hire you to a decent job without a 4-year degree at least." I never heard much at all from my peers about "this college experience is opening my mind like nothing I could have ever imagined. Gee, I couldn't imagine my life without all these classes that have nothing to do with my major."

A student gets a C in English literature, has nothing to do with their major. They were just taking the course because they had to in order to get the degree. It tanks their GPA. All the sudden, they are a little less valuable on the job market because of a class that had zero to do with their major. As enough time has passed, I have to call it what it is. It's a racket. The enormous tuition costs. The pressure from guidance counselors. The propaganda that you have to do this or your life will suck and you'll hate yourself for it if you don't. Has all the markings of a scam.

That said, there are no doubt some amazing professors out there who put their life, heart and soul into their teaching and to their students. They are not in it to get rich. Many of them are doing it out of a sense of giving. But the system overall is a racket at this point. Hence the polling data referenced in the OP.

 

I doubt there are many Harvard grads working as Baristas, regardless of major. Pretty crazy people think that’s somehow the norm.

Let’s be serious. The problem isn’t “liberal arts degrees”, the problem is shitty schools. There are schools out there that have a high preponderance of graduates defaulting on loans, that is an accountability issue. The solution to that is actually quite simple. Have those bottom tier schools and for- profit/unaccredited schools no longer eligible for federal aid of any kind. Most likely they won’t stay in business for long, unless they improve performance at graduates getting in positions to start paying on loans. The good “liberal arts” schools not only have the vast majority of graduates get jobs, but then have plenty of income to give back to their massive endowment funds. It’s those tier 3 and tier 4 schools that are the issue (and I think for-profit education is even beneath them, mostly in the realm of scams).

I’d say an equally concerning issue is “shitty schools” churning out unqualified graduates even if they don’t result in “defaulted loans”. Example: there is a nursing shortage right now, this has resulted in many middle/small market hospitals and clinics effectively not being able to hire top quality nurses,
instead having to deal with a hiring pool of nurses from diploma mill type schools. So the nurse gets a job, and isn’t defaulting on their loans. Which means the school might even pass my financial/default criteria above. But this pool of nurses is so poor they aren’t fulfilling the nursing role adequately. I don’t think this is a great arrangement either, even if these “nurses” are technically filling jobs. They aren’t defaulting on loans, instead they are harming patients through incompetence and lack of a “real” nursing education at a more rigerous school.

 

It's a must in my opinion.

 

I agree - it's not higher education many of us decry - it's higher indoctrination. A friend of mine (polar opposite of me on who to vote for w/ President) says TikTok targets the teens and floods them with anti-Israel propaganda. Obviously, social media and universities are separate; but, I have seen little critical thinking from the testimonies of the Presidents of various Ivy League schools. Case in point:

People cannot define a woman. But, they know a man can become a woman. WTH? "If you don't stand for something you'll fall for anything" - Zig Ziglar
Many of these universities stand for themselves and to continue to enrich and insulate themselves while pontificating on how the peons are wrong, so wrong. Sometimes, it's helpful to consider the source.

 

There is also the culture war aspect of Joe Six Pack swinging a hammer for a living not wanting to be told how to live by " ivory tower elitists". That goes back decades.

 

Poster is angry that the administrators of educational institutions aren't weighing in more heavily on the culture wars?

 

I'm not as familiar with BS degrees, but my guess is that the BA is lighter in econ, with more gen ed requirements, or perhaps with a minor. The BA in music is "music light," whereas the Bachelor of Music degrees are a bit more intensive.

 

Then why didn't you just become an independent researcher, since you obviously already had that all figured out. Or you could be the world's most independently thinking roofer. The godlike complex label you slapped on profs was your perception during an intellectually stimulating and challenging time in your life.

 

My son will make more when he graduates with an A & P license (airframe and powerplant to build or repair planes) after 18 months of trade school than we pay starting engineers. A good engineer may pass him in lifetime earnings at some point, depending on what he does with his career. He will make nearly 3x what my daughter that graduated with a Masters with a degree in social services will make and about the same as daughter 2 that will have her PT license with a masters. Supply and demand at work. Just had a junior engineer ready to sit for licensure quit to go build a remodeling business with his brother as he can make more doing that.

 

So now we know why higher education is evil. The next-level indoctrination levied upon young unsuspecting minds is responsible for a) anti-Israeli thought b) poor Presidential testimonies c) transgenderism d) anti-peonism. Thanks for making it all clear.

 

higher ed trails only pharma in lobbying dolalrs

higher ed leads all industries, including health care, in inflation over the last 20 - 30 years

higher ed employs so many people and drives so much of the economy that politicians will not touch it. Obama was last to try and put in some sort of reporting requirements and that got shot down by both parties during his honeymoon. we are funding our economy on the backs of future earnings from college graduates. I would say a large % of schools that now qualify for federal financial aid should not based on completion/employment in field rates and that would trim out all the non-performers

 

I thought PTs now require a doctorate.

 

how about we set some performance parameters around which "colleges" qualify for federally backed assistance/loans and give the consumer some informed choices about the school's performance?

 

I just looked and now UF only offers a BA in economics and not a BS. Seems like kind of a peculiar choice to run it through the liberal arts school and not the business school but I'm sure they have the reasons.