On the value of college

You completely missed the point…

 

I thought I recalled him saying he advised the Clinton administration at some point but maybe that was short or informal or I misremembered since I can’t confirm that with a search. He was definitely on the Governor's Council of Economic Advisers for the State of Florida in the late 80’s.

 

I’m not through this whole thread but at this point you seem not to understand median vs average.

 

I haven’t seen that but maybe I read too fast. Are you saying defending the value of college is elitism or that their are posters calling other posters dumb?

 

@AzCatFan @oragator1 @wgbgator
History major here too! History matters.

The History department’s most recent newsletter:

“I’ve just come across an old newsletter issued by the Department of History in 2005 called “History Matters.” Like a medieval parchment, it describes a world that no longer exists. At the time of the newsletter’s publication, the department had nearly 1,000 history majors and 135 graduate students. In 2022, those numbers have fallen to about 325 majors and 45 grad students.

We aren’t alone — nearly every history department in the country can tell a similar story of declining enrollment. The reasons are an open book: The recession of 2008, continuing economic uncertainty compounded by the pandemic and the increasing cost of a college education, have all combined to create the impression that humanities degrees are somehow less employable. To many students and their families, STEM disciplines offer a safer bet for post-graduate career success.

Naturally, we take a different view. Employers value the skills we teach — critical reading, research, use of evidence, analysis and writing are applicable in a wide array of sectors. A history graduate, armed with the experience of crafting a 20-page research seminar paper or a 35-page honors thesis, can take on any number of careers in law, journalism, business, government, academics, and, yes, even the sciences. Our students gain historical literacy, a sense of how history has shaped the world they’ll inherit. As any headline can tell us, that’s an urgently-needed skill. To be a history major is not to retreat to the past but to embrace the present. History may not repeat itself, but knowledge of our past can help us understand today’s challenges and prepare us for tomorrow. It’s a study of human nature itself.”

Chair’s Letter

History Newsletter Fall 2022

 

Man... that just reeks of insecurity.

 

There are of course exceptions to it. I'd have to go looking up the stats, but it's fairly well understood that some degrees are much more difficult to get jobs in without heavy post-grad work than others.

 

I'm not characterizing the argument as a personal thing. It's not meant to be a judgment. Apologies if it came across that way.

I simply disagree with the notion that there's any sort of concentrated effort whether intended of not. It's the argument I disagree with, it's not an indictment of you presenting the argument.

 

Definitely serious. You have to really try if you want to connect present-day politics with things that happened decades/centuries before. I did have a professor who was English that gave us updates on West Ham United, his soccer team.

 

Is it not fruitful to evaluate how and why a large demographic draws the wrong conclusion given a well-established fact set?

 

It’s an interesting theory. You don’t need the “tinfoil hat” if you assume it’s a subconscious thing rather than a “conspiracy” to suppress people from going to college.

I do think he’s onto something in particular, I guarantee you if you polled a group of republicans with school aged kids, if they wanted/expected their own kids to go to college - the resulting number would be a heck of a lot higher than 37%. Even if the proverbial “family business” is a trade you’d think that they’d want their kid to get a business degree or learn some more advanced knowledge to bring into the business (otherwise they are not necessarily going to be prepared to innovate or move the business forward, businesses don’t always work out if you just hand over the keys to little Johnny hoping he’ll just “do what daddy always did”).

I’m sure there are some that truly are “anti college” and that’s a bit sad. Take that truck driver in the original article. He says “books don’t do anything for me”, that actually sounds more like he’s anti-knowledge than just anti-college. It’s true you don’t need much education to be a truck driver, you can practically be illiterate. Doesn’t matter you’ll get paid the same either way. How about just being an informed citizen? How about hoping your kids can be leaders? Can’t do that if you are borderline illiterate, and I’d opine these are overwhelmingly the people falling victim to Facebook misinformation and fake newz. College doesn’t impart common sense on people, and there are no doubt plenty of college educated fools, but *on average* at minimum it increases literacy and critical thinking skills for those who put in the work and graduate. It’s fair to say college isn’t what it might have been 50 years ago, but if anything that’s because there is more emphasis on advanced degrees for those who want to be “experts” in a field, whereas in some contexts a bachelors degree is now seen as what a “high school” degree used to be… i.e entry level only.

 

nothing is preventing you from doing all of the above. If your cause is just and you can document results you would have money dumped into your enterprise /non profit. You could hand out scholarships. Help whomever you want wherever you’d want. Why do you feel the need to force participation to make it work ? You could even treat it like a business( gasp). Start small. Make mistakes. Refine it and then scale it out.

 

I just don't buy it as a viable theory (subconscious or otherwise). These days, people have the tendency to assume something sinister when politics are involved when the simpler explanation is much more viable. It's a big part of the reason the country is so polarized. A complete lack of trust or respect for anyone that claims to play for the other "team".

I don't disagree with you that there is a LOT of fake news garbage out there muddying the waters. I've repeatedly opined over how social media is an unfiltered sewer. I firmly believe that a higher education (if you have the ability to go into college, you absolutely should for many reasons already documented in this thread and by more mainstream reputable sources) is of paramount importance in today's society.

As far as your statement regarding polled Republicans w/school aged kids, there are plenty of variables here. For example, where was the sampled population taken from? It's fairly well established that the cities tend to poll blue while more rural areas tend to lean red with suburban areas in purple. 37% isn't out of the realm of reasonability as a stat if the sample was taken in rural Kansas or Nebraska as opposed to suburban Detroit or upstate New York. The sad part IMO is that people who live in those rural areas tend to solidify in their views as the world changes while those in the cities seem to go with the herd mentality. Both have it wrong from my point of view.

 

A few years ago I was teaching early-morning seminary (scripture study for high school kids) at our church. I mentioned that leaders of our church have encouraged getting an education so that you can support your family. The next day I had a parent come in and chew me out for daring to suggest that you need an education to support your family, she and her husband supported their family very well without an education and she didn't want people like me telling their kids they needed to do better. I thanked her for making the time to come in and refrained from pointing out that she and her husband both had to work ~80 hours a week to support their family because neither had training that would let them earn more, and if her husband had a job that required a college degree, likely he would only have one job and she wouldn't have to work at all for their family to have the same lifestyle, and their quality of life would be dramatically improved.

On average, parents with a college education have more time and money to spend on their kids. And that is better for America.

 

You mention scale. back when I went to college, the state of Arizona paid 75% of tuition for in-state students to attend state schools. Today, tuition is 12X the cost, and the state only covers 25% for in-state students. What kind of business could anyone create that could potentially scale up and come anywhere near to making up the difference 30 years has made? None, unless I create the Amazon of scholarships. Trust me, others have tried. It's impossible to scale this large.

Like anything, a rise in costs will see a drop in demand. We've seen that in higher education. 4 million less students in college today than 10 years ago. And Arizona, the drop in enrollments is about 9% of high school seniors, where 55% of seniors used to go on to college. That number today is 46%. There are about 92,000 high school seniors in Arizona, so we're looking at a drop of about 8,200 students. To pay for their in-state education, that's, tuition alone, over $90 million a year.

With a less educated populace, we all will suffer. The gap will widen between the haves and have-nots. And those skills us history majors have that make us employable will start to dwindle and eventually disappear.

 

When you claim that there are dozens of posts taking that stance on this thread,don't you think you should be able to point out a few of them?

 

I skimmed through the thread to see if anyone had mentioned this. Degree inflation.

Let's use primary education as an example. When I was in elementary school, the teachers all had bachelor's degrees. These days, they can still get jobs with just a bachelor's but many teachers are getting at least a Master's to help them get jobs.

Someone mentioned Physical Therapy, there was a time when that was just a Bachelor's degree, as well.

Years ago, I looked into going back to school for an additional Bachelor's in Electrical engineering. The Faculty Advisor implied that you could get a job with just a Bachelor's but you really needed at least a master's to be guaranteed.

Now we have the question of student loan forgiveness. If loans are forgiven, then I think there will be a push to make college free in the same way that Primary education is free. I believe we're already at the point where College is the new High school.

 

I mentioned that in my long winded post, didn’t use the phrase “degree inflation”, but I was thinking in the same terms that college now is almost equivalent to high school 50 years ago.

Requiring the advanced degree isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does put it even farther out of reach for some, esp those who might already have been on the fence about 4 years of schooling. Teachers shouldn’t have that issue though, considering the shortages. Ditto for nurses who would be in high demand with a BSN (nursing in some cases used to be 2 years, but it seems like it’s mostly been phased to 4 year programs now).

 

Competition is bad for workers and it fuels things like this. Everyone is constantly having to add new credentials or ‘expertise’ to get a leg up in the labor market. Even professionals. The credentialing never ends even after school. Employers are always taking about people needing to develop skills … it’s good for them, and typically bad for workers in that most credentials aren’t particularly useful in of themselves and they cost money that you could put somewhere else. But it fuels the sort of competition that’s useful to employers dominating the labor market.