The Wastefulness of Higher Education

[ysabetwordsmith]

Here's one example of wastefulness in higher education, with comparison to more frugal options.


Society has made a number of expensive mistakes in this regard:

* Pressuring everyone into college runs up the dropout rate, because not everyone is actually an academic, and it causes degree inflation such that people currently working with a high school or bachelor's degree must be replaced by someone with a master's or Ph.D. A bachelor's degree has become the equivalent of a high school diploma but costs ruinous amounts of money to obtain.

* Splurging on things like stadiums makes it more expensive to attend college and drains money from actual education that college is supposed to be about.

* The bigger and fancier colleges get, the less people respect smaller schools, other ways of learning, or practical skills. It becomes a sham, all about having a snazzy piece of paper from some yah-rah institution, rather than about what work a person can actually accomplish.

* So kids look at this and think it's a bunch of bullshit, which it is. Very expensive bullshit that is ruining a lot of lives. Then they think adults are stupid to push them into this heap of bullshit, which is also true.

* But society has turned college into a means test for survival. Without a college degree, it's all but impossible to get a job that might pay enough to live on -- if you're permitted to have a job at all, and if there's anything left after paying the loansharks. When they claim that college raises income, ask who gets that money. Increasingly, it is not the graduates, but the loansharks.

* That runs up the rate of anxiety, depression, suicide, and other problems among youth in their teens and twenties. Then society whines that something is wrong with kids these days. You want to blame someone, blame the deciders.

* On the other hand, we have the internet. You can find almost all information known to humanity on there, and a majority of it is free. Very, very few subjects require or benefit greatly from facetime interaction -- things like music and linguistics and physical therapy. Even those can be studied somewhat from books, videos, online articles, etc. Most subjects, you can learn as much as you want online with similar quality as in class. Frankly I've learned far more, better, faster, with higher quality materials on my own than stuck in a room with a bunch of dumbasses and a teacher who thinks the shit textbook is accurate.

* Take away the requirement of facetime teaching, and what you're left with is college as a place to socialize, which is how a lot of students already seem to use it. But is four years worth of partying worth hocking the rest of your life? Probably not.


Sooner or later, the college bubble is going to burst. It has to, because the cost of college has long since exceeded its value, the current situation is ruining a lot of lives, which undermines the functionality of society as a whole, and it's rapidly heading toward a point where most people won't be able to afford it at all no matter what they try or what the claimed rewards are.

If you want to help deal with the mess, there's one thing everyone can do: stop treating college degrees as a requirement for life in society. Instead, ask whether a person can do a given job. If they can, hire them for it. If not, don't, go find someone better. It won't stop the coming collapse, but at least you won't be ethically responsible for contributing to it.

I like knowledge, I really do. But America's education system has turned into a shark tank. >_< I can't condone that.

Comments

[cmcmck]

It's gone the same way here in the UK but that said, I was a working class kid with major personal problems who flunked out of school at 15 due to those problems and university was the making of me because one was wiling to take a chance on me.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

I am glad that you found that an uplifting experience. Certainly college can be that.

Another problem I see now is one of increasing filters. It is no longer enough to get "into" college in general. Now students have to qualify to get "into" college-level courses in each subject area. If they fail, they are forced to pay college-level prices for remedial classes that don't count toward a major. This wastes time, money, and energy usually without improving their test scores. Many students stuck in remedial classes quickly conclude that they are "not college material" (which is sometimes but not always true) and drop out. That extra layer of qualification becomes a very serious barrier.

[siberian_skys]

What a waste higher education was for me. I have never used my degree. I'm with you. I'm very pro knowledge, but there are a lot of ways to get that without pouring vast sums of money down a hole.

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

There were certainly parts of college that I enjoyed, but I can't say it was worth what we paid for it. Nor was I permitted to choose a lucrative major.

[kengr]

With regards to sports facilities, anything beyond stuff sufficient for intramural stuff, should be paid for by the teams/donors etc. IE make them self supporting.

That'd reign a fair bit of this in.

Textbook prices, though a "minor" bit in the expenses are another scam. Prices are inflated to make money for the authors (who are often the very professors teaching the course.

This is another scam that needs to be fixed.

I won't even go into the other stuff..

[mtbc]

When I was considering career change I became annoyed at how many professional careers' entry requirements are rather less can you pass the exams? than have you done enough hours' accredited whatever?.

I have also become annoyed at how, in recent decades, textbooks have become rather less useful for teach yourself because it's all, unless you're an accredited educator we won't tell you the answers to the exercises.

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> When I was considering career change I became annoyed at how many professional careers' entry requirements are rather less can you pass the exams? than have you done enough hours' accredited whatever?. <<

That's a serious problem. It changes job application from being about competence to being about paperwork and means testing.

This explains a lot about why it's so hard to find competent workers for anything these days.

>> I have also become annoyed at how, in recent decades, textbooks have become rather less useful for teach yourself because it's all, unless you're an accredited educator we won't tell you the answers to the exercises. <<

That's frustrating. However, today everything is for sale if you have the money. That includes answers. Somewhere, somebody is selling the teacher's guides. And reselling them. I would check general places like Craigslist and eBay, but also places frequented by teachers and students. Libraries are another excellent option.

Textbooks for sale

[mtbc]

Admittedly, an advantage of teach-yourself rather than looking for external credit is that one can make do with the previous edition of the textbooks which are available at a good discount used because, sigh, the questions get adjusted between editions to make everyone have to buy the latest.

Re: Textbooks for sale

[ysabetwordsmith]

Yet another transparent scam that angers students and makes people think that college is run by shysters. Not exactly a good image to project.

That's before students realize that some of their classmates are homeless and their professors are on foodstamps. That really kills the image of college as a way out of poverty. >_

[fyreharper]

For some of us, what college provided (what school in general provided) was *structure*. There is a ton of information out there for me to learn whatever I want/need, but I either want to do all of it but that’s too much so I don’t even start any of it, or I go into read/learn all the things mode for as a subject holds my attention and then get distracted and drop it. 3/4 of the way through the project (I did the interesting part and I hate weaving in the ends of my knitting), or 1/4 of the way through acquiring the skill set I wanted to learn, or…

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Structure is valuable for many people and purposes. For others, it just gets in the way.

A problem I see increasing in contemporary college is wasting students' time, money, and energy on things they don't want. It is no longer enough to get into college, now students have to qualify for college-level classes in every subject or be forced into remedial classes that don't count toward a major. Once they reach college-level classes, they have to take a large amount of stuff -- often irrelevant to their major or interests -- before being permitted to learn things they actually need or care about. More and more colleges fill the first year or two with required cruft and the major is just the last couple of years.

The extra classes often turn what is advertised as a 4-year degree into 5-6 years. And the longer it takes to earn a degree, the fewer students will succeed. Most often, the money runs out first. Other people become exhausted by the unending demands. Sometimes major life changes, like pregnancy or parental death, intervene instead.

Community colleges compete somewhat by offering job-focused degrees and certificates, but even there, the cruft requirements are creeping in. Also, community college is good at teaching skills but nearly useless as a stamp of approval -- it won't get people into good jobs.