I will tell you this and I say that as someone who loved college and actually loved law school (more than I enjoyed practicing law). If the leftist racket that has taken over the American University is not stopped and very very soon we are doomed. This is not hyperbole. The degree of misseducation and indoctrination of actual evil in the humanities and liberal arts to ignorant children (for this is what they are) cannot be overstated and the result will be the replacement of the organization of our society which is based on enlightenment and judeo christian values with a weird hybrid of Marxism and Islamism. By the time the miseducated fools realize the truth it will be too late. We probably have a decade or two left at the most before a large majority of Westerners will have been fully indoctrinated by this insidious horror.
“Higher Education” used to be a a signifier for ability. Once that became the case, it was commandeered to provide credentials to (many) unqualified people who were preferred based on ethnicity or “background”. And children of foreign oligarchs. The value of such degrees has been destroyed much faster than the manipulators of the system expected. But then, there are people who actually observe results. It’s actually funny to me that an Ivy League degree has become a negative signifier in less than ten years. Being admitted to Yale 30 years ago, you’re probably pretty smart. Now, you’re a globalist rando who has politically correct opinions and likely is an organizational cancer. Good luck with that… Seriously though, most of the graduates of these institutions are toxic to a functioning society. Do not recommend.
I read a story today of a HS in Wyoming that has a CDL program. One student graduated with his diploma and CDL license. He'll make almost as much as the college kids will borrow. More of this please. Next do electricians.
In my opinion, the true purposes of college education should be:
1. Introducing students to the best ideas, primarily from western civilization, so that they understand how unique and valuable the knowledge passed on to us is
2. (stealing from Charlie Kirk here): finding a suitable mate at a time when the opportunity for finding one is optimal
3. Preparation for further graduate or better professional education
Not mentioned by Glenn is another problem with "higher education": graduate education is a Ponzi scheme. Here as in China and probably around the world, there are far more PhD's and PhD candidates than there are academic positions now or in the future. All the money and prestige go to the small number of tenured professors. Most of the work is done by adjuncts and TA's.
I think improving high school and elementary education -including opening trade schools again- would be a wiser investment. Right now, to get a machinist or welding education in Texas, we have problems in junior colleges. Why? Because the high schools that have programs don't support them so the exist mostly on paper. Instead they push the 'everyone needs college' myth.
They don't. The idea of core classes has been made useless by both the dilution of course quality and forcing PC classes on students. The weakness of high school standards means employers use the college degree as a vague indicator of quality. But even that is seriously degraded, so it's not an indicator of anything.
We used to do tracking - industrial arts, college prep and the general education for the truly lost. Now, it seems, that everyone is jammed into college prep.
I dropped out of the middle class trip for a while. Army, firefighter, construction. Money was ok, but the social life got to be too rough (only so much Buffett).
Pretty much spot on. You didn't even get into the problem that AI makes a lot of college courses pretty much a waste of time. You might get some joy out of, for example, reading and analyzing The Illiad or the Constitution but so what.
A high school education should teach a student how to do something, then a college education should teach how little they know. It should be pushing a learner to the far side of the Dunning-Krueger Effect. I find instead that it indulges and encourages that overconfidence and leaves the student in a poor place to learn.
I'm trying to write a book that tries to apply mathematics and algorithmic thinking to a subject at the intersection of economics, sociology, and anthropology. I think it's a good idea, but I'm finding it difficult to finish, and difficult to feel certain I've done enough research. I've tried to find academics that will even talk to me; I've even offered to pay consulting fees for them to look at it, including graduate students, and gotten few responses, and no affirmative ones. The most feedback I've gotten is from an economics professor who didn't read the book, but told me I shouldn't get a graduate degree as a means of further study because academia isn't a good place for independent thinkers.
Remember that corporations used to use aptitude tests, but SCOTUS banned those because they had a "disparate outcome" for black people. So a "college degree" became the standard way to get a good job. Naturally. colleges have become so dumbed down, nowadays, that many people with college degrees only read and write at an 8th grade level.
My grandfather went to school in the 30s. He was a classical liberal man, able to recite poetry etc. did a career in the US Forest Service. A public servant when being a public servant was about pursuing your passion along with serving the public, not what it is today. I went to school in the 80s. Can't quote poetry and was a business major. I read the book The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom and thought, I wasted four years of my life. I have been steadily trying to close the gap on my own now. However, the classical western civilization core curriculum has been either dropped, or so politicized it is generally not worth taking at college. Hillsdale College offers excellent video classes on the great books etc and well worth someone's time. I did Paradise Lost and loved it.
Gary Becker did a lot of the research that showed financial returns to college were higher than if you didn't go. The reasons for that might not have been the degree, but due to the fact college grads got married and had more stable families (less divorce).
Suggest you read 'Will' by G Gordon Liddy. He provides the 8th grade curriculum his father had, in an elite school. They were taking Greek and Latin, in 8th grade. We've so dumbed things down, bachelors degrees are today's equivalent of a finishing school. Except for the student with a STEM degree, it's still pretty much who you know (KMJ - we're looking at you).
Something Peter Drucker wrote more than 50 years ago:
"One thing it (modern society) cannot afford in education is the “elite institution” which has a monopoly on social standing, on prestige, and on the command positions in society and economy. Oxford and Cambridge are important reasons for the English brain drain. A main reason for the technology gap is the Grande Ecole such as the Ecole Polytechnique or the Ecole Normale. These elite institutions may do a magnificent job of education, but only their graduates normally get into the command positions. Only their faculties “matter.” This restricts and impoverishes the whole society…The Harvard Law School might like to be a Grande Ecole and to claim for its graduates a preferential position. But American society has never been willing to accept this claim…"
We as a country are a lot closer to accepting Grande Ecole status for Harvard Law School and similar institutions than we were when Drucker wrote the above. Indeed, many people seem to take it as a given that 'elite' colleges should play the role Drucker critiques, the only question being who should get in and thereby benefit.
Unless the goal is to train future health professionals, engineers, and research scientists college is overrated. I would suggest that in general and before DEI was used so extensively for college admissions that those admitted to top universities because of their intelligence and aptitude would also be the ones to succeed in any endeavor. Not because they went to that top university but because they were innately intelligent to begin with. I once served on the school board of a small private religious school. The principle was congratulating the teachers and himself because of the exemplary success our graduates had obtained in High School. I noted that the raw material they had to start with may have had more to do with the success of the children then their educational input. Needless to say those thoughts were not welcomed. My own experience in college and professional school was similar. I began my college career at 16 much too young and intellectually immature for college. As I progressed in school and matured I found that some of the students that I thought were smart did not advance as much as I did as I matured and so I left them behind academically but some of the really intelligent students had much more raw intellectual power than I did and they maintained that brilliance through school and throughout their careers. I came to realize that the really smart kids were smart and college didn't make them any smarter but did fill their heads with facts and sometimes skills. For the average college student a trade would most likely be a more financially advantages path.
This isn't getting fixed until the Marxists are purged from the system, a difficult task.
Teaching students about the history and theory of Marxism is entirely appropriate. Teaching students Marxism and its offshoots are a valid basis for an economic or social system is malicious malpractice and should not occur in an American university.
I will tell you this and I say that as someone who loved college and actually loved law school (more than I enjoyed practicing law). If the leftist racket that has taken over the American University is not stopped and very very soon we are doomed. This is not hyperbole. The degree of misseducation and indoctrination of actual evil in the humanities and liberal arts to ignorant children (for this is what they are) cannot be overstated and the result will be the replacement of the organization of our society which is based on enlightenment and judeo christian values with a weird hybrid of Marxism and Islamism. By the time the miseducated fools realize the truth it will be too late. We probably have a decade or two left at the most before a large majority of Westerners will have been fully indoctrinated by this insidious horror.
Same here. I loved law school; the practice of law, not so much.
“Higher Education” used to be a a signifier for ability. Once that became the case, it was commandeered to provide credentials to (many) unqualified people who were preferred based on ethnicity or “background”. And children of foreign oligarchs. The value of such degrees has been destroyed much faster than the manipulators of the system expected. But then, there are people who actually observe results. It’s actually funny to me that an Ivy League degree has become a negative signifier in less than ten years. Being admitted to Yale 30 years ago, you’re probably pretty smart. Now, you’re a globalist rando who has politically correct opinions and likely is an organizational cancer. Good luck with that… Seriously though, most of the graduates of these institutions are toxic to a functioning society. Do not recommend.
I read a story today of a HS in Wyoming that has a CDL program. One student graduated with his diploma and CDL license. He'll make almost as much as the college kids will borrow. More of this please. Next do electricians.
In my opinion, the true purposes of college education should be:
1. Introducing students to the best ideas, primarily from western civilization, so that they understand how unique and valuable the knowledge passed on to us is
2. (stealing from Charlie Kirk here): finding a suitable mate at a time when the opportunity for finding one is optimal
3. Preparation for further graduate or better professional education
Not mentioned by Glenn is another problem with "higher education": graduate education is a Ponzi scheme. Here as in China and probably around the world, there are far more PhD's and PhD candidates than there are academic positions now or in the future. All the money and prestige go to the small number of tenured professors. Most of the work is done by adjuncts and TA's.
I think improving high school and elementary education -including opening trade schools again- would be a wiser investment. Right now, to get a machinist or welding education in Texas, we have problems in junior colleges. Why? Because the high schools that have programs don't support them so the exist mostly on paper. Instead they push the 'everyone needs college' myth.
They don't. The idea of core classes has been made useless by both the dilution of course quality and forcing PC classes on students. The weakness of high school standards means employers use the college degree as a vague indicator of quality. But even that is seriously degraded, so it's not an indicator of anything.
We used to do tracking - industrial arts, college prep and the general education for the truly lost. Now, it seems, that everyone is jammed into college prep.
I remember. I had freinds who took industrial arts and ended up as machinists, mechanics, plumbers etc and did well for themselves.
I dropped out of the middle class trip for a while. Army, firefighter, construction. Money was ok, but the social life got to be too rough (only so much Buffett).
IMHO the college loan scam is the biggest boondoggle ever created
It wouldn't be if it wasn't run by the government, and was totally private.
Pretty much spot on. You didn't even get into the problem that AI makes a lot of college courses pretty much a waste of time. You might get some joy out of, for example, reading and analyzing The Illiad or the Constitution but so what.
A high school education should teach a student how to do something, then a college education should teach how little they know. It should be pushing a learner to the far side of the Dunning-Krueger Effect. I find instead that it indulges and encourages that overconfidence and leaves the student in a poor place to learn.
I'm trying to write a book that tries to apply mathematics and algorithmic thinking to a subject at the intersection of economics, sociology, and anthropology. I think it's a good idea, but I'm finding it difficult to finish, and difficult to feel certain I've done enough research. I've tried to find academics that will even talk to me; I've even offered to pay consulting fees for them to look at it, including graduate students, and gotten few responses, and no affirmative ones. The most feedback I've gotten is from an economics professor who didn't read the book, but told me I shouldn't get a graduate degree as a means of further study because academia isn't a good place for independent thinkers.
Always remember, they're not elite schools; they're schools for the elite. Big difference.
Remember that corporations used to use aptitude tests, but SCOTUS banned those because they had a "disparate outcome" for black people. So a "college degree" became the standard way to get a good job. Naturally. colleges have become so dumbed down, nowadays, that many people with college degrees only read and write at an 8th grade level.
Linked at my post Enablers of Mamdani: America's Universities
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/74475.html
My grandfather went to school in the 30s. He was a classical liberal man, able to recite poetry etc. did a career in the US Forest Service. A public servant when being a public servant was about pursuing your passion along with serving the public, not what it is today. I went to school in the 80s. Can't quote poetry and was a business major. I read the book The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom and thought, I wasted four years of my life. I have been steadily trying to close the gap on my own now. However, the classical western civilization core curriculum has been either dropped, or so politicized it is generally not worth taking at college. Hillsdale College offers excellent video classes on the great books etc and well worth someone's time. I did Paradise Lost and loved it.
Gary Becker did a lot of the research that showed financial returns to college were higher than if you didn't go. The reasons for that might not have been the degree, but due to the fact college grads got married and had more stable families (less divorce).
Yes, college is more a marker for the qualities that lead to success than an instiller of such qualities.
Suggest you read 'Will' by G Gordon Liddy. He provides the 8th grade curriculum his father had, in an elite school. They were taking Greek and Latin, in 8th grade. We've so dumbed things down, bachelors degrees are today's equivalent of a finishing school. Except for the student with a STEM degree, it's still pretty much who you know (KMJ - we're looking at you).
Something Peter Drucker wrote more than 50 years ago:
"One thing it (modern society) cannot afford in education is the “elite institution” which has a monopoly on social standing, on prestige, and on the command positions in society and economy. Oxford and Cambridge are important reasons for the English brain drain. A main reason for the technology gap is the Grande Ecole such as the Ecole Polytechnique or the Ecole Normale. These elite institutions may do a magnificent job of education, but only their graduates normally get into the command positions. Only their faculties “matter.” This restricts and impoverishes the whole society…The Harvard Law School might like to be a Grande Ecole and to claim for its graduates a preferential position. But American society has never been willing to accept this claim…"
We as a country are a lot closer to accepting Grande Ecole status for Harvard Law School and similar institutions than we were when Drucker wrote the above. Indeed, many people seem to take it as a given that 'elite' colleges should play the role Drucker critiques, the only question being who should get in and thereby benefit.
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/50249.html
Just stop government subsidies
Unless the goal is to train future health professionals, engineers, and research scientists college is overrated. I would suggest that in general and before DEI was used so extensively for college admissions that those admitted to top universities because of their intelligence and aptitude would also be the ones to succeed in any endeavor. Not because they went to that top university but because they were innately intelligent to begin with. I once served on the school board of a small private religious school. The principle was congratulating the teachers and himself because of the exemplary success our graduates had obtained in High School. I noted that the raw material they had to start with may have had more to do with the success of the children then their educational input. Needless to say those thoughts were not welcomed. My own experience in college and professional school was similar. I began my college career at 16 much too young and intellectually immature for college. As I progressed in school and matured I found that some of the students that I thought were smart did not advance as much as I did as I matured and so I left them behind academically but some of the really intelligent students had much more raw intellectual power than I did and they maintained that brilliance through school and throughout their careers. I came to realize that the really smart kids were smart and college didn't make them any smarter but did fill their heads with facts and sometimes skills. For the average college student a trade would most likely be a more financially advantages path.
The trades don't provide much intellectual stimulation, hard to find a good marriage partner.
This isn't getting fixed until the Marxists are purged from the system, a difficult task.
Teaching students about the history and theory of Marxism is entirely appropriate. Teaching students Marxism and its offshoots are a valid basis for an economic or social system is malicious malpractice and should not occur in an American university.