In my immediate family, of four people, we have nine college degrees. My sainted parents had one high school diploma between them. In a battle of wits, the smart money would not necessarily be in the corner of the folks with the degrees, based on my memories of my parents. They encouraged my brother and me to be the first in our family to go to college, but their example taught us that wisdom did not come only, or necessarily, with a sheepskin.
A demurral. About 2/3 of the baccalaureate degrees handed out in this country each year are in occupational subjects. Among those who receive one in an academic or artistic subject, just north of 1% receive a philosophy degree. A degree in accounting is 4x as common as one in philosophy; one in elementary education is > 10x as common; one in psychology or biology is ~18x as common.
Some observations:
Primary and secondary schooling have been allowed to rot. Both are unfocused, suffused with useless (now pernicious) mush, and designed to please teachers except when designed to please administrators. (See Marva Collins on why there is a bias against the use of phonics in reading instructions).
Teacher training programs reduce the quality of the applicant pool by repelling the more serious students. Thos. Sowell wrote about this a generation ago and you can look at teacher-training course lists and see the problem is noticeably worse.
Primary and secondary administrators are drawn from the ranks of those most willing to sit through teacher training courses. At the tertiary level, MEd degrees are common in the student affairs apparat as well.
The baccalaureate degree as constituted in our time is the bastard great-grandchild of the 19th century baccalaureate, which was built around a common core curriculum. A familiarity with classical languages was a common requirement for undertaking baccalaureate courses. School years were also longer. The distribution requirements and synthetic courses which have replaced the core serve the interests of faculty, not students.
Credentialization has been fueled by employment discrimination law. (Which, however, has been deceitfully re-interpreted to allow a regime of contrived mistreatment of certain segments of the population).
Addressing the problem is going to require a series of interlocking changes in educational practice and in sorting the labor market. It’s hard to know where to begin first.
A philosophy degree would be useful if it was focused on God and reason. Too bad universities aren’t focused on teaching the philosophers who reason the existence of God without theology, but would rather teach those who ended up with a mental illness.
Although I agree that a trade will give you a good long term income with no student debt, the problem here is that people learning a trade these days a far lazier then a few decades ago and expect an immediate salary with few sacrifices. Ie. a plumber apprentice used to works weekends and all for minimal pay. A plumber apprentices now-a-days shops around his employer for a higher salary and better working conditions. They want the quick money without doing the hard yards.
The ideal scenario is a tradesperson who also uses their brain in their trade. And builds a strong ethical business based on sweat and an honest days work.
If you’ve ever tried to find a good tradesperson you can trust, you will probably get my point.
Evidently, Kipling had a low opinion of James I. He wrote a poem on same with the following line, “Learned in all things, Wise in none.” Someone else wrote, “The Habsburgs learned nothing and forgot nothing.” Or, something like that.
From my observations that applies to many intellectuals and academics.
Another thing. Seems as if they long ago eschewed the search for truth and took up data mining and skewed [omissions, false comparisons, exaggerations, distortions, repetitious repetitions of outright lies, etc.] research to validate their conspiracy theories, myths, opinions, propaganda; and advance their nightmare agenda.
I remember that commercial with Lincoln. Wasn’t that in the 60s?
Late sixties or early seventies. Clep started in 67.
Art Deco wrote, “A familiarity with classical languages was a common requirement for undertaking baccalaureate courses.”
I lack a college degree. Yet I have retained my 4 years of Latin and 2 years of Koine Greek that I learned during my high school years. My high school Latin teacher and my Pentecostal preacher Greek tutor were excellent. And my father’s watchful eyes as I did my homework at the kitchen table was sufficient incentive to get the good grades he expected his offspring to achieve. BTW, he only went through the 8th grade at school, having been born on a farm in 1918. Farm work took priority during his teenage years. He was the smartest man I have ever known or will know. As a result, today at “Neutrons ‘R Us” I teach people with all kinds of degrees – topics ranging from such things as BWR and PWR systems training, process measurement and controls, software engineering for digital instrumentation and controls, etc. My education after high school was cleaning the bilges in engineroom forward on a Los Angeles class nuclear powered fast attack submarine before I was allowed to qualifiy as reactor operator. Best education in the world. Why? Because I got to learn every single piping system and every electrical conduit penetration from engineroom into the reactor compartment, and why keeping the bilge clean from oil spills helps prevent fires in an enclosed metal tube more than 800 feet submerged. Learning stuff like that prevents the need to learn how to breathe seawater. Today’s young freaking upstarts have no idea what duty and responsibility are, and they never will. They’ve been done educated into imbecility by liberal progressive nit wits.
T. Shaw: That was the Bourbons but the thought is quite valid. The last of the Habsburgs attempted to transition into politics after the fall of the monarchy but was not successful.
If we go back to earlier times before a B.A. or B.S. become a credential, then there were programs at most colleges / universities in what was termed a liberal education. There were some colleges (which exist now) that offered only a liberal education: St. John’s College, Thomas Aquinas, Christendom. There are still programs, contaminated by PC inserts, for preprofessional training in the law, medicine, science. The problem lies in “schools” of education. These should be rased (sp?) to the ground. Teachers should be taught subject matter, not how to teach…and I could go on.
Two persons are playing degree poker:
I’ll see your doctorate in “almost anything” with my bachelor’s in engineering, and raise with a couple of certificates….
@David WS, that’s exactly what’s happening in my industry. Digital I&C and Software V&V Engineers are supplementing their bachelor of science degrees with PE licenses, software engineering and cyber security certifications, etc. And once they get these, they can go from an $80K a year job to $160K almost overnight. Nuclear cyber security engineers are in HUGE demand so long as you have the right certifications. And if you get a job with the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and you keep your nose clean, then you’re in for life. I assume things are even better outside of my small nuclear world. Electronics engineers in Field Programmable Gate Array technology are in similar HUGE demand in aviation.
But a degree in inter-racial diversity and trangenderism? Well, you deserve to starve if that’s what you got.
@LQC, the salaries aren’t as high in my field, but I personally know engineers who: are not in a protected class, immigrated to the US with nothing, applied for citizenship, lived with a relative while attending a state school and working part time, received an accredited BSEE, worked 5 years and obtained their PE. They’re buying houses.
It can be done.
It’s my story too, except for the immigration part.
None of our four children are engineers, but they all have practical knowledge and a skill after college. They all worked through college and they don’t have large debt.
It can be done.