During the last century college was transformed from a relatively minor institution in our culture into a gateway for the many. Prior to the 20th century in America, few Americans, in all classes, had college degrees. Most of the professions had pathways that did not involve college, and although going through rapid expansion, in the 19th century most colleges remained what they had always been: finishing schools for the rich, leavened by a few serious scholars, many of them associated with religious denominations. Now in the 21rst century colleges have morphed into daycare for mass extended adolescence, indoctrination centers staffed by far Left academics and cult centers for brick and mortar instruction that have been made increasingly obsolete by the march of technology. All of this is incredibly expensive with graduates increasingly having little to show in actual gained knowledge for the years and money wasted. If we had serious political parties in this country, this ongoing disaster would lead to serious debate. Instead we have shrill proposals to make all of this “free”, which means endless taxpayer money to prop up this manifestly failing system. However, the real problems besetting what we hilariously call higher education have almost nothing to do with money, and everything to do with an institution that is dying before our eyes because it fails to educate, in any meaningful sense, most of its victims students.
We need the following, among much else:
- Instructions in the trades to be greatly ramped up. This needs to be transparent, with the trades shorn of the favoritism and nepotism which often makes this process a joke.
- Businesses to cease mandating college degrees as proofs of basic literacy for junior executives. Allow them to institute tests to replace this practice.
- Online education for most professions with rigorous testing at the end before admittance.
- Allow bankruptcy for educational loans with institutions having to repay 25 percent of the loans. Make them have skin in the game.
- Drastically reduce the amount of higher education funding from government, most of which is simply wasted.
- Radically reduce state and federal regulation of occupations. That there is any regulation of barbers and beauticians, for example, is simply farcical.
- Have more research centers for the hard sciences with zip responsibility for undergraduate education, and fund them with private funds.
- Rigorous testing before an undergraduate degree is awarded. The tests can be taken by anyone without required attendance at a college. Proof of cheating would be felonies for test givers, along with substantial fines. Likewise for a test taker. Blind grading would be the order of the day.
In the comboxes list your reform ideas. This is a very soluble problem, but which is treated as if our current dispensation is the way things always have been, and the way things always will be. Both of these formulations are false.
I agree with the above list. But also think nothing will be done until our corrupt feudal system is totally blown up. But here is one notion that occurs to me that might help.
—-Publish incomes by occupation with and without college degrees.
Unintended consequences? Will so-called free [you and I pay] community college adversely impact already-apocalyptic higher education?
Maybe it started with the GI Bill after WWII. Then, the elites layered-on tons of Federal grants and loans.
Seen on the net. End inequity! Abolish the Ivy League.
Evidently, outside engineering and [maybe] public accounting, colleges are finishing schools [it full-bore began in kindergarten] for useless idiots and self-hating lefty slugs.
The oligarchy needs supine, brainwashed minions, or it falls.
Burn the Jesuit institutions to the ground and salt the remains. That’s my recommendation as a graduate of a Jesuit college. These people are predators, period. Child predators. Anyone who takes a high school student and tells him it is a good idea to go six figures in debt for a garbage liberal arts degree. If a college brags about the percentage of first-generation college students who attend, you know it’s full of predators.
Wow! I remember that PSA with Lincoln from many, many years ago. Hard to believe there was a time when college was not considered a goal unto itself.
Bring back Classical Education as a standard in the younger grades, so that when a child is older they have an understanding of western culture, how to think and learn. A higher education then becomes a love of knowledge and someone who decides on a trade can already think and reason.
I largely agree. Classical education, anchored in a study of the Latin and Ancient Greek languages, classical literature and primary sources for the sciences, as well as arithmetic, music, and geometry should form the basis of any curriculum. This should be combined with religious instruction received from the Church and family. There should be an exam for the awarding of a bachelor’s degree, similar to the GED but much larger in scope, which can be taken by anyone who has put in the effort to learn, whether by tutoring or self study. The exam could cover classical literature, classical and modern languages, math, science and American and world history, and would require no enrollment in an actual college. The current graduate school system could also be overhauled and replaced with something akin to the British system, where one undertakes a substantial research project under the guidance of an expert and earns a masters or doctoral degree based on the published results. This could be done without attending a physical campus, except where perhaps a laboratory was needed. Obviously medical and related schools would require a hands-on element, but the for the majority of people education could be undertaken at home and with little expense. Additionally, all children should begin learning trades as soon as they are able to safely manipulate the necessary tools, and hymn books written after 1960 should be shot into outer space (that has nothing to do with education, but it needs to be done).
I largely agree. Classical education, anchored in a study of the Latin and Ancient Greek languages, classical literature and primary sources for the sciences, as well as arithmetic, music, and geometry should form the basis of any curriculum.
No.