As I watch my son struggle to finish up his degree, I ask myself the same questions, and I don't have any answers. His chances of getting a better job with his diploma in hand aren't very good, but he's only 4 classes away, so quitting doesn't seem real smart. One more semester (IF he able to get the last classes he needs) and he'll join the ranks of the over qualified.

I don't have a degree, either, but I didn't need one to run my successful business for 20 years. My husband does, but all that did was give him a 5% pay raise at the job he already had, then made it possible for him to promote (his degree was not in his field, so why having it mattered seems kinda arbitrary.)

Seems like someone somewhere decided it made it possible to separate the wheat from the chaff...

Good questions, Icky. rec'd

Well in this country it serves only one purpose. To to keep you busy while being brainwashed into nice obedient little robots for the elite.

C

Huge topic, really. But one facet of it is that there is not a singular How to learn, but rather a mulitude of hows. How we come to learn about our world in the biology laboratory is fundamentally different than how we come to learn of our world through the poetry workshop. And both of them are valid, co-existing.

Putting aside the technical skills and knowledge from medicine to architecture that one gets from secondary education, there isn't, in the end, nothing one "learns" at college that couldn't be learned in some other environment.

But colleges, by their nature, facilitate a greater likelihood that an individual will engage in critical thinking, intellectual reflection, and creative construction, while encountering new modes of thought, ideas and perspectives that one would otherwise not encounter.

I remember sitting around one class, nine of us in vigorous debate (within a structure environment designed by the professor) about the implications of a multi-cultural democracy in regards to individual rights and majority rule. While it is possible for me to have such an experience out of college, it would be much more difficult to find such experience. Even more so to have such an experience within in a concentrated course where the outcomes of this experience were tossed into weeks of similiar debates and readings on other topics related to overall theme. By the time I came out of this particular course, while I didn't see the world in a completely different way, my understanding was more textured and nuanced.

It is unfortunate that such in-depth grappling with the issues of society and life cannot be truly implemented in high school. Too many parents would be in a uproar, if not about the fact that the teachers were making the kids question the world view the parents were trying to instill, then about the fact the teacher wasn't teaching to the test (so the kid could get into college).

There is a deep strain of anti-intellectualism in this country. We cannot expect our children by the time they graduate from high school to have a well-honed ability to think deeply and appreciate the arts and sciences. Our politics and society suffers accordingly. College is not the ultimate answer by any means. Many leave college just as "stupid" as they were going in. But it is one of our society's last hope in developing a country with mature citizens.

I

I would have to say it is more the person rather than the educational environment that leads to success. Sure a motivated mentor would be helpful and there is nothing that can replace the group/social learning experience. Obviously there is something wrong with judging the quality of ones education on the number years accumulated.

I have a two year tech degree for whatever it is worth and I hire two to four people a year who bring little more than the two year government mandated education with them but little else. The phrase we like to us " license to learn". Anyway, a number of years ago I started this habit of half hour coffee breaks where we can discuss any subject but it does remind me of my early college discussion groups except I am the professor and am carefully leading/guiding the discussion. Occasionally I am successful at providing a little enlightenment.

Like all educators it is the rare reward of success that keeps us trying. One of my failures was a young man who refused to take instruction from a female coworker. I fired him. About two years later I received an email from the same guy thanking me for providing him with a set of skills which allowed him to excel beyond his coworkers. Sadly nothing about working with women. You win some, you loose some.

M. Paul

I have received a good formal education (more from a series of inexplicable moments of good fortune than ambition) and then became educated through working in several trades for a long time. Both paths provide something that the other doesn't. Both forms of training lack important things the other side provides.

When put this way, the measure of knowledge is how well one can produce stuff of value.

But there is an element in both ways of learning that tries to preserve and fortify the idea of being a person that goes beyond providing fodder for a certain means of production or the grooming of the future members of a class. It is not an accident that educators and labor organizers are the people repressive regimes put down first.

I don't know the answer to your question but I think it is tied up with why there are so many clear ideas about resistance and so many vague ideas about cooperation.

Two things on this point:

- College teaches most people how to use a spell checker. "SUREGEONS"? :)

- citing plumbers and electricians in an article arguing against education seems a little misinformed; both professions have massive training and apprenticeship systems. Maybe they don't call it "school" or "college", but it's the same thing.

The real problem facing a young American is what to do in the "after-college" period; more and more of the lower-level jobs that fresh graduates used to start in are being shipped overseas.

Ickyma --
I hear you, with the proviso that it seems to me that one should go to college and apply oneself earnestly just for the benefits in personal enrichment and in expanding one's perspective.
That said, isn't it interesting that, in my own experience, the two Ivy League husbands I had (one UPenn/ Wharton, one Princeton/Fullbright/Columbia) simply could not adapt past a sense of personal entitlement, so that to be unemployed was somehow honorable, whereas to be entrepreneurial was somehow - ewh, for other, lesser folk . So that it was my non-Ivy efforts ( plus an inheritance) that sustained the family, from whatever source, in whatever incarnation, while their lordships deigned to benefit therefrom ...
I was lucky, under the circumstances. I inherited some money from prior entrepreneurs, and I had some mainstream career success of my own. But the fact is that what I derived real pleasure from was building a better mousetrap, finding a market niche and filling it. Ewhh, or, hooray, depending on how one looks at it.
So here I am today, looking out on the harbor of a small sailing waystation for snowbirds, and I think to myself, hmmmm:
1) an average of twelve big boats a day seek shelter overnight here enroute to Florida, the Bahamas or the US/British Virgin Islands.
2) For every Wall Street fat cat skipper, flush with our cash -- yours and mine -- there is a wife or girlfriend who wonders what the hell has happened to her; in an effort to be "yar" she has traded a fabulous house or apartment with mod/cons, for a boat (however "luxurious") in which it falls to her to cook, wash dishes by hand, and hoard laundry to wash in a laundromat in port, enroute.
3) And I say to myself, just suppose I offered these women the following services: laundry pickup on arrival, an elegant breakfast and possibly fresh flowers delivered in the morning with the return of the freshly done laundry.....
What could I charge, in cash, for such a service? $5 per load of laundry? $10 per breakast? $10 for flowers? Delegating the laundry to someone local, but selecting the flowers and cooking the breakfast myself and delivering all of the above, via dingy?
Lemme see: an average of nine boats per day X $15 for three loads of laundry plus $20 for breakfast for two plus $10 for flowers = @$12,000 gross per month, less expenses. So say, conservatively, $6000 per month net for four hours work per day or 27 hours per week. Granted, this only works for six months a year, three in the fall and three in the spring. But, hey.
That's still $3000 per month for four hours per day or 27 hours per week.
As compared to last year, when I worked 72 hours (nice hourly interposition) per week for nine months as a teacher/dorm parent to Ivy-wannabes, for a monthly net of $2400.
Is my idea sound? Maybe, maybe not. Do I want to do it? Maybe, maybe not -- it's a lot of physical work.
Just saying, Ickyma, I get your point and, in today's world, agree that every option should be considered. 'Cause with the extra hours of free time, one can read a lot of books.

I think that school should be about understanding the world, ourselves and life. To learn how to learn, think and question all the we see so as to be able to relate to our world in a thoughtful manner.

However if you want to earn a living - go to electricians school and join the union.

C

Yes, college is, in part, to teach us how to learn or, as the current "in" phraseology goes, it is to teach us to be lifelong learners.

But, college education was never intended to be, nor should it be viewed as the equivalent of a vocational school. Higher education was orginally intended for the upper classes and to transmit certain knowledge and values from one generation of the upper class to the next. It still serves that function but does so in the modern world to a much broader range of people spread throughout the various social classes. A college education is intended to help people be well rounded, intellectual curious, able to think critically, conversant in most major areas of learning and intellectual inquiry, and especially knowledgeable in the subject matter of one's major. A good college education also teaches ethics, morality and philosophy to its students. Having a technically proficient society with little or no ethical sense is a dangerous thing indeed and the dream world of despots and dictators. In today's society higher education serves to strengthen democracy by having a well informed, well educated citzenry that can think for themselves and decide for themselves what direction is best for society.

Vocational benefits have been used to "market" colleges and universities to parents and student in the past generation and that has distorted how people view education and it's purpose. If the purpose of college was synonymous with vocational education it would be a nearly useless excercise. But it isn't despite the insistence of so many Americans of viewing it in that light.

Once the intellectual skills are acquired, one is better prepared to deal with the world in general, not just the vocational world though that is an important part of the whole.

The main purpose of a college degree (in particular, not school in general) is to prove that the person who has it is capable of high-school-level thought.

In short, since high school graduates often cannot read, write, or do mathematics, the college degree substitutes for what the high school degree should have covered.

There is more to it than just this, but this alone is enough, and shows one of the main flaws in the current US system. I think, however, that the real underlying root cause of the disease (as it were) is a lack of respect for, and even a strong distrust of, "intellectualism" in America. It starts quite early: by fourth or fifth grade, individuals are labeled "jocks" or "brains". Some time around seventh grade or so, "brains" move down in social status. ("Jocks" do not move up until the sports teams begin to compete, which is generally more towards high-school-senior years, but at that point the distinction becomes quite clear and entrenched.)

Even four-year universities suffer to some extent from this, if only because football is big business. (Other sports are not big money-makers by comparison.)

I do not have a cure (pet or otherwise) for this problem; I merely observe.