Archive for the ‘General’ Category
Don’t Let College Interfere with Your Education
David authored this article for the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy back in 2010. It remains relevant for those making decisions about where, or whether, to attend college.
I made a decision early on that college was about getting a piece of paper, not an education. My goal wasn’t to become a better-rounded individual, or even to gain a greater understanding of my major area of study. Rather, it was to gain the educational credential that employers now use as a screening device for most jobs. And my experience confirmed what I had expected—that post-secondary education today has only a lackluster ability to provide real value aside from that credential.
It’s critical to understand the true value of a college degree before embarking on an expensive voyage that may or may not get you where you want to go.
Why Did 17 Million Students Go to College?
Over 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees (over 8,000 of them have doctoral or professional degrees), along with over 80,000 bartenders, and over 18,000 parking lot attendants. All told, some 17,000,000 Americans with college degrees are doing jobs that the BLS says require less than the skill levels associated with a bachelor’s degree.
Does earning a degree increase your salary?
One commonly held belief about college degrees is that earning one will boost your income in your current job, or help you secure a job with a much higher starting salary than someone who only has a high school degree.
This may have been true at one point, but in recent years the earnings gap between high school and college graduates has been shrinking dramatically. Mary Pilon takes a detailed look at the earnings landscape in a recent Wall Street Journal article. It’s well worth a read whether you’re considering college for the first time or planning to return to school to earn a post-graduate degree.
One advantage to pursuing a degree via distance education is the lower cost. Combine that with the ability to work a full-time job while studying in the evening and you have a powerful alternative to the traditional college experience. Of course, it’s still a good idea to research your target career field and determine whether the cost of a college degree is truly worth the salary increase. It might not be.
College degrees no longer cost effective?
In a recent New York Post article, Jack Hough presents compelling evidence that college degrees are no longer cost effective for most students to pursue. As he puts it:
“A student who secures a degree is increasingly unlikely to make up its cost, despite higher pay, and the employer who requires a degree puts faith in a system whose standards are slipping.”
Distance education, being a less expensive alternative, improves the cost-to-benefit ratio dramatically. For those jobs that require it, a degree earned through distance education may still be worth it.
The Case for Working With Your Hands
High-school shop-class programs were widely dismantled in the 1990s as educators prepared students to become “knowledge workers.” The imperative of the last 20 years to round up every warm body and send it to college, then to the cubicle, was tied to a vision of the future in which we somehow take leave of material reality and glide about in a pure information economy. This has not come to pass.
Academic fraud
Soon college students will come home and present parents with their grades. To avoid delusion, parents should do some serious discounting because of rampant grade inflation. If grade inflation continues, a college bachelor’s degree will have just as much credibility as a high school diploma.
Expulsion threatened over prayer for sick teacher
Attorneys representing two students who have been threatened with expulsion by a California college because of a prayer for a sick professor say a federal judge has refused the school’s efforts to have the case dismissed.
Some encouraging advice
The Teaching Home is a magazine for Christian home educators. A few years ag, they published some suggestions for parents and students who are considering higher education. If you’ve been wondering what the Biblical motivations and goals behind higher education should be, this is an excellent read.
Phyllis Schlaffly: College not always necessary
While the price of a college education has skyrocketed far faster than inflation, many careers for which colleges prepare their graduates are disappearing. U.S. News‘ Best Careers guide concludes that “college grads might want to consider blue-collar careers” because B.A. diploma holders “are having trouble finding jobs that require college-graduate skills.”
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Why it doesn’t pay to get straight A’s in college
I worked hard to get good grades my first few years of college. My last year, I was tired of the whole college deal (and was working full time in my career field already) so I didn’t stress out quite so much about getting straight A’s.
I still got a decent GPA, but in the end it didn’t really matter since I’ve never had a potential employer ask about my grades. They generally only care about whether or not I can do the work.
Being good at book learning rarely equates to being good at any particular job.
Does studying for 60 to 80 hours a week, pulling all-nighters and not having time for socializing describe your college life? It describes 25-year-old Jon Morrow’s, and in this retrospective essay he questions whether it was worth it.
