Graduation season 2019 has come and gone and we stand now at the time of year when many new college grads begin the process of confronting real life.
That confrontation can mark the beginning of an awakening by a college grad to the fact that he or she is the victim of a colossal scam that came at a colossal price tag.
For decades it has been dogma in this country that every single high school kid should, upon graduation, embark upon a four year college degree. This came about because sociologists and economists and other great thinkers observed that over the course of a career, college graduates earn more than those who don’t have a college degree.
But here in 2019, as the Gershwin song says, “It ain’t necessarily so.” At one time a college degree was a fairly reliable proxy for one’s education and chances of lifetime success. A four-year degree was evidence that the degreed individual was possessed of a useful and generally applicable fund of knowledge that included English, history, mathematics, civics and studies specifically relevant to the individual’s intended career. A degree was evidence of education. Today a college degree and an education are actually two different things.
Soon enough, many graduates of 2019 are going to learn that the hard-left, anti-capitalist curriculum in which they have been immersed for the past four years has little to do with self-sufficient, successful and productive adulthood.
Few people in the real world trying to get to work and cover the bills are “woke” – the word now used for a hypersensitive awareness to any number of perceived societal injustices. (And by the way, shouldn’t a college grad know that the correct word is, “awakened?”)
Few employers spend much time thinking about gender fluidity. Few employers are much impressed by a gender studies degree. In fact, few employers are impressed by any degree ending in the word, “studies.”
College students today are to varying degrees taught (read: indoctrinated) to abjure capitalism. (All while graduating college not knowing what “abjure” means.) Yet they expect to be amply provided with the goods, services and comforts that only a capitalist economy can provide.
A disappointingly high percentage of college graduates – and those of us who fund their degrees via federal student loans, grants and other higher education subsidies – have been ripped off. In the time between when we went to college and now, the American higher education system has been hijacked by far-left academics who have turned our once proud universities into academic gulags where indoctrination has taken the place of debate and inquiry.
So out you come Class of 2019 into the real world, many of you with heads full of mush. If that description hits too close to home, you have two choices. One is to move back in with mom and dad. The second is to resolve to free your mind from its four years of intellectual bondage, get a job and set about actually learning something.
I will never earn what my plumber does!
With K-12 now inadequate, the sweet spot that’s emerged is the 2-year technical community college.
I cannot really add much to Paul’s commentary; he has accurately described one of the biggest scams in the history of our country. The majority of “higher” education has become a Liberal indoctrination exercise that will infect generations to come. The student loan debacle has only been a catalyst; but if these loans are not forgiven, maybe there will be a backlash by graduates when they realize they have been scammed. The ghost of Saul Alinsky and his many disciples in the Democrat Party can take a victory lap.
It’s actually worse than you describe, Paul. The “colossal price tag” you mention is mismanagement by university leadership and politicians. From 1985-2011, college tuition and costs increased almost 500%, while the general rate of inflation (CPI) went up 115% (https://inflationdata.com/articles/charts/college-tuition-fees-inflation/). Policies like tenure and routing public funds to athletics have left students to fund a skyrocketing bill, and they receive an education heavy on useless liberal drivel. Even the universities that have billions in endowment money refuse to lower tuitions and reduce student debt (think UT and A&M here in Texas). It’s hard to think of anything else in this world where the price goes up and the quality goes down like it does with our secondary education.
American public education and the curriculum of American universities has evolved into a plethora of subjects in place of disciplinary study. Textbooks and now the internet have become the arbiter of the curriculum. Consider mathematics as one example that most states require of all students at the high school level. Students memorize formulas, substitute numerical values into formulas, and memorize information for tests. A few years out of school and even those students who enrolled in “college prep” math classes remember very little and can use almost nothing beyond elementary arithmetic calculation and a little geometry. The goal of students has become to “get through” the courses they need to graduate and/or enter college. Mathematics is not understood by most high school math students (or high school math teachers as disciplinary study!) If one asks educators why mathematics is in the curriculum we often hear that mathematics teaches one to think or that mathematics is involved in almost everything. A local school district that achieved an excellence award in mathematics a few years ago was proud to display the banner based on 80 percent of the students meeting the state standard (which was 38 percent correct, at the time). Even the focus of the exam failed to address disciplinary study.
Public Schools and universities have lost sight of answering the question of what is valuable to the human beings in their schools or to the country that provides those educational opportunities. Schools and universities have lost sight of what it means to educate. Members of our society need to be effective as members of a family, as employees, as consumers, and as citizens. William Glasser in his book, Reality Therapy” noted that we each need to feel worthwhile to ourselves and others. Of course one form of feeling worthwhile is to provide for ones self by earning a living. Ms. Ocasio Cortez wishes to provide a living to those who are unable or UNWILLING to work. She fails to believe that earning one’s way is a significant way to feel worthwhile to self. She fails to see that doing an outstanding job of providing service to others is a significant way to feel worthwhile to others.
So, what is it that family members, employees, consumers, and citizens need as an essential component of their education? Effective fulfillment of these roles include: critical thinking, decision-making, and problem solving which are higher levels of thinking that go beyond memorization. The focus of our schools and universities on low-level memorization of subject content instead of teaching higher order thinking skills such as critical thinking, decision-making, and problem solving has left us with graduates who believe that rationalizing and presenting a rational argument are synonymous. The liberal left identifies the conclusion it wants voters to believe and then looks for a rationale to believe the conclusion. Presenting a rational argument involves defining terms (such as racism), identifying what is accepted as true without provide (e.g. we accept these truths to be self-evident that … ) and then applying syllogistic logic including facts to lead one to conclusions.
In short, schools and universities are telling students what they should think instead of teaching them how to think. (Yes, students can be taught how to apply higher order thinking!) Students are evaluated on their ability to repeat what they are told instead of being evaluated for applying higher order thinking skills to present a logical argument.