As if, what; this is the way things have always been? College attendance, funding, and cirriculum are akin to laws of physics?
This is a relatively recent issue which began when the fed started backing student loans in the mid sixties.
There are only really two ways to fix this problem.
1. Make college education free. This includes trade schools for those that would want to go that route.
2. Government regulation to cut back on companies demanding higher education for blue collar work. Since this is the result of the free market (companies wouldn't demand that level of education if they couldn't get away with it) then you would have to add some restrictions on the free market to solve it.
People go to graduate school to learn new things and, specifically, to learn to discover new things. A PhD is essentially an apprenticeship for researchers. You spend very little time in the classroom, maybe a half dozen classes or so over as many years.
If you go for the title or for the money, you're going to be very disappointed, very quickly.
Not everyone needs to go to Princeton but everyone who wants a degree and is willing to do the requisite learning should be given the opportunity at a solid degree.
Further, outside of some niche circumstances, most of the people who wouldn't "thrive" would be much more able if the earlier systems hadn't failed them so spectacularly.
>most of the people who wouldn't "thrive" would be much more able if the earlier systems hadn't failed them so spectacularly.
Most? Maybe, maybe not. Some amount of them absolutely, but that's once again a different problem to solve, not something to band-aid over later.
Personally, I'm totally ok with making college just as mandatory as high school as long as it doesn't place an undue burden on individuals.
Some food for thought: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/11/educat...
Also, we know that education rates skew heavily with SES. It's much more an issue of availability and quality of education than it is some kids being dumb or something...
We need to start questioning bad assumptions about education. Shuffling money around isn't going to do it.
Yes, but it's the same question. Initial schooling is implicitly accepting a working age adult contributing no income for four years. We're just accustomed to it.
> what assumptions do you think need to change?
* 18 year olds are capable of making decisions about what career they will want for the rest of their lives
* Leaving (or pushing back entering) the work force for four years in pursuit of a degree is a nigh-universal good
* Taking four years of time / 120 credit hours is a reasonable and good target around which to structure degrees, regardless of what amount of knowledge must / should be imparted
* Training on the job cannot replace any meaningful amount of what four year degrees can offer
* Anyone can get a degree, and should be encouraged to do so regardless of whether or not they actually can or will
I mean, there are more, but that's a good start.
Even if you did get rid of government guaranteed loans, companies would happily step in to grant people guaranteed loans in exchange for servitude over the rest of their lives. If they don't find a well-earning job well that's even better.
There were multiple non-government loan options back when I was in college that were just that.
To be a machinist or welder can require a training program like this. I'm not clear on whether that's well represented in this article.
No one teaches at the jobs anymore because those people then leave.
You need to smack the owners and HR departments who can't get their head around the fact that raising someone's salary is cheaper than having to hire a replacement.
Unfortunately, as things stand in American business, if you want to get ahead you have to jump around at least every 5-8 years.
This is circular though. Companies don't invest in their employees because they leave anyway <-> employees leave for better opportunities because their companies don't invest in them.
To get his job, my friend completed a 3 year program at a local community college. He learned about welding, robotics (obviously), a bit of control theory, destructive and non-destructive testing, metallurgy, safety certifications, and more. The latter bits of training are critical, since his job involves setting up and monitoring the robots that weld together the pieces of truck frames.
Math? Yes
Physics? Yes
CS? Maybe
Cogito ergo sum? Hell no.
It may be unnecessary but if the premium is large enough the "overqualifcation" may be rational if there is enough of an edge on average.
There's a compelling case that most college degrees are mostly valuable for signaling reasons. Most people use very little to none of what they learn at university. Yet employers still care a lot about degrees because they signal that the worker is most likely intelligent and diligent enough to successfully complete the degree.
Even if its mostly a farce, it's still a smart idea to play along. Not having a degree can lock you out of a lot of important activities. But from a policy perspective, the signaling model tells us something very different than the human capital model (which assumes that higher education is valuable because it confers useful skills).
If we're all just getting degrees to signal our good qualities, than its inherently a wasteful zero-sum game. The more people that get degrees, the less they're worth. Rather than talking about expanding people's access to higher-education, we should be figuring out policies to discourage people from going to college.
The overwhelming majority of people would choose the former. Which is pretty strong evidence that the value of a Harvard degree is the social status and credibility that it gives you, not the things you learn in class.
Different definitions may be appropriate in different cases. Deciding whether to go is one case (extremely valuable, depending on discipline). Evaluating how useful it is for education is another (in my opinion, it's a pretty terrible value).