Debating the Value of College in America
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
1. Society is a machine that trains worker ants for roles in production which serves the goals of the society. The efficient operation of this machine requires that intellectual knowledge workers be identified, tested, corralled into specialties with a certification which is accurate and uniform so that factories can employ known quality product cogs to place in their production lines.
2. People are stupid and lazy and do not like to learn things. College forces them to learn things so they will not be so stupid no more.
3. People need specific technical skills and training to do technical jobs from nursing to product design. Colleges need to provide uniform quality vocational training to accomplish this end.
He also dismisses much of the research that shows colleges do not teach much critical thinking by suggesting that if a measurement gives a surprising result, the measurement is wrong since we know the result should be otherwise.
These are the arguments of a desperate man who does not understand humans or what education is.
This all said, I was fascinated and amazed that his three reasons for college match up with the criticism of educational reformers such as John Gatto, who argues that the problem with contemporary education is that it trains factory workers, performs vocational education and assumes people hate learning and must be forced to learn things when in fact people actually are built to learn and will pursue it naturally unless their spirit is crushed by institutionalized forced schooling.
That being said, people on HN are obsessed with discussing the ROI of undergraduate education when referring to the "bubble," without really discussing the role that a liberal education should play for those who aren't engineers. I think the really interesting point the author made was that professor's incentives have goes awry, as they are better off if they assign easier coursework so that they don't get docked on student reviews at the end of the term.
Perhaps you are thinking of another article by the same author? I have read that argument before and it's obviously a good one, but it's not brought up in this article here.
It's a great book, well worth the read.
Most people just want someone to give them a job and let them do it. Being told what to do by an authority figure is considerably easier than figuring out what to do on your own. College is a system of authority and assigned work, and that's a big part of why people like it.
I don't think the purpose of college is to provide people with education and a love of learning. Most people don't want that. The majority of people don't like to learn things. Learning is for nerds.
The purpose of college (or any form of institutionalized education) is to do all three of the things that you listed. It's a tool of our society. Changing it would only make it unappealing to the average person. People who love learning have wikipedia.
> I don't think the purpose of college is to provide people with education and a love of learning. Most people don't want that.
Your stance on this issue strikes me as one-dimensional and solipsistic. Maybe you're a very smart person who was unfairly persecuted for being different, or maybe you were persecuted for being different and placed the blame on a feature.
From my perspective, humans are learning machines, as evidenced by the totality of human output.
> People who love learning have wikipedia.
Wikipedia does not talk to you, debate your ideas, or force you to think in uncomfortable ways (`Discussion` does not count). I might be nitpicking your point, but autodidacts are well served by interfacing with people who can challenge their ideas and also help them articulate their opinions in person.
Edit: I'm getting downvoted, and I hope it's not because this comment comes across as rude. If it is, please message me directly; I tried hard on the tone.
I believe that a good vo-tech schooling should be considered as an acceptable alternative for many.
But, you just wrote...
Society needs a mechanism for sorting out its more intelligent members from its less intelligent ones, just as a track team needs a mechanism (such as a stopwatch) for sorting out the faster athletes from the slower ones.
His income numbers use average instead of median. I can't find the exact numbers, but eyeballing it -- it looks as though he's quoting the household income numbers instead of the individual numbers.
You nearly always use median for incomes, otherwise Bill Gates can walk into a room and the average income goes into the hundreds of millions.
Someone discussing the value of college education in America should be educated in the skills to evaluate it, and, fairly or not, it really calls into question the validity of rest of the article for me.
I'm a college dropout and a programmer. I got an A and an A+ at my 2 Calculus classes in college, but in the same time I was reading Petrarca, Yeats and Donne. What does that make me?
Bygones.
"The obvious initial inference to make about a test that does not pick up a difference where you expect one is that it is not a very good test."
Or maybe the expectation is incorrect because you're a biased, myopic dimwit? Sorry, former Ivy League professor, but you just failed miserably in 'Logic and the Scientific Method 101'. How ironic, considering the fact that he was trying to counter an argument about universities' failure to impart critical thinking skills.
For example, if I make a test to tell me which item weighs more between two, and then I weigh myself and my refrigerator and it says I weigh more, then I should look at the test first. Now it may turn out that the test was right, and my fridge actually is a new lightweight fridge, but your expectation is the default hypothesis.
In fact the way you typically calibrate tests is to verify that it signals differences that you very strongly expect.