Are college educations killing the country?

Tim Patterson graduated with a degree in computer science.

True, many technological advances are made by people who didn't attend college...but the vast majority of technological advances are made by engineers, chemists, doctors, and all manner of acedemicians.

All of the German rocket scientists had advanced degrees. All of the Manhattan Project scientists had advanced degrees. All medical research scientists have advanced degrees, and I could go on all day like this.

No it doesn't. Being able to graduate college, unless your parents are well connected, proves you have "stick to it". And after your daughter masters the skills her uneducated co-workers teach her, she will be at an advantage because she'll have a more well rounded skill set tool box to draw on.

It's impossible to impress the advantage you gain by having a college degree on people who don't have them. There are many accomplished college drop outs and uneducated people. Samuel Colt, Johannes Guttenberg, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and so on, but a college degree can ONLY help, and cannot hurt someone

Our economic rivals in China, India, Korea, Japan, and Europe still understand and value college degrees. If we turn our backs on it, and churn out nothing but graduates of Bob's heating and air college, or medical assistant school, we'll be in trouble on a global scale

 

Well done, not everyone needs a college degree and insisting that this should be a goal is wasteful.

There are also a lot of college degrees that have little utility.

 

But that does not prove that he wouldn't have accomplished what he did without the degree. Don't get me wrong, I understand that education is critical to technological advancement, but that does not imply that education must be obtained under the framework of the current college system.

Like I said, I have never been to college, but I have written many original algorithms to control displays and other I/O devices, which I use in my electronic control systems. I obtained my education from books and tutorials, and I have contributed to teaching others the tricks of the trade. The point is that the current system of De facto educational mandates build barriers that keep people like me from contributing to our potential.

But that doesn't prove anything, because there are barriers that discourage or prevent participation to those without college degrees. Some of these barriers are legal and others are the result of a fetish market.

Yes, you could go on all day ... but it wouldn't prove anything. I already know that barriers stop people without college degrees from contributing to their potential. The barriers to becoming a rocket scientist without a degree are greater than the barriers of getting a degree, so obviously going to college was the path of least resistance … but what if the barriers didn't exist … we vary well might have more advanced rocketry.

I know a lot of lazy college graduates who can't stick to anything, and I know a lot of individuals without college degrees that never leave a job unfinished … you are just making things up now.

Or, more realistically, the business was just legally required to hire someone with an occupational license, and they hired my daughter to fulfill a legal technicality.

I am smarter then most college graduates. But if you are talking about how a college degree will help fulfill the legal technicalities (barriers to entry) that have been erected around certain occupations, then I understand you fully.

It can and does hurt those who are forced to fund the system.

You are confusing the value of education (which I fully support) with the value of a college degree (which I don't support). It is completely reasonable that some individuals could become competent heart surgeons by simply working with a heart surgeon for a few years. They would become fully educated in the occupation, but without ever attending college. My point is that if they can prove their competency, absent a college degree, that society should allow them to contribute to their potential.

 

They shouldn't. The free market determines whether the skills they have learned are valuable enough to warrant pay beyond what someone makes who worked straight out of high school. Some college degrees, along with other credentials, allow individuals to get paid more, some less. Seems pretty obvious.

What you are explaining is the consideration that any non-idiot should keep in mind while before attending college. Those students should consider the cost of their decisions to take out loans, but oftentimes they don't, so they end up with a degree in liberal arts and start working for me for less than the hourly wage earned by those who have four years' experience with no college degree.

If a student wishes to get her or his education, then that student needs to consider the financial costs of her or his decisions and that student should bear the costs of the decision. However, K-12 education is dedicated to ensuring that students are financially stupid, so our society continues to pump out liberal arts idiots year after year.

 

Personally I feel as long as a person has the intelligence to do a job that should be the only thing that matters.

However the world is not like this.

AboveAlpha