Did you get you moneies worth?

[JackLuis]

Found this article and wondered if it was true?

How do you feel about higher education?

 

[cloudy]

I got a great education, but I went to one of the few universities that every undergrad has a second minor in english built in to every single program - engineering, business, whatever.

It's also gotten me more jobs, and better pay at those jobs than I would have been offered if I hadn't had that education.

No complaints here at all.

 

[jomar]

Apologies, but that was way to much to read for a porn board so not sure what the point was. Higher education may be dumbed down these days (I always did like the idea of higher education being the process of learning more and more about less and less until one finally knows nothing at all) but a college degree is still the entry level certificate for most jobs.

College, tech school, doesn't matter - you have to have something beyond a high school diploma.

As for me, I own my own small business and work in my field of education, so I'm good with it.

 

[_Lynn_]

I'm in college now for the first time at age *cough cough*, which says something about my thoughts on it.

 

[TE999]

I went to college on the GI Bill and enjoyed every minute of it. I landed my first full time job due to my skills learned in the military; my BA was frosting on the cake. Eight years later I was strongly encouraged to earn a Masters Degree by my then employer who assisted with my tuition and expenses. It took me four years, but I did it and I enjoyed it. One year later the employer and my job disappeared. I found another job and finally retired twenty years later.

Did I benefit from a college education? I think so. My skills would have only carried me so far in my chosen field, beyond that college was required for advancement and I was able to advance.

If I was advising a young person today, I'd suggest they learn a trade such as plumbing, appliance repair, HVAC installation and repair, electrician, etc. People with college degrees in non-specific or obscure fields of study are flipping burgers and stocking shelves at Hell-Mart while painfully paying back their college loans.

 

[O2]

These days I feel like an undergrad degree is what a HS degree was thirty years ago. My younger daughter got her Masters in Teaching at a cost of 50K....not worth it in my mind.

I had the G.I. bill and got grants because I was married and had a child at the time with the second on the way. It was less expensive between 1979 and 1984......every year it goes up...and up....and up....

We paid for the first two years of college for both our girls and they are still paying for the rest.....

 

[BlackShanglan]

What one considers one's education to be worth is I think largely answered by one's motives for pursuing it. If one's sole goal is financial, one tends to concieve of formal education as a frustrating barrier that must be surmounted to gain a ticket to a better job and a better salary. Any way around that barrier appears equally acceptable, and any difficulties appear to be the fault of the barrier.

If one's goals are otherwise, one tends to look at the matter otherwise. I'll be paying off my debts from my education for many years to come, and I am (by choice) no longer employed by anyone who cares a straw for my educational accomplishments. Yet I would not trade a moment of it, nor a single thing I learned. It has been wonderful and continues to be so. It pervades my life on every level, and it gives me joy which no other thing can touch.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

I advise my students to spend the first two years in a community college. Not only is it cheaper than university but you have the opportunity to learn a salable trade. This is important. To my mind, forcing a young person into debt for their education so that they begin life owing tens of thousands of dollars is immoral. Learn a trade, take your time and understand that a college education isn't to make you more employable. What it does is make you an more interesting person to spend time with. That's important.

 

[WRJames]

There is always a nostalgia for the "good old days" so I'm hesitant to say that things were better back when I went to college. But still -- college costs have outpaced the general rate of inflation. The use of graduate students to teach has become more prevelant -- and more of those students are English challenge. And grade inflation, not really mentioned in this article, has been so rampant.

The net effect is that college degrees have been priced up and dumbed down. Of course, this process may have been in progress for a very long time.

I was amused by one of the supposedly educated attendees talking about a "plethora" of activities. When I was growing up, plethora meant "too much".

 

[Katyusha]

I got my money's worth. I'll admit that I didn't read the entire article, but I went to a university with a business college that required all its classes to be, essentially, one big project. We had lectures and textbooks, yes, but we weren't simply taught the principles and philosophies of various aspects of business, every assignment we had forced us to put that into practice. And every single assignment was a written assignment of sorts; anything from a short technical report to a long drawn-out analysis complete with recommendations for changing/improving this, that or the other. We were everything from a person helping a sibling get a small business off the ground to senior vice presidents of mid-size corporations to directors of business strategy during a merger between two multinationals.

It was actually a lot of fun.

 

[Katyusha]

I advise my students to spend the first two years in a community college. Not only is it cheaper than university but you have the opportunity to learn a salable trade. This is important. To my mind, forcing a young person into debt for their education so that they begin life owing tens of thousands of dollars is immoral. Learn a trade, take your time and understand that a college education isn't to make you more employable. What it does is make you an more interesting person to spend time with. That's important.

It's also a good transition; universities (in general) have such trouble with freshman retention because the change from high school to a major university is a huge shock for many students. Community college offers a stepping stone; not only can students learn a trade before going to a university but they also can make the transition between high school and university much more easily that way.

 

[BlackShanglan]

It's also a good transition; universities (in general) have such trouble with freshman retention because the change from high school to a major university is a huge shock for many students. Community college offers a stepping stone; not only can students learn a trade before going to a university but they also can make the transition between high school and university much more easily that way.

It is, however, one to be taken with caution. I agree that the smaller setting and generally lower price makes community college an appealing transitional environment. However, community colleges also tend to rely heavily on adjunct faculty (part-timers paid by the course), which can mean that students will have difficulty getting help outside of class. Grade inflation can also be a problem in those circumstances; sadly, the desire to avoid protracted hassle and justification can lead harried adjuncts to cut corners. I've supervised some products of the local community college's lower-division courses who clearly did not get the education they paid for.

 

[3113]

I used to teach at a community college. The one thing I found was that none of the students--NONE--who stepped into my class could think critically. Not that first week and usually not till five or six weeks in after I'd scared them into actually asking questions and doing research to back up their beliefs and arguments. Which makes me believe whole-heartedly that the one thing that is worth every red cent is higher education--at least, until critical thinking is taught in high school again. Because, unfortunately, America is one of the most powerful nations on Earth. So I want our voters as educated as possible, because when they're stupid, they vote in stupid people who screw over the whole world.

Is it worth it? You bet your fucking ass it is...if people learn to ask questions, look for answers, and learn to be better thinkers. So long as we have a democracy, we need educated people. When this country becomes an aristocracy, it won't matter how stupid and uneducated the serfs are.

 

[trysail]

Found this article and wondered if it was true?

How do you feel about higher education?

As the author of the article accurately states, many forms of education have become highly over-priced and over-valued. In many respects, it has become a racket whose prime beneficiaries are the professoriat and administrators.

What cost me and my family $40,000 for twenty years of pre-school, elementary school, high school, college and graduate school now costs $616,586 (AFTER-TAX!).

If that $40,000 was merely adjusted for CPI-inflation, the figure would be: $197,348.

Since 1963, tuition inflation has been 8.0% per annum while CPI-inflation has been 4.2%.

Since 1974, education inflation has been 8.7% per annum. In that same period, CPI-inflation has been 4.0%.

Over the weekend, I ran into an acquaintance who is a Trustee of a "selective" four year private college and the topic arose. He was candid in his admission that, today, many of these schools compete on the basis of having deluxe facilities and media rankings ( which are, of course, idiotic ).

An undergraduate liberal arts degree has become the equivalent of a 1920s' high school degree. From a purely economic perspective, it simply isn't worth the price. Science and engineering degrees have some economic justification.

A B.A. from one of the large public diploma mills has become largely worthless.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Knowing what I know now, I wouldnt waste my time and money and inconvenience in college.

A college diploma is now a union card for low paying civil service employment unless you get a professional degree in engineering or medicine or agriculture.

If I ran the education system I'd assess each student's aptitudes and tailor a program to their highest scores. Vocational evaluators used to do this but too many Democrat sub-species qualified for janitor, sanitation worker, and cafeteria labor.

 

[Liar]

The problem seems to be that people mistake degrees for education.

I don't give a rat's ass about my college degrees. They're in social sciences. Or "liberal arts" (whatever that means, sounds like a derogatory nomer to me. It's not art. Art is to make paintings and stuff.) or whatever you wish to call it. I have a masters in rethoric and a lesser degree (what do you call it, a BA?) in sociolinguistics. Those don't get you hired anywhere. Except maybe to teach the very same things.

My college education, a.k.a, the stuff I learned, have been invalueable though, both professionally and personally.

 

[3113]

Allow me to add, I don't believe that Higher Education should be ruinously expensive (though the teachers should be reasonably paid). Nor do I think that four years at a university is for everyone. That should go without saying. Not everyone is a scholar or jazzed by learning.

But unfortunately for us--and until we do better--that first year of higher education, be it community college or regular collage--is often the only time that anyone gets taught critical thinking, how to research and teach themselves information, how to better use their minds. There are other ways a young person can learn these things, but the only place where a class in it is given and required is in private high schools (ironic as those who can afford to send their kids to a private school are often the same who can afford to send them to a university) or higher ed.

It's not a good thing that students need to take that extra year of higher ed to get this; it should be in the high schools. So long as it's not, higher ed matters.

 

[Katyusha]

The problem seems to be that people mistake degrees for education.

They also mistake degrees for general intelligence.

 

[Katyusha]

Allow me to add, I don't believe that Higher Education should be ruinously expensive (though the teachers should be reasonably paid). Nor do I think that four years at a university is for everyone. That should go without saying. Not everyone is a scholar or jazzed by learning.

But unfortunately for us--and until we do better--that first year of higher education, be it community college or regular collage--is often the only time that anyone gets taught critical thinking, how to research and teach themselves information, how to better use their minds. There are other ways a young person can learn these things, but the only place where a class in it is given and required is in private high schools (ironic as those who can afford to send their kids to a private school are often the same who can afford to send them to a university) or higher ed.

It's not a good thing that students need to take that extra year of higher ed to get this; it should be in the high schools. So long as it's not, higher ed matters.

It should be taught starting in elementary school. Not as a separate subject, either. It should be a part of every teacher's curriculum, something that is increasingly needed to successfully complete assignments as a child advances through school. You teach it that way and it becomes a part of their nature; by the time they get to high school they don't know any other way to think; they'll know how to ask the right questions at the right times regardless whether they're asking their teacher or peers or consulting publications on their own to find the answers.

If, however, it's taught beginning in high school, either as a separate subject or not, teenagers, whose minds are already far less malleable than elementary school students', will have to learn a way of thinking that is completely foreign to them. Critical thinking is a necessity for life, not just for education and employment. It should be something that is natural by the time one becomes an adult, not a second way of thinking.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Unfortunately (and ironically, considering where we're posting), I think that the Internet has introduced some new dangers to the critical thinking arena. There is such a massive wealth of facts, factoids, statistics, and pre-written opinions available that people can churn out material indefinitely without having to engage in any sustained analysis or build any substantial chains of reasoning. The Internet is a wonderful tool for gathering information if you know what to do with it, but that "if" is a big one.

 

[JackLuis]

Well we have standardized tests and that is supposed to end the grade inflation, unfortunately it only cause the societies expectation to sag down to a level the Academics think is as good as they can do.

I went thru a trade school CC and used that to get a job in Test Engineering and then to Management and finally ended up running a profit center. I probably should have gone back to school, but I read the books and used common sense to keep up with the Collage Grads.

I was never good at school, I imaging there is a name for my condition, but I'm easily distracted by things and tend to be focused on one thing at a time.

I always had great respect for the PhD's and well educated people who I worked with and under.

I see how little the younger generation knows about the world or even how to protect themselves from the predators. Cell phones, games and rapid fire entertainment draw the attention of our kids and how many care a damn about learning? I'll leave that for our Teachers to discuss.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I've done it all. Trade schools, military schools, correspondence courses, seminars, college, and graduate school; and the bottom line is you gotta be able to apply what you learn to real life problems.

Where we are is a whole lotta people have diplomas and dont know how to do shit with what they learned.