For most of this country's history college was reserved for the rich and the highly talented. The GI Bill after World War II allowed hundreds of thousands of people who never would have considered college to attend. This was great, and I have read about many people who served as junior enlisted in World War II and used their post war college education to become doctors and scientists and other prestigious jobs.
The problem is that their descendants have now come to regard college as something everyone should go to, just like high school. Effects have been disastrous. Colleges have become profit seeking degree miills, , academic rigor has all but disappeared, jobs now require a college degree for the same types of positions that would have only required a high school diploma 50 years ago, and several generations have assumed spiraling amounts of student debt in the pursuit of worthless degrees.
The only way to fix this is to re-center youth expectations about earning a degree in the types of jobs they will do after high school and return colleges to the place they formerly held.
Colleges have become financial schemes that large corporations have encouraged. Credentialism has been a disaster for the human race.
Colleges ideally should train students to understand the world around them and not be a career-focused, profit-seeking gravy train. This is what Luther Classical College for instance is trying to do (not plugging them but showing an alternative to the High Learning Commission system).
For most of this country's history college was reserved for the rich and the highly talented. The GI Bill after World War II allowed hundreds of thousands of people who never would have considered college to attend. This was great, and I have read about many people who served as junior enlisted in World War II and used their post war college education to become doctors and scientists and other prestigious jobs.
The problem is that their descendants have now come to regard college as something everyone should go to, just like high school. Effects have been disastrous. Colleges have become profit seeking degree miills, , academic rigor has all but disappeared, jobs now require a college degree for the same types of positions that would have only required a high school diploma 50 years ago, and several generations have assumed spiraling amounts of student debt in the pursuit of worthless degrees.
The only way to fix this is to re-center youth expectations about earning a degree in the types of jobs they will do after high school and return colleges to the place they formerly held.
I remember a family member telling me what their student loan debt back in the 60's was.
It was six thousand dollars.
The whole thing.
That's it.
The debt-based monetary racket we have created must be fundamentally destroyed.
Okay, but in the mid-1960s you could buy a new Ford Mustang for $2500, now it starts at $27500.
Colleges have become financial schemes that large corporations have encouraged. Credentialism has been a disaster for the human race.
Colleges ideally should train students to understand the world around them and not be a career-focused, profit-seeking gravy train. This is what Luther Classical College for instance is trying to do (not plugging them but showing an alternative to the High Learning Commission system).