Academia is a pyramid scheme. You graduate 100 history majors and tell them to seek a position in academia every semester. No knowledge or teaching how to do something else with the degree at all. Then, you only have 6 positions in the history department entirely. Every school follows the same path.
That's history, the very foundation of philosophy and knowledge. Everything else is written about it. Then you have something like Women Studies, who graduated 400 students a semester, and have 20 positions entirely. They're all told people will hire them, and they need to move the world forward. Slave labor? Graduate teachers, post docs, and undergrads are all doing the work the professor needs to stay in academia. All those papers published with barely any actual research or looks. The higher up just says if something works or not. Those papers have to pay to be published by the way. To keep your job you need to publish 5 papers a year.
The worst is networking. You go to Harvard to network, and the education is nice as well. The school will promote a 90% hired rate, but have no way for students to show off or talk to people to find a future. The jobs are all lower level stuff, which is likely for a company built just like the academic one. It's bureaucratic bullcrap all over, and it all moves at a glacial rate, and destroys lives left and right. All the while theybdeclare how important they are and we need to praise the iceberg.
One you see it in motion, you realize how and why empires implode so often. They create stuff like this to look good and then it envelopes them.
The problem happened when we turned colleges into degree mills. There weren’t supposed to be 100 history majors, only a small handful. Then college industrialized and became a multi billion dollar business. Completely ruined higher education.
Predatory student loans made it worse. Ask an 18 year old child if they want to go $150k in debt. They’re told it’ll all work out and be fine. For most, that level of debt is insurmountable. All degrees and units costing the same is also ridiculous. Student loans should be more like business loans. No bank would approve $150k for Women’s Studies. Many would have for CS or engineering or something, though with AI now, that gets shakier.
Still love higher education, I’d just rather they got all the business out of it.
After Griggs vs Duke Power, corporations were forced to use a university degree as a makeshift intelligence test. This is why so many white collar positions want a college degree now.
Government, as it always does, warped the post secondary education market far beyond what it was intended to be, and now it is collapsing under it's own weight.
Academia is a pyramid scheme. You graduate 100 history majors and tell them to seek a position in academia every semester. No knowledge or teaching how to do something else with the degree at all. Then, you only have 6 positions in the history department entirely. Every school follows the same path.
That's history, the very foundation of philosophy and knowledge. Everything else is written about it. Then you have something like Women Studies, who graduated 400 students a semester, and have 20 positions entirely. They're all told people will hire them, and they need to move the world forward. Slave labor? Graduate teachers, post docs, and undergrads are all doing the work the professor needs to stay in academia. All those papers published with barely any actual research or looks. The higher up just says if something works or not. Those papers have to pay to be published by the way. To keep your job you need to publish 5 papers a year.
The worst is networking. You go to Harvard to network, and the education is nice as well. The school will promote a 90% hired rate, but have no way for students to show off or talk to people to find a future. The jobs are all lower level stuff, which is likely for a company built just like the academic one. It's bureaucratic bullcrap all over, and it all moves at a glacial rate, and destroys lives left and right. All the while theybdeclare how important they are and we need to praise the iceberg.
One you see it in motion, you realize how and why empires implode so often. They create stuff like this to look good and then it envelopes them.
The problem happened when we turned colleges into degree mills. There weren’t supposed to be 100 history majors, only a small handful. Then college industrialized and became a multi billion dollar business. Completely ruined higher education.
Predatory student loans made it worse. Ask an 18 year old child if they want to go $150k in debt. They’re told it’ll all work out and be fine. For most, that level of debt is insurmountable. All degrees and units costing the same is also ridiculous. Student loans should be more like business loans. No bank would approve $150k for Women’s Studies. Many would have for CS or engineering or something, though with AI now, that gets shakier.
Still love higher education, I’d just rather they got all the business out of it.
After Griggs vs Duke Power, corporations were forced to use a university degree as a makeshift intelligence test. This is why so many white collar positions want a college degree now.
Government, as it always does, warped the post secondary education market far beyond what it was intended to be, and now it is collapsing under it's own weight.
It’s the 80% figuring out how to control and profit off of the 20%. Metaphysical communism.