College: Big Name or Generic Brand
As our schools turn out less educated product– more “repeat after me” than critical thinking– our colleges have had to change as well. Not only have their entry requirements changed due to the fact that political correctness has run amok, but they’ve also started weighing achievements in a community, or the hard luck case you came from. This certainly cannot be the same as what these colleges used to be.
There was a time in the mid 1900s that it was believed that men and women could not get a high paying job if they did not have a college education. This led to all the promises made by politicians to get people into college, which led to a bigger population that wasn’t the best and brightest, which did get more people a college degree but watered down what one means. It’s hard not to find someone with a two or four Year degree now, and what a person with that degree can expect has vastly changed. That, and the fact that people like Bill Gates can make a huge corporation without having a college degree shatters the myth that one cannot make it without the degree.
Enter Vox Day’s comments in regards to colleges being no more than brand names for those who value those kinds of things. He comments that in his professional experience it mattered more what one truly learns and knows than what a degree was in or what institution it came from.
For me, I was doing my day job during the summers as a temporary employee two years before graduating. The company knew I would get my degree in the field, and offered me the job before completion without even considering my college transcript. (They may have been able to do better!) I chose a different route than two of my college buddies. I went into the workforce, they got their Masters. We all have different life experiences because of the choices.
So, of how much value is a college degree? What is the comparitive ROI (Return On Investment) of a degree from different places– since some companies believe that it’s fine just to have the degree? Is it worth it?
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Comments from MInTheGap
Chris Naron said,
Wrote on August 11, 2006 @ 12:27 am
This is a debate I’ve had several times on my blog. I contend that the emphasis on technical training at universities along with the dilution of the liberal arts into social critical theory programs in disguise has led to largely worthless degrees. If you can get the technical training elsewhere without taking History, why wouldn’t you? And if none of what they’re teaching you in liberal arts is truth, why bother learning any of it?
Universities should be producing scholars not employees. If you haven’t read it yet, get a copy of Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind.
MInTheGap said,
Wrote on August 11, 2006 @ 8:09 am
I’m certain that having multiple subjects– producing a well round individual– is a good thing. That being said, it turns out that those that want a specific set of knowledge end up learning a majority of their work post-graduate or through self-teaching.
Is it possible that college education has just moved further out? What I mean is that it now takes a Masters Degree to learn what used to take a Bachelors?
Chris Naron said,
Wrote on August 11, 2006 @ 4:32 pm
It means that colleges and universities are rotting at both ends. Technical training brings in the mercenary student bent on learning only that which will get him a job. On the other end, you have the liberal arts student who wants to bask in what passes for free thoguht these days. Put the two together on a the campus and you have a hopelessly watered down system where the “real” learning occurs on the job and in post graduate work. In a sense, undergrad work is a mere weeding process, which is what high school used to be.
MInTheGap said,
Wrote on August 11, 2006 @ 9:07 pm
And these elected officials that are going to mandate college education will just go one step further while causing us to pay more money out of our pockets!