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Americans Are Losing Faith in the Value of College. Whose Fault Is That?
(www.nytimes.com)
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this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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I think a big part of it is the mindset that college education should train you to do a job, rather than provide a knowledge based on which job-specific training can be built upon. I think this is dually precipitated by employers not investing in training/educating their employees anymore, and outsourcing that cost to the employee, but also the issue of students who throw a fit about taking class X because they're going for a degree in Y (I see this a lot with science/engineering majors when having to take classes in the humanities).
It is the age old argument. The question is why are you going. Unless your wealthy, it is nuts to spend money and take debt without a plan of how you will pay for it. Too many people do not consider the price value side of things.
As far as the the tech versus liberal education. It makes no sense for someone like me to pay for or waste time on useless crap. What is useless crap is very person dependent. The other interesting thing is one never hears about the liberal education folks pushing that they need more science and tech skills. How many liberal arts people actually understand science and tech?
A lot of people were also lied to about the cost analysis; there was a pervasive idea that everyone who went to college would get a 'good job' that would pay for all of the loans.
Yes. The the whole college thing seems scary these days. I know I went to an informational session for parents with kids where I worked. The company had a whole program to help parents. Just all seemed so complicated. I never had kids but was interested in the situation.
I also think the title on the article is stange too. The idea one should take collage on faith just seems nuts. One always needs to figure a combination of their skills and interests and do their own analysis. But how is the average 18 year old going to do that and how many have patents that can help.
On the other hand my nieces and nephews seemed to more or less figure it out without crazy debt. Not all have figured out a career or one that pays that well at least yet.
It is also interesting the different attitudes about college in my family and my wife's family.