Over-Education: The Education Vaccination

^I find it unconscionable that, on any given day, a full 20% of our people are in the lowest quintile!

Oh, we have a class system. It's just convoluted as fuck.

I went to school with white rich people, and black rich people and Asian rich people! And rich people from many other countries too! Like Brits and Aussies and Indians too! Very diverse IMHO!

We crossed all political lines too. In my condo I was neighbors with the daughter of a GOP congressman and down the hall was the son of a Democratic senator!

If that's not diversity I don't know what is?

And everyone I went to school with all have great jobs, or are doing PHD's or Law School at the very least. That suggests that this whole economic downturn thing is spread by those too lazy to get ahead.

how's your dad Polar?

What are your degree(s) in, Polarslam? If you want to say, of course . . .

I have a very jaded opinion of colleges and higher education.

When I graduated from high school, I went off to a mortuary college to learn how to be a funeral director and embalmer. Instead, they taught me how to pass the board exams and I learned how to embalm and direct funerals after I graduated and went to work.

A few years later, I went back to college to learn how to be a Registered Nurse. Instead, they taught me how to pass board exams and I learned how to take care of the sick and injured after I graduated and went to work.

When I went to mortuary school, it was a 1 year diploma program. A few years later, the states started requiring 2 year Associate Degrees. Now some states are starting to require 4 year BS degrees to get the same education to pass a board exam that I got in 1 year.

RN programs used to be 3 year programs that were run by hospitals. Besides classroom work, you spent alot of time working shifts on the floors. You were an RN once you finished school and passed boards. Then the colleges took over RN education and are turning out AAS and BS nurses who get a little bit of clinical training in school and don't know their asses from a hole in the ground when they go to work. The 3 year nurses were the best of all because they graduated having a shitload of clinical experience and knew how to do patient care. Those 3 year non-degreed nurses also already knew what they were getting into by the time they graduated.

The 2 year and 4 year nurses spend all that time time in school getting a degree, go to work, and are horrified to learn that it's a dirty job sometimes.

It took me 5 years to get an associate degree because I am a dummy

...Please tell me you're being facetious. You just tried to explain diversity by making points about how everyone you knew was rich, and that everyone you went to school with are doing PHDs and Law School.

Then go on to express that the class issues are caused by poor people.

:twitch:

I think what I meant went right over your head. I'm not talking about races or creeds, I'm talking about socioeconomic statuses. Having gone to Princeton, you've likely known ONLY a few lower to middle class students who don't have a daddy to arrange a nice high salary job for them after graduation. And there's no question they've got great jobs. You went to PRINCETON. That place is FULL of connections. (REAL connections). Suck the right dicks and you can easily become White House Chief of Staff someday.

I did a double honors undergrad in Economics and Political Studies and did a M.A with a focus on Political Communications.

I find the poor fascinating! I have strong commitment to noblesse oblige. Like a young John Edwards I look forward to lifetime of poor people helping and banging crazy hippie ladies.

But to stop being facetious for a moment...

I'm completely aware that my Ivy experience was not the norm and no matter how schools like Princeton and Harvard like to spin their 100 Billion Dollar endowment funds that create opportunities for those in need of aid, the cold hard facts are that 85% of my class mates were from wealth and privilege, even the minority students. The African American students in my program were the children of prominent business and political figures and not gifted students from the inner city doing a masters on aid. The quality of the instruction and facilities was amazing and the piece of paper itself has more value because of the branding around it than it might deserve, but it's that way all over the world. Certain schools are elevated to high levels for various reasons, but in the end of the day an idiot from Princeton or Oxford or le Sorbonne is still an idiot and they will get called on it eventually.

Ugh. Way too much work.

If I'm going to suck the right dicks I just want to be senior adviser land spin that off into a lifetime of lucrative lobbying jobs and consultant roles with a mix of corporate boards. That's the smart way to go about it.

I knew it was you that stole Louis Riel's cock!

Repeatedly!

The value of a business major from any university is zero, at an absolute maximum, in any reality. The value of conning some numbnuts who's managed to luck into a heap of cash despite a complete lack of brain activity into believing that there's value in your business degree from your fucking university, however, is whatever you manage to make it to be, and a lot more than the value of the degree itself. So fuck off with getting the degree and just lie about it, because anyone who attributes value to the degree won't notice the difference.

Are you drunk?

Are you saying that your PhD in horribleness is fraudulent?

You've lost me here. How can you disdain book-education, as you call it, in literature? What is experience-education in relation to history?

And for the record, I loved university. I think it likely that it was the best experience I will ever have in my life. And I didn't go in order to get a specific job afterwards. You wouldn't do a subject like history if you mostly had the job market in mind.

What I'm saying is that it seems wrong, to me, for a company to look to hire one of the following two: a man with twelve years of solid experience and no college education vs. a wet-behind-the-ears 23 year old college grad with a BD, and hire with the college grad.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I think college is fantastic. I'm finally able to attend this Fall to Indiana's Butler University. What I'm complaining about isn't that college or education is bad, or that book-education is bad.

What I'm saying is that, when it comes to field success, qualifiable experience consistently proves more credible than a text book education with no field experience. And yet, companies seem to be content with throwing out the experienced applicants for green college grads.

It happens because they can pay the green college grad much less than an experienced person, even if the experienced person has a college degree themselves.

This is true. One question: In your opinion, do you think that this is kind of short sighted?

A company hires the green college grad who comes to work for the comparatively crappy wage and either 1) gathers experience which he or she will then take to some other company to secure a higher paying job (forcing the company to spend money on hiring and training again), or 2) because the grad is green, he or she makes mistakes which cost the company money to fix.

Of course, there is the third option which sees the grad rise through the ranks, gaining experience, seniority and higher salaries, making him or her ripe to be replaced because, on it's face, it seems like a good idea to spend less on some kid who's wet behind the ears (which puts you back to options 1 and 2).

Doesn't seem sensible to me.

All I can say is I worked my ass off and my university totally screwed me, and not in the way I enjoy being fucked. All I'll say is IF I could go back and change it, I most definitely would!

Education is never a problem. Subpar education resulting from the educational system being expanded at an unsustainable rate without regard for quality and the idea that everyone CAN and has the DESIRE to learn have just diluted the effects of work.

An idiot in a factory does something useful. An idiot in an office... just gets a check.

It sounds like you went to technical schools or very easy to get into colleges (which are normally defacto technical schools) instead of some hard to get into top 50 university. That would be your problem.

You should have gone to a better school IMHO!

Working your ass off at some mid tier state school is less smart that coasting by at an Ivy or top state school, if you must lower yourself to public institutions.

Please don't remind me...

You can always go back and shoot the place up when your life of menial labour causes you to snap!

I would NOT sacrifice my "life" on vengeance to get back at that university. Now if EVER I concocted some MEANS by which to sue them (a dream), believe me I wouldn't hesistate to suck the finances out to them to the point where they'd be bankrupted out of business.

No, I went to very good schools. What I experienced is the same as NCLB: teach the test. It's the basis of education in America.

I definetly think it's short-sighted, but, with many industries, short-sightedness is what drives the market these days.

Whatever makes the bottom line look good today, not next year or the year after.

I really think you just got stuck in a shit program for nursing. My university has mandatory clinical work included in its program. Of course, it's one of the best programs in the South-East, but still, all the nurses they graduate have had about a year of experience with actual nursing work. They have to do a whole summer of actual clinic work and they take several labs where they drive to different hospitals and help out.