For Stossel to suggest that teens today shouldn't bother with college would be as if your dad had told you not to bother with high school. Stossel's not saying he regrets having gone to college himself; he just gives a few examples of outliers from previous generations who dropped out. He's assuming that this generation is facing the same employers, the same careers, the same world as his generation, and that's just not true.
Take that further. Look at Physical Therapists. What was a bachelors degree has become a masters degree and there is an effort to make being a PT a Phd. Why?
Exactly. Get your AS in IT and then persue the shit out of industry certifications, make money hand over fist, spend money on hookers and blow, wash rinse repeat.
This is what worries me about college. What if I am one of those people, ya know? I mean, I know I'm smart and I know I can do the college thing, but will these loans be worth it in the end? As my bf says: "College is a gamble." He tried going several times, several environments. Online, in classroom, University, Community College and never finished. He's already very smart, has a fantastic memory, and educates himself daily. So 9 times out of 10 he was already more educated than the teacher, bored, or had such strong and fuelled opinions on things that the teachers didn't like him and failed him solely for that. Granted, he did get something out of going. He met great people, got close to teachers who helped influence his writing, etc. He's just one of those people where college isn't really for him, his mind is on a different path.
lol. And I just showed him this article to which he responded that it was very poorly put together, but he agrees with the basic principle.
I've been hearing that FNP is going to become a doctorate. If you're going to spend that much time, might as well be an MD. It's all about getting your money.
I'm virtually the same way, but my thing is - show me anything once and I'll figure it out, get better, and then master it........as long as it's challenging. If it's not a challenge, I get bored really easily. I've been better about it over the past couple years. I also have been reading a lot of educational books over the past several years. I especially like books about neuroscience and expanding the capabilities of thought. Woooooooow....that sounded really snooty, but it's the truth. lol
I have answered the question, and offered answers to that question numerous times in the past. So it is no secret. I notice that you are unwilling to answer the question as well. Do you have a point to your question, or is it simply a Margaret style diversion to avoid discussing the topic?
Yeah, I've heard that as well. Which makes zero sense. There's a doctor and nurse shortage in this country which is going to get worse, and yet the people already in the field are lobbying to raise the bar, so they can keep the costs high and their pockets filled. Forget quality of care.
I'll add this: I talked to one of my professors about a year ago (a year after graduating), and he said he was no longer convinced that going to university with the expectation to get a career was worth the time and money. For the knowledge, yes. "If you had asked me 10 years ago, should you go to college to get a job, I would have said, 'Absolutely.' Now, I'm not so sure." He was one of the Geography Dept. advisors. I'm not sure this is something he'd disclose to any prospective or current students, though. I've got my BSc. I want to at least pay off my credit card before weighing whether getting a Masters is worth my time and money. At this moment, I'm not convinced. That said, there is a graduate-level music history project I want to do, tying in my geographic training. This may be something worth doing, but again, the credit card needs to be burninated. Details are here: http://wordforge.net/showpost.php?p=2092433&postcount=24
As a music professor (interestingly enough at that "other" OSU), I can tell you I wrestle with this almost every day I teach. Of course I can't go around telling students not to go to school because, let's face it, universities need students. But I do get dismayed when I see students stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that they really shouldn't be music majors. Sometimes we (the faculty) wind up having to dismiss them as a music students after juries at the end of the semester but again, we obviously can't do that to very many.
Mmm, it's not something that much of an issue here in the Northwest -- the music departments have a hard time finding musicians to fill in a section for band or orchestra sometimes.
I didn't mean the competition to fill seats in university groups. I meant the competition when they graduate and try to get jobs performing. Extremely difficult to make a living that way (again, as I'm sure you understand). That's why I sometimes struggle with whether or not to tell a student the "truth" about what they face. ETA: BTW, I'm playing in an orchestra with your trumpet professor, Brian McWhorter in a couple of weeks. He's a stud and a very strange/funny guy.
Ah, sorry. I assumed that "Oregon Symphonic Band" meant the Symphonic Band at the University of Oregon. My bad.
As someone else in the thread pointed out, these are all outliers, and their unique experiences and successes can hardly be generalized to include every high school graduate. If it were that easy to be a Mark Zuckerberg, then we'd have a lot more 20-something billionaires running around, wouldn't we? I agree that this is the prevailing attitude, and has been for quite some time. While college graduates may not make more money than high school graduates in every instance (see: the aforementioned outliers), a college education does open up a kid's horizons and opportunities. Most 18 year olds have minimal wordly experience and obviously little if any exposure to the wide array of professions & careers available to them in our society. And with few exceptions, 18 y/o teenagers can't see beyond tomorrow, let alone be expected to know what they want to do with the rest of their lives. They have no concept of themselves at ages 25 or 30. A college degree has also become increasingly essential to gaining entry level positions in various professions. You want to be a licensend clinical social worker, or licensed professional counselor without bachelor and masters degrees? Forget it. The state won't license you without the required level of education. You want to be an attorney without a bachelors degree? Forget it, no accredited & legitimate law school will accept you. A veterinarian? A medical doctor of any kind? An architect? An accountant?An aeronautical engineer? Gotta have the degree(s). That assumes that your earing potential is determined soley by your inherent ability & intellect. I think we're all savvy enough to realize that in the real world that just isn't true, we don't live in a pure meritocracy. Financial & career success is as much determined by things like who your parents are and who they worked for, your own efforts at networking (who you know, not what you know), where you live and regional job market dynamics, and sometimes just dumb luck. I do think it's true that the emphasis, at least in many majors, is on research productivity rather than teaching. And that's a direct result of the "publish or perish" paradigm. Professors are under pressure to churn out lots of research and get it published in top journals. And then there's the grant money. That's what gets dept. heads really excited. That's how you achieve tenure. Teaching is a necessary evil, a responsibility often delegated to graduate assistants because it's deemed unworthy of a professor's valuable time. True....however, I also detect a hint of anti-intellectualism here. Just because Stossel doesn't think a topic is interesting or worthy of exploration, doesn't make it true. I agree, the college experience isn't for everyone. Many high school graduates with marginal academic abilities go to college and ultimately drop out. Some people just aren't "book learners," (although I tend to think this is often used as a cop out for those who are just too immature, lazy & undisciplined to apply themselves). Many just aren't mature enough yet and need some time out in the real world slaving in some minimum wage job before they decide that maybe college would be a good thing. A student taking 6 years to earn a bachelors degree? That's not the school's fault. That's the result of a lazy, undisciplined student. Unless you had to drop out for a semester or two for other reasons. Hard to respond when they're using such a broad brush - all these untold thousands of folks with college degrees that are driving taxis - is it because their degree is worthless, or does it have something to do with the individuals that prevents them from finding other work? I certainly agree that there are many college degrees that are pretty worthless in terms of job market application. Philosophy, history, political science...if you're not wanting to teach these things at the university level, I see little point to them. Unless you're using them as a stepping stone to law school. Lots of people start small businesses. The vast majority fail. Then what? Better have something to fall back on when your dream of owning your own coffee shop goes down the tubes. Not to mention that not everyone is a natural born entreprenuer. That takes a certain type of person, someone with a knack for salesmanship. And starting a business isn't as easy as it seems they'd have you believe. It isn't something you just run out and do in an afternoon. And that's Priceton's fault? I doubt it. So was I, in many, many classes. It doesn't mean I didn't pay attention and take notes. Professors aren't there to entertain you, their function is to communicate information. Some are more interesting than others. But of course he was bored, he was more interested in poker & girls than his classes. See my above statements about the impact of immaturity. If he was so bored by his classes and found them so useless, perhaps he should have dropped out and saved whoever was footing his tuition bill the money? Yeah, maybe that's why most television "journalism" sucks ass. No, what he learned at that TV station was how to use sensationalism and populist rabble-rousing to boost ratings. Stossel used to be pretty good when he was doing investigative reports on 20/20. Now that he's at Fox, he's shit. The Obama administration also went after trade schools that were providing substandard education and handing out worthless degrees while saddling graduates with mountains of debt they couldn't pay back. Yet the usual suspects screamed & bitched that he was destroying education, or freedom, or democracy, or something..... Problem is, while Stossel hops aboard the "college is a scam" bandwagon, he fails to suggest any plausible alternatives other than opening up your own business. There will always be a market for competent trade services - plumber, electrician, car mechanic, heating & air, construction. I agree for some young people those are better options than convincing them to sit in English Lit 101 three times a week reading obscure 16th century novels.
Not necessarily. In this area, there are schools which are chronically "short" on professors in general education courses, so folks wind up not being able to graduate on time because they simply couldn't get the classes they needed in a timely manner. (This happens too often for it to be an accident or poor planning.) There's also schools which screw around with the requirements to graduate, so that when you go to file to graduate, the school pulls out some weird course requirement which you "failed to meet" (often times, the only reason you "failed to meet" the requirement was because they changed the name of the course and the clerk in the office is too stupid to realize this) and the only way you can get this corrected is by petitioning the school President or other department heads, which takes time. And that's if you've been told you can appeal the decision.
I can't say these things don't happen, but it hasn't been my experience. What I would suggest to someone in this circumstance is that if your primary college isn't offering a class you need that semester, look to see if an equivalent class is being offered at one of the smaller colleges in the area, and make sure your primary college will accept that credit as a transfer.
Taking six years for a bachelor's degree can also be the fault of lazy/unethical/greedy (choose one or more) academic advisors. Yes, ultimately the responsibility lies with the student, but an academic advisor should point out that they are taking more electives than they need or that they are going to wind up taking years longer to graduate. IMO.
That doesn't work for two reasons: 1.) Because they're so spread out that the commute would be a nightmare (and generally even the online courses require one to show up periodically). 2.) Until recently (as in the past two years), one couldn't expect courses to transfer on an equal basis. Mind you, the one school which was one of the guiltiest of doing this had a university President who nearly cost the school its accreditation because he refused to do things like upgrading the library to modern standards (this was while the university was running a surplus, so its not like they didn't have the money). The President later was promoted to the Tennessee Board of Regents, and then, a year later, became the first person to be fired from the TBR. He filed a lawsuit and then lost. No idea what happened to him, but he's probably retired by now, if he's not busy trying to wreck some other university.
