"Access to education"/everybody gets to go to college...

Has anyone stopped to consider this? Should everybody get to go to college? Because there are some stupid people out there. I mean, by definition, half the population is of below average intelligence. Sending them and giving them a women's studies degree just makes a college degree worthless for everyone. It no longer means anything.

Right now I work with some phenomenally stupid people. Don't get me wrong, they aren't necessarily bad people, just very very stupid. Yet many of them either have college degrees or have been in college.

Well, gotta go. Discuss.

A thousand times this.

Some of the most stupid people I know...have Masters degrees.

College should be available to everyone. If you've the means, the ability, and the motivation then go for it. If not . . . well, no loss. There are trade schools and stuff.

A high school diploma was once considered key to having a brighter future. Standards were lowered so anyone could get one pretty much by showing up. Today, a high school diploma is worthless because a great many functionally illiterate kids receive them.

So, a college degree is key to having a brighter future...

Definitely too many people go to college, and no doubt the availability of easy lone programs takes quite a bit of blame. Those programs are well intended, because financial means is not available to all who would otherwise fit Lanzman's criteria. But there needs to be some gate keeping. Once everybody can pay for college, the schools see that as an opportunity to make more money by lowering admissions standards.

But it's easy to point the finger of blame, much harder to solve the problem.

What Paladin said. For the last fifty years our wonderful education system has been busily lowering the bar for everyone. What used to need a high school diploma now requires a bachelor's degree. What used to require a bachelor's is now a masters. And so forth.

As long as students are the customers, colleges will do what their paying students want. If you want them to uphold standards against the preferences of individual dumb but rich students, you need to decouple college financing from indvidual students.

Stupid IS bad.

Stupid is like the baby-monsters in "Galaxy Quest".
Plays cute for awhile, then hisses and bites.

I work in Finance for my company and I have an economics degree from college. Know what I use from my college days that I apply to my work??? Absolutely nothing.
College! Huh! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Say it again...

I was just watching a Penn & Teller Bullshit episode where a guest reacted to a comment by saying "That right there speaks of higher education. I mean, you have to have gone to college to believe something that spectacularly stupid."

See, high schools don't even discuss that as an option...that's the other problem. Many today see trade schools as something beneath junior college, which is only worth attending to save money on the University you really want to graduate from. Shop classes are next on the chopping block after band and drama are gutted. Apprentice is a term that's associated with Mickey Mouse more than any practical purpose in real life.

And lest I turn this into an echo chamber, yeah colleges are more interested in than teaching anything that will actually be of use in the workplace. Or, anything at all. If I could go back in time ten years, I would've to a tech school instead of State.

We should seperate out the concepts in the thread title. Everyone should have equal access to eduction, but that should be based on academic performance, with standards being higher than they are now.

A few of the Brits here have mentioned that Uni as it's called there doesn't rehash the same courses that should be second nature to a college student. Like English composition. Your secondary school system gives you the tools to go into uni and be done in 3 to 4 years.

Meanwhile, in 'Murica, (or at least here in California), a third of all entering freshmen have to take some kind of remedial English and /or math. And by math, I mean Algebra II, which most 10th graders should have no problems with.

But then, most HSs are well behind the global power curve. TKO told me of a South Korean girl who was held back when she returned to her country because the track here was well behind her SK school. And keep in mind TKO was taking the hardest classes offered.

For the most part. Standards are slipping though. Engineering and other technical courses often have to bring students up to speed in Maths for example. That's because GCSE and A-Level (the secondary level qualifications) are being dumbed down. I for one am tired of people getting 10 A's in these exams just because they cram hard.

I have noticed this, as well. I've observed that those who can't get the career they want with their Bachelor's will go into grad school so they can defer their colossal student loans.

The bigger issue is that while a college degree doesn't guarantee [what most people would consider] a decent job/career, not having a college degree is a pretty good guarantee that your resume will be automatically filtered by HR algorithms long before any human bothers to take a look at your cover letter.

Once employers stop requiring a college degree for careers that don't really require them, young people will respond to the changing job market by focusing more on what those employers actually demand. But the employers have to change first.

So, you're saying we have to kill the 1%?
Well, you put forth a damned good argument for it, you've won me over.

Seems you've caught that nasty garamet disease of mischaracterizing other people for your own profit.

So now you're saying we shouldn't kill the 1%?
Make up your mind.
Are we doing this, or not?

Kill them all.

What about the new 1% that forms?

That's where the "all" part comes in handy.

That isn't going to happen. In a job market where lots of people have college degrees--and ceteris paribus it's better to have an employee who's college-educated than one who's not--employers will use college degrees as a sorting criteria. Yes, that will result in them often getting employees who are educated well in excess of what the job requires, but since the market rate for the job is the same either way, why NOT get a college-educated employee?

We've made a college education very commonplace and we've lowered the standards for attaining it. Abundant supply and reduced quality is a recipe for lower price in the job market. Couple that with enormous student aid programs that have simply bidden up the cost of an education--a MASSIVE transfer of wealth to academia--and you've got masses of college graduates with big loans and little prospect to pay them.

When the bubble bursts--and it seems headed in that direction--you'll hear a lot of wailing about educational opportunity and whatnot, but it will simply be the latest catastrophe handed to us by those who would plan the economy.

The logical end would be the extermination of the human race altogether, no?

You're catching on.

What happens when a new 1% forms in Heaven? You can't kill a spirit.

If they're in heaven they're not here bothering me.

Some of us will return to haunt you.

I knew you loved me, Soma.

Kill those fuckers too! And before you ask, that goes for the next group, too.