I’m glad you wrote this…I’ve been saying the same thing to my husband…esp. after I read about MIT. Most out-of-high-school students don’t want to really take advantage of the educational aspects of college anyway, as much as they want to just experience freedom and life without parents. And they end up in unpayable debt.

Just in time, as the hardened liberal agenda has a firm death like grip on education.

As a M.B.A. graduate, I take offense at the suggestion that “merit badges” can take the place of academic graduate work, particularly in business, science and medicine. Badges are for scouts, degrees are for adults. Would you go to a doctor who only had a merit badge? I think not. The idea that education is unaffordable is also a myth. In the 1990s, I attended local junior college, a state school, and a private university to obtain my degrees. I saved money by not going to elite schools; I worked & paid my way through and did not take any loans. This is still possible today.

Were you at our dinner table last night?

Friend’s daughter in law school graduating under life altering debt-around 200k in total between both schools. She *may* make about 60k a year when she gets out.

Friend’s son graduating with an associates and electrical certifications, small amount of debt (30k) and the ability to make about 60k a year when he gets out.

Mom and dad have forfeited their retirement to help the kids pay.

It’s a total bubble, and the only people that are going to have a college diploma soon (even now?) are the wealthy and the poor who got scholarships.

As a business owner, I’d just like to be able to hire people who can read, write and do some math—which is questionable even with a college diploma.

If you are only going to college to make more money, why are you majoring in linguistics?
There are two types of college that are worthwhile:
1. Truly technical degrees that lead to goals that exist off college campuses: engineering, business, medicine - I’m sorry but I bet few of us would trust a buildiong designed by someone on merit badges or trust someone similar to perform lung surgery on us
2. Those that actually learn - there are some people who want to learn some material so much, the debt is worth the 4 years free to learn the subject. (The kind of guy who reads the optional reading in most courses and spends 10 hours Saturday in the Library - he is enriched and I think society is enriched by this study.)

Unfortunately, most college students don’t fit in 1 or 2. (A good number figure it is f4 years of beer and laziness.)

I do think part of the problem is the over-valuing of degrees from elite schools.  I started my college education at an Ivy League women’s school and hated it- felt like I was just a number, and the atmosphere was so cutthroat and competetive that I was miserable (hard core introvert here!).  Then they pulled the financial aid rug out from under me (I later found out that many elite schools do a “bait and switch” with financial aid with the theory that you will take out whatever loans you need to in order to stay there and get that degree with their name on it).  I transferred to a less famous and smaller liberal arts college and got a great education for very little additional money because I was lucky enough to get a scholarship. 

I will be encouraging my children to do as That Hat Lady said- attend community college and state schools, or join the military for the college money as my husband did- he got both a BA and an MBA through military aid.

Question to the Hat Lady- how does one go to school full time and work full time to pay $20K a year in tuition?  I’m sure you could probably do it if you drag it out more than 4 years, but if your goal is 4 years and out, how can it possibly be done?

“The idea that education is unaffordable is also a myth. In the 1990s, I attended local junior college, a state school, and a private university to obtain my degrees. I saved money by not going to elite schools; I worked & paid my way through and did not take any loans. This is still possible today.”

The average tuition costs for a public college or university over 4 years averages $80,000. It matters not what type of degree one gets - the costs are the same. Add in room and board, and books and the price goes up even more. For a private college, a 4 degree costs neary $200,000. For grad schools, the tuition is close to $40,000/year. For the average worker-B, the question remains, “Is the costss really worth it?” The education bubble is essientially a reflection of the cost/benefit analysis stated in this article. When word gets out that the majority of college grads either will be unemployed or “underemployed, but still must pay-off 6 figure college loans the will be a rush to the exits, and universities will either have to scale back or shut thier doors. It is simple as that. We’re not talking about doctors, lawyers and other professionals who must have a minimum of 4-6 years of college. We’re talking about a glut of students (mainly MBAs) who will never see the rewards for thier diploma.

“Would you go to a doctor who only had a merit badge?”
- We’re not talking about a ‘fire starting’ badge. The idea mentioned is that, through merit and performance, the doctor has earned a ‘badge’ or simply a ‘certification’ if you want to use a more professional sounding word, that is proof that he knows what he is doing in a certain field. With that understanding, yes, I would go to such a doctor. We use such people as plumbers, electricians, mechanics, etc. all the time.

“The idea that education is unaffordable is also a myth.”
This is a much bigger topic, I think. Depending on where you go and what you’re trying to get out of college, yes, it is unaffordable. If you do what I did (and it seems what you did as well), go to smaller schools to get technical abilities, then it is more affordable.

Khan Academy is a great resource at both the collegiate and K-12 levels.  The videos are top notch, but the practice exercises probably provide greater educational value to students.  After all, the only way to get good at something is through practice.

-Joe Wagner
Founder, Backpack TV
www.backpack.tv

Thank you for this conversation, we have not had success with College yet as far as jobs go. One son who graduated with an Architecture degree just as housing fell, has never had a career job. He works hard at min. wage jobs and luckily only has a small amount in loans. Another son never went to College but worked his way up in the resort business. He has a fabulous job with benefits. We now have two more in College. It is so expensive! I believe the one in Engineering will be worth it, not so sure about the one in Graphic Design. I recommend keeping the costs as low as possible, you never know if there will be good employment when you get out.

Colleges should follow the European model: begin core classes as a freshman then after 4 years have the equivalent of a master’s degree.  The liberal arts route is no longer relevant for most

@JP - the average in state tuition cost is about $8500.  Not free, but doable with small loans and part time jobs so long as you can live home with Mom and Dad.  Room and board are extra, and will jump the price to around 17k.  More expensive, but still doable with help from parents, small loans, and part time and summer jobs.  The price you’ve heard is for out of state tuition.

As much as I’d love to see the change a burst higher education bubble would create, I don’t see it happening any time soon because most financial aid loans are backed by the government, and they have the legal right to garnish wages to get their money back. It is very hard to default on higher education loans. Not even bankruptcy will wipe them away.

Yes!  This.  Absolutely.

If you want to cut the cost of college education, get rid of government subsidies. They push up the cost, not the other way around. Make the college compete; don’t subsidize their every whim.

Problem solved. The free market works.

To MPSchneiderLC, et al.:

A major problem is that the university system in the Western world was designed and built with the goal of 2), but it is sold to its customers on the basis of meeting goal 1). And we Americans especially pride ourselves on being an eminently ‘practical’ people - it’s one of our failings, almost - and can’t see anything practical in a classical humanities education.

Besides which, our colleges and universities have this huge, expensive infrastructure that must be paid for, and which is completely unnecessary for teaching the classics. For that, you need a good library and a handful of instructors who know their subjects well and love it.

You’re father son example describes me exactly, down to my interest in linguistics pulling me away from my original major, which was meteorology. I became a spanish major (minoring in linguistics). I loved language as such, but Texas A&M didn’t offer a linguistics major, only a minor. In fact, they stopped offering even the minor right after I finished my last linguistics requirement and declaring it as a minor. Fortunately, having a disability allowed me to receive a tuition waiver, allowing me to graduate debt free, but that same disability is what caused me to leave meteorology for Spanish.

I had studied Latin and Greek, and even Esperanto in my spare time, so I justified my choice of Spanish as a major because, hay, I live in Texas, spanish is everywhere. I’ll have a job in no time, right? ...Right? It’s been just over a year since I graduated, and I’m just now employed. I haven’t even started yet. I learned the hard way that having a Spanish degree is only marginally more useful than having an English degree, only because I am now sort of bilingual.

I made the mistake you mentioned in the article, pursuing knowledge for its own sake with little thought to how to make it put food on the table. If I had it to do over again, I’d major in business, even though I find the subject dreadfully boring, and minor in Spanish. That’s what all the smart kids were doing.

I think Laura has hit on a key element that was left out of this very good article, namely, that the federal government continues to inflate higher education tuition through federal student loans that are not subjected to the same qualification criteria that other loans in the marketplace are.  There is no incentive for colleges and universities to keep costs in check since they know students will line up to borrow the money, and the government will issue the loan checks with little scrutiny. If the government would step out of the way and let the marketplace value the education without a de facto subsidy, a lot of things would change quickly.

I wish I could get merit badges or log hours as an apprentice to be a priest. I love theology don’t get me wrong but something feels wrong about the diocese having to be saddled with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for each formed priest seems sort of sad.

This debate between college being for “love of learning” vs. “career training” is nothing new.  I think the bigger problem is how this debate was misunderstood and ignored for years.  For instance, my parents had this belief that ANY degree would equal a better paying job than what they had.  This idea was certainly reinforced by the schools that I attended (Catholic schools).  You would take your aptitude tests, talk about what you might want to study or do, and then find a matching college…because you HAD to go to college if you didn’t want to make more than minimum wage for the rest of your life.  Oh, and don’t forget that “as soon as you graduate from college, you’ll get a really great, high-paying job”.

The reality is that unless you have a degree in a specialized area in high demand, a college degree might get your foot in the door over someone who doesn’t have a degree and some bargaining room for salary but that’s about it.  Experience still trumps a college degree in most areas.  Those of my friends who excelled the most immediately out of college were the ones that were doing internships while they were still in college and went on to get a Masters or Doctorate.

So, I think before you send your kids to college, you really have to talk to them about what your and their expectations are afterwards.  I talk to my kids a lot about “What is God calling you to be?” instead of “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  Asking how you will serve God completely shifts the paradigm. This may or may not mean a college-degree to get you where you think God is calling you.  Sometimes this will mean a more career-oriented approach to college, and sometimes it might mean a more “learning for the sake of being a well-rounded person” orientation. 

As homeschoolers, I expect that my kids will take some community college courses in high school.  They might end up going the CC route for two years after high school, or they might go into a four-year college depending on scholarship money.  Or they might be better off at a technical college or in an apprenticeship program.  But they will have to be willing to eschew going to expensive colleges (if there is no scholarship or financial aid) or work for most of the money themselves.

I went to college on a full four-year scholarship that include room and some money for books, so my parents mainly just paid for my living expenses (food, clothing, gas).  Although I worked part-time to pay for extra things.  But my college tuition at the in-state university I attended would have been less than the Catholic school tuition they had been paying.

I am curious why the That Hat Lady should take offense at the ideas of merit badges as opposed to degrees.  I can understand her questioning whether they could replace a college degree but to get offended?  What is ironic is that when she described her scenario, she showed how the traditional college paradigm was already breaking down in the 1990s; yes there were people who went to junior college before then, but by and large, the model had been that one enrolled in a 4 year university at the start of college.

Here is my thoughts.  Colleges have, in modern society often taken the role of professional certification.  In the I.T. Field, I see plenty of jobs that require college degrees, not because it means the applicant is more qualified but because at least the hiring manager has one point of information he can confirm.  In my experience, it is often more likely that the people without degrees are more competent (This is also true of various industry certifications).  Most anyone can cram for a test and thus get the grades they need to graduate (or the certification), but it doesn’t mean they will know what they are doing 6 months or 6 years later.  As far as I am concerned, certification is just fine.

Here is where College really has a role to fill.  Anyone can be trained with the techniques to be managers, engineers, etc.  Colleges should, ideally, be about training the people who will expand the bounds of knowledge, regardless of the field.  A PhD in computer science may not be able to write code as well as a guy who gets certified as a software engineer, but he will be able to expand how computers are programmed.

Fom the other side (I’m a professor at. University), here’s how it looks:
1. American students aren’t interested in STEM programs, but I have seen a major demographic shift to liberal arts topics, humanities, etc. translation: these students are not getting trained for the majority of jobs out there, they are being educated in fields they enjoy.
2. The STEM subjects have been and always will be marketable and most are shifting towards collaborations with industry, for both funding and an educational program that ore resembles training. It is working great, if the responses at the last job fair are any indicator. In short, that’s what employers want. To pay very little and get employees who can hit the ground running.
3. Cost. Here’s a bit of complaining. Faculty at places that are NOT ivy league, i.e. where MOST students go, are being paralyzed by the administration. Costs are going up because administration sizes are doubling, or more in our case, in cost and size. And this is just the last five or six years. As I say to my students who complained at me one day for their tuition going up. My annual pay I’d public information. Look it up. It hasn’t changed in three years, but your tuition has gone up 30%. Don’t ask me where that money goes. Although I know its going to research only faculty, administrators and buildings. Things that offer little benefit to students.
4. Student debt is outrageous. Tuition must come down and administrators must stop being venture capitalists.
5. It’s really up to the parents and students what degree to get, so I’m not sure how to direct people towards philosophy degrees or if it’s ethical for me to direct them at from it. I guess as a scientist, I only get STEM students, so I’m not sure it’s my choice to make for a student.

I kind of like the idea of badges, although as a scout mom, I wouldn’t call them merit badges ;) But I think that a combination approach would be better, much like they do in scouts.  You earn a whole bunch of merit badges, in different disciplines (I counsel for gardening, textile, and scholarship) some boys discover they love gardening/farming, and move to a more detailed program or opportunity. Some boys discover they hate it and try something else.  After all of this, you work on your Eagle project showing what you have learned as well as how to apply what you have learned in the bigger world.Then the boys become Eagle scouts before they are 18.  And the doors that open are amazing!  From the perspective of real Merit Badges, they are earned by mastering the information, and then moving up, not by time spent watching videos like the Khan Academy. (digital “I watched this badges” are silly. Even my 8 y/o wants a real touchable thing.)

In terms of landing a job, a college education, official certifications, etc. act more as social currency than verification of knowledge and skills. What you actually know means less than having the right kind of degree on a piece of paper so you will get noticed. Many jobs in business could readily be done by individuals without business degrees, but they are ignored by hiring managers because of their lack of proper educational pedigree. If you’ve foregone a business degree for a liberal arts discipline, etc., but put in the work to develop a professional network and market your skills with savvy, you can still cross the social hurdle. But it is still much more difficult. Employers need to be more open to thoroughly evaluating each candidate. A degree is not strictly necessary to do most jobs today, but it is required strictly on the basis that most people have accumulated some sort of post-secondary education.

The stigma attached to business or vocational degree programs is also largely social. Many hard-working and ambitious students expressly avoid studying business or entering into a so-called “practical” degree program because they largely cater to skills and strategies rather than broad and serious intellectual development, and don’t engage the whole person as much. This can be attributed to both the nature of the discipline and the social environment that is built around it. A good case in point is business education. By no means are all business students under-motivated, over-partied, and intellectually lazy/immature, but those types of students do make up the visible majority of the business major population at many schools. Do young college freshman want to become part of an academic/training community that naturally alienates them? Absolutely not! Of course, learning to socially navigate in a professional atmosphere where one doesn’t naturally fit in is a necessary part of life (especially for most Catholics!), but entering such an atmosphere at the wrong time can be more harmful than beneficial to some students. After studying philosophy and Classical languages, I now work in the corporate world, but my introduction to it came for the right time for me: graduate school. Going into business as a college freshman would have been detrimental to me, socially, intellectually, and spiritually.

Google “College Conspiracy Video”. It was done by the National Inflation Institude. It’s dead on. College and the college degree are almost worthless these days- unless you’re going into a specialized field, of course. You have better chances at getting a job if you learned to be a mechanic.

Q”...how does one go to school full time and work full time to pay $20K a year in tuition?”

First, don’t go out of state. Go in-state. Then:

1. Arrange your class schedule to free up blocks of time for work, preferably shifts most students won’t take. One of my roomies worked a hospital call center during the graveyard shift, I was the West Coast field office contact for a Midwestern company, and a classmate worked on an evening cleaning crew.

2. Go to school part-time, if necessary.  It lessens the amount of financial aid (e.g. loans) you’ll be offered, but the benefits of steady pay and more study time are great.

Professor MarkM, it’s my opinion that adding amenities also raised tuition.  For example, I attended Wayne State University post-graduate.  When I began, the university president (Adamani) focused on keeping tuition low and encouraging the commuter students, so he was a proponent of restoring existing buildings and keeping costs down.  He retired. In my last year, I was paying fees for an athletic center I could never use and parking fees doubled.

Here’s the advice I gave our daughters as they were considering what college to attend:  In 10 years, it won’t matter as much where your degree came from as it will whether you are still paying for it.  Both consequently ended up chosing state colleges.  As for our son, he is more mechanically inclined and I can see him going to a technical college.

As a former high school teacher, I used to ask students what they wanted to go to college.  The most used response was “To get a job so that I can make a lot of money.”  I used to respond that you can make money doing in any number of things, all without a college education.  Today, our culture sends the message that obtaining a college degree is elitist, which is not what learning is about. 

A blended approach is probably what will happen.  The liberal art schools will remain (I am thinking the true liberal arts like Great Books, etc.) and students will go to learn truth.  After this degree (or while) the students will learn a trade as well in a type of certificate program much like in the computer world.

My son was flying home from college a couple of years ago, and sold his aisle seat to a CEO.  They got to talking.  It turned out they were both headed to the same hometown.  He really liked my son who is articulate and polite, offering him a summer internship.  My son decided to take on a full time position at the tech company he had worked all summer at.  He was promoted to “head blogger” for the entire firm.  At this point, he had made friends with lots of young CEOs in other budding tech. companies, at mixers and industry events.  One of them lured him away.  Today he works as a crucial member of the team, as “Project Lead”.  His position calls for speaking with executives at Pepsi,Travel companies, Food companies etc.  He is only 21 and he would be crazy to go back to college at this point.

My husband and I have always maintained that if a kid doesn’t know what he wants to do in life, then don’t go to college just because it’s the “thing” to do after high school.  It’s just too expensive.

We are encouraging our kids to think along vocational/technical school lines.  With all the college-educated folks around, it’s hard to find a plummer sometimes!  (Great, my spell-check just identified “plummer” as an unknown word!  We are in serious trouble in this country.)  Blue-collar jobs have always taken a bad rap as if only the dumb ones in school do those kinds of jobs.  Guess what?  When the sump pump, furnace, carburetor, etc. quit, any doctoral candidate will recognize the great contribution the folks who can fix it offer!  Also, the pay of those jobs seems to be pretty good and getting better as there are fewer skilled workers out there.

The next thing we need to figure out is getting our factories back in the U.S. from overseas.  It’s time for more Americans to quit seeing such jobs as “beneath” them as well.

To That Hat Lady and others, I just want to point out that C=MD. So just passing Med school classes and getting a degree may not be all that impressive, honestly.

I have a degree in Education and am now slowing working my way through a nursing degree at a local community college.  I do think that learning the foundation of education or medicine in the classroom is important, but I would really like to see much more hands on experience in the form of an apprenticeship taking place before someone enters the workforce.  I did one semester of student teaching before I received my education degree and I would have benefited a lot more from having 2 years in the school and two years of student teaching, rather than 3 1/2 years in school and a semester of student teaching.  For this reason, I’m trying to volunteer in a local hospital to prepare myself better for becoming a nurse.  The more hands on experience the better!

I received my AAS in December from Polk State College. This was a 2-year school and is now a 4-year school with community college prices. I will receive my BAS in 2.5 years or less and am receiving PELL for my funding. I only pay a small sum for what the grant doesn’t cover for books. It can be done. What I’m trying to say is, don’t go to college right after high school, I tried that and failed miserably and ended up dropping out. From 1994-2009, I worked part and full-time until I was laid off at the beginning of 2010. Being laid-off this last time was the motivation I needed to get serious and get a college education. Most employers now won’t look at you with less than a 2-year degree. It doesn’t matter how much experience you have. Just some food for thought.

Not everyone is cut out for college and believe it or not there are plenty of in-house trained professionals. At our business we have house trained, bookkeepers, import specialists, production managers, tool makers and engineers.

This really disgusts me:  My daughter is leaving for college in a couple of months.  She has suddenly been flooded with offers from credit card companies for “easy money”.  It’s outrageous. They are dangling thousands of dollars in front of her nose like money pimps.  They should be ashamed.  But then, when did credit card companies EVER have integrity?  “I DO need a MacBook Pro” She protested…after I crumpled the offers up and threw them in the trash.

To Maria who said “C=MD. So just passing Med school classes and getting a degree may not be all that impressive, honestly.”
I have 2 children in a US Medical School. In order to get into Medical School, they had to be tops in their class in grade school so as to get into AP classes in High School, where they had to graduate tops in their class (salutatorians)and get high SAT scores to get into a “competitive” College where they had to be tops in their class- graduating Magna Cum Laude- and getting a superior MCAT (much harder than the SAT) score to earn admission into a $70,000/year U.S. Medical School where, I can attest, they study their hearts out day and night 24/7 and 365 along with all of their equally competitive and accomplished classmates. So, getting a “C” grade in Medical School would be like the average person (me) getting an A++. Earning a “merit badge” would not suffice for the medical profession.

As a 2010 college graduate, I will share what my experience has been. My major in college was Catholic Studies and I obtained minors in Catholic Theology and Spanish. My original purpose of going to college was simply because that was the direction my parents were pushing me in. I had no concept of the importance of work or at some point starting to live my own life. I just looked at college as something that I had to get through. Upon graduating, I traveled to Honduras to teach English in a bilingual catholic school. I was able to do this because I was an ESL volunteer for a couple years in college, and I enjoyed it. After returning to the US in the middle of 2010, I was unable to obtain a work position for nine straight months until I got a job making $10 an hour. I recently quit that job because I got accepted to teach ESL in China for much more than $10 an hour. I learn a lot during my unemployment time and college experience, and it is this: IF YOU HAVE NO PREVIOUS WORK EXPERIENCE OR PRACTICAL TRAINING IN THE AREA IN WHICH YOU WANT TO WORK, YOU WILL NOT GET THE JOB. COMPANIES ONLY WANT PEOPLE WITH WORK EXPERIENCE SPECIFICALLY IN THEIR FIELD. This is hard because many college students only study their subject and do not work with it in a practical setting. However, above all, we must trust God and do what He wills, and He will guide us in the right path. God bless you.

I’m a professor at a Catholic university. There are a large number of factors that are hard to sort out. Let me mention just a few.  To bring college costs under control, (1) we professors might have to start teaching more classes—or larger classes; (2) there will probably have to be fewer administrators and support people such as counselors, people arranging study abroad, and so on. Both of those will help bring costs down, but they have drawbacks that need to be faced up to. You might not like having larger classes. You might not like the fact that the people who teach your classes are so busy teaching (and preparing and grading—the actual classroom time is just the tip of the iceberg) that they no longer keep up with their field—professors who do nothing but teach are not intellectually lively. And, with fewer counselors, and without the zillions of people who arrange student activities, college will be a lot less fun. On the topic of fun, let me mention something else: (3) compared to when I went to college (I’m in my late 40s), going to college today is like living on a cruise ship. A lot of college expenses go to nice salad bars, nice dorm rooms, nice fitness rooms, wifi everywhere, and so on.  That too is going to have to change. But it’s hard, because when students are choosing a college, you think they want to check out the professors? They want to check out the fitness room. It’s like an arms race among colleges to make themselves attractive, and the competition is sometimes about what looks like the funnest school to go to.

Oh, and one more thing. The stories of people who are out of work are very depressing, but it’s too simplistic to say that college failed them. Maybe, but almost everyone is having economic difficulties now. The current economy isn’t the best test.

Our entire economy has been living beyond its means for decades. In the future, we’ll all be working harder to consume less. It’s called “paying it back.”

Unfortunately, it does seem like college will only be for the very rich someday, because poor and middle class people will not be able to pay for it. Talk about reverting to feudal times! However, be not afraid of debt.  There’s a certain dignity to being broke and educated.  My husband and I are collectively $300,000 in debt (would have been $400,000 if it wasn’t for all my scholarships that paid for undergrad), and our student loan payments make-up 52% of our combined income even though we both thankfully have really good professional jobs (yay for student debt!) We may live in an old ugly apartment with a bullet hole in our window and won’t have a cent to our names for at least the next 10 years, kind-of like indentured servants (except they got their freedom after seven…), but that is the fallen world we live in, and we’re not giving into it.  In fact, we might be taking on more debt so my husband can go back to school for another 7 years for his Phd and I’m totally for it. Education is priceless no matter what all these people say.  Don’t let borderline poverty scare you away from what 100 years ago only the sinfully wealthy had access to.  Education is your right as a human being.  Whatever the cost, go for it.

A four-year program in science or engineering or in the medical field would still pay off, if one can do well in it.  There are so many courses for engineering (5 semesters of calculus, 2 semesters physics, 2 semesters of statics and dynamics, etc. just for the basics) that a simple badge would not do, although passing the eight hour long fundamentals of engineering exam in one’s senior year comes close.  Medical school the same story, etc.

The issue has to do with one’s major, and on the favorite topic is that of liberal arts, a few observations:

1) The liberal arts are liberal in that in past ages free people studied them, as opposed to slaves and serfs who studied the servile arts.  In that age a person free to study the liberal arts did not have to exactly work for a living.  That is a luxury that does not often exist these days.  Yes, we need great thinkers like C.S. Lewis who benefited from a doctorate in literature and philosophy, but that is a small pool of truly brilliant people who pretty much replace out-going professors.

2) That a person either A) studies something very practical and earns a living while suffering as an intellectually brain dead robot or B) studies the liberal arts and then lives on a higher plain, is a false dialectic.  Something odd happened in the last 60 years in this country.  My grandfather (born 1901) was a machinist, who enjoyed studying Latin in his spare time.  There is a set of books on my shelf called the University Guild Series, except it is not from an actual university; it is a set of books from the 1930’s designed for non-college people to read every day and work through the major classics in a year.  Go through a really good used bookstore and one will see examples of that sort of thing from the first half of the 1900’s.  I even have a primer on art history published by Good Housekeeping—can anyone imagine that being published these days?  Remember just 20 years ago when the A&E cable network actually had arts and drama; now it is Dawg the Bounty Hunter.  The point being that when few could indulge in a liberal arts college degree, a lot of people studied the liberal arts on their own.  Now that every other person is going to school to study the liberal arts, there is little demand from the every day person to study on their own.  I went into engineering, but still enjoyed a course in English Literature and even a senior level course in History.  Even managed to read the Iliad in idle moments. 

3) The impression is also that the liberal arts are not that liberal any more in the traditional sense.  Learning how to learn, learning the great books, learning the foundations of Western Civilization, etc., are fine things, but is that what is going on?  Are the liberal arts students really becoming free thinkers or ideological clones of their professors, while taking fluff, grade inflated courses in deconstructing the civilization that first created the university?

4)  As others have said, there is nothing wrong, and there is actually quite a bit good in learning a trade and getting to work.  A person can become an electrician who can program PLC’s in a couple of years at a community college, make good money (I know of one exceptional one who makes $90K and does not have a four year degree, and no student loans—ever in his life), and avoid all the nightmarish politics that go on in the white collar world.  Same with machinists, plumbers, appliance repairmen, mechanics, etc.  Some of these trades also allow one to be self employed if they chose, and some of them can not be outsourced.  Nothing wrong with actually bringing home some bacon starting at age 20 either.

I see the higher education system splitting, but not along the lines you expect:

Our grandkids will get vocational training certificates. College will be a mainly social activity for the children of the elite. The purpose of the college degree will not be for education or intelligence, but to show that you come from the right kind of family.

Many people would do better going into the trades, such as plumbers, electricians, and other related jobs.  A college degree will no longer guarantee a good job after graduation!  This is not to mention the burden of having to pay back a very hefty student loan!  The day is coming when it will not be possible to afford a college education!

My husband is a college professor at a small, regional university in the Midwest.

The problem with our college system is we’ve convinced our entire country that college is the next step after high school.  For some students, that simply isn’t the best choice, because of their academic skills.  They are allowed to enter university, but then end up in debt for 1 to 2 semesters before they flunk out.

My husband’s favorite story that describes this experience was when he was talking with a student that really wanted to go to a vocation school to be a plumber, but his parents “made” him go to college.  The student said, “And it’s the best thing that could have happened to me….I’m having so much fun in college.”

My husband says if our children want to go to a vocation school, he will encourage them to do so.

Wow.  Talk about humble pie!  I realized I misspelled “plumber” as “plummer.”  That’s embarrassing.  Now I have to go fix my spell check. :-)

I work as a college campus minister and have spend some time thinking about this topic.  One of the main problems is that we as a society have been convinced that we need an expert for everything.  You must be an expert, for example, to teach even K - 4th grade!  Think about that?  Are most adults not really qualified to teach basic reading, writitng and math?  If you answer yes, then how wise are we to rely on the so called experts?  We think you need a degree or a certification to do just about anything - an idea exploited by those whose make money from the fees charged for these things.  In reality, most able bodied adults can start businesses, build houses, or just about anything.  The problem is that there are so many laws a bureaucratic hoops through which to jump, that the system limits one possibilities. 
The other problem is that college is no longer about the pursuit of truth, about learning from the greats that though before you.  If one really completed a true liberal arts program they would have climb onto the shoulders of great thinker from times past so that they could see the world from a different vantage point.  They would have studies all the great thoughts that have been so that they could add their own and so that their world view would be as informed as possible by truth itself.  For these type, making their way in the world, as far as making some money, would not be as big of an issue.  One just need set aside the notion that only experts can do x, y or z, then then do it.  That being said, it never hurts to learn a trade along the way.
College is for thinking, nt for learning a trade.  You can learn a trade in numerous ways, but college is probably the worst suited way.

I didn’t get my degree.  I have three general Ed classes left.  I tried to take English 104 on three different occasions, finding that I actually failed the course because I was unable to wrap my mind around taking notes on how I took notes, learning how to use the Internet, and was exhausted arguing with my teacher at a Catholic university that abortion was indeed not a right.  This class was the equivalent of what I took in 7th grade.  The other class, “multiculturalism seminar” should speak for itself in the title.  It was a hate party of classically educated white men, heterosexuals, and ironically, Roman Catholics.  I completed the major requirements (music) but the rest of the classes I took at DePaul were 100% useless.  Now I’m paying out the nose for what amounted to be a huge joke. 
There is going to be some incredibly careful consideration when my children think about post high school opportunities.

I’m currently in my third college. The first 2 years I was in a trade institute learning the electrical trade. Then I was in Florida for two years majoring in audio engineering and Music business. I went there because I loved music. But as I was getting out and wanted to back home and start a career I realized that there was no work, and the security of the job was scarce if any. I fell back in love with Engineering, and figured in keeping with my families line of work my dad being a licenses electrician and my Papa as well, I would take the next step up and get an Electrical Engineering degree. so now I am back at a Catholic college near my house. I love it there, and learning can be clearly seen as a gift of God. I spent so much money or my parents did rather and I am not in a position that is in audio Engineering. I don’t mind because I feel more at home being an EE major, it really fits me. Plus we have to take Philosophy and Theological studies, which I think makes for better people that can have more insight to life. I do want to say that even though I think kids should go to college or school for what they love as I did. there should be thought of it’s practical use. We aren’t in the world for ourselves. If you want to go to trade school or the service and come out as a plumber because you love to do it than have at it but be the best darn plumber you can. In response to Jacob Morgan post on Tuesday about PLC’s. I learned that when I was in technical school. It was great and I was working a little before I decided to finish and get my BS but PLC’s aren’t taught in engineering majors which stinks because so much of today is PLC’s. Even though I will have debt I won’t complain. There’s stuff in PLC’s that even guys with Masters in Engineering don’t know. But it’s a great Niche and when I’m done with my BSEE I only know more about it. Plus at Merrimack College we read Plato and Socrates and Boethius and Augustine, and know full well because of Catholics the university system is here. Those guys of old are required reading at Merrimack. That’s why I don’t see how a badge would work for Engineers. Plus no matter where I worked I would always notice EE guys are a needle in a haystack there are more Mechanical Engineers than EE guys, but that’s ok, I like being rare not to mention a Catholic. I don’t want out university system to go away. But I don’t know if badges are really the right way to go. I know guys that graduate Merrimack, with EE degrees and decide to go into local Unions around the Boston Area because they like the work. So still the College institution was there.

College is way overrated and has been for some time. The big push to get eveyone to college since the 60’s has created a new class…blue collar workers with degree’s hanging in their closets. The comparison of higher education to the housing “bubble” is very apt and the same sub-prime tendencies that contributed to the crash will likely contribute to a crash in the higher education system. So many institutions are merely degree mills and are getting quite rich in the process while students mount breathtaking debts. One of the issues that Bill Clinton ran on back in 92 was starting a national apprenticeship program similar to Germany’s. I thought that was a great idea at the time. We have a need for skilled workers if we are going to bring manufacturing back to America. Like Dr. William A. Marra (RIP) said, “not everyone is cut out for college”

Wow!  This is one of my absolute favorite topics.  Thanks Jennifer.

1)  I was a terrible student K-12.  Somewhere around 9th grade, and then confirmed in later grades, I was advised to not go to nor even think about college…I wasn’t college material.  THEY WERE SO RIGHT!  I really struggled through school, and it wasn’t until I went to work that I really enjoyed finding myself and put everything into my work.  I found out many years later that I was A.D.D. but way back then (the ‘60s) they didn’t figure out problem children like myself needed to not be in the middle of 40 other students.  Success came with better and better jobs (you wouldn’t believe what an A.D.D. woman can accomplish in her own office!)  In my late 20s I decided to go to college to learn how to teach (I wanted to work with children).  Following all that I had learned about myself, I always sat in the front row of seats, etc.  I graduated Summa Cum Laude.  BUT, I knew my degree was a “dummied-down degree”.  My textbooks resembled my 4th and 5th grade textbooks…lots of pretty pictures.

2)  I agree with Blake, having homeschooled my children for a number of years, it doesn’t take a four year degree specialized in teaching k-4th graders to teach them.  Then they went on to a Catholic Liberal Arts high school education.  They read the great books (which we have a copy of thanks to ebay), they learned how to think for themselves since the school uses the “socratic method or seminar method” which is where they sit in a circle at a table and discuss.  They are currently enrolled in one of the Newman top 20 Catholic Schools, and have been challenged in each of their classes (including the high school classes) more than I was through 4 years of college.  So, Jacob they are still out there…those that offer an education in Goodness, Truth and Beauty.

3)  My husband is a college professor (no union at his college) so I really hope these jobs are around for at least a dozen more years.  A good percentage of students enrolled are receiving government assistance.  A good percentage of those students milk the system for tax payer monies and will never come close to a degree.  My husband and all of those educating at his college spend a good amount of their time on committees…thought up by the administration such as the calendar committee, how to boost enrollment committee (get those numbers up), etc., etc., etc.  Then there are those pretty and colorful textbooks that get pricier with each new year AND new edition (so one couldn’t be cost conscious and puchase a used book).

4)  Finally, I recall that one couldn’t just be educated in a trade job.  You had to know someone in order to become an apprentice, learn a trade, and move on to work either through self-employment or a company or something (my daughter just interrupted my thought, and zoom!  there goes that A.D.D. mind!)  Has this changed?  If so, why aren’t people looking into the trades? 

So, I guess what I think is that the grandkids probably won’t go to college as we know it (and this will be progress if education becomes what it was, not what it is).  God bless you Jennifer, et al.

Nathan,

With PLC’s, they are one of those things that some people intuitively grasp and others do not.  I’ve seen some electricians do better than some engineers, and some electricians not grasp them at all.  Anyone really good at it is in demand, especially if they combine that with knowledge of a particular industry.  I’ve seen one company make an entirely new labor grade for their best PLC electrician just so they could compensate him competitively.  At another company they took a gifted one and even though he had no four year degree they called him an engineer anyway and paid him accordingly.  It is no joke that a good electrician can get in the work force in half the time at a low cost and then make a lot more money than quite a few of the people dropping out of, or getting a fluff degree from, college. 

As far as college degrees go, EE is pretty flexible, covering telecommunications, circuit design, power systems, etc.  Can even leverage it into computer programming in a pinch.  Try, try, try to pass the FE exam so you can get a PE license some day, that opens up the ability to be a consultant in the field, sign off on public projects, etc.  Depending on the field you go into, it may not matter or may be mandatory, so better to go ahead and get it.  Spent every Friday night in my senior year taking a review course for the FE exam (don’t engineering students have fun?) but it was worth it.  Try hard to do an internship some summer, that is something employers look for. 

I think with all the changes in technology & communications higher education will change,too.Hopefully for the better.
Another question is whether much of highschool is really necessary? Four of my children earned a GED & then went on to community college at 16 & 17 yrs of age.They could have stayed those extra years in highschool but it seemed pointless.Once they began college there was no discrimination between students who entered with a highschool diploma or a GED.
Germany I think currently has an apprenticeship program that the US might want to look at.

Kathleen writes: “Germany I think currently has an apprenticeship program that the US might want to look at.”

Why not get the government out of education and let the free market take care of things? We don’t need “a” solution; we need those that rise to the top in a free market; and it might be many serving the needs of citizens rather than government.

Frank

“let the free market take care of things”...well why don’t they? Some might argue that the control the corporate world wields is as much big brother as big government is.

Bob Cratchit wrote: “‘let the free market take care of things’...well why don’t they?’

Um, because the government has inserted itself with subsidies that inflate tuition, create “sub-prime” lending practices, etc.  Through legislation under Obama, private banks will soon be forced out of the college lending market altogether, and the government will have a monopoly on the practice.

Jen,

Thanks for replying to Bob Cratchit. I had decided that his comment did not show enough understanding of economics, markets, governments, freedom, republics, common sense, etc. that it would be futile to reply. You can’t have a discussion with someone whose world view is basically a 1st grade level.

Frank

I went to a vocational nursing school which was so cheap that my parents were able to pay the remainder of the very small fees left after my scholarships. My husband was poorer and went to the Naval Academy to pay for his education. When we married, our school debt was $0.
.
What we saved in our educations, we managed to blow on our kids…were $100,000 ($75,000 cash and $25,000 loans) into their Universities and they both suffered severe depressions in their junior years and failed out. Were now rethinking this whole issue…right now vocational school is looking good.

Yeah, they need to work on their pitch.  I can’t take that imagery seriously.

Yeah let banks have free reign over education lending. Like they did with the mortgage industry. That worked out real well.

When banks had free reign in home loans (up until the late 1970’s) there were no bubbles.  Banks demanded, and got, 20% down and only loaned to people who had a high probability of paying back the other 80% on a house that was worth at least as much as 100% of the loan. 

That changed with the Community Reinvestment Act, with Fannie and Freddie having the government backing up loans, and the endless pimping by the media in their breathless reports that poor minoriites were being turned down for loans.  The bubble was primed after the government got into it and pumped when the Fed held interest rates down to nothing. 

Loan money to a bright, energetic young person who wants to be an engineer or an accountant?  Who has good ACT or SAT scores, and good grades in hard classes.  Someone willing to work summers and nights and pay some out of their own pocket?  Banks would be happy to loan money for that.  Loan someone $50K who could earn $2M to $3M over their career? One heck of a business plan.  The sort of thing that makes banking boring.

Loan $100K to a kid who doesn’t know what he wants to do, can’t add fractions to save his life, according to his ACT tests will probably not graduate, likes the idea of going through a case of beer every week, scoring with who ever is drunker than himself, and pretty much just wants to party for five years and hopes the economy shapes up by then and has use for another golf major…banks aren’t going to loan to him unless uncle Sam money bags is backing the loan.  May as well buy a lottery ticket than make that loan.  If sugar daddy uncle Sam wasn’t throwing Chinese borrowed money around, the silliness would start to sort itself out.

The feds backed students loans before the late 70’s unless you don’t call a guaranteed student loan or the GI loans “government backed loans”. The problem is not everyone is cut out for college but yet everyone is enticed to go. Trade school or apprenticeship programs have been down played but should be viable routes for many.

John, I am completing my last course for my BA in Theology from Catholic Distance University.  It is not only conveniently online, but also accredited and cost-efficient.  Check it out!

There aren’t many jobs paying over $30,000/year (which just isn’t that much, these days) that don’t require a Bachelor’s degree. Job postings consistently list a required Bachelor’s degree. Employers are complicit, here. Until they stop using college degrees as gatekeepers, colleges will still be required in order to provide them. Let me know when corporations start accepting merit badges in lieu of a college degree.

However, something being lost in all this is the change in the workforce. 1/3 of Americans are now self-employed and attain work on a contract basis. Projections show that 1/2 will be self-employed by 2025 (that’s only 13 yrs; remember how recent 1999 was?). What credentials will be demanded of those self-employed for them to secure work and income?

Thanks for the info Chas I never heard of an FE exam. I actually done some internships which in all of them I worked on PLC’s I really think that’s my Niche because I really like it, but I also really think that God has a purpose for me and with the way my life was, I know he had something to do with me going to Merrimack. Plus EE degrees are always wanted and are far form fluff not that I’m saying you think they are. I’m not a mathematician or will I ever be but I know the value of grinding something out for a higher purpose. It really helps me put things in perspective.

I heard an interesting discussion of this on the radio. About 30% of people now get a college degree. When my father went to college—after serving in Korea—it was much, much cheaper and a much, much smaller number of people went. It was possible to pay your way through a state university by working in a restaurant or some relatively low-paying job like that. And it really WAS a guarantee of a higher salary. After the 1960s a college degree took the place of a high school degree as a basic requirement for many jobs, in part (I’ve been told) to get around racial quotas and charges of racial bias. Colleges and universities began growing like mad and making the degrees easier to get, and eventually the sheer number of graduates meant that a degree no longer meant a high-paying job. The debt many people go into and can never pay back is disgusting. In “The Closing of the American Mind,” the author said that most colleges have become career schools and cannot really justify more than a 3-year requirement. I think that’s true. My daughter got a great scholarship to a small liberal arts college, but most of her friends are going to live at home and attend the local state college—which is about $8500 a year without room and board. It’s doable for many families, although $21,000 with room and board is not.

The idea that a liberal arts education leads to learning “truth” is an utter joke.  Who are, as a group, the most dishonest, self-deluded, perverse people I’ve met in my 40 years?  The liberal arts majors…especially those holding masters and PhD.  They passed the classes and regurged for their degree…but they are now as morally awful as they were when they began.  Often worse…the putrid fire stoked by the arrogance from those pieces of paper on the wall.  That’s all they are…pieces of paper.  There is no sign in their conduct that they truly learned ANYTHING.

While ‘badges’ would not be appropriate to have on a resume,I would rather have a certificate instead of a course of study.Since many schools have virtual classrooms,this would be a cost-saving measure for the parent,because the parent does not have to woory about dealing with the car lines,wondering if the car has enough gas to make it,and getting out of the house in time to be on time.