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A lot of those points are fairly obvious but many people choose to ignore them as if taking on more debt and transferring wealth to academia was some sort of rite of passage. And I don't believe the notion that students and their families assume the burden of strategizing to come up with the right financial aid package. They can make schools compete on price and quality by comparing tuition, fees and services.
For the "worst than useless" part where it refers to courses that are "intolerant of Christianity" or teach about "re-distribution of wealth."
If you accept those things as truth just because your professor says them, you may want to re-think whether or not you belong in a college environment.
The writer of that article is affiliated with a very conservative Christian college, one of the few in the country that won't accept federal money b/c of Title IX. I'd take it with a grain of salt.
The writer of that article is affiliated with a very conservative Christian college, one of the few in the country that won't accept federal money b/c of Title IX. I'd take it with a grain of salt.
Most things you read should be taken with a grain of salt. There are some things that I found to be true from my own college experience and some were pretty far-off.
My 2 cents on part one without being as radical as the author.
1) “Far more people earn degrees in many liberal arts majors than can be employed in those fields.â€
The article tends to put emphasis on getting a job after stepping out of a college career halfway through. The reality is that liberal arts majors are almost always academic majors (BA) and are oriented towards academia. Yet most of the students in that field never finish their studies and often end up as a bartender or unemployed. This really has to do more with students not knowing what they're getting into than it does with colleges running a business.
2) “You cannot assume that if you work hard and get good grades, you will be rewarded with a good job.â€
Absolutely true! However, working hard significantly increases your chances of being successful (while not guaranteeing it). If you work hard and get good grades, you're more likely to get into a top school like Yale and increase your chances of attaining a job going forward. I put this one on the parents more than anyone else. Many parents don't offer their children the resources they need to be successful.
3) “Some of what you learn in college may be worse than useless.â€
You're bound to learn some useless stuff with anything that you participate in. But remember that you choose the college and you choose your professors. It's not the other way around. You know exactly what the professor is about when you research them and select them. It's safe to assume that what you get out of their class will be inline with what you read in their thesis prior to choosing them to be in their class. I'd be surprised if it were radically different.
Also, remember that college is not just about classes.
The article tends to put emphasis on getting a job after stepping out of a college career halfway through. The reality is that liberal arts majors are almost always academic majors (BA) and are oriented towards academia. Yet most of the students in that field never finish their studies and often end up as a bartender or unemployed.
If students never finishing their studies, they don't sound like the types who are oriented towards academia or even the professional practice of their majors. How many English majors out there really have the prolific talent of a TS Eliott or Ayn Rand? Also how to account for those AB grads from elite liberal arts schools now loitering in Brooklyn and Portland as hipsters.
If students never finishing their studies, they don't sound like the types who are oriented towards academia or even the professional practice of their majors. How many English majors out there really have the prolific talent of a TS Eliott or Ayn Rand? Also how to account for those AB grads from elite liberal arts schools now loitering in Brooklyn and Portland as hipsters.
As you said... they're AB grads. No different than those bartenders the article mentioned.
#1.Getting a job in your major isn't really the point of college for humanities majors. If you want a job in your major you should go to community college or study something that isn't humanities. Studying humanities in college is a mix of teaching you how to think in a certain way and a class thing. Those are the principle benefits and that is why 4 yr college grads have and will always have substantially lower unemployment then the population at large.
#3 is also just his own personal opinion, and it is a bad opinion at that especially since most of the government still operates using Keynesian assumptions. I would warn anyone about studying under him if he is not going to teach an economic philosophy that basically drives the Federal Reserve, and a fair amount of congress to this day and has experienced a resurgence since the 2008 crisis. Basically you are going to come out of his econ class with your brains filled with only Mises and Hayak and be extremely confused about why governmental entities are doing what they are doing, and worse yet you are going to be non-conversant about econ around everyone else who has studied econ unless you learn the stuff on your own.
# 4 College is an investment and like all investments it involves risk, I also don't think it is a bad investment because you have those unemployment rates that are heads and shoulders better then any other group.
#5 This is true, but if you read your loan documents they very clearly warn you about the consequences of going into debt. So it isn't as though nobody warns people, and if you aren't willing to read your own contracts, why the heck do you want to go on to college in humanities which is about 70% reading.
#6 This is questionable. If colleges were a buyers market places like U of P would not exist.
#7 As I have said a huge part college college in humanities is a class thing and that includes networking. As such I seriously doubt online education will ever be worth it in the vast majority of cases.
Last edited by Randomstudent; 01-06-2013 at 09:41 AM..
Studying humanities in college is a mix of teaching you how to think in a certain way and a class thing.
If a student has to major in something just to learn "how to think" then he or she has major deficiencies that cannot be remediated by college.
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