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I don't agree that the colleges that fall under the 150 mark aren't worth the investment in your child's education/future, but this is what it's come down to, apparently.
The very small private Eastern Pa college I graduated from 21 years ago USED to be called the "Ivy League Wanna Be of Eastern Pa". Was (was) rated as one of the top 10 colleges in the country for their pre-med program.
Times have certainly changed at my alma mater (Liberal Arts College). You can't go back to the school for an alum function without being held hostage to at least 10 out the 50+ acapella groups on campus during said function. The theater/arts has taken over to the point that the monies dedicated to the "arts" program, in my opinion, is pathetic and has take away from every other program offered...who pays close to $60K for their kid to major in "I was NOT the lead in "Annie Get Your Gun, but I was in the production"?
I don't even think the school registers in the top 1000 schools for their pre-med/sciences program any longer.
What a waste of what used to be a great school.
I don't understand the change, and why the college spent so much money building up the theater/arts side of education when it was well known for the sciences. All I know is my kids will not apply. Not even for craps and giggles.
Bill Bennett has no credibility; off the mark as usual
The man has wasted his life as a Conservative, being part of the problem. His severely flawed judgment and instincts don't carry any weight with me, especially on this topic. We have Republicans like Bennett favoring profit over loyalty to American workers, by overwhelmingly promoting outsourcing and offshoring of jobs to foreigners. Bennett and his ilk are experts at displacing qualified American workers, discarding them at their degrees in favor of cheaper foreign labor. I don't agree with him or the confident incompetence he represents.
A college education doesn't guarantee a person a job. It has enormous intrinsic value that you can't put a price on, which places one at a higher vantage point by which they could explore a greater range of opportunities. I think any means that one can advance their education is extremely valuable. A no-name college in western PA is just as good for this purpose as Harvard. The value depends on the individual and what he/she gets out of it, not what some ranking in US News and World Report says.
Right now, i'm comparing the state universities of my state and the ones near the Expensive Part of state seem to have a higher ROI then the ones in the Affordable part of state. Could this be due to the region in which some graduates are prone to return to??
(Obviously I know that the Ivy Leagues and other "top schools" will be profitable regardless of where you're at).
The man has wasted his life as a Conservative, being part of the problem. His severely flawed judgment and instincts don't carry any weight with me, especially on this topic. . . . I don't agree with him or the confident incompetence he represents.
The problem isn't that he is a conservative; rather, the problem is that he is an incompetent blowhard with poor judgement, as you have said. According to numerous mainstream news reports he has lost literally millions of dollars gambling in Las Vegas (and probably other places as well), all the while touting his "Book of Virtue."
The study itself is complete rubbish until ROI is controlled for the innate ability of the student body at any particular school. Smart people usually earn a lot of money. Harvard, for example, attracts smart students. That they earn a lot of money after graduating Harvard is to be expected. The same students would earn just about as much if they attended a good but "lower" school.
Last edited by Hamish Forbes; 05-13-2013 at 06:05 AM..
Pretty ignorant statement. How many people have the jobs they have because they graduated form a 'less than top 150" college? Most of the college educated work force, that's who.
...The study itself is complete rubbish until ROI is controlled for the innate ability of the student body at any particular school. Smart people usually earn a lot of money. Harvard, for example, attracts smart students. That they earn a lot of money after graduating Harvard is to be expected. The same students would earn just about as much if they attended a good but "lower" school.
So, is the next step that smart people skip higher education altogether, because if you are smart people money is your destiny?
I agree with him, for the most part. People need to seriously consider what he's saying: If you go to a top-ranked university, then you can major in almost anything you want and get a good return on your investment. But if you don't get into a top-ranked university, then you must major in a high income/high demand field like engineering.
88% of people go to college to get a job - very important information. All of this stuff should be self-evident by now.
How is this value defined? What is meant by "worth the investment"? It appears to mean that one will earn back the amount paid for the diploma at only 150 schools, and at all the others, the cost of the diploma will be greater than the income increment for having it. Patently untrue. An Associates degree from any community college will increase lifetime earnings well above the investment, if one choose a curriculum leading to an in-demand career field. And, Bennett said exactly that.
Not because the "education" is of any value, but because nowadays it is rigged that way. It certainly didn't do Bennett any harm to have learned articulate communication skills in addition to whatever degree he feels it "worthy" to pursue.
The headline belies Bennett's very valid point. He never said what was implied by the headline of the article, except as a tangential aside. His main point was what major you pursue, not what school you choose. This was based on one very short interview, introduced by one very leading question ("Is college worth it?") , by an unprepared hack reporter doing a fluff piece, and then a headline writer misconstrued the entire point.
The study itself is complete rubbish until ROI is controlled for the innate ability of the student body at any particular school. Smart people usually earn a lot of money. Harvard, for example, attracts smart students. That they earn a lot of money after graduating Harvard is to be expected. The same students would earn just about as much if they attended a good but "lower" school.
This is not true. Elite universities offer superior placement services to run-of-the-mill universities. It isn't necessarily the placement office, it is the reputation of the universities that put hungry recruiters at Harvard but not at American U.
Corporate Greed, Inc. will look for talent at elite universities and if they don't find it they'll look abroad before going to lesser schools. And they will more likely hire foreign students from the elite universities because they are more likely to sacrifice all for the company.
Bill Bennett didn't get any smarter by being Secretary of Education, and no one else will get any smarter from reading Bill Bennett. The last time he was right about something was when he said, "Hey, I bet I can parlay my 15 minutes of undeserved fame into a pretty good part-time meal ticket at the expense of really stupid people." Everything he has come up with since then has been wrong. He is an intellectual pornographer.
College is not a market play. College is a place and time to grow up, to learn how to learn, to top off your stores of general knowledge and begin setting down stores of a particular knowledge that fascinates you enough that you decide to specialize in it. It is a place and time to lose the provincialism of youth, to expand and broaden your horizons and your consciousness, to meet and explore new and different people and benefit from their insights and experiences along with your own. It is also a place to have a good time so that you'll have plenty of cool stories to tell later on in life.
If Bill Bennett had ever said something half as insightful or worthwhile as the above, you might be able to say something nice about him. But he hasn't.
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Bill Bennett has no credibility; off the mark as usual
