Antipathy Toward College Educated (elementary school, grades, biology, classroom)

[sheena12]

Originally Posted by jtab4994

I disagree. Everyone who runs the place has a degree from an Ivy university, and they often have several such degrees.

If you're concerned about anti-intellectuals making their opinions known, Twitter and Facebook's censors are working on that.

Well that should tell you something. Even the party that pushes "trade schools" does not attend them, and does not send their children to trade school.

In fact, the only celebrity I can think of who has a son who is working in a blue collar career is Bruce Springsteen's son Sam, who in a New Jersey Firefighter. He applied to the fire department AFTER graduating from Bard College in Annandale-On-Hudson, NY.

Every President in my lifetime sent their children to college and didn't demand that they major in a certain field. Let's see, one of the first presidents I remember is Pres. Richard Nixon. One was obviously studious, and attended the prominent Smith College, one of the prestigious Seven Sisters colleges. The other attended a two year private Junior College where many wealthy young women who were not academically inclined yet who's parents wanted the right social credentials attended - Finch College, in NYC. After receiving her associate degree, she transferred to a four year college.

George W. Bush's delightful twin daughters attended very different colleges - one attended Yale and the other, University of Texas at Austin. Jenna majored in the "useless" communications field, and she is co-host of "Hoda and Jenna".

All of Trump's children attended college - mostly the University of Pennsylvania. In the case of Ivanka, she transferred from Georgetown, as her father transferred from Fordham University.

Attending college, particularly leaving home to have the full college experience, in the entree into the middle class.

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by tnff

Why is it so many like to toss out the term "haters" whenever someone holds a differing opinion. Over the years I've been pretty much called that by both sides of the argument. Yet I see, and argue for, the value of the trades and Vo-Tech training in school. As well as see, and argue for, the value of college education.



While there are those who do think that, more often than not, I think that statement gets tossed into the discussion as a way of shutting down dissenting opinions. IE, "if you disagree with A, then you must be X and are therefore <insert appropriate derogatory term here.>"



It seems to me the difficult thing about explaining the value in a college education is that those who understand the value don't need it explained. And no amount of explanation is sufficient to those who don't. Reminds me of a discussion about the value of GPS in the Gulf War years ago. Supposedly someone said "We don't need to be wasting money on all those GPS satellites. All I need is this?" As he held up the GPS receiver that depended on those satellites to provide the information he saw.

As is so often the case from your device.....great post.

IMO being called out by people on either side of this argument means you are on intellectual and sociological terra firma.

[houston-nomad]

Originally Posted by Retroit

I think the sentiment has been there for a long time (decades). Consider a non-college educated person who has been working for four years encounters a college educated person who hasn't, specifically someone with a useless liberal arts degree which doesn't really prepare you for much. The former has a real world understanding and the latter has had liberal smoke blown up their behind by liberal professors trapped in their liberal bubble.

It's different for those with a technical degree, like a doctor, engineer, scientist. I think they always have been respected by the non-college educated.

Here's your antipathy. "Useless liberal arts degree." Nevermind four years of reading journal articles, analyzing arguments, writing papers. In what field do you need critical thinking, reading, and writing skills? What a waste!

[M3 Mitch]

Originally Posted by redguard57

College is pretty useless until you need it. Being able to analyze Shakespeare is useless until at some point in your life you actually need to use the set of skills and mental bandwidth you activated by analyzing Shakespeare.

Ultimately everything you learn is generally useless until it's not.

Biggest career mistake I ever made was taking away a college degree requirement for a job class. My thinking was, "any decently smart high school grad can be trained to do this." No. No they couldn't. I almost got fired because it was my initiative and those people crashed and burned. Put it back to bachelors required and suddenly most candidates were able to do the tasks again.

Well, actually *analyzing* Shakespeare is of very limited practical value, *however* the skills so developed are of great practical value. Consider it the intellectual analog of weight training. Bench pressing a barbell is not actually useful work. The muscles developed by doing it, however, can be valuable.

Of course not all intellectual development happens in an accredited college. I learned quite a lot about nuclear power and its practical applications in the Navy Nuke program. And I have studied Russian Language in informal classes for over 20 years. So while I don't have the "pedigree" for that study, I still know the material.

[M3 Mitch]

Originally Posted by TamaraSavannah

Why all the hate for "liberal arts"?

These "people" Moderator cut: link removed, competitor site are using geography and that's liberal arts.

Basically, if there is antipathy, it may have been put into their heads by a media that may not know what they are talking about.

I don't think it's "hate" for the classical liberal arts per se. I think the disrespect is targeted at kids who take a "liberal arts" degree, which is to say they didn't have a major as such. This is sometimes called "general studies". I rather look down on such having taken a degree in Physics, and "graduated" from or at least successfully completed Navy Nuke training.

Think back and you will remember the "rich kid" who never took any hard classes and partied their way through school.

I am glad that I took my degree at a "liberal arts" school so I did get some of that to go along with the hard science.

[jtab4994]

Originally Posted by sheena12

Well that should tell you something. Even the party that pushes "trade schools" does not attend them, and does not send their children to trade school.

The perception that only one party is "pushing" trade schools should tell us something, too. There should be two parties pushing trade schools.

In fact, the only celebrity I can think of who has a son who is working in a blue collar career is Bruce Springsteen's son Sam, who in a New Jersey Firefighter. He applied to the fire department AFTER graduating from Bard College in Annandale-On-Hudson, NY.

There may be others that we don't know about, but apart from Bruce Springsteen and Mike Rowe, famous and wealthy people celebrate blue collar work but they don't live it.

Every President in my lifetime sent their children to college and didn't demand that they major in a certain field. Let's see, one of the first presidents I remember is Pres. Richard Nixon. One was obviously studious, and attended the prominent Smith College, one of the prestigious Seven Sisters colleges. The other attended a two year private Junior College where many wealthy young women who were not academically inclined yet who's parents wanted the right social credentials attended - Finch College, in NYC. After receiving her associate degree, she transferred to a four year college.

George W. Bush's delightful twin daughters attended very different colleges - one attended Yale and the other, University of Texas at Austin. Jenna majored in the "useless" communications field, and she is co-host of "Hoda and Jenna".

All of Trump's children attended college - mostly the University of Pennsylvania. In the case of Ivanka, she transferred from Georgetown, as her father transferred from Fordham University.

Attending college, particularly leaving home to have the full college experience, in the entree into the middle class.

The fact that nearly all national political figures attended Ivy League schools (or the equivalent) is hardly a ringing endorsement of that system. Look at the shape we're in. The same people who caused the problems are now telling us that only they have the expertise to fix them.

William F. Buckley, Jr. once quipped that he'd rather be ruled by the first 100 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard. In a real-life democracy we really are supposed to be ruled by random people (the electorate) and not an elitist cabal that all have the same life experience.

[E-Twist]

I appreciate anyone that does their job well, college educated or not. I appreciate my dentist, my auto mechanic, the last plumber I used that fixed the previous bad plumber's work. I appreciate some doctors and nurses more than others. I appreciate competent wait staff. I think education is a wonderful thing, but not everyone is cut out for college. It doesn't mean they can't do well at something if they have common sense.

I had a relative with only an 8th grade education. By the time he retired at 50, he owned a feed store, chicken farm, orchards, grocery store. He was a smart man but not well educated. He was also ambitious and didn't expect anything just handed to him. His children, except for one daughter who still did well in business for herself, are college educated.

One thing I have noticed among people I know, are those that had loans and paid them off are resentful of those that are having loans forgiven. Except for those that have children with loans. They want their children to not have to pay.

I think it would be nice to make higher education more affordable. It never hurts to have more education.

[jtab4994]

Originally Posted by E-Twist

I think it would be nice to make higher education more affordable. It never hurts to have more education.

Right now, college is the least affordable it's ever been, and more people are attending college than ever before. Yet millions are unable to pay their loans back in a timely manner.

So rather than antipathy toward the college educated, perhaps we might try a little focused antipathy toward the Boards of Trustees that endlessly approve projects that increase tuition.

[ohio_peasant]

Originally Posted by sheena12

Well that should tell you something. Even the party that pushes "trade schools" does not attend them, and does not send their children to trade school.

Rarely is there cause for surprise, when persons in power - political or otherwise - operate under "Do as I say, not as I do".

Originally Posted by houston-nomad

Here's your antipathy. "Useless liberal arts degree." Nevermind four years of reading journal articles, analyzing arguments, writing papers. In what field do you need critical thinking, reading, and writing skills? What a waste!

The charge of "uselessness" is another particularly American trait. The idea is, that for some concept, object, method, endeavor or whatever else, the value of the thing, is assigned in proportion to its utility.... and not to its intrinsic properties. Even in engineering-class, the theoretical derivation of some concept, is panned as being useless... students just want to get to the final formula, or even better, a computer program that encodes the formula for rapid iterations.

America just isn't a country of theoreticians. For early evidence, consider "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin". Much of this is probably tongue in cheek, but there is a serious and ingenuous theme. American culture, even circa 1750, much preferred the mechanic to the mechanical engineer, and in turn the latter, to the physicist.

Originally Posted by M3 Mitch

...Think back and you will remember the "rich kid" who never took any hard classes and partied their way through school.

As an engineering student, I too felt something between pity and contempt for the liberal arts students. The proximate cause was that they had time and resources to party, whereas I didn't. It was only years later, that I realized, that the distinction between a thriving social-life and a limited one, has more to do with one's personality and "emotional intelligence", than with one's vocation.

[A New Day]

Originally Posted by kyle19125

You mean back when you could achieve a bachelor's degree from a good university for 25K-30K? Try it at double or triple that amount at a salary not much higher and double the cost of living (or more). Not exactly tit for tat...

I’ve got two kids currently in college, and they will have each paid a little under $20K for their degrees.