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So we can all stay at our computers with bated breath until he has enough time to deliver his wonderful opinion, clearly.</p>
<p>I think there are several problems with how college is integrated into society.</p>
<p>1) There are many majors that do not directly prepare you for any sort of career. In fact, outside of the hard sciences and accounting, I think nearly every major falls into this trap. I’m an econ major. But this degree doesn’t really directly prepare me to do anything except become a professor. Many people major in econ to do something in finance or business, which I do plan to do. But overall the degree isn’t all too applicable to this. A correlated thing to this is that getting a degree in something like this doesn’t really tell future employers that much about you. By that I mean that getting a degree in this or that major doesn’t really mean that one will be good at this or that job. Majoring in history doesn’t mean I’d be a good history teacher. Majoring in zoology doesn’t mean I’d be a good zoo keeper. etc.</p>
<p>2) The prestige factor has become way to big of an issue. I’ll talk about econ, but you can see this applies to nearly every major. The economics that I learn at my top 25 non ivy school is the same as someone at Harvard learns, or someone at a community college, or someone who can go on google and look up Price Elasticity of Demand. The knowledge is all the same. Someone could pretty much learn as much as is needed for an econ degree by going to the local library (I’m reminded of the bar scene in Good WIll Hunting). Yet when it comes time to apply for jobs, all of these people, with pretty much the same knowledge, look vastly different in the eyes of an employer. And the reason that people end up in different schools is largely a result of things that happen way before employment age, from 14-18. So just because one gets A’s in high school, they are a better candidate for a job? That is almost what this boils down to. </p>
<p>And don’t say that its because those that come from “harder” schools are better workers. If you can learn the material, you can learn the material.</p>
<p>This all being said, I don’t think there is a simple solution. Some major/careers have tests (LSAT, GRE, MCAT) that are supposed to be some sort of guide as to how well you learn the things. But this falls into the same trap as the college admissions game. Who makes the tests, and whats important to know for them? The guidelines for knowledge required is just as subjective as for college majors.</p>
<p>Well, I mean the college system may not be perfect, but you have to admit that its what has brought the poor into better lives. It may not be easy, but at least its an option. But there are obviously flaws in the very imperfect system, especially now. </p>
<p>I see a growing trend of undergrad education becoming almost expected. Master degrees are really the new “higher education”.</p>
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<p>The two criticisms you listed in your post are examples of artificial natural selection, it serves to make learning sort of a game with a hierarchy and in all fairness makes people work harder, otherwise we’d probably be living in a communist country.</p>
<p>I wish college would put less emphasis on grades and more on creativity. Guess that’s what grad school is for?</p>
<p>Maybe we should be slowing movig toward a system in which everyone get higher education, but not necessarily under the same system. The controversy between “one goes to college to perform a job” and “one goes to college for personal development” will, somehow, be addressed and overcome. Morevoer, both purposes are not mutually exclusive.</p>
<p>Back in the 1900’s, the high-order complexity of most occupations people took to make a living was far lower then today’s occupations. Basic physical ability and repetitive (and boring) routines were the norm in flourishing industrial employment in rich countries. Farming was very inefficient in terms of the amount of man-hours required to produce a certain amount of economic-worth food. Many families dedicated themselves entirely to a not so small plot just for the sake of producing food to feed themselves and little surplus to spend on comsumption of other items.</p>
<p>Fortunately, people (mostly college graduates, I’m sure) developed better and more efficient ways to perform those repetitive, labor-intensive tasks of the past. There’s no reasoning in spend a man/woman’s life behind a three-step movement position in an assembly line if a robot can do that without sweating, getting occupational disease and, essentialy, wasting his/her potential to a meaningful life in a dumbly simple function. Modern farming in America and Europe provide much (relatively) cheaper food than ever in recent history, yet not more than 10% of population are employed in direct farming activities, and even then farming is now an high-tech enterprise, with GPS-guided tractors, satellite monitoring of crops, genetic-modified seeds and fuzzy pest-control.</p>
<p>I think that, sooner or later, higher education will be kind of compulsory in the same way that high school is now. Let’s remember that before World-War II HS was not considered something that everyone should attend, and there was no such social stigma of drop-outs: if you found a decen farming or industrial job (for that '</p>
<p>I agree with a lot of what europegrad says, that technological advancements have made many manual jobs, such as farming far more economically efficient than ever before. Today’s farmer feeds roughly 128 people (far greater than before), which has dramatically decreased the number of farmer’s needed and jobs in that field. This same effect is widespread and prevalent in just about every industry with manual labor. People are replaced by machines, thus people will need to be able to perform jobs that machines can’t aka. get higher education. Higher education is the effect, not the cause.</p>
<p>Globalization also plays a key role. For example, a few decades ago, being a butcher for the food industry was equivalent to working for the auto-industry today, and sufficient to support a family (well not really since all our car companies are bust). Today, not so much, the food industry( a business) now hires illegal immigrants (lowering cost of production) to do the majority of the butchering (Globalization). This is good for the consumers (lower cost of food) and the Business (higher profits), but terrible for the workers (lower pay, fewer jobs, fewer rights), but aren’t we the workers?</p>
<p>I believe what we are seeing happen to our country is just the result of capitalism and globalization. Businesses conglomerate to become multi-billion corporations that have a **** ton of money and influence with lobbyists (congressmen), and eventually, it is these corporations that are calling a lot of the shots. I’m not complaining about the dollar menu ( cheap food), but you start wondering, if these companies (food industry, pharmaceuticals, everything) with so much influence are money driven, then who’s got the average guys back?? Nobody, so people have to step up, and start getting higher and higher education, but I guess I’d rather go to school than work on a farm. And I get to have way more stuff (materialism).</p>
<p>But resources are limited, which is why we need “sustainability,” which of course, makes no sense to capitalism and our natural greediness for goods, so we ll just keep chugging, getting fatter, wasting more resources, buying things we don’t need, popping pills we think we need, and become the slaves of these corporations (cultural norms, which are greatly influenced by advertisements) aka. WALL-E. </p>
<p>Our society is driven by progress, and progress is great, but unfettered progress is a large flame that burns to quickly.</p>
<p>There more there is of something, the less it is worth.</p>
<p>College degrees are becoming useless, due to the fact that everyone is going to college now. If everyone has a degree, the degree no longer a distinguishing factor.</p>
<p>It’s the same with money. The more money in the economy, the less that money is worth. It’s called inflation.</p>
<p>College Education has done much good for society in my opinion. Mainly in the way that it gives those that would otherwise not get the chance to have higher paying jobs, due to where they grew up or their family income, a chance to. It also, if carried out properly, can serve as a way for individuals to figure out who they are and how they want to contribute to society through their work.
Yet, with the positive there can be the negative. What college education has also done is create a layer of people who think they are ENTITLED to certain things and “deserve better” than person X, Y, and Z who didn’t go to college, or didn’t go to this or that school, or didn’t get a degree in this or that major. These sort of people were drinking too much of the kool- aid and forgot it takes more than just a piece of paper and a few skills to have success. They also forgot that most all jobs, some less glamorous than others, are important to society and need to be done.</p>