Is college overrated?

Parents Forum
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<p>The college system would work better more programs for specific careers were established.</p>

<p>For example, you shouldn’t have to go to college, get your BA, and then go to medical school? Why make a school for all of that in one? To encapsulate, I want to learn about global history when I want to become a doctor.</p>

<p>There are a few places that have this idea on track, such as the Sophie Davis school of Biomedical Education.</p>

<p>BS/MD Program
The Biomedical Education Program is designed as a seven-year integrated curriculum leading to Bachelor of Science (B.S.) and Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degrees. During the first five years of the program, students fulfill all requirements for the B.S. degree as well as the pre-clinical portion of a medical school curriculum. After successfully completing the five-year sequence and passing Step I of the U.S. Medical Licensure Examination, students then transfer to one of six medical schools for their final two years of clinical training. Read more.</p>

<p>PA Program
Our Physician Assistant ¶ Program is a 28-month upper division program leading to a BS degree and certification as a Physician Assistant. It was one of the first baccalaureate degree-granting physician assistant programs in the country.</p>

<p>Wow, getting my MD for little to no debt. College is overrated. When one thinks of college they think of education, sitting in packed classes, drinks, and girls.</p>

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<p>Please speak for yourself. I didn’t think of college that way, nor did my kids or many others I know.</p>

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<p>How’s this. Make</p>

<ol>
<li>A general college for liberal arts majors (basically for most people) with the option to move to business for the last two years.</li>
<li>Engineering becomes a professional school with strict certifications and no grades</li>
<li>Research schools to train future researchers.</li>
</ol>

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<p>GOOD musicians - this is a point missed by a lot of people. I feel there is an almost ontological difference between the general populaces entering both LA and engineering majors - btw, this doesn’t actually apply to a decent chunk of CC members because there are plenty of genuinely intelligent CCers, so at least some of you guys should probably take this as simply observational in the same way I am. </p>

<p>Engineering as a field has successes and failures - you either get it or you don’t, and when you get it, you’re able to perform the grunt work correctly. In this way, an engineering degree means something, because, for the most part, regardless of where you get it from or how intelligent you are, you are still within the scope of the successful engineers (i.e., those who graduated with the degree). However, a success in LA isn’t simply differentiated by those who received the degree versus those who didn’t; there are actual rungs of success past the degree heavily dependent on personal characteristics. Consequently, the LA degree means very little. </p>

<p>This is also a minor side effect of a mass popularization of college. People know if they are able to do engineering pretty quickly (it’s also one of the quickest ruled out), so LA ends up getting plenty of these people. Those who would have been successful in LA have to try harder to separate themselves from these overflow candidates. So the average good LA major contributes as much as the average engineering major - it’s just that on-paper-successful LA majors 1. are harder to measure 2. are more bad ones of. </p>

<p>This also ties into modern psychological populism and government coerced egalitarianism but I’ll save that for when I finally get to college (or somewhere you guys care).</p>

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<p>My apologies if I rubbed you the wrong way. I’m one of those rare people that are not that interested in “making loads of money”; if it comes my way, great. As long as I’m able to put food on the table, pay bills, and travel here and there, I’m good.</p>

<p>A few engineering types I have met invest a bit too much time conversing about salaries and related things; I’m not that interested in those types of conversations, especially when I know that if I want to make a lot of money I can sell snake oil to gullible people. In contrast, many of the physics and math majors I know converse about scientific subjects I barely understand but that I find more intriguing. That’s just me.</p>

<p>Soozievt:</p>

<p>I apologize. It was not my intention to insult your children. However, we should be frank about the fact that large numbers of people view a college education as job training and place little importance on some of the knowledge they are offered. For many of these people, the end goal is the piece of paper.</p>

<p>Viviste:</p>

<p>I do not care where you go; I care about what you do once you get there.</p>

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<p>The college system would work better more programs for specific careers were established.</p>

<p>For example, you shouldn’t have to go to college, get your BA, and then go to medical school? Why make a school for all of that in one? To encapsulate, I want to learn about global history when I want to become a doctor.</p>

<p>There are a few places that have this idea on track, such as the Sophie Davis school of Biomedical Education.</p>

<p>BS/MD Program
The Biomedical Education Program is designed as a seven-year integrated curriculum leading to Bachelor of Science (B.S.) and Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degrees. During the first five years of the program, students fulfill all requirements for the B.S. degree as well as the pre-clinical portion of a medical school curriculum. After successfully completing the five-year sequence and passing Step I of the U.S. Medical Licensure Examination, students then transfer to one of six medical schools for their final two years of clinical training. Read more.</p>

<p>PA Program
Our Physician Assistant ¶ Program is a 28-month upper division program leading to a BS degree and certification as a Physician Assistant. It was one of the first baccalaureate degree-granting physician assistant programs in the country.</p>

<p>Wow, getting my MD for little to no debt. College is overrated. When one thinks of college they think of education, sitting in packed classes, drinks, and girls.</p>

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<p>In my view, the problem is not the idea of a relationship between college and job training. The problem is the notion that “college” in a general sense provides worthwhile job training, which is empirically denied by the status quo. A college graduate is not automatically employable - their field of study and institution both matter.</p>

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<p>Enginox: I’m sorry, but I’m having trouble following here; how was that relevant to what I said?</p>

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<p>Enginox…</p>

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<p>First, my point was not that you insulted MY kids but anyone (myself included) who has a career or field of study that is not in the sciences. Secondly, you tried to distinguish that in YOUR field, you’d be advancing scientific knowledge…ya know, making a difference in the world, and not just job training or a piece of paper…but I’m saying that many people in many OTHER fields, myself and my kids included, ALSO care about what they learn (are passionate about their fields) and ALSO are in it to make a difference in the world. You and your peers in engineering programs (if that is what you are in) don’t have a lock on that by any means.</p>

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<p>Sure, but then you have to ask yourself how much of that is due to the social stigma imputed on those career tracks. Let’s face it, at most high schools, the vocational classes are generally looked down upon as the purview of the untalented and lazy students. That’s not the way it should be, but that’s the way it is. Naturally, if you stigmatize a particular choice, kids tend to shy away from that choice. </p>

<p>To give you an analogy, back in high school, during the fall semester, the “cool” boys would join the football team, and the “cool” girls would join the cheerleading team, whereas the “uncool” boys would join the soccer team, or not even play a sport at all. The social incentives were clear: if you wanted to be cool, you had to play football or cheerlead, even if you didn’t really enjoy it. I personally don’t think that football is any more worthy of a sport than soccer, but nevertheless, soccer was imputed to have lower status than football within the high school social hierarchy. If we all think back to high school, surely we can all agree that this was true, even if we wish it weren’t. To this day, far far more American boys dream of becoming professional football players than professional soccer players. {Maybe the World Cup will change those attitudes, but that’s a long process.} </p>

<p>In the same manner, high school students are incentivized to take college prep courses and shy away from courses on drafting and auto repair simply because those courses are not considered ‘cool’. Even those students who would be better off in those vocational courses often times end up taking college prep work anyway, simply because that’s where their friends are. </p>

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<p>As mentioned by others and myself, the ‘dream’ in many cases consists of simply avoiding sending to the labor market what employers now view as a negative signal. Employers now increasingly demand college degrees for even the most mundane roles. You need a degree simply to avoid that first cut by the HR department. That’s not so much ‘following a dream’ to me as it is avoiding a ‘nightmare’. Employers don’t pay for college, so demanding degrees is costless to them. All of the costs are imposed on the people, or if a public school, the taxpayers. </p>

<p>And besides, nobody is arguing that vocational work has to be physical in nature. I’ve always been amused by high school seniors who can deconstruct Shakespeare down to the most minute detail, but don’t know how to configure a simple Wifi router in their own house, how to set up a basic file server, or in some cases even how to properly connect a HDTV to a DVD player. There are plenty of good jobs available for those who have IT skills, and I’m shocked that high schools don’t provide opportunities to learn these skills. As an example, I know many high school kids who work at fast food restaurants making minimum wage, when they could make double that setting up simple Cisco router/switch networks - a skill that could be learned after just a few months of practice.</p>

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<p>I hear this argument a lot about how a college education teaches one “critical thinking,” but given that most students choose a “perfect fit” school (i.e., people like me, people who think like me, people with political views like me, etc.), how much of their world view is actually being challenged, thus giving rise to critical thinking? I see posters here all the time saying they want a liberal or a conservative college. Education in the echo chamber isn’t enlightening. Affirming, perhaps, but certainly not enlightening. If a student enters a school with a given set of beliefs, has those beliefs echoed by the vast majority of his or her professors and fellow students, and leaves with a hardening of those beliefs, there is no question that “critical thinking” has not occurred. </p>

<p>A 2007 study done of college seniors’ basic knowledge of civics and history showed that only 50% could demonstrate such literacy, and while students at elite colleges scored better, they are showing little or no gain in their knowledge of basic civics or history from the freshman to the senior year. I just don’t think our colleges are churning out these great “critical thinkers” that we think they are. </p>

<p>[College</a> students struggle on history test - USATODAY.com](<a href=“http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-09-17-history-test_N.htm]College”>http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-09-17-history-test_N.htm)</p>

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<p>sakky…just to share…at the high school my kids attended, there was no football and no cheerleading. Actually soccer is cool. One of my kids was on the HS team (the other played it prior to HS though). Also, at our high school, I would not say that kids take academic classes to be cool and avoid tech ones as non-cool. In fact, at our high school, one-third of the students do not go onto college and the techy kind of classes fill a need for those students. Lastly, computer courses are required for graduation.</p>

<p>PS…my D, who was val and went onto an Ivy League college and then MIT for grad school, did an independent study in the HS tech dept (which is filled with kids who are not going onto college) as she wanted to study something tied to her intended field in college and beyond. So, she wasn’t too cool to go there every day for her independent study project, even though she was also taking the most demanding HS academic curriculum.</p>

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<p>And I would refer to the concession you made in post #61 - that correlation does not equate to causation. In fact, there may in fact be causation in effect here - in the opposite direction. Meaning it may be precisely because society became wealthier that allowed more people to afford to attend college, rather than college increasing the wealth of society.</p>

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<p>^^^ However, many believe, including myself, that our society will benefit by having a more educated populace.</p>

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<p>It’s not just a view, it’s the truth. On average, humanities and social science disciplines give out easier grades for less work than do science and engineering disciplines. </p>

<p>*You argue in the report that grading disparities between science/technical fields and less technical ones are scaring off American students: is there evidence for that? My sense is that most people (certainly including graduate schools) know which disciplines are harder and take that into account when comparing students. Or were you seeing students at Duke who were planning on studying applied math, were scared off by B’s and B-minuses, and switched to art history instead? — Abigail, Calif.
A.</p>

<p>Duke is actually a good example of the loss of talent in science and technology that happens in college.</p>

<p>Unlike most colleges and universities, Duke’s undergraduate engineering school has a separate admissions office. Every year it has to oversubscribe its admissions because many students will leave the engineering school and transfer into arts and sciences after a year, typically majoring in the social sciences. When you ask students why they make this move, they often say it’s because of the workload and grading.</p>

<p>There is also significant attrition across college campuses when it comes to potential biology majors, typically those who initially wanted to go into medical fields. Again, the driver for this attrition is workload and grading.</p>

<p>There are those who argue that this attrition is a good thing, and I would agree to some extent. We don’t want mediocrity in the design of our bridges and machines, or in a hospital operating room. But some of this attrition is undoubtedly unnecessary.</p>

<p>I don’t want to dwell on Duke, but many of those who move out of engineering have the talent to excel. In conversations with them, I have heard a common story about seeing people in dorms partying away and wondering, “Why not me?”</p>

<p>That’s what I mean by unnecessary (and harmful) attrition. I don’t believe that the sciences and engineering should demand less of their students. Rather, the social sciences and humanities need to demand more.*</p>

<p>[Grade</a> Inflation: Your Questions Answered - Economix Blog - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/13/grade-inflation-your-questions-answered/]Grade”>Grade Inflation: Your Questions Answered - The New York Times)</p>

<p>I remember the dead silence in a faculty meeting when a Notre Dame Dean said over 60 percent of the grades in English and Humanities classes were A’s, the rest were A-minuses and B-pluses. It was an attempt to embarrass professors’ lack of effort at identifying variations in student performance. Shaming didn’t work, nothing. And, as a new report shows, Notre Dame is not alone. Grade inflation is alive and well.</p>

<p>colleges that focus on the sciences have had less grade inflation than those that do not.</p>

<p>[Prizes</a> for All: Grade Inflation Is Alive and Well - Brainstorm - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Prizes-for-All-Grade/23607/]Prizes”>http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Prizes-for-All-Grade/23607/)</p>

<p>*students are twice as likely to enroll in a course with an A-minus average as they are to enroll in a course with a B average. The big losers are the natural science and math departments, since they grade hardest, and the big winners are the humanities, since they grade easiest. Johnson writes, “On average, American undergraduates take 50 percent fewer courses in the natural sciences and math than they would if grading practices were more equitable.” *</p>

<p>[Grade</a> inflation in humanities a dangerous trend | The Chronicle](<a href=“http://dukechronicle.com/article/grade-inflation-humanities-dangerous-trend]Grade”>Grade inflation in humanities a dangerous trend - The Chronicle)</p>

<p>*What this generally does apply to, though, are those classes within the soft sciences and humanities. The prevalence of grade inflation within these departments is summed up in a passage of a 2004 New York Times article:</p>

<p>“English departments have basically worked on the A/B binary system for some time: A’s and A-minuses for the best students, B’s for everyone else, and C’s, D’s and F’s for students who miss half the classes or threaten their teachers with bodily harm.”</p>

<p>There is no reason that getting an A in an English, philosophy or history course should be any less challenging then in a chemistry, biology or engineering course — or any more prevalent. Yet, it is — usually on both counts. *</p>

<p>[The</a> Badger Herald: Opinion: Grade inflation threatens value](<a href=“http://badgerherald.com/oped/2009/03/30/grade_inflation_thre.php]The”>http://badgerherald.com/oped/2009/03/30/grade_inflation_thre.php)</p>

<p>So for those who dislike the statement that humanities and social sciences are less demanding than are natural science and engineering courses, well, take it up with the schools. Ask them why they persist in easier grading for the former disciplines.</p>

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<p>Why? There are less jobs for college grads than there are grads. Likewise, a society full of PhD’s is not necessarily a good thing. More does not equal better, which seems to be the theme these days. “These people need to go to college, those people need to go to college, everyone needs to go to college. And once they go, the stars will shine and we will have fireworks and wine”.</p>

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<p>Sakky…you are using grades as an indicator of how demanding a course of study may be. I don’t see it that way. One of my kids was in a BFA degree program which is a professional degree program that is extremely intense and demanding. Her class hours alone were greater than for many college degrees…she was in classes from 9-5:30 most days and in required activities from 6:30 -11 PM and often required on weekends. She had to fit in her schoolwork around these required hours. My other kid is in architecture and the hours involved in that field are all day, all night, all weekend. How demanding a program or field is isn’t just based on grading.</p>

<p>Further, Enginox’s comments were not just about how demanding his field was compared to other fields but also he indicated that those in other fields were in it for the paper on the wall or the job they could attain rather than for a passion for the field and a desire to make a difference in the world as he is doing with advancing scientific knowledge.</p>

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<p>I believe we go to college and major in what is in demand even though we may not like it. There are way too many majors out there that doesn’t provide a well paying salary.</p>

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<p>That may describe YOUR motivations but not so for many others, myself as well as my two kids included. I know that I, as well as both of my kids, chose fields we loved without any thought to the salary. In fact, we are not in high paying fields for the most part. I am in education, one of my kids is in performing arts, and the other is in architecture. We chose our fields based on a passion for that field and not which jobs are in demand or which pay a higher salary. </p>

<p>Some may do as you describe…but clearly many of us don’t.</p>

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<p>And even that contention can’t be taken at face value. To paraphrase Thomas Sowell, whether education is a net positive or negative for society is ultimately an empirical question that depends crucially on the interaction of the type of education involved with the demand for that type of education, along with the sorts of expectations that education can engender. Education can sometimes be a net negative for society if it induces people to consider a wider range of jobs to now be beneath them. </p>

<p>*
"Formal education, especially among peoples for whom it is rare or recent, often creates feelings of entitlement to rewards and exemption from many kinds of work. In India, for example, even the rudiments of education have often been enough to create a reluctance to take any job involving work with one’s hands. In the 1960’s it was estimated that there were more than a million “educated unemployed” in India who demonstrated “a remarkable ability to sustain themselves even without gainful work, largely by relying on family assistance and support.” Nor is this social phenomenon limited to India. Other Third World nations have shown similar patterns.</p>

<p>Such attitudes affect both the employed and the unemployed. Even those educated as engineers have often preferred desk jobs and tended to “recoil from the prospect of physical contact with machines.” In short, education can reduce an individual’s productivity by the expectations and aversions it creates, as well as increase it by the skills and disciplines is may (or may not) engender. The specific kind of education, the nature of the individual who receives it, and the cultural values of the society itself all determine whether, or to what extent, there are net benefits to more schooling. Blindly processing more people through schools may not promote economic development, and may well increase political instability. A society can be made ungovernable by the impossibility of satisfying those with a passionate sense of entitlement - and without the skills or diligence to create the national wealth from which to redeem those expectations…"*</p>

<p>[Race</a> and culture: a world view - Google Books](<a href=“http://books.google.com/books?id=oMMab6JiwtAC&pg=PA23&lpg=PA23&dq=thomas+sowell+“educated+unemployed”&source=bl&ots=Wmo8Mt46PW&sig=5k1JkTGW92NJaCr8B277qL_EWpo&hl=en&ei=Qkg2TPXlOoT58AbcloicAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false]Race”>http://books.google.com/books?id=oMMab6JiwtAC&pg=PA23&lpg=PA23&dq=thomas+sowell+“educated+unemployed”&source=bl&ots=Wmo8Mt46PW&sig=5k1JkTGW92NJaCr8B277qL_EWpo&hl=en&ei=Qkg2TPXlOoT58AbcloicAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false)</p>