[quote=EconProf]College degrees are hugely overrated in America. Soon the public will realize the military-industrial complex is nothing compared to the education-industrial complex. Both share many traits: self-serving bureaucracies, use of scare tactics, faulty statistics, lobbyists, union featherbedding, fighting the last war (or, for educrats, politically correct causes), etc.
Consider just one of the myths propagated by the education-industrial complex…the oft-quoted high rate-of-return on an “investment” in 4+ years of college:
1. The lifetime earnings of college grads vs. HS grads comparison is embarrassingly phoney. College-bound HS seniors already differ in IQ, ambition, family background, etc. from their non-college bound peers. How much does their college degree contribute to their lifetime earnings compared to all the other factors? I cringe every time I read that meaningless statistic trotted out.
2. The particular major chosen has a huge bearing on lifetime earnings. How valuable is a Sociology degree in the job market? English, history, political science, ethnic studies, women’s studies?
3. Recent tech advances allow really ambitious and curious HS graduates to learn on their own without the huge investment in time and money. The internet is an exploding font of knowledge and discovery. And that goes not only for their major field of study but the liberal arts, history, humanities as well. Wading through general ed. classes often taught badly by bored, tenured professors and teaching assistants can be topped by motivated individuals in a disciplined, self-guided course of study.
To take a real estate example, how knowledgeable would a senior majoring in real estate or finance be compared to a dedicated 22-year old glued to the Piggington site and all its assorted links. Which would you pick as an investor-partner or employee?
America has overinvested in college and university campuses and neglected HS and junior high education. We need to reach the huge and growing fraction of high schoolers who drop out and are tired of hearing that college is the holy grail they should be aiming for.[/quote]
I disagree on the principle that I think the problem a lot of folks are facing is the complete opposite. Not enough people are going through work/career with enough rigor…A good percentage of folks want all the financial benefits of what an “advanced education”/”advanced opportunities” is suppose to offer, but very few want to put in the time/effort/pain to get there. They look at the end goal, how long it takes, and without instant gratification, its “just too much work”.
So some of the institutions “dumb it down” with things like “Get your B.S./ M.S. online” doing only 1 hr a day,etc,etc,etc and make a lot more $$$$$….
Second, the majority of people just graduating from H.S. lack to discipline to learn what they need on their own, especially things that they don’t like to.
Most people (not all) need a framework, rigor, and discipline. The idea that they can just run rampart and do what’s necessary to succeed after H.S. would never work here, simply because the pre-college schooling in the U.S. in most public school lack the very rigor that are needed for most people to be independent. Some structured programs put some maturity into these young minds. The only way this would work is if one’s survival depended on it. IE, if you don’t do X, you starve. But this won’t happen at a large scale here.
As much as people want to think they are the next Bill Gates, less than 1% will be the ingenuous person that they are. Folks always like to point out at the 1% naturally gifted folks that have succeeded without a former education like Gates/Dell/etc as a reason why no former education is required…BUT, I think what folks turn a blind eye to are the remaining 99% of the people that aren’t Bill Gates. I don’t know, I wouldn’t want my kid to be gambling on those odds thinking she was one of those “gifted ones”.
And as we are seeing, a little more education in the in-demand professions, especially in this economy, would have made a huge difference for most average people. It’s no longer a matter of just getting “a college degree”. It’s about what you’re going to do with it. Or what you’re going to do from what you learned from it afterwards.
For most, there is no shortcut in life. Save the bubble period, I don’t see to many successful RE agents that doesn’t bust their asses off either. Something that so many people that wanted to get rich quick on RE didn’t understand….As I’m sure is the same case for folks searching for the next “big thing”.
