Cheating the non-college bound

I think it's important to remember that it isn't only kids who "aren't smart enough" for whom college is a bad choice. Besides intelligence, there's the matter of personal temperment and inclination. Those should be considered, too.

"I do a lot of work in the construction industry [which is] doing very well and projections continue to look very good even though there may be some slowdown. The slowdown is not anticipated to be significant or very long."

Heh. Dream on.

This is why a huge benefit to any community is a strong and creative community college system. As the cost of a traditional four year university education continues to rise more kids will look to that option and will find that the trade classes are offered there.

I wonder whether our insistence that young people need to go to college isn't in part, at least psychologically, a holdover from the early postwar period. Returning GIs were encouraged to go to college -- and were helped to do so by the GI bill -- in part because doing so would delay the entry of many of them back into the job market, which would give the market more time to absorb them. If all the millions of returning GIs had descended on the job market and tried to find jobs in 1946, the bottom would have dropped out. Now, if anything, we have the reverse problem.

Speaking as someone that was more than intelligent enough for college (I mean, seriously, based on my undergrad experience (University at Buffalo, I think most varieties of kelp are smart enough to handle a liberal arts degree) I was never interested in attending and only did it, as another posted noted, because I was 'supposed to.'

I'm pretty sure based, again, on my anecdotal experience, that most of the people I went to school with went because they were supposed to and did little more than work on their alcohol tolerance and, on rare occasion, their sex lives all while their parents foot the bill for an education they'll likely never really use.

In short, outside of medicine, engineering and various other, classical, professions (and teachers do *not* need masters degrees!), you do *not* need a college education as far as practical application goes. The only use for that piece of flimsy paper is to note it on your resume.

The only use for that piece of flimsy paper is to note it on your resume.

But that's sort of the whole point, isn't it? We've become an increasingly credentialized society, in which having the credential itself is more important than what one may or may not have actually learned. It also acts as a sorting mechanism for potential employers. Many jobs that really could be done just fine by someone without a college degree are now advertised as requiring one, mainly because that allows the employers to conduct an initial sorting of the applications and winnow what would otherwise be a large pile down to a more manageable size.

Rod, not sure if you've heard this from other emailers or commenters, but as a high school teacher, one interesting (and maddening) side-effect that I've encountered from the 'college for everyone' mentality is that it seriously undercuts the motivation of a (maddeningly large) number of students. For many, there is no incentive to study or work hard on the high school level, because, well, they know they're going to college somewhere.

As a teacher you used to be able to hold college over a student's head ("your going to have to work harder than that or you'll never get to college"). But today, the kids just don't buy it. Every one of them knows someone (perhaps even an older brother) who slept and partied their way through high school and still got accepted somewhere. They can coast all they want, and still get admitted at the local state school or community college or the low-profile liberal arts college that is struggling to keep its doors open.

A kid who rarely ever turns an assignment in will tell me with a straight face that he's going to go to college to be an engineer. And he really believes it. He knows that he's not going to Cornell, but he'll get in somewhere.

I'm actually a big fan of Friedman, and I preach his message to my students...but Friedman's deeper insight is about the value a society places on education. Because college today for so many is a foregone conclusion, we are losing sight of how important education is. I think that's the larger problem.

Talk about malinvestment of capital - the schools funnel the not-so-inclined into business management courses at college level, to manage whom might I ask? Or What? The purchase orders streaming thru the SAP enterprise data software on their way to Mexico, India, China? Meanwhile the fabricated parts for constructing or rehabbing your residence or office come floating back to be installed by whom? We live in a 20-yr old home-owner association run community, where the builder-grade roofs, stucco stoops, aluminum windows and HVAC systems are all failing at their expected longevity deadline. We can't get -- for love nor money -- skilled craftsmen who know a thing or two about the hi-tech "Made in China" gadgets we'd like to upgrade with. What use paying for improvements if they're so poorly installed that they detract value from our equity? My husband installed the HVAC himself, then lent and read the HVAC tech book from the library and took the certification test needed to handle refrigerants safely. (He's an engineer, and says that the microprocessor stuff is so advanced most kids with high school diplomas wouldn't "get" it). There is only one pit left in Pennsylvania that mines the blue slate I'd like for my hallway and kitchen floor: at three times the price for the multi-hued variety from China at Home Depot. They even cut it into the multiple sized rectangular pieces I'd need for the traditional design while the Chinese stuff is just squares, squares and more squares. What is the flooring contractor going to offer his clients? If he hopes to make any profit it won't be the local stuff sad to say. How does the flooring contractor ensure his apprentices learn all he learned if all he offers his customers are squares? He doesn't - we are losing a little bit of our culture every day, in this drip, drip, drip death of a thousand cuts...

Why have we settled for this mediocrity? The labor value theory, my friends... efficiency (whether Marxist or Adam-Smithist) forbodes the death of cultural goods... or at minimum aggregationism leads to imperfect aggregates... and Government? They need your money - taken by taxes or seignorage on your currency holdings. Services? Sorry they're drip, drip, dripping away by the same mechanism of labor value theory - each year your municipality will need more of your money and do less with it, we are on the slipery slope to a tyranny ... not of your choosing but of those you elected to the school board, traffic court, township chief of police etc. etc. (can't remember casting a vote? Perhaps you trust your neighbors to democratically manage your liberty for you? You'll like tyranny well enough then. For the rest of us: WAKE UP! Begin exercising the responsibility of your patrimony! Liberty isn't free, the price is your autonomy!