College, schmollege
The Instapundit has been thrashing the higher education bubble meme for this little while, most recently lining to a longish piece in New York Magazine, The University Has No Clothes. As you, Dear Reader, will be aware if you've been paying attention the Buckethead clan is homeschooling its youngins. So the idea of college and education and assorted issues is important to us. I have mixed feelings about college education. It is in theory capable of providing the sort of knowledge that simply cannot be gotten any other way. And we all like to think of it that way. But the reality is something more akin to a four to seven year long, savagely, offensively expensive binger with a light frosting of vocational training and (for the lucky or skilled) a creamy filling of consequence- and moral-free sex. At the end, you are tossed into the world with a credential of dubious and rapidly diminishing value and a mortgage for an expensive house you can't live in or sell.
Now, I would be the last person on Earth to undervalue spending the better part of a decade drunk, high and nailing anything with a heart beat. But I managed accomplish exactly that with a bare minimum of debt by the simple expedient of not actually attending college. And of all the people I met in college, a fair number of them did graduate with debt ranging from inconvenient to crushing. And only one is actually doing anything remotely related to his degree, and of the rest very few are doing work that actually requires a college degree in even the most tenuous way. Did they get their, or their parent's, worth of the money spent or borrowed? I have no sheepskin, but I am doing better financially than a large number of graduates from the small Ohio liberal arts school I attended. And I arguably had a lot more fun. Because when I was doing my real drinking, I never had to worry about midterms.
If I'm willing to keep my kids out of public schools to give them a better education, college is certainly up for discussion. Do I want to drop $200k (or more, hyperinflation depending) to allow my son, and equivalent or greater sums for three daughters to go on a four year bender in a world completely divorced from reality and end up unemployable?
I think I can think of better ways to spend the best part of a million dollars.
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I agree with everything you have written. After seeing the first two kids go through the public school system. I opted to remove the youngest after elementary school and have been home-schooling her for 2 years now.
My oldest daughter attended a private college and graduated 2 years ago. She finally got a reasonable paying job that has little to do with her major, and is scraping to pay her expenses as well as pay off the loans she has.
College is most certainly NOT for everybody. the colleges are literally banking on government-backed loans to entice more kids to attend so as to reap larger profits. It's all about the money now and we taxpayers ought to be turning off that loan & grant tap.
My plumber gets $60/hour, and $90/hour after 5pm and on weekends. He drives a new Lexus and he's always booked 6-12 weeks in advance. Why? because he went to trade school rather than college.
Good article, and thanks for posting it.
As an academic myself, let me say this at the outset: There are those here among us that recognize that there is a problem, and are trying to do something about it.
That said, I don't recommend going deep into debt for anything if one can help it, college included. I was lucky as an undergrad: I test well, and I got a National Merit Scholarship. My wife was smart, and each term only took the classes for which she could pay cash on the barrelhead. Took her seven years to graduate, but she didn't owe a penny and had valuable work experience into the bargain. That is my strong recommendation.
Ken, I'd be interested to…
Ken, I'd be interested to know what anyone is attempting to do about the problem. Most of what I see is new gymnasiums and increased tuition.
I can't imagine at this point forking over the long green for anything except a STEM degree. Liberal Arts is pretty much right out for me, I think most anyone who is smart enough to actually get something meaningful from reading the classics is not going to need a college to do it. As for business majors - I saw the people in those majors, and you'd be better off just starting your own business.
Honestly, I think you could get 90% of the benefits of going to college by just moving near a college.
A lot of liberal arts programs have dumped the classics. That's a part of the problem, but not my part. I visited a small liberal-arts school this spring that no longer has a classics department. (You'd recognize the school, too -- I'll shoot you an e-mail.)
Many of us recognize a need to reinstall some rigor and depth into the curriculum, in order to do a better job of giving value for money. I'm in business myself, but the way I teach marketing is to start with Aristotle, durn near.
Excellent! I'm glad you were able to do some nailing (oh, a carpenter, eh?) without going into debt! :D
My observation (and confession at the bottom of the article) : The new seal of conformity: the college degree.