COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN INVESTMENTWATCH
"Why College
Degrees Are Becoming Useless"
It just ain't so.
Some college
degrees are useless for sure, but not degrees in general.
The useless ones, for the most part, are obvious, such as
most BAs in English or journalism or history or education. They are useless
simply because there are ten of them for every possible job, and the
institutions use virtually no discretion in continuing to admit people to such
programs.
Then there is that whole class of "created"
subjects for which there is virtually no job market: women's studies, black
studies, aboriginal studies, film studies, etc. Perhaps, the first people “out
of the gate” got jobs as some other institutions started up or experimented
with such programs, but after that it is pretty much a dead end.
There is an old bit of economic analysis in education that
is often forgotten. Education has both an investment component and a
consumption component. Some courses and degrees are serious investments for the
future (in what economists call human capital) while others are consumption,
much the same as a watching a television show or reading a mystery. Perhaps
enjoyable, but bringing no future returns.
American education has created an entire industry in manufacturing
degrees to please young people's egos and to fill their own coffers. The
consumption component of education has been given a major role.
Grade inflation in public schools, vague parental dreams and
expectations, over-generalized talk about the value of an education, truly
second- and third-rate institutions created by state and local governments as
political measures, and a kind of artificial democratization of the whole idea
of higher education – these all contribute to the situation.
Hard-nosed academic studies have never been democratic. They
are, if you will, just naturally the domain of the more able, although even our
highest-quality institutions have always admitted and graduated some who do not
belong,
George Bush being a perfect example. Such people are called
"legacy" admissions because the whole cynical intention of admitting
them is to earn the institution a nice pot of money in gratitude from a rich
family. Of course, once you admit a George Bush, you must graduate him
regardless of what he does. Ditto for the Royals in Britain at places like
Cambridge.
Of course, the American tradition of sports being used as a financing
tool by colleges is very corrupting to education. Young men with sports talent
are given free places regardless of their academic ability because their
contribution to the team will bring in alumni donations.
But that is a totally cynical practice. These young men
should be paid money for their effort, not given admission. It is the pathetic
"Hoop Dreams" phenomenon.
The American military, too, plays a role with its education
benefit there to entice a flow of recruits, who, in many, or even most, cases
are not truly college or university material. It is a kind of force-feeding of
colleges in order to fill uniforms.
Higher education today has a great deal of cynicism and
corruption built into it, but it remains the responsibility of each potential
student to exercise the old caution, "Buyer beware."
Failure to do so yields a lot of debt, little or no
prospects you could not have had otherwise, and a sense of frustration.
_________________
Response to another
reader’s comment:
Some good points.
Trades for now remain good opportunities.
Yes, the trades are going to fade - some far quicker than
others - but then so are many of the professions and higher-end careers.
