Whoa! This explains why universities, and people educated at universities, are hotbeds of reactionary thought in our country! It’s all so clear to me now!
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This is absolutely true. I flunked out of my undergraduate at Butler and I can tell you, from personal experience, that it is very difficult to provide for a family without a degree - you have to be willing to do grunt work to earn your way for many more years. And, if you plan to do something like becoming a pastor - it gets even harder. Do you know how many churches are willing to interview a guy with no degree? They will hardly look at a guy with no M.Div, but a guy with no Bachelors is nonsense in most places.
This doesn’t just apply to the pastorate, there are many jobs that people did without a degree for decades that now require one. You now need a bachelors to become an appraiser. That is ridiculous beyond belief. My brother was appraising for nearly two decades with no college and had to rush to get a few required courses to be grandfathered in with no degree. Now that path is closed for everyone. 4 years of a garbage degree or no appraisal license.
So, I agree with everyone that says college is basically a worthless education in terms of education but I agree with Heather that it is very helpful for a good number of other things.
This is absolutely the case. There are virtually no success stories from my high school friends who did not go to college. The Bill Gates of the world are unique precisely because of this basic truth. It might be ridiculous, but the experience of college has become part and parcel with learning to be an adult. That may have more to say about our failure to raise children than anything else - but it stands true. Without college many, many people remain aimless, wandering, and hopeless for career prospects.
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To save money, would it be wiser for future students to stay close to home for university? That and the fact that living on campus away from home carries with it certain temptations. If college is the new high school, should parents like ourselves figure that we will be supporting our children up until 22 or 23 years of age?
No, I don’t think college is the new high school in that sense. College may be the new high school in the sense that it’s a required step for jobs and provides education that high school used to provide, but I don’t think that means we should plan to support our children until they are 22 or 23.
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I’ve spoken to my barbers a few times about this type of stuff. Every barber in my local shop is completely white haired. These days, it takes about a year of full-time, unpaid study and apprenticeship to become a barber in Ohio. No wonder no young adults are working there. A lot of blue collar jobs are like that, requiring significant time and money before upfront.
My biggest fear regarding bachelor’s degrees will be a growing trend toward requiring accredited degrees, which limit your choice of college, perhaps greatly in the future.
If you closely plan and coordinate your high school classes, your kid can be halfway to a bachelor’s degree before they become an adult. If you’ve a nearby school to finish off that degree while they live at home, then great.
Computer programming, for the right person, can be taught in two years, no degree necessary. High demand. I’ve seen it work for both teenagers and young fathers, leading to full careers.
Commercial driver’s licenses are in high demand, and truckers can be home most nights.
Tree arborist is a cool career, not requiring licensure, and starts with landscaping work which can start very young.
This is interesting input, Joe. I wonder if there’s a selection effect here where very few kids who have a reasonable shot at college don’t go. I don’t know.
When I went to a large public U 20+ years ago, I saw the exact same thing: lots of kids aimlessly wandering through, no direction. Except they were paying several thou a year in tuition (most were in-state). I have seen similar stories with friends who go to Community College: one friend spent about 5 years at the local JC and didn’t even get an AA! (His story ended better than it began.)
Among several of my HS friends who went to private colleges/universities, I noticed that the schools did a much better job of moving kids through. Even the most aimless kids were going to finish in 4, although it was possible to flunk out.
I think we need to seriously consider these things, and answers will vary from family to family and from kid to kid. In most cases, supporting a 22 year-old is going to look a lot different than supporting a 12 year-old. And the nature and type of support may differ whether you are supporting the kid to go to MIT or supporting him finishing up an English degree at the local State U. But we no longer have a culture that can absorb independent 18 year-olds and turn them into productive adults with careers and families.
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This is partially true. To get most driving jobs you have to be 23 (there are attempts at changing this legislation all the time.) The reason? Most drivers are males. Most males are idiots with vehicles until at least their mid-20s. They shouldn’t have 80,000lb vehicles to smash into things.
Also, with few exceptions, most drivers have to gain experience of between 3 and 6 months to get a home daily job. Which means they will be over the road (usually going a month or more between home stops) for several months before gaining such employment. Also, many times, the work is 10-12 hours per day to be home everyday. Truckers are exempt from most work-pay regulations, so there is rarely overtime unless it is a union job.
Now, that doesn’t rule it out entirely, but it is not going to viable for 18-22 year olds because they simply can’t be licensed to operate inter-state.
This is, however, how I was able to provide for my family. I got my CDL while single and worked to get a home daily job. The money is decent but not great for most companies. Most men who have been at it for a year or two can make between 50-60k. If they are willing to work more, live in a bigger metropolitan area, and drive nights - they can make between 80-100k.
That’s probably partially true. And yes, as you note, there are plenty of aimless wanderers after 4 years of college. But, the difference between the two is that ridiculous piece of paper - which although intellectually worthless many times - is one of the single biggest factors in gaining a career outside of the trades.
That one stings a bit, but I agree as well. I was on academic probation my last 3 semesters at Butler. My scholarships were revoked. My parents received certified mail that I was being kicked out. I was able to attend the last semester by filling out some papers and appealing to the Dean of Students. It took all of about 3 hours to be re-instated. Private colleges do not like low graduation rates so they do all they can to get you a diploma, even if you are abject failure.
And that’s the problem with the whole thing. We don’t teach kids not to take excessive debt, so they ruin their lives with loans. Or, we give them nothing but a head-nod and a hope you figure it out if we send them into the workforce. We’ve made it virtually impossible to be an adult at 18. It is a sad reflection on us and our society that we have made it so.
I’m confused by this statement. Essentially all colleges and universities are accredited. In fact, I think accreditation is required in order to receive student loans.
That is one thing it’s necessary for.
The accreditation process is burdensome for young or small schools. I was part of a private high school seeking accreditation, and we had to solicit donations to fund a large set of physical books for a physical library, which we had not initially planned on having. I’ve taught at a private college which lost potential students because some licensing required an accredited degree, and the school leadership decided not to seek accreditation. Again, the library was one of the onerous requirements: I think we would have needed to have on staff someone with a graduate degree related to library science.
Loss of accreditation may soon be the mark of faithful Christian schools, as political pressure increases. Lack of accreditation may now be one mark of a fiscally responsible school, and of a school truly independent of the government or other regulating bodies (or as independent as one can be).
From what I remember from my research, prospective teachers who graduated from a non-accredited college would need to get a Master’s degree from an accredited school before pursuing State licensure. But most licensed teachers are already now pressured or required into getting master’s degrees early in their career anyways. I don’t think military officership specifically required a degree from an accredited school. I didn’t find that graduate school requires accredited bachelor’s degrees, so that is one way to launder a less respected bachelor’s degree.
(When I say accredited degree, I mean a degree from an accredited degree program. The degrees aren’t accredited themselves. The school or programs are. When a young school or new degree program is accredited, previous graduates/degrees are retroactively given the accredited status.)
I think there are only specific licenses that check for accreditation, like teachers in some states.
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I don’t know much detail about Hillsdale College. They appear to be accredited. This is a statement from the website regarding federal loans:
Due to our independence from government assistance, federal loans are not made available to Hillsdale College students.
Here is information on accreditation in the U.S.:
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Since so much has gone on since I last commented, I am going to try an omnibus reply.
I’m not very knowledgeable about universities in Europe, but my understanding is that they are much more bare-bones than in the U.S. – large classes sizes, little instructional support outside of lectures, no remedial education, no dorms, no athletics, no diversity/equity offices, no mental health services, etc. A university run on that basis in the U.S. would be cheap, too. But European universities also have a high flunk-out rate, which would be intolerable in the U.S. One big driver of college costs here is all of the support services that must be provided to increasingly academically unprepared students to get the high graduation rate that parents and state legislatures demand.
Sorry, I don’t know. But Rube Goldberg schemes like the ACA and the process for getting student loan forgiveness benefit the administrative class and those who are able to work the system rather than the ordinary person, who finds it difficult to navigate the complex requirements.
All true. My expectation going forward is that more and more people who are not born into wealth and high social status are going to find their future life options to be much more limited than was the case for preceding generations. Awareness of the various tradeoffs will enable better decisions and outcomes.
Bill Gates is unique because he was born into a wealthy and socially connected family and went to an elite private high school that had a computer for students to program in 1968. With that sort of background and opportunity, it would be surprising if he were not successful.
At first, I thought going the skilled trades route would be a good option, but I’ve been hearing some stories suggesting that, as elsewhere in our economy, there is an ongoing deskilling of trade work and consolidation in the industry. I hear that in construction, plumbing, etc., established companies are developing ways to get the job done with low-skill, low-wage immigrant labor with which the independent middle-skilled tradesman just starting out will find it difficult to compete. And there’s no future in going to work as a low-skill worker in one of the established companies.
Some trades, like HVAC, have kept up relatively high salaries, but this is because there is a union that limits the number of entrants, and if you don’t know someone inside who can sponsor you, you will find it difficult to break in.
Landscaping is a complete dead-end where I live. It’s completely overrun with cheap immigrant labor – not even the lowliest tasks are a teenage job any more.
There has definitely been a lot of mission creep and overreaching by accreditors, but the original reason accreditation got started was the existence of colleges that would take the student’s money and deliver a worthless education. It’s fine to go to an unaccredited institution if you are pursuing education for its own sake and can judge for yourself whether you are provided with what you are looking for. But if you are paying a substantial amount of money to get skills to further your job prospects, it’s very helpful to have outside verification of the quality of the school. I’m not saying accreditation as it currently exists serves that purpose well, but without something like it, predatory practices would be even less restrained.
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You might not be surprised to know Hillsdale is where both my sons are going to college next year.
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