posted on Nov, 20 2009 @ 02:13 AM
I have sympathy for those seeking higher education and feeling angered by the tuition hike. But the fact of the matter is that the entire higher
education system needs a big overhaul. People go into 6-figure debt and come out totally unable to find a job in most cases.
Most of the things you can study at university are totally useless from a job-hunting perspective: Sociology and Women's Studies don't put bread on
the table. Even the hard science majors are having trouble finding work as it is increasingly shipped overseas.
Yeah, yeah, an education is about improving yourself, not finding a job...heard that one many a time...tell that to the
fifty million Americans who struggled to find
enough food to eat last year. Intellectual enlightenment is all well and good in times of prosperity, but people need to worry about EATING
FIRST in darker times. And darker times are precisely where we are headed for.
It's only really since the post-WWII era that even a sizable minority of the population aspired to higher education. To have half the country
spending four years of their lives partying day and night and studying material that leads up a jobless dead-end alley is beyond ludicrous. We are
seeing the breakdown of this system because, in the end, its a fundamentally ridiculous system.
I believe wholeheartedly in the power and importance of knowledge, but with the Internet and other forms of communication/interaction, there must be
more efficient and rational ways to achieve it. And as stated above the entire concept of what is studied at colleges and universities needs to be
revamped so that most people can find some way to make the investment of time and money worthwhile. There will always be a place for the liberal arts,
high philosophy, and theoretical studies...but to expect that 40% or more of the population can spend years going into hock to study non-practical
fields is not a tenable proposition.