College- The biggest scam in america

OP, you would probably really enjoy reading The Underground History of American Education.

reply to post by ElliotNoir


Berkeley Education BA Econ had to borrow $12.5k for the 4yrs.Rest was subsidized/work/grants etc. (2) Master Degrees had to borrow another $37.5K. $50K in total. This was mid to late nineties. I felt the burden and thought I would die while still owing on my loans. Surprisingly, paid it all back in a few years. Seemed like a lot at the time. Many people lost $500k in equity in the their homes like I did back with this recent housing market crash. The cost of my entire education is insignificant compared to real costs like homes, medical expenses, rearring children, new cars, and the unexpected stuff that comes up.

The indebtedness of a degreed education and graduate work is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Low fixed interest rates to take advantage of.

It's all cool to think that it's a waste of money. Truly, the college degree and experience will be what you make of it. Also, I know that most all parents understand that the value of the college experience goes well beyond academics and it is already being marketed as such, just look at the marketing literature of universities.

Bottom Line: Cost of a good education is one of the most valuable things you can borrow money for!

GV

And for those who give up or feel there is no need for a degree, I wish you the best of success in your ability to earn enough money to accomplish your goals whatever they may be. It's a tough world out there and personally, I would want every advantage I could have on my side, but that's just me.

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a scam but it's value is like many things subject to inflation - the more people and the less exclusive a degree program is the less its value.

Getting a degree now is more about a financial transaction than it is a learning transaction especially with all the on-line schools for "working adults" or "alternative learning" basically you pay the money and get the sheep skin.

While some on line institutions are of course better than others one can literally “buy” a degree with little real effort or ability if they shop around for a while.

A lot of Schools especially larger state institutions are no longer as vested in the business of educating and preparing young people for the work place as they seem to be in the business of making money - used to be a school was judged by who they would not let in (their admissions exclusivity was in direct relation the value of the degrees they proffered upon one - see Harvard, and Yale as examples) rather than how many graduates they can crank out to pay the bills.

Let’s face it not all people are cut out for an education at the college level – there are plenty of skilled trades in America that are in need of competent individuals to ply them.

There is somehow a stigma associated with working with one’s hands in America that forces kids to choose college to their own and society’s determent. Used to be that having a college degree, even at the bachelors level was a sort of vetting process though which middle and entry level management could be screened and therefore the pay level of graduates was commensurate with someone who was of professional level drive/skill.

Now HR people and businesses put no stock in a degree as an indicator of intellect and or drive and subsequently a degree is worth very little when it comes to employment.

Interestingly enough most of the new breed of self made wealthy men and women are entrepreneurs in the trades – plumbers, electricians etc. How hard is it to get someone to do that work for you now days? They can virtually pick and choose their contracts according to my family member who is one.

He is doing fantastically well on his HS diploma and trade certification. College degrees are a dime a dozen while a skilled tradesmen is a diamond in the rough…

I have in my time met, worked for and with many educated idiots (worse is they usually tend to use their education as a validation of their bat-crap, fail ideas) while learning a great deal from people with little to no formal education at all.

reply to post by Golf66


Well said. Successful entrepreneurship trumps all. I know the union workers here in California do very well. Tons of benefits and many of the Long Beach dock workers make over $100k/yr and this was reported years ago when they went on strike. Fat pensions too.

Originally posted by camaro68ss
lok at mee I nver weant to colige and i turned out juste fine. hek i diddnt evean go to high skcool for th mater.

Is that supposed to be funny?

The fact remains,that people that might actually spell that way,could very well be far better humans as far as morality,and ethics go.

I say do not judge a man by his race,or his education,but by his character. ( a little twist on ML words)

Not saying education isn't important. But I know people with degrees that are just bad human beings. The sad part is that because they have an education ,they think that what they do and say is above reproach.

reply to post by ElliotNoir

I strongly believe in education and i actually believe we should have an education based society but this current one we have ....

That is why I recommend Home schooling. Government education is spoon fed propaganda.

"For 10 years, William Schmidt, a statistics professor at Michigan State University, has looked at how U.S. students stack up against students in other countries in math and science. "In fourth-grade, we start out pretty well, near the top of the distribution among countries; by eighth-grade, we're around average, and by 12th-grade, we're at the bottom of the heap, outperforming only two countries, Cyprus and South Africa."
:Source

Is it any wonder Corporations now import workers from other countries?

... Surveys of corporations consistently find that businesses are focused outside • the U.S. to recruit necessary talent. In a 2002 survey, 16 global corporations complained that American schools did not produce students with global skills. United States companies agreed. The survey found that 30 percent of large U.S. companies “believed they had failed to exploit fully their international business opportunities due to insufficient personnel with international skills.” One respondent to the survey even noted, “If I wanted to recruit people who are both technically skilled and culturally aware, I wouldn’t even waste time looking for them on U.S. college campuses.”

www.edreform.com...

We can thank John Dewey the "Father of Modern Education" for the intentional dismantling of the US education system.

...Dewey's philosophy had evolved from Hegelian idealism to socialist materialism, and the purpose of the school was to show how education could be changed to produce little socialists and collectivists instead of little capitalists and individualists. It was expected that these little socialists, when they became voting adults, would dutifully change the American economic system into a socialist one.

In order to do so he analyzed the traditional curriculum that sustained the capitalist, individualistic system and found what he believed was the sustaining linchpin -- that is, the key element that held the entire system together: high literacy. To Dewey, the greatest obstacle to socialism was the private mind that seeks knowledge in order to exercise its own private judgment and intellectual authority. High literacy gave the individual the means to seek knowledge independently. It gave individuals the means to stand on their own two feet and think for themselves. This was detrimental to the "social spirit" needed to bring about a collectivist society. Dewey wrote in Democracy and Education, published in 1916:

When knowledge is regarded as originating and developing within an individual, the ties which bind the mental life of one to that of his fellows are ignored and denied.

When the social quaility of individualized mental operations is denied, it becomes a problem to find connections which will unite an individual with his fellows. Moral individualism is set up by the conscious separation of different centers of life. It has its roots in the notion that the consciousness of each person is wholly private, a self-inclosed continent. intrinsically independent of the ideas, wishes, purposes of everybody else.

And he wrote in School and Society in 1899:

The tragic weakness of the present school is that it endeavors to prepare future members of the social order in a medium in which the conditions of the social spirit are eminently wanting ...

The mere absorbing of facts and truths is so exclusively individual an affair that it tends very naturally to pass into selfishness. There is no obvious social motive for the acquirement of merely learning, there is no clear social gain in success threat.

It seems incredible that a man of Dewey's intelligence could state that the sort of traditional education that produced our founding fathers and the wonderful inventors of the 19th century lacked "social spirit" when it was these very individuals who created the freest, happiest, and most prosperous nation in all of human history.... And so, high literacy had to go.

It is one of the great mistakes of education to make reading and writing constitute the bulk of the school work the first two years. The true way is to teach them incidentally as the outgrowth of the social activites at this time. Thus language is not primarily the expression of thought, but the means of social communication ... If language is abstracted from social activity, and made an end in itself, it will not give its whole value as a means of development ... It is not claimed that by the method suggested, the child will learn to read as much, nor perhaps as readily in a given period as by the usual method....

www.ordination.org...

reply to post by crimvelvet


very good. My years on ATS has done more for me than any class room.

I got news for you, most of the entire current system is a scam in various ways.

The corruption, cronyism, and deception are off the charts.

Military industrial complex, Big agri biz ( monsanto and others ), Big pharma,
NWO, Bilderberg, CFR, Trilateral Commission, Club of Rome, yada yada yada....

The whole system world wide is run by a bunch of Neo malthusian pirates
bent on world domination.

My best advice to ppl is to learn how to hide well, and live off the land "just in case",
because to me it looks like we are entering a new dark age for various reasons.

The psychopaths are about to vacate what little sanity remains in the world.

As for education I think it is good, but you don't have to pay $40,000 for a library card
or internet access and you can get educated with those two pretty well.

The problem is to be accepted as a good obedient worker drone you need the
sheepskin to prove you will conform and stick to a task for years.

The degree is more about your willingness to conform, and stick with it.

Paying $40,000+ proves you are a true believer and follower of the current paradigm.

As a college student who spent a year at a state university (and now back at a community college after being fed up paying thousands a year for basically nothing), I have to agree that the whole thing is scamish. From the textbooks to the unnecessary courses that stretch out the years needed to graduate, I'm just about done with the whole thing. What happened to on-the-job training? Businesses don't want to train people...they just want someone who is good at one select task and take the word that their piece of paper proves it. College really only proves that you are able to cram and pass for tests. It doesn't really test work ethic in the real world (when you are getting paid), or common sense. With the general economic decline going on, how many with a college degree are really going to find suitable work?
Now, I'm not saying that doctors, scientists, and people in those kinds of fields require less schooling. But for the ~90% (highly exaggerated but you get the idea) of the population that does mundane office cubicle tasks, what difference does it really make? With the whole "student loan bubble" and tuition going up everywhere, every year, it seems like the schools know this can't keep going on forever, and are trying to milk everyone for all that they can.