Thursday, October 13, 2011

The higher education bubble


That's the title of an infographic from The Best Colleges, a Web site that proclaims its mission as being to produce 'independent ranking assessments of colleges in various disciplines'. They permit embedding of the infographic, so here it is. It makes sobering reading.





I can't help but compare this disastrous situation to the way I earned my degrees. I have four University qualifications: two Bachelors degrees, one post-graduate certificate program, and a Masters degree in Management. I earned all four through part-time study, the two Bachelors degrees by correspondence, the other two through evening classes. I paid for them all up front, year by year, without study loans (although my father helped during the earliest years, as my earning power wasn't sufficient to cope at times). I graduated debt-free (at least as far as my studies were concerned).

Later, as a manager and director, I learned to look for that approach in people wanting jobs. It was my experience that someone who'd worked for three to five years while completing a degree or diploma part-time exhibited far better attitudes, habits and self-discipline than someone who'd gone to university full-time and was looking for his first job. I'd invariably hire the part-time students before the full-time ones, because I knew I'd get more work out of them. They cost more, of course, because they had more skills and experience; but I could make more out of them, too, so it balanced nicely.

Their approach may be contrasted with moonbats like this:







If I ever caught such a dumbass applying for a job in any company I ran, there might just be an immediate auto-da-fé in the parking lot - with all existing staff invited to the celebrations!





Peter

5 comments:

Dirk said...

"Not all degrees are created equal" "Most students are never informed of these facts". Really? they need to be *TOLD* that a degree in underwater basketweaving won't pay as well as a degree in engineering? Really????

And, that interview with that moron... Wow. Loved the reporter, though. He was far more patient than I would have been. Reminded me of conversations with 6-year-olds. "Why do you want that?" "Because!"

Anonymous said...

One of the key statistics above is the 45% non-graduating number. It might be interesting to know the subset of that number versus their percentage of the student body as a whole who are of black/African-American(or whatever they are being called these days) who are falling into that group.

The Raving Prophet said...

Interesting graphic, but I must say, anybody using the term "wage slave" with any kind of seriousness automatically becomes less credible.

Yes, there are those who can be independent of a paycheck. We call them the independently wealthy. The simple fact is that most of us are more or less reliant on a stable source of income... the better prepared have a few months' worth of cushion available to them.

The simple fact is that for the vast majority of people there is no such thing as true independence of your paycheck. We even have a term for that kind of cash: "F--- You Money."

trailbee said...

I think the only reason the reporter got his answers is that he appeared non-threatening/critical. What is it worth to someone to appear stupid and selfish on national tv?

Dad29 said...

It's also worth knowing that most jobs in the US simply do NOT "require" a degree for superior performance of the tasks.

The silliness afoot here began in the mid-'60's; Personnel Departments needed to find an easy way to divine 'ability' (rather than actually doing the work of interviewing people), so they convinced the Big Guys that 'only degreed people are worth hiring.'

You'll note that corporate America has not significantly improved its performance under that protocol. Only computerization has allowed productivity gains. (!!)

And, by the way, increased unemployment.