Four reasons why college degrees are becoming useless
Link here. The first two reasons are illustrated forcefully by the madness we have recently seen in many college campuses, where mobs of screaming thugs take over and drown out anyone who wants to discuss the issues at hand rationally.
The last two reasons are less noticeable but more economically important. Combined with the first two reasons, expect there to be a collapse in attendance at colleges in the coming years.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Link here. The first two reasons are illustrated forcefully by the madness we have recently seen in many college campuses, where mobs of screaming thugs take over and drown out anyone who wants to discuss the issues at hand rationally.
The last two reasons are less noticeable but more economically important. Combined with the first two reasons, expect there to be a collapse in attendance at colleges in the coming years.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The traditional brick and mortar classroom still hasn’t faced the full impact of the modern online world. I note in the article, many young men are walking away from these dusty, old world archetypes.
They get it. They are moving towards online and alternative learning modalities. You don’t go to the post office to send an email, why go to an old brick building to learn.
You don’t need to send any resumé when you apply for a job anymore. Recruiters say they evaluate you based on your online social media history anyway.
LocalFluff – “they evaluate you based on your online social media history”
Then I would never get a job because I do not exist.
Seriously, I understand the movement to on-line, but I kind of wonder how this will impact real fields of endeavor, such as STEM. It would seem like both teaching institutions and industry are going to have to make some big changes.
Michael,
They will hire a whole bunch of bots though… I think they were thinking of certain kinds of jobs. Socially oriented jobs of course, but some software developers and other IT related people demonstrate their competence quite visibly online, on other sites than Facebook.
I can recommend having a look at Stackexchange which is a pure QnA site (with a great user interface) for any academic topic for which there is enough interest, the Space Exploration topic is quite active. Really top competent people are very active. Like Mark Adler who is heading the development of NASA’s inflatable heat shield capable to land big payloads on Mars, which is making good progress. If anyone has a good question about landing on Mars, for example, which isn’t already answered there, you will likely get very good answers within days or hours.
You can add a fifth reason, most people don’t get jobs related to their college degree.
A few problems with online learning. You often don’t interact with a mentor or teacher. You need strong personal dedication to follow through because the structure of a traditional classroom is not there. Homework/practice often doesn’t come with feedback. Many of these courses don’t allow you to move at your own pace.
Wodun, I recently finished a degree online.
My professors were readily available, as were classmates. We had constant discussions of the material, and the feedback on homework was, in most cases, rapid and excellent. They were 7 week compressed semesters, which made the pace VERY rapid, meaning unless it was a course you were taking to check a box, you were constantly moving to keep up with the material.
I found it much easier than the brick and mortar classrooms I previously attended.
@ COMMODUDE: Thanks for sharing your online education experience. My last try at that was a few years ago and wasn’t entirely satisfactory.
Everything I went to school for I’ve made a living at, but I tended toward learning useful skills. Were I counseling a high schooler, I’d emphasize the need to make a living, and look at life-cycle cost. 60k for a Psychology BA isn’t rational.
Commodude, likewise — thanks for sharing your experience. It’s worth mentioning that many business’s now conduct their meetings and significant amount of training in a similar virtual manner. (They don’t send everyone to Paris in private jets for a conference related to the excesses of western culture — that’s reserved for government employees and celebrities.)
Why would a young man, especially a white man, want to go to collage?
Constantly attacked by everyone else for no other reason than who they are. White and male.
Not just by other students but now also by staff.
Plus unless your a prodigy you pretty much have to get loans and pray for the occasional scholarship.
Plus 80% of the people will never get a job in their degree field. So why study something you even like?
Your first two years are spent making up for high school deficiencies. A waste of either the 12 previous years of school or two years towards your field. And the added debts.
Now you have a loan debt big enough to have bought a house.
Collage costs are about the same as a house costs in the local area of the collage.
pzatchok wrote: “Your first two years are spent making up for high school deficiencies. A waste of either the 12 previous years of school or two years towards your field. And the added debts.”
Free government K-12 education is not so free after all.