The College Scam

[shann0]

www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/07/06/the_college_scam_110470.html

The College Scam
By John Stossel


What do Michael Dell, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Mark Cuban have in common?

They're all college dropouts.





Richard Branson, Simon Cowell and Peter Jennings have in common?

They never went to college at all.

But today all kids are told: To succeed, you must go to college.

Hillary Clinton tells students: "Graduates from four-year colleges earn nearly twice as much as high school graduates, an estimated $1 million more."

We hear that from people who run colleges. And it's true. But it leaves out some important facts

That's why I say: For many people, college is a scam.

I spoke with Richard Vedder, author of "Going Broke by Degree: Why College Costs Too Much," and Naomi Schafer Riley, who just published "Faculty Lounges and Other Reasons Why You Won't Get the College Education You Paid For."

Vedder explained why that million-dollar comparison is ridiculous:

"People that go to college are different kind of people ... (more) disciplined ... smarter. They did better in high school."

They would have made more money even if they never went to college.

Riley says some college students don't get what they pay for because their professors have little incentive to teach.

"You think you're paying for them to be in the classroom with you, but every hour a professor spends in the classroom, he gets paid less. The incentives are all for more research."

The research is often on obscure topics for journals nobody reads.

Also, lots of people not suited for higher education get pushed into it. This doesn't do them good. They feel like failures when they don't graduate. Vedder said two out of five students entering four-year programs don't have a bachelor's degree after year six.

"Why do colleges accept (these students) in the first place?"

Because money comes with the student -- usually government-guaranteed loans.

"There are 80,000 bartenders in the United States with bachelor's degrees," Vedder said. He says that 17 percent of baggage porters and bellhops have a college degree, 15 percent of taxi and limo drivers. It's hard to pay off student loans with jobs like those. These days, many students graduate with big debts.

Continued on page 2 at the link...

www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/07/06/the_college_scam_110470.html

[PrisonerOfHope]

A college degree is being touted as the answer to the problem of unemployment, as a guarantee of a better job, as a sure way to success, but all college today really does is teach people to become good little citizens of the NWO.

I've attended - up until now - seven different colleges; only one - the NY Institute of Finance - was truly challenging, but then, the classes were taught by Wall Street professionals to adults who worked on the Street.

NYU has a great reputation - but I found myself correcting the teachers (mostly grad students) who clearly didn't know their subject! Back in the late 70s it was $265 per credit; I can only imagine what it costs now. (Fortunately, my employer paid for it.)

I've taken classes at the local community college, and it was pretty obvious that most of the "students" bought the hype that having a degree would magically get them a high-paying job...never mind that most of them couldn't bother doing the work. In an English Lit class, it became clear that many weren't doing the assigned reading, so the prof did a quick quiz that would prove who had and who hadn't read a short story. When he told those who clearly didn't read the assignment to go to the library and do so, one young man refused to leave his seat. When told again to go to the library and read the story, the student said, "Iz payin' for a kollege edukashun and Iz not leavin dis room cuz I paid for dis class!"

I did a degree completion program for adults at two different private Christian colleges; the work was a joke! A lot of students didn't even bother to participate, and many constantly complained about how time-consuming it was. One day one of my classmates said, after I made a presentation, "Wow, you should be teaching this class - you know more than anyone else here!"

I'm now in a Master's program at one of the country's top evangelical universities. I can't say it's any more challenging than my private high school was, where I had seven majors at any given time. I couldn't believe it when I saw that the school offers a REMEDIAL WRITING course...in a MASTERS PROGRAM!!!!! If you can't write by the time you graduate high school, you probably never be able to write...and you certainly shouldn't be in a Masters program!

People are intelligent...or they're not. If someone is stupid, or even less than the brightest bulb in the chandelier, all the schooling in the world can't change that. Let's be honest - many (perhaps even most) would be better off going to a trade school than to a college.

Meanwhile, new colleges are popping up all over the place; in the last couple of years I've seen the opening of Virginia College of Business & Health, Phoenix University, Chattanooga College, and others, right here in this area alone. The caliber of the "students" I see entering their buildings looks like they just got back from a gang rumble, but...they're going to get a "degree!"

It all comes down to money - not that the students are going to make any more than they would without a piece of paper (in fact, they'll be worse off, because they'll have student loans to repay); it's the schools who are cashing in, thanks to the student loans. They're selling false promises, and maybe hope...but you can't fix stupid (or even less-than-intelligent), nor can you fix lazy. Showing a potential employer a diploma from one of these fly-by-night schools isn't going to get anyone a job, especially if they don't have innate intelligence, present themselves well (both in speech and in appearance), and exhibit a good work ethic.

I was an accounting manager on Wall Street before I took even a single college course; I was self-taught. I'm now working towards a PsyD only because I wouldn't be able to get licensed as a counselor without an advanced degree. Am I learning a lot that I didn't already know? Not really. At least my tuition is paid for by grants and scholarships.

[shann0]

I've seen plenty of people with college educations who didn't have the common sense of a fly. Sure they had book knowledge, but that doesn't always translate into the real world. The education system does nothing to promote critical thinking skills, it's all just rote memorization of information, then regurgitation of that information.