"Expansion of college to everybody in a sense devalued the college degree rather than giving everyone the magic of what a college degree meant in 1960 when it propelled you into a place. "
That's ridiculous. Colleges devalued the college degree. In 1960, if you had a degree, it was a guarantee that you were literate. It was a guarantee th…
"Expansion of college to everybody in a sense devalued the college degree rather than giving everyone the magic of what a college degree meant in 1960 when it propelled you into a place. "
That's ridiculous. Colleges devalued the college degree. In 1960, if you had a degree, it was a guarantee that you were literate. It was a guarantee that you had some motivation to learn. It was a guarantee that you had been exposed to great books and great ideas. It was a guarantee that you had developed some critical thinking skills. This is what made college graduates employable as professionals.
In 2023, a college degree is a commodity and a college student is a customer. Colleges sold their collective souls in order to get as many students as possible regardless of their motivation and ability. No matter how dumb and unmotivated you are, you can get a degree in something just by taking out enough loans, regurgitating leftist dogma, and being a robotic radical activist. Tree climbing, Lady Gaga, and the TV show South Park are all subjects of college classes. This is not because those subjects have educational value but because spending their lives in front of video screens have left students today with the attention span of fruit flies. Students don't demand an education; they demand college credit for entertainment. They demand colleges reinforce their political prejudices and tell them how perfect they are, just like mommy and daddy (or both mommies or both daddies) always did.
"Give me what I want or I'll go somewhere else." So the colleges fell all over themselves to pander to angry, intolerant brats. So now, the angry, intolerant brats have a diploma that in many cases, they can't even read. They also have thousands of dollars in debts, no real education, and no real job prospects.
Indeed, colleges themselves have made themselves increasingly unfit for purpose. That's literally their business model nowadays.
While the very first expansion of college to the non-elite masses in the 1960s and 1970s would of course have inevitably necessitated *some* degree of watering down and grade inflation, what has happened since then, especially in the past quarter century, should be laid at the feet of the colleges themselves.
Especially as colleges have become far more expensive since then, which is the opposite of expanding it to more people, even as college becomes more and more necessary to earn any semblance of a living wage nowadays. Such a racket.
So true. Time for colleges to jettison any degree that has “Studies” in the title, and any degree that could be taught at a 2 yr vo-tech institution. These include hotel management, food service management, communications, marketing, journalism, along with gender studies and all those other bullsh-- degrees. Go back to requiring philosophy, history and classics courses in any degree, including math. Of course, this requires there be professors who can teach these subjects....
"Expansion of college to everybody in a sense devalued the college degree rather than giving everyone the magic of what a college degree meant in 1960 when it propelled you into a place. "
That's ridiculous. Colleges devalued the college degree. In 1960, if you had a degree, it was a guarantee that you were literate. It was a guarantee that you had some motivation to learn. It was a guarantee that you had been exposed to great books and great ideas. It was a guarantee that you had developed some critical thinking skills. This is what made college graduates employable as professionals.
In 2023, a college degree is a commodity and a college student is a customer. Colleges sold their collective souls in order to get as many students as possible regardless of their motivation and ability. No matter how dumb and unmotivated you are, you can get a degree in something just by taking out enough loans, regurgitating leftist dogma, and being a robotic radical activist. Tree climbing, Lady Gaga, and the TV show South Park are all subjects of college classes. This is not because those subjects have educational value but because spending their lives in front of video screens have left students today with the attention span of fruit flies. Students don't demand an education; they demand college credit for entertainment. They demand colleges reinforce their political prejudices and tell them how perfect they are, just like mommy and daddy (or both mommies or both daddies) always did.
"Give me what I want or I'll go somewhere else." So the colleges fell all over themselves to pander to angry, intolerant brats. So now, the angry, intolerant brats have a diploma that in many cases, they can't even read. They also have thousands of dollars in debts, no real education, and no real job prospects.
The degree is devalued, yes. But not merely by universities but instead by the very students public schools have produced. And even private schools.
A student graduating from high school in 1960 is roughly equivalent in knowledge to an Ivy league university graduate today.
The entire school system is at fault.
Indeed, colleges themselves have made themselves increasingly unfit for purpose. That's literally their business model nowadays.
While the very first expansion of college to the non-elite masses in the 1960s and 1970s would of course have inevitably necessitated *some* degree of watering down and grade inflation, what has happened since then, especially in the past quarter century, should be laid at the feet of the colleges themselves.
Especially as colleges have become far more expensive since then, which is the opposite of expanding it to more people, even as college becomes more and more necessary to earn any semblance of a living wage nowadays. Such a racket.
So true. Time for colleges to jettison any degree that has “Studies” in the title, and any degree that could be taught at a 2 yr vo-tech institution. These include hotel management, food service management, communications, marketing, journalism, along with gender studies and all those other bullsh-- degrees. Go back to requiring philosophy, history and classics courses in any degree, including math. Of course, this requires there be professors who can teach these subjects....