College is letting our young people down in many ways. What can be done to fix the education system?
Question of the Day, May 9
College is letting our young people down in many ways. What can be done to fix the education system?
Reestablish academic standards, hire conservative professors, end entrance racial discrimination, end double standards for athletes, terminate cheaters,
Get government out of the student loan business.
Something funny about those pictures is there is no diversity. No original thought. They just did what they where told to do by there political master
Besides getting the government out of the student loan business….
I call this the ‘Used To Be’ solution.
100 years ago college was the solution. There was a lot to be discovered in science, engineering, automation, the second industrial revolution was taking place.
Today, much of this is known, formalized, conquered. So a college education is no longer the ‘one size fits all’ or ‘how to get a career with good pay’.
These students are rushing to an outdated, 100 year old solution, that’s not going to give them what they want.
The real problem is that currently (the world) there is no revolution (as there were two industrial revolutions) that will increase productivity. Without a revolution that demands trained individuals, there won’t be ‘good paying jobs’.
Stop admitting students who require remedial math and/or writing courses. This has become routine practice.
Higher education has become another corrupt entity, and as such will eventually destroy itself, at least in its current form. The time is right for an enterprising group using technology and creativity to offer a different way to get a good education for much less money. There’s a fortune to be made.
1) End federal student loans, loan subsidies, and all distortions of market process, including money given (as “grants” or “scholarships”) based on favored political status.
2) Employers should stop requiring a college degree as a screening device. A degree, without more, no longer has any value as a guide to a person’s intelligence or maturity. Obviously, if a specific technical degree is needed for the job (e.g., engineers need an engineering degree) that is OK, but don’t require random “college degree” as a threshold for getting an interview for a non-technical job.
Put simply, a person with a BA degree in “gender studies” is worth less as an employee than a person of the same basic intelligence but no degree or college classwork at all. What modest benefit there might be in writing skill or organization will be more than counterbalanced by brain damage and entitlement.
Complete privatization, with financial assistance available to the indigent.
Fix it?
Simple.
Undo everything that has been done to it since about 1969 or so.
In addition to ending federal loan guarantees:
Shutter the sociology departments, fire the professors, expel the students. No more ethnic/gender/lgbtxyz studies. Institutionalize these people.
Fire every professor, and expel every student, involved with La Raza or Mecha.
Robert, who provides this financial assistance to the indignant? If it’s private charities, fine. But if it’s government, that opens up the whole thing to more of the same. Who qualified as indignant? Where is the line drawn on how much money you can make before being deemed indignant? If that financial assistance was coming from uncle, pretty soon we would have what we have now.
This question was made for me. I dropped out of middle school (homeschooling), high school, community college, and University (twice).
!. Lessen the requirements for teaching. This seems counter productive, but most “teachers” in our public school system were just really good at being students. All the requirements and hoops teachers jump guarantees we don’t have the best teachers. Throughout my whole education my best teachers were people who’d worked in previous fields and had life experience (my favorite high school teacher was a history teacher who was a late-in-lifer who spent his youth working in the mines in U.P Michigan).
2. For college, a higher barrier of entry. I should’ve never been able to get into community college (duel enrollment in high school) or college as a teenager. While I was very smart, I had no idea what I wanted to do as a career and wasted plenty of time and tax payer money failing when I should’ve went to college later in life (mid-20s to me is the ideal time to start college IMO). Most of my friends also wasted time in college and went back to school later when they figured themselves out.
3. Get rid of all federal funding and pell grants. It’s incredibly easy to flunk out/ piss away time when you’re spending money on education that you didn’t earn. Also, the money Universities are taking in from tuition is being pissed away on over paid professors and administrators (low graduation rates are proof).
4. Get rid of tenure and make all teaching positions (including professors) based on performance. The grades/achievements of students will never improve as long as crappy/disillusioned teachers are never allowed to be fired. It was rare that I had a teacher who wasn’t disillusioned. Get rid of them.
5. Hire teachers that actually want to teach instead of glorified babysitters. When I read TBP I think plenty of the people on this site would make excellent teachers. I hate career teachers as much as career politicians. Most career teachers and academics are useful idiots. I believe teachers should have a requirement to still be working in their fields or be force to return to their fields every 5 years for a certain duration. While in college I was being taught by people who hadn’t worked in their fields for 20 plus years as technology drastically changed what was expected out of career prospects.
Gator,
Good question. The funding would have to be private charities, but I would make sure that taxes were lowered commensurately with the government’s diminished funding needs, because it would no longer be paying for education. Lower taxes would leave more money in taxpayers’ pockest, with which they could donate more to educational charities, as well as have more to spend on all other goods and services.
“financial assistance to the indignant?”
I’m pretty fucking indignant any more. The more I read TBP, the more indignant I get.
Fortunately I’m not indigent.