To many kids going to college?

[sailingpj]

Eagle1982 said:

 

"So many parents are afraid their kid won't get into a good college (although there's too many kids going to college, but that's a different rant)."

 

I would like to see some elaboration on this comment please. Why do you think that there are too many kids going to college?

[moosetracker]

I don't know if this is what they are eluding to, but some study showed that too may kids were going to college, and not enough into the trade buisness that need some education & hands on.. Like automotive & welding etc.. Therefore the kids going into the trades will have alot of opportunities for positions when they get out, but those in the 4 yr + colleges will stuggle to find a position when they get out.

[GernBlansten]

Danny Noonan: I planned to go to law school after I graduated, but it looks like my folks won't have enough money to put me through college.

Judge Smails: Well, the world needs ditch diggers, too.

Lacey Underall: [to Danny] Nice try.

 

[Eagle92]

Sail,

Problem is that the HS diploma doesn't mean the same thing is did 15, and especially 30 years ago. When I got out of HS in the 90s if I wanted to, iI could have gotten several decent jobs without any more education except possibly on the job training. And 30 years ago when my brothers were in school, they had programs that gave you technical skills and training in HS, so that as soon as you graduated HS, you could get a good job.

 

Now if you have a HS diploma, you are very limited in what you can do, you need at least an associate's degree today for jobs that would have required a HS diploma 30 years ago. And in some areas you do need a bachelors

 

Depending upon what you Associate's is in, you could be getting a very well paying job, making more money than some folks who have MAs and MLSs, or both in my case. Yep I know folks just getting out of community college in nursing who make more than I do with both a MA and MLS.

 

And I know folks who have the bachelors, masters, and in one brief case a PhD, who couldn't find work. The one with the PhD actually went back to school for a second master's in order to find a job!

 

 

[GernBlansten]

Our entire economy is transitioning to service and technical. We've outsourced all our manufacturing and destroyed our labor unions. So when you graduate from HS, you have two choices, go into service or go to college. And since the economy is in the tank, many of the college folk from the technical fields are competing in the service fields. This pushes those without any college education to a huge disadvantage. If your kids aren't able to compete against the higher educated college folk, they are at a huge disadvantage. Better for them to learn, "You want fries with that?"

[Eagle92]

Gern,

I hate to say it, but labor unions had a small part to play in our manufacturing ability's demise. I'll give you a great example: Higgins Industries of the 1940s, the ones who built the Higgins Boats of WWII.

 

Andrew Higgins was a big proponent of unions, and had no problems implementing a union shop. However his #1 concern was his employees, and when AFL officials started abusing their members, Higgins allowed his employees to vote on staying with the AFL, joining the CIO, or doing away with unions altogether. His employees decided to go with the CIO. AFL sued, and before the case went to court, Higgins realized how expensive it would be and decided it would be cheaper to close the company. So he just closed down his 4 or 5 factories, rather than deal with the lawsuit.

[sailingpj]

Okay, those explanations make sense.

 

Just finishing up High School myself I don't see it as preparing students for anything, not a job, and definitely not college. I am taking college courses in place of my senior year, and for the first time ever I actually have to study. That is a completely new skill that I am learning. I am learning how to take notes and prepare for tests. High School doesn't teach any of that. I am even having to redo algebra courses because the algebra I took in High School really didn't teach me enough to go into precalc.

[Eagle92]

Sailing,

What you are saying doesn't surprise me. When I taught college History, my "younger" students expected me to just give them an A for showing up as the concept of working for it, i.e. doing the reading, participating in class, writing papers,and passing the exams, was a foreign concept. Heck I had one student tell me "You must pass me as my company is paying for the course," and another student complained to my dean when I told her that she needed to consider going pack to school like a part time job that: short term there is a lot of sacrifice, long term the benefits are great.

 

I am also seeing it with the HS students I need to work with at my job who are working on their projects. They have no clue on how the real work works.

[packsaddle]

"I am even having to redo algebra courses because the algebra I took in High School really didn't teach me enough to go into precalc."

 

For a high school student to write this is just astounding. My son took algebra and 'pre-calc' in middle school. We spent many evenings helping him understand the math (incidentally, the algebra course he took WAS a pre-calc course - I'm not sure what your distinction is).

I'm thinking that if your experience is average for your state, then the educational system for Florida must be on a par with education in Somalia or Darfur or something.

 

As for too many kids going to college: there is college and then there is college. Some schools will let almost any warm body in who can pay the tuition. Those young people may not have as many prospects after graduation as students whose college experience makes them actually competitive. I note that becoming competitive involves both effort by the student as well as opportunities by the college. Moreover, in order for the student to prepare for the real world, the student must have a good awareness of what it will require to become competitive. I credit the many anecdotes of failure to situations in which students do not have this awareness or else they simply don't think they need to do the work. Sadly, this mistake is often costly for a lifetime. But hey, there will always be a need for custodial workers.

[sailingpj]

Actually, I am mostly a product of a California education. Algebra 1 in the eighth grade, geometry in the 9th, algebra 2 during the 10th grade at the local community college in California; then I tried to take a college precalc course here in Florida last semester and I found that even though my SAT scores were high enough for me to take the class I hadn't seen half the stuff that I was supposed to. So now I am taking a college algebra course. I could have passed the precalc class, but I wouldn't have learned much. I don't just want to pass my classes. I am actually interested in learning.

[Eagle92]

Unfortunately there are colleges out there that will accept anyone, and keep you in school as long as you pay. No expectations from teachers. Unfortunately I went to one of those, didn't learn much form the courses at that school except 1 (my program had me taking 1/2 my courses at another university where I did learn something) and got the master's. Luckily a lot of what I needed to know I already learned doing the first masters, which was NOT a cakewalk, or I got "tutored" by the wife who had the degree from a respectable university. You know it's bad when the prof shows up 45 minutes late to an all day class, and then let's us out 2 hours early to "do research for our paper." Forgot to add that we had to buy his personal junk for part of the project. Luckily I was able to get something I was interested in, a CD-rom on local Native Americans.

 

As for my comrades, some have jobs, others don't. Those in my program, which again did 1/2 the work at another university, wound up with jobs.

[ScoutBox]

I think that there are too many under educated kids going to collage. Need to improve the High School level of education I the States first. Too many kids sliding through high school getting into collage and wasting time and money.. Strange that my Collage education is spent doing high school studies instead of what I wanted to go to collage for in the first place. My wife " German" went through Gymnasium in Germany, which prepares students who are already working hard for university. Once in Uni. they are studying their major not High studies.. I wish I would have earned a better Trade myself, and not Uni. A uni. degree gets you a job at McDonalds I guess. but a Trade gets you a job doing something that pays..

[Lisabob]

Too many kids are going to college who are not well prepared, or not especially interested, in finishing college. Not everybody has to go to college to lead a successful and happy life. And schools that accept anybody with a pulse, but that also have an abysmally low completion rate, are simply taking students' money from them.

 

And colleges are suffering from "mission creep," too. I am confused about why my college now offers 4-year degrees in construction, airport security, airplane maintenance, and other more truly vocational areas. This is not to say these are softball programs - from all I see of what students do in them, they're not - but then, learning to be an electrician isn't simple, either, and people shouldn't need a 4-year college degree to do it.

 

(As an aside, yes I understand why colleges do this - it is infinitely easier to market a degree in an applied field, than in, say, "classical studies". So really, this is a marketing thing. And also understandably, public colleges and universities that are being slowly but surely defunded by their state governments are looking for new revenue streams. Applied degrees are all the rage right now. Students sign up for them in droves. As someone who teaches in a traditional "liberal arts" discipline, I suppose I should be grateful about that. At least the money is streaming in from somewhere!)

 

 

[Engineer61]

"Our entire economy is transitioning to service and technical. We've outsourced all our manufacturing and destroyed our labor unions."

 

Hate to burst your bubble, but engineering, especially design engineering, has been outsourcing for years as well. India, China, Russia, turkey, Israel, Singapore have all been the destination.

 

I live is what use to be called the "Silicon Desert"...hundreds of semiconductor, telecommunication, mil-aero electronics companies...there might be 30-40 companies now.

[packsaddle]

And we would like to thank all those excellent, highly-motivated and bright international students for their tuition dollars and for returning home so they can outcompete their inferiors here in the states.