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Let's also make the requirements for having children, driving cars and all normal everyday things also have high standards and relegate the "Ignorant" to farms or eliminate them.
"Back in the day" we didn't have student loans....Many who could have been more successful, weren't due to the issue of not being able to afford it.
It is also because we had jobs that didn't even require a high school education. Most places actually paid better for the working class than the management and executive class. It wasn't until the 1980's that executive pay was astronomical in relation to the average worker. In the 1980's rash of consolidation and corporate raids, we saw many jobs lost and continue to for similar reasons (Disney buying out the Fox Studios.) We didn't have mass technology and not even in the urban and even suburban areas. Everyone forgets about the technology on the farm. About the mid 1900's, farms even became mechanical with the introduction of combines and harvesters. Instead of tons of sharecroppers, now you can have a man sit on a combine and do the same job in maybe even faster time.
The times we have lived in during since the 1980's have been dramatically different than the past. People don't stay with a company until they get the gold watch after 30/40 years of service anymore. Instead, they let them collect as many belongings as they can fit in a box and kick them out when times are tough with no sign of "We'll call back if things get better." Wages are far more out of line with basic costs. College costs have skyrocketed somewhat due to the loans, but also due to NIMBYism of people saying "My taxes are too high, why am I paying for state and county colleges I don't use." The world has changed and continues to. It is harder out there due to the challenges because by the time you figure out today, tomorrow comes and flips it on its head.
For argument sake STEM is a popular major grouping. STEM is stuffed down people's throats as early as elementary school. Not middle school, not high school but elementary school. I know because I have worked with K-2 and even a bit with 3-5 and they use things that maybe I had in my middle school days the earliest and I'm not that old. By the time our high school graduates of a few months from now graduate university in four/five years or even community college, who's to say a STEM major is still a worthwhile major? Perhaps it will be finance instead. That is four/five years down the drain. This is why I disagree with the whole "well let's make financial aide contingent on the major Junior wants to take" logic. Now will all say it was a waste, no. College/university has other benefits mostly social. You change and grow a lot in that time and become more and more self-reliant. Unless you have lawnmower parents, typically your parents aren't as helicoptering as they use to be.
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Originally Posted by TexasLawyer2000
Not quite. Back in the day, people who had what it takes got free rides. Same as today.
Well yeah, but some of that I found is also based on what metaphor base you were on to start with. The Trumps for example were all born on third base, rounding home already. To use Ivanka as an example of individual branding is a bit off. Many do this mind you. The reasoning is she has the Trump name which her father Donald turned into a brand. The same can be said about Stella McCartney, Paul's daughter and fashion line owner. The same can be said about Shane and Stephanie McMahon, the children of the WWE McMahon dynasty. These people are business leaders, but had the benefit of being born into the lottery with a winning ticket. Now am I gonna say that they didn't work hard, no. They just didn't have to work as hard from the bottom as others have. It is far easier to struggle for work when you have a trust fund than you do as a college graduate struggling to afford pork and beans after you have to payback your student loan.
As it is, everybody and their mom can go to college, as a result, student debt is insane and lots of people are just dumb and shouldn't be in college at all. What if there were far stricter requirements, say only the smartest most intelligent people were allowed to go to college? Kind of like how it was back in the day?
I am ABSOLUTELY in support of that.
In a down economy, college degree requirements start cropping up everywhere as a convenient "filter" to produce a smaller applicant pool and a more credentialed one, as well. (Notice I didn't say better qualified)
In a booming economy, job descriptions are revised with "or equivalent experience" and suddenly doors start opening. Also, some graduates with no experience are again considered for entry level professional jobs. No more "chicken and the egg" paradox.
Right-sizing your talent pool of college graduates, theoretically, should have at least one of two effects: 1. Companies reconsider the college degree requirement for roles that do not specifically require it to practice that job function, and 2. The employers who still feel the need for a candidate with a degree will offer a steeper premium for those who possess one.
To some, it seems like a campaign to dumb down the population. And in a way, it is. It is a suggestion to stop borrowing for education. To end making an equivalent of a mortgage payment for knowledge you will not retain and never use. The idea of guaranteeing payment in exchange for a "chance" at a job sounds like a very bad "deal".
Take away student loans. Shut it down. Let all the Strayer-esque, "all money is green" universities shut down. Shrink, shrink, shrink.
Well, I don't know what you people call "back in the day" when supposedly only the wealthy went to college, but I can tell you that my aunt, my father, and my mother all completed university degrees from a real university using a combination of night school, part time attendance, part time classes, loans, and work-study programs. When you consider that none of them had more than two nickels to rub together at any point, it's pretty clear to me that at least in the period 1945-1960 it was not true that "only the rich went to college".
Well, I don't know what you people call "back in the day" when supposedly only the wealthy went to college, but I can tell you that my aunt, my father, and my mother all completed university degrees from a real university using a combination of night school, part time attendance, part time classes, loans, and work-study programs. When you consider that none of them had more than two nickels to rub together at any point, it's pretty clear to me that at least in the period 1945-1960 it was not true that "only the rich went to college".
Prior to 1945 it was true, more or less. Now having said that, you have to remember that there are people, then and now and even participating in this thread, who only count the Ivies as " college". Pre-1945 there were likely thousands of colleges and universities across the US.
Land Grant colleges which were founded as agriculture and agronomy schools (Penn State and the University of Maryland are examples). Texas Tech added engineering. Normal schools trained teachers (Pennsylvania's system of around 12 now state universities like Clarion and Slippery Rock started out that way).
The year 1945 is important for the history of colleges in the US because of the GI Bill.
Well, I don't know what you people call "back in the day" when supposedly only the wealthy went to college, but I can tell you that my aunt, my father, and my mother all completed university degrees from a real university using a combination of night school, part time attendance, part time classes, loans, and work-study programs. When you consider that none of them had more than two nickels to rub together at any point, it's pretty clear to me that at least in the period 1945-1960 it was not true that "only the rich went to college".
Well...varied a lot on the region and community. A minority of students in my graduating class of 1968 went to college, and in a very large, extended family, I was the first to complete college. Most kids in my graduating class either went to work in the local factory or went to the "big city" to work at places like Kodak.
But I do agree that not only the rich went to college.
You seem to have missed the point. Being a physicist does not endow you with some super-knowledge that other people don't have. I've seen them up close and personal.
Rejected. That's not remotely what I meant and you surely know it.
We are definitely sending too many people to college, since there are far more people with college degrees than there are jobs that really should require them. In particular, the tier of private colleges that charges Ivy League level tuition but gives a less than Ivy League piece of paper need to all go out of business.
The problem will be, nobody will ever agree on how it should be determined who gets into college and who doesn't, when the stakes become higher.
Rejected. That's not remotely what I meant and you surely know it.
I can't read your mind. My comment fits in with this, below. And trust me, many people think those with physics degrees have some sort of "Holy Grail" the rest of us don't have to suss this stuff out.
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Originally Posted by TexasLawyer2000
Ahh, I see where you were going. [B]tnff[/b] is certainly not familiar with academics and common understandings of academia.
There are several regular posters here whose usernames or self-description make a big deal of being a hard-science PhD, often physics.
They are notable primarily because of the length of their posts and the absolute inability to do anything but quote established facts and dogma; even human behavior is something that comes from historical records and data that is imagined to be rigorous and unchanging.
Because their world is rigidly defined and based on successive layers of provable facts, everything else must be as well. Human behavior in 2019 (and beyond) must be exactly the same as established patterns of behavior as far back as the Renaissance. It's right there in the data. Outside influence and changing conditions are irrelevant.
To assert that only the smartest ,and most intelligent should attend as they did 'back in the day' is an unfounded claim, and in fact quite wrong.'
'Back in the day',let's say 100 years ago, only the children of the wealthy attended university. Many of them were (and still are) ineffably stupid.
This may come as a shock, but you don't need to be very bright to obtain most undergraduate degrees. What you do need is persistence, focus and motivation.
Excluding the professions, most undergraduate degrees (Eg Liberal arts) were never intended to provide a qualification for anything. The idea was to round off one's education. With luck, one might have learned some critical thinking skills and perhaps a slightly broader world view..
I'll share my educational journey as an example:
Left school at 17, not having finished high school. Started working full time.Finished high school at night.
Conscripted for 2 years in the army (thankfully, no war service).
On return, back to full time work. Did a 3 year part time diploma course in Human Resource Management .
Had a year off.
The discovered our top state university was offering places to mature age, non matriculants ( I had finished high school, but not qualified for University) . I applied.
First, had to write a letter, setting out why I had not been able to go to university.
They liked that, so I was asked to attend a university hall, where I would need to write an essay. That was to demonstrate a good literacy level, and some ability in critical thinking.
They liked my essay. I was then invited to an interview with three faculty heads. They liked me, so I was accepted.
---there were 150 places, and 1500 applicants.
I elected to do a BA, part time ,spread over 9 years.,as I was working full time.During that time, I maintained straight A's, achieving a BA with a double major in Social Anthropology. This degree actually helped me in my work. I worked for Social Security, and was dealing a lot with refugees. By the time I had finished my degree, I had spent a total of 14 years in formal part time study. My informal studies have never stopped, although they have slowed down a bit in the last few years..
The kind of tests you recommend are only really useful with vast numbers of people. They were developed for use by the US army, to test recruits for WW2. It was a broad brush, meant to weed out mental defectives and psychotics.
As far as I'm aware, no test has yet been developed which can measure potential.
I disagree. One hundred years ago, there were a handful of free colleges and that kept increasing until around 1970. City College, Cooper Union, later Brooklyn College and then the University of California college system were difficult schools with high standards. You did not need money to get into these schools and they were alternatives from the elite schools that barred Non-WASPS, which was the major entry requirement for schools that were not "Negro" colleges. Brooklyn College, City College were filled with immigrants and the children of immigrants. Hunter College was a very elite Women's teaching college and it was free. Many, many highly successful people graduated from Brooklyn College, including supreme court justices.
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