Doubters say college isn't for everyone

[melm00se]

BY ALAN SCHER ZAGIER - The Associated Press

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- In a town dominated by the University of Missouri's flagship campus and two smaller colleges, higher education is practically a birthright for high school seniors like Kate Hodges.

She has a 3.5 grade-point average, a college savings account and a family tree teeming with advanced degrees. But in June, Hodges is headed to the Tulsa Welding School in Oklahoma, where she hopes to earn an associate's degree in welding technology in seven months.

"They fought me so hard," she said, referring to disappointed family members. "They still think I'm going to college."

Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/05/14/481426/doubters-say-college-isnt-for.html#ixzz0nuHvHTbI

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Truth? Fiction?

[hobbit709]

1. The joke here in Austin back in the late 70's

A Masters gets you a job driving a cab.

[Javaman]

24. Howdy, fellow Austinite!

:hi:

[dkf]

2. Now they are saying a college degree doesn't add to earnings?

Weird.

[hobbit709]

4. When a degree doesn't get you a job-no earnings.

[dkf]

15. That is the condition now but hopefully we won't always be this bad.

It does sound like they are dissing certain majors though. Maybe they don't see the point in it period.

[cali]

3. I don't think college appeals to all kids

why do we have such disdain for skilled trades? Ideally, high schools should turn out literate graduates who can write clearly and who have well developed reading skills. They can then decide whether they want to go on to college.

[howard112211]

13. Also, high school should turn out people who

know the difference between a median and a mean value, and who know what a standard deviation is.

And preferably, people who know that there is a difference between magnetic force and gravitational force.

[KharmaTrain]

5. Not Enough Info...

To answer your question...No, college is not for everyone as not every job requires a college education...and in some cases is a waste of time. I saw too many in my college days who had no clue what they were doing in school other than making their parents happy...or no idea of what they wanted to do in the future and floundered in classes and programs they weren't comfortable in and would drop out.

For the most part many people I know who did get degrees either never applied them or did so sparingly...ending up in a different career than their degree. Was their four years a waste of time? No necessarily as college does teach you how to cope with the bullshit of the "real world"...but not sure it's worth $25gs or more a year to get that lesson these days.

[rox63]

6. We need plumbers, mechanics and welders as much as we need teachers, accountants and scientists

Our society needs all sorts of people in all sorts of professions. Without mechanics, the scientists can't get to their labs, and the teachers can't get to their schools.

[hobbit709]

7. We used to joke about our friends' kids going to college

to be lawyers and doctors. We said what we really needed is mechanics and plumbers.

[eShirl]

9. +1

[distantearlywarning]

12. +1

Totally agree. A lot of this problem would be solved by just not assuming any more that one profession is somehow more socially worthy than another profession.

[lumberjack_jeff]

20. +1 to your +1 n/t

[alarimer]

25. Yet those formerly unionized good jobs no longer exist either.

It used to be that a job in the trades was a good job, often unionized with benefits. Now, most of them are unemployed for long stretched or have been replaced by non-union labor in an effort to build cheap shit to sell.

I don't think trade occupations are the answer either.

[seabeyond]

8. i dont think college is for everyone and that is a huge misstep we are taking in dealing

with lower grades in school. there is an inherent dishonesty telling kids and expecting a nation that all kids go to college. i think that is a ridiculous premise.

[customerserviceguy]

10. Good for her

If she wants to be a welder, and is willing to use her education money to pay for the training, then she should do it.

So very much of higher education is, "Give us bucketloads of money, and we'll give you a piece of paper that might impress someone when you go to get a job to pay back all of your student loans".

[distantearlywarning]

11. As someone who is working on a Ph.D.

I completely agree.

I have seen so many kids in the college classroom who weren't suited for being there, weren't motivated to be there, didn't know why they were there, were fundamentally uninterested in academics, etc., all of whom were there because some outside force (society, parents, HS guidance counselors) convinced them that "everyone" should go to college, or that the only way to make anything of oneself is to go to college.

What I would love to see if I were empress of the universe:

1) Free college for everyone...

2) ...combined with a very strict meritocracy, where you could only get that free college if you were truly intelligent and motivated (measuring that would be tricky, but maybe some combination of scores, grades, maintaining a certain GPA over time, professor evaluations)...

3)...and greater social value placed on "trade" professions out in the real world. People used to take pride in working effectively with their hands, but somehow over the years being a plumber, carpenter, mechanic, etc. started to become seen as "what you do if you're too low-class to go to college". That's ridiculous. No work is "better" than any other work, and I say this as someone who has been everything from a cashier at a fast-food restaurant to a scientist. We need cashiers, scientists, plumbers, doctors, mechanics, lawyers, janitors, and everything else to make our society run, and it's well past time to get over this social status crap about professions. Frankly, it's killing us as a society, because the influx of everyone who wants to be high status by going to college is (to be perfectly honest) watering down academia (not that everyone has to be a brain surgeon, but if you're actually trying to train brain surgeons, you really don't need 100 people in your classroom who will never understand how to perform brain surgery no matter how many years they spend in school).

[ProgressiveProfessor]

19. As a working professor, I try to get students to consider a broad range of options

I prefer to teach the 200 level courses, the ones where the students are just starting into their majors, to help them understand if this is for them. Its also the place where the wannabes are weeded out (the whiners are still there up through grad school).

There are many options outside college.

[HughBeaumont]

21. Bad Grades does not = "stupid".

With that plan, I'd have been cancelled out. My grades were horrible because I was bullied and had severe ADHD and didn't yet know it. Does anyone know what it's like to study 2/3 hours a night and get nothing but average-to-below average grades to show for it?

[RaleighNCDUer]

22. That's where the 'motivated' comes in. You take entrance exams, do

intake interviews, prove to them you belong there. Getting into the free college would be dependent upon HS record, to a degree, but also on interviews and testing, so what happened to you in HS would not necessarily determine your getting into college. And the kid who was bullied and beat down in HS can shine in the academic atmosphere of college.

And, if college is free, those who don't really belong will be freer to drop out and go in a different direction without disappointing, and squandering the investment of, the parents, leaving those who really WANT to be there.

[izquierdista]

14. You can get a Ph.D. in welding

Welding, as with any body of knowledge, has levels of expertise which go all the way from trade school educated practitioner to post-graduate education. It doesn't take much training or experience to weld a busted-up fence post; it takes a lot of education and experience to develop a new technique to robotically weld drill pipe on the ocean floor.

How far a person should go with their education should really be dependent on their motivation, their level of intellectual curiosity. The last President, for example, should have been let go with a grade-school education to load and unload beer trucks. Unfortunately for the rest of us, his aristocratic family sent him to college where he learned to be a 'decider'.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

17. Which accredited university offers a PhD in welding?

What I believe you are describing is Materials Engineering

[izquierdista]

27. Ah yes, the erudite title

Got to have something to show for all that tuition and study time. And I believe the more common term for a PhD in plumbing is "Chemical Engineering".

[ProgressiveProfessor]

16. Its about time more of this is getting out

You can invest 5 years and over $100K (full cost, not just tuition and books) and get your $LIBERALARTS degree. From there where do you go? Teaching is full, grad school will keep you busy for a couple more years, but sooner or later you will have to face up to the fact that degrees in $LIBERALARTS have limited marketability. If instead you went to a trade school or into an apprentice program, about the time you would have had a basically useless BA, you would be a journeyman, making more than many of those $LIBERALARTS majors who were lucky enough to get something better than a McJob. Its a harsh view but the reality today, and will be for some time to come.

[tammywammy]

18. College isn't for everyone

There's nothing wrong with going a trade route, welders, plumbers, electricians are what makes this world go around.

I know I've railed against the fact that in the school district I live in, there isn't a good trade school route, the focus is on prepping all students to go to college. Should we increase access into colleges? Of course. At the same time realize that college isn't for everyone and we should beef up our technical/trade schools at the same time.

[Brickbat]

23. Absolutely it's not for everyone, and I get tired with efforts to paint a college degree as the

culmination of one's educational career.

The key is keeping middle-class jobs that don't need a college degree -- trades and manufacturing -- in this country, and then NOT requiring advanced degrees for jobs that don't need them -- forest management, for one.

[TwilightGardener]

26. If she's a smart cookie, she'll take her welding skills, work for a while, and then

maybe go to college later. College isn't a "do it when you're 18 or forget it forever" proposition.