Higher Ed's Big Lie

[WilliamW]

Ha ha, like they only tell one lie.  More like one of many.  This is the system the higher ed cartel and their shills are protecting.  Go into hock up to your eyeballs for a degree that gets you nothing more than you could have gotten right out of high school.  Assuming you even get a degree at all.  


Higher Education's Big Lie

...With millions more students attending college, it makes sense to ask whether their degrees will pay off.

First of all, it is debatable whether a majority of future job openings will require a college degree. ...The New York Times reports that, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, most job growth in the next decade will be in labor markets where a bachelor's degree is not necessary. Furthermore, the cost of attending college has risen dramatically in recent years. Conflicting claims about the economic value of a degree along with skyrocketing tuition raise a question about whether college is a good investment for all students, especially those low-income students who can least afford to spend money and years on a higher education venture that may not produce rewards.

Secondly, the issue of college payoff becomes even more complicated when we consider that many students who begin college will not complete degrees. While the U.S. leads the world in college attendance, it is ranked near the bottom in the number of students who actually graduate. In fact, college access, which is touted as a symbol of our meritocratic ideals, leads to a degree for only about half of all students who enroll. Completion rates are even lower for first-generation collegians and people of color. According to education researcher Peter Sacks, the chance that a low-income child will earn a bachelor's degree is no higher today than it was in 1970, a grave contradiction in the meritocratic narrative of the education gospel.

In fact, as the sociologist Annette Lareau has shown in Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life, the qualities that lead to academic success are not linked to college access, effort, or intelligence, but to accidents of birth. For the most part, the children of affluent parents attend the best colleges and get the best jobs. Opening the doors of higher education has not altered this basic arrangement. Still, the myth persists that, to get ahead in life, the first thing you ought to do is write a tuition check.

These days it is more likely that a student's first tuition bill will be paid with money from a loan. What looks like an investment in the future, however, can often turn into an economic disaster.

...We can all point to success stories in which nontraditional collegians achieve a sense of purpose and satisfaction in the life of the mind, earn degrees, and find jobs worthy of their tremendous effort and intelligence. But there is a pervasive silence in academe about the tarnished hopes and debt loads of many other students who do not complete degrees. ...

Student loans...are the most burdensome to nontraditional collegians, especially working-class students and people of color. These students are disproportionately enrolled in institutions that do not look anything like the colleges of popular imagination in which full-time students live on residential campuses, party on fraternity row, and attend football games.

...Rather, I am proposing that those of us working in academe begin to dismantle the myth that higher education can facilitate social mobility on a mass scale. In fact, the opposite is true. According to a study by the Brookings Institution, "the average effect of education at all levels is to reinforce rather than compensate for the differences associated with family background and the many home-based advantages and disadvantages that children and adolescents bring with them into the classroom." This is a shattering indictment of the education gospel. Dismantling this myth means being honest with ourselves and with our students about the role of higher education in reproducing class inequality across generations. ...

[ham]

In fact, as the sociologist Annette Lareau has shown in Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life, the qualities that lead to academic success are not linked to college access, effort, or intelligence, but to accidents of birth. For the most part, the children of affluent parents attend the best colleges and get the best jobs. Opening the doors of higher education has not altered this basic arrangement. Still, the myth persists that, to get ahead in life, the first thing you ought to do is write a tuition check.

Oh really?

[Armando Ramos]

First of all, it is debatable whether a majority of future job openings will require a college degree. ...

Secondly, ...many students who begin college will not complete degrees...[C]ollege access...leads to a degree for only about half of all students who enroll. ...

Student loans...are the most burdensome to nontraditional collegians, especially working-class students and people of color.

Great article, and in IHE too.  So higher ed is really just a high stakes gamble for the working class student.   Even if you are in the half who actually completes the degree, still no fancy job, just a big fat loan debt that you can't even discharge in bankruptcy.  

All the more reason for people of limited means to jump on the far more economical DETC programs.   Same likelihood of non-completion or unemployment as RA, but for only half the price.  

Do you suppose any disclosures will be popping up on university websites, like SEC and FINRA disclaimers?  

Before you make a commitment to purchase any degree, diploma, certificate or any other instrument or educational product, you should seek advice from a relevant professional taking into account your specific educational objectives, social, financial and political situation and particular needs with regard to the suitability of any degree, diploma, certificate or any other instrument or educational product.

Past education is no guarantee of future employment.

This is a shattering indictment of the education gospel.

Sha-dooby!

(For those not alive in 1978, old Rolling Stones reference.  Any use of the word "shattered" or variations requires a "sha-dooby.")

[ham]

(For those not alive in 1978, old Rolling Stones reference. Any use of the word "shattered" or variations requires a "sha-dooby.")

you mean like groovy and spacey?

[Dennis Ruhl]

(For those not alive in 1978, old Rolling Stones reference.  Any use of the word "shattered" or variations requires a "sha-dooby.")

Speaking of Rolling Stones, it's sad to see Mick Jagger having wasted his life after dropping out of the London School of Economics.

[Yancy Derringer]

you mean like groovy and spacey?

Alas, you unfortunate lad!  You wasted your youth reading textbooks and studying--and not listening to the hits on the radio?  Now that is sad.  Here's a sample, hopefully not too late to corrupt you:

[Don Dresden]

Speaking of Rolling Stones, it's sad to see Mick Jagger having wasted his life after dropping out of the London School of Economics.

Keith Richards attended Sidcup Art College (now defunct), along with original Stones’ bassist Dick Taylor.  

Charlie Watts attended Harrow Art School (now part of the University of Westminster).  Apparently went there four years and had a real job as a commercial artist before joining the band, but I can’t find any mention of a degree.  

Ron Wood attended Ealing Art College (now part of Thames Valley University), also apparently for four years although no mention of any degree earned.  Yes, same place attended by Pete Townshend.  

"The art schools from my time specialised in old-school teaching methods of brutalising your students with some wild thinking that was off the map," remembers Pete Townshend, whose lecturers at Ealing College of Art included Gustav Metzger - his concept of auto-destructive art inspired Townshend to smash up his guitar - and Roy Ascott, whose theories on cybernetics predicted the internet. "I remember Roy looking at me in a lecture and saying: 'It's a pity that the only person in this room who has the slightest inkling of what I'm talking about is such an idiot.' Fucking genius, Roy Ascott."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/apr/19/art-schools

As you suggest, Dennis, something about “attending” seems to inspire greater achievement than actually “graduating.”

Interesting that economics major Jagger achieved what might be considered a more distinguished academic career (i.e., dropping out of a better college, and the only non-arts major) than the others.  Consistent with one of the points of the original article, Jagger’s father and grandfather were both teachers, and his mother was active in local politics.  By comparison, Richards’ father was said to be a “factory labourer,” Watts’ father was a “lorry driver,” and Wood’s family described as “’water gypsies’ (river/canal barge operators).”  

If “art school” is considered more akin to “trade school” than “higher ed,” perhaps the message for working class students really is that it’s better to spend your tuition money on trade school and get a job where you can earn a living, rather than being an unemployed college grad with a back-breaking student loan debt.