A number of bloggers have covered the controversy over the University of Wisconsin - Stout in regards to Professor James Miller and his First Amendment rights to free speech on campus. Apparently the campus police chief doesn't believe in them. Neither does the interim Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.
The U of W has beclowned itself on this matter and I'm not going to belabor the asininity of the powers-that-be at that fine institution of..ahem...learning. Instead, I am going to address the continuing destruction of our colleges and universities and the concomitant higher education bubble that is about to burst. Or rather, I am going to let Penn and Teller do it for me. After all, I have work to do and money to make so that someday I too can retire a year or so before my employer involuntarily "retires"my ass me because they believe I'm too damn old to do the job anymore. So sit back, relax, and enjoy their expose (in three parts).
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
That basically covers it.
I particularly liked the part when they talk to the supposedly smartest man in academia, Noam Chomsky. All he did for me is prove that he's a clueless, out-of-touch putz. (Frankly, the smartest man in academia is probably Stephen Hawking, at least in my opinion.)
The U of W has beclowned itself on this matter and I'm not going to belabor the asininity of the powers-that-be at that fine institution of..ahem...learning. Instead, I am going to address the continuing destruction of our colleges and universities and the concomitant higher education bubble that is about to burst. Or rather, I am going to let Penn and Teller do it for me. After all, I have work to do and money to make so that someday I too can retire a year or so before my employer involuntarily "retires"
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
That basically covers it.
I particularly liked the part when they talk to the supposedly smartest man in academia, Noam Chomsky. All he did for me is prove that he's a clueless, out-of-touch putz. (Frankly, the smartest man in academia is probably Stephen Hawking, at least in my opinion.)
It all comes down the the "credentialed, not educated" paradigm. Some of the best and brightest engineers I've ever worked with did not have degrees. Or if they did, it was after the fact to show future potential employers they had actually attended school (but not necessarily to learn anything).
Like many in my family I am an autodidact. I don't need to go to school to show I know what it is I've taught myself. In some cases there is no school that can teach what it is I've learned by myself. I didn't go to school to learn about optics, yet that's what I do. I learned on the job or researched the information I needed myself. (MIT is great for that!)
Brent, best that your kids go to trade school where they can earn an honest living rather than becoming government drones.
Ruth, I know far too many people with BA or MA degrees that work in jobs that require them to wear paper hats and headsets that allow them to speak to people in the drive-up line, or dispense overpriced alcoholic beverages to drunken patrons.
I agree 100% with your sentiments.
The cost of a college degree has doubled in ten years' time.
The Dept of Labor estimates that 35% of college graduates work in jobs that they could have right out of high school.
And those are the ones employed and not watching cartoons back with Mom and Dad.
Going to college makes sense if one gets a government job, which I'm going to encourage my children to get.
My manual labor job pays the mortgage, provides the pension, and gives us the medical insurance. And I'm not as fat as I'd otherwise be.
I gotta say, I have TWO bachelor degrees, one BA & one BS, and you know what? THey're useless to me. Other than being able to say that "oh, I have a degree" on my resume or to recruiters it does me no good. I've not used any of the learning from any of the classes in the real job arena, and part of me really really wishes I'd gone to a trade school of some kind instead. Or done like some of my high school classmates did and just go straight into the job market. That was late 90's so the .com boom was still flying high so it would have been totally possible to get the tech job and not have a degree, and maybe that realworld experience would have made the difference.