The Value of a College Degree is Not Keeping Pace With the Cost
“a tight job market is motivating more employers, including Google, IBM and some state governments, to scrap degree requirements and open up jobs to non-degree-holders”
The growth of diversity administration is causing the cost of college to rise while not keeping pace with the value of a degree. Betsy McCaughey, a former lieutenant governor of New York, blames wokeness.
She writes at FOX News:
College degree value plummets as woke insanity spikes
For decades, parents have sacrificed and students have gone into debt to fund college degrees that lead nowhere. But the college scam may be up soon — not thanks to any moral awakening on the part of college administrators.
Instead, a tight job market is motivating more employers, including Google, IBM and some state governments, to scrap degree requirements and open up jobs to non-degree-holders. Elon Musk, who decided “college is basically for fun,” has for years evaluated applicants at Tesla based on skills, not a diploma.
This trend should make college consumers skeptical about blindly forking over a fortune. For too long, Americans have been buying the idea that a degree in something, anything, is necessary to launch a career and join the middle class.
All the while, colleges have been raising tuition mercilessly, pushing families to take on more debt to cover the hikes.
Over a lifetime, getting a college degree pays off financially. That is unless your major has absolutely no market value, which is the case with a large number of students borrowing for college.
At New York University, students who take out federal loans and major in theater, one of the most popular choices, and graduate with a bachelor’s degree will likely earn an annual salary of only $29,054 three years after graduating, according to federal data.
On that salary, it’s impossible to pay back a loan. And it’s a moral outrage that college advisers steer students to make such choices. An NYU student choosing a bachelor’s in economics could expect to earn $73,022, and a computer science major would likely command $104,670 three years after graduating.
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Comments
Huck sez to me one night, “Why, a blind man in a closet at night without a candle can see plain as day that within a few years you ain’t gonna be employable atall if you caint function in Spanish. In America. Almost anywhere. Doing almost anything that involves talking to anyone. Or reading anything.”
So, he ‘n’ I agreed that if you are between about 3 and about 23, and you’re planning on supporting yourself in the years ahead, in the USA, your goal oughta be to pass the DELE C1 or the SIELE C1 or the CEFU Advanced.
Start on-line, then move on to immersion summer camp, and move up from there.
Good teaching can be had at
MariaOrtegaGarcia.com,
DonQuijote.com,
MenteArgentina.com,
AcademiaDeBuenosAires.com.
Plenty other options as well
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Once you’re effectively bilingual you can choose to attend college in Spain or South America.
Then, you can move back to America for your masters degree and/or other options as well.
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Reminder: In the 1950’s and 1960’s it was completely optional whether one ever learned to “touch type.” With the introduction of personal computers in the 70’s and 80’s, and e-mail ubiquity it’d be difficult to find anyone who cannot use a keyboard.
There’re other examples of this sort of cultural shift.
That’s what’s happening with Spanish.
George W Bush told us this literally 21 years ago.
Obama told us this ~15 years ago.
Millions of Spanish-speakers are moving to America each year. And they’re going to need products and they’re going to need services.
Already today there are parts of America that are Spanish-only.
Wake up people. Get with reality. Like it or not.
Btw, all the offspring of these new immigrants will be ~100% bilingual. In-accented bilingual, perfectly comfortable in both worlds.
If you are under, say, ~23 and you aren’t prioritizing Spanish fluency for yourself or your children, then I’m sorry but you are dictionary-definition of “stupid.” Regardless what nonsense goes on at any American college or university.
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/stupid
Submitted respectfully
I only disagree about the touch typing. Nobody teaches that anymore, much less takes a course in it. I took it in high school, and it was one of the most valuable courses I ever had. It didn’t hurt that it was a class populated primarily by women either! Most people today are what I call “peckers,” because they use the two finger method of typing, and have to look at the keyboard to do so.
I constantly amaze my students by talking to them and typing, or looking at a page and typing without taking my eyes off the page.
There are some computer programs that can train you, but require more than the 15 second TikTok attention span that current students possess.
Don’t get me started on spelling and grammar! Understandable handwriting (that not requiring a Rosetta stone? Cursive? Reading an analog clock?
All lost arts.
Spelling and grammar, yes!
It seems many, if not most, novels I download from Amazon have a rousing good story hampered by atrocious writing. Some of them are hard to read because of horrible spelling and terrible punctuation. Kindle Unlimited helps because I can read a half-dozen novels for the price of one really good, well written story. Quantity vs. quality. What a price to simply pass time.
The Bride kept our ninth grade Warriner’s English Grammar And Composition, her Heath’s College Handbook Of Composition, and I have a Strunk and White’s The Elements Of Style. Too bad modern students don’t use the same references. Thesaurus? Is that a dinosaur? In schools now, probably so. We have one of those, too.
.
In a few years the joke “most secretaries are hunt ‘n peckers” will have lost it’s meaning. We seem to be losing both “the classics” and the classic jokes at the same rate. 🙁
That being said, I was raised at a time where most professionals had others to do their work, and thus typing was not an essentail skill. Of course, had I known how to type quickly, I am sure at least one year of college could have been saved. That honors thesis on a typewriter was painful.
Sorry! Immersion Chinese is the only choice. When Xi has paid the Big Guy the final installment, the CCP will occupy DC, change our official language from Spanish to Chinese, make using any other language a capital offense, and change the standard American dish from Tacos to Chow mein.
Does that mean I will no longer be a Breakfast Taco, and will have to identify as a Thousand Year Old Egg?
Un-accented
By the same token, the SUNK COST of a college education is SPIKING !!!
Well, the theater example is absurd because everyone knows what that major means.
However, there needs to be a reckoning that removes both many exorbitant costs and the university’s responsibilities from the equation.
Make it against the law to fund luxury services [e.g. counseling, health care, DEI propaganda, etc.] and reduce legal liability. Make the only on-campus housing affordable housing that is not under the purview nor the management (thus liability) of the university. The university only need provide the land for the properties to ensure that there is housing available for students. The rest is up to private enterprise.
Many of these luxury items are being subsidized by the entire student body while only a fraction use them.