The College Bubble Is Bursting. Good Riddance
| Opinion

Not to diminish a college degree, I know of people in trade skills area that make 6 figures and do the normal things on the weekends. Sure, there is occasional stress on the job yet I'm glad they're around for possible weekend moonlighting handyman jobs.

Many corporations are no longer requiring a college degree for many positions. Walmart and Amazon were among them. When I went to college, tuition was small, and there were no loans, and few scholarships. People worked or went into military to obtain the tuition. Now, no one works or goes into the military. Tuitions have skyrocketed because loans are readily available, and students are graduating with $50K and more of debt, which they are not repaying. College tuition has been socialized, taxpayers now funding through a college degree for many---except for conservatives, whose only right as a citizen is to pay for it all.

College is a nice thing to do of you want to avoid working. Skilled trades, apprenticeship programs, will put people into good money. But, you can't be afraid to get dirty.

Mike Rowe for sec of education.

College is absolutely necessary for about 10% to 20% of the people that actually go there. Most of the jobs college grads hold and spend their entire lives in can be done equally well by someone with a high school diploma and a trade school certificate. Even in the health care field. How many people do you need with a four year degree plus four years Med school plus four year internship and board certification? Yes you do need them but a lot can be done by appropriately paid technicians. Same is true in other fields. Besides of what practical use is women's studies, basket weaving, African music, social work?

The value of my undergraduate college degree is suspect but for the overarching cosmic reason that I was apparently at that college at that time studying that particular subject to meet that girl who became my soulmate of 40+ years. Til death do us part is the plan. So from that perspective - the one where college is not only a place to learn something that will help you get a job, but also a place where you grow up a little and find lifelong friends and soulmates - it's a crying shame that today the young women encounter effete, soyboy cut-outs of what's supposed to be a man, and young men encounter enraged lezbo feminazis with bigger Cheneys than they have. Not much soulmate material on campuses today. Combining that with useless college majors in ethnic and gender studies and climate policy and "journalism", etc., there remains no good reason to even send a kid to college unless you: A) hate your money and/or B) hate your kid, or C) just want some time alone and don't care how your kid turns out.

The four year degree was turned from an accomplishment into a fad decades ago. The agonizingly hard work of practicing true scholarship by studying meaty rigorous courses using demanding standards was replaced by academic and financial fraud. Marxism, foreign money and affirmative action had a lot to do with the failure of much of higher education but weak-brained leadership allowed all of it. There just aren’t that many brilliant people who are capable of earning a Master’s or PhD in something worthwhile to keep multi-billion dollar endowments alive and so inane “studies” and “studies of studies of studies” ad nauseum were added to curriculums to keep money rolling in paid for by self-centered, vain, title worshipping mediocrities or the downright stupid. Anyone with half a brain who saw those three morally neutered and intellectually obtuse hags from some of America’s most respected academic institutions testify so appallingly before Congress after 10/7 had to know the jig was up for the siren call of a post-secondary education.

Colleges and college degrees are one of the biggest scams in the country. There is no reason for the tuition fees to be so high when these colleges and universities have such bloated endowments. It is especially egregious when one considers the absolute lack of real education students are receiving.

This has been the case for quite some time. It was starting back when dh and I were in college in the 90's. A college degree, outside of STEM or law, wasn't worth the paper it was written on as everyone had one and you learned very little that actually helped you DO anything. Our son went the trade school route for many reasons, not least of which he wanted to be able to get a career start with low to no debt. At 22, he is making $52k a year working for an apartment maintenance firm. He graduated from trade school for HVAC and is certified. He worked in residential and them commercial for a couple years. He loves his new job. It is different everyday, relatively stress free, and he gets to do a variety of jobs from electrical to grounds work to plumbing. And he is debt free. Even his car is paid for. He gets reduced rent at the apartment complex he works at too plus benefits. It's a great gig for a young unmarried guy who always loved working with his hands and enjoyed learning how stuff works. As a teen, his room was always filled with electronic stuff he had taken apart and put back together.. something of a Frankenstein's lab for electronic gizmos. He said maybe he will one day go to college to become an electrical engineer. More power to him. I know he would be good at that. That said though, I am just happy he is financially stable, on his own, and loving his work. That all goes a long way toward peace of mind, his and mine.

College for everyone has always been a stupid idea. For science, engineering and other technology areas, it is still necessary. After the 'liberal arts' degrees stopped teaching about the art and literature of the European middle ages and enlightenment......these departments have jettisoned their ONLY reason for existence. So now, a 'liberal arts' degree is only to teach hate for American and European historic art, architecture and literature. All of the racial and gender studies departments only teach hate and victimhood, need to be all hone.

You know how colleges got rid of the SAT during the woke uprising of 2020? If I were a business, I'd ask high school kids to take the SAT, and, if they did well enough I'd hire them directly as trainees without the waste of four years lecturing on DEI. The secret of Ivy League and oher selective colleges was always this: admission to them told potential employers that kids had proved the necessary cognitive ability (SAT score) to get admitted to those colleges in the first place. Nobody cared what they learned there in 4 years. Now that you can hack your way into those schools by pleading victimization and without taking a test, the degree doesn't signifiy much anymore.

With the world changing so rapidly, what could you POSSIBLY learn in college that will help you 20-30 years later? (Example: I graduated in 1973. I've reached my peak earning years in 1993-1999). 80% of what you were taught is forgotten (Except for the parties)....the remaining 20% is outdated College......who needs it?

I agree with #8. University professors are rewarded for grant money, not quality education. They only have to teach one course, and once tenured, cannot be fired. Usually their grad students do the work of teaching and grading. That is why the cost is so high for your indoctrination experience. So if employers stop requiring a degree, the student will realize that the school debt is not worth it (if Biden won't pick up the tab). In fact they can be working and earning money for 4 or 5 years while their competition goes to class, and gets more and more behind.

After my class trip to the far east in the early 1960's, I started at the bottom for a major oil company, on a 7/7 shift. I took some engineering courses on my off time and retired 33 years later, after working all over the gulf coast and the offshore gulf of Mexico, as a construction superintendent. Can't say that I missed anything. Met the missus of 56years w/o the college parties, have life-long friends from work and now, my son has followed in my footsteps, but at many, many times the pay that I retired at in 1998. Seeing today's aggrieved students and knowing my taxes have to pay for worthless degrees is depressing, to say the least.

Growing pains are leading to a MAGA country?

Colleges and universities in our country (yes, even the universities I attended) have become social justice factories and indoctrination centers for socialism, communism and hate for the United States. A degree is now nothing more than an attendance certificate. "Graduates" of these institutions emerge credentialed but ignorant as the day they attended freshman orientation. Exhibit A for what I write: that Cortez twit with a degree in economics from Boston University who now sits in the House of Representatives.

While I do believe there is value in a college education, I often found myself sitting in a required class that seemed to offer nothing other than employment for the professor.