Def not a fan of AOC!! But I'd like to think there are alternatives between $60k/yr + watered down and free + watered down ...

Totally agree Catherine about STEM. They may be better than the humanities but definitely not immune. I have had many a conversation with expert doctors who know almost nothing about scientifically proven methods of healing diseases within their expertise which are slightly outside the box or not championed by big pharma (nutritional cures in double blind peer reviewed studies, for instance) ... that in itself is not too bad - we all have lots to learn - what I find suspicious though is the complete lack of curiosity and highbrow attitude they give in defending their professional egos instead of acquiring more truth to ultimately better heal their patients!

Definitely part of what's going on, especially (but not exclusively) in the humanities ...

That has already been accomplished. IDW contributors and classical liberals are doing their best to combat the situation.
[intellectualdark.website]

Definitely worthwhile to distinguish STEM education from the humanities as part of this discussion ... thanks for the comment!

I’m an Engineer myself but I believe that fields outside of STEM are criminally undervalued.

There are some incredibly clever people in the humanities and arts but because these areas do not have a clear career path they are dismissed as a waste of time. Yet some of the people taking these subjects are considerably smarter than those I met in my Engineering classes. And I don’t consider myself an amazing engineer either, many of those at the top of my classes were still ignorant or lacking curiousity about other things.

Even if one cannot be a renaissance man in the modern era, one should still try to learn from these subjects. Embrace the arts. One of my lecturers made some crack about the futility of learning about poetry for example... I was the only person in the room of 200 who didn’t laugh.

But that’s not everyone. One of my favourite lecturers, and one of the smartest, shared my disdain for this attitude towards the arts and humanities.

So, my fellow STEM lords, please strive to be more like renaissance men and less like snobbish, robotic nerds.

@InternetDorkWeb I'm not arguing against the 10% that should be in the humanities. I'm arguing against the companies that use colleges as a glorified IQ test when they go to hire their middle managers. If the job doesn't require a specific college degree then don't require a college degree.

@RobBlair And how will you be able to identify who that 10% are, before they have even taken a class?

There’s no guarantee that even STEM students will have a career that is relevant to their degree, and we don’t have a crystal ball to decide who those people are.

Secondly there are several skills required of all college graduates, regardless of discipline, that are not taught in highschool. These include: time management, self discipline, research skills, analysing information and extracting key information, and project management. Incidentally, these are skills which are required in many contemporary jobs but which are not specialised to any particular discipline.

The reason these graduates struggle to find work in their field or elsewhere is a lack of jobs. If they avoided college altogether they would simply have to find work in entry level positions, consequently making these positions even more competitive. There would be a similar outcome if they simply did STEM degrees instead (ignoring that many don’t have the ability or the desire to succeed in STEM).

@InternetDorkWeb Looks like a good list of things for high schools to teach (or parents). Not up to me for the rest of them, but if my kid comes to me and says he wants to become an historian, I'll ask him to show me his journal and the history books he's read in the last month. If he's short on substance I'll tell him to do better before wasting money on a degree he isn't willing to pursue. Then I'll sit him down to do a economic cost analysis so he understands that being less than the best in his class will not pay the bills. Good historians are invaluable. I read their books. I was taught by at least 2 of them. Bad historians sell books at the book store and whine that there aren't enough jobs for them while they try to pay for their overpriced degree.

@RobBlair These are not things which a high school is designed to teach, and trying to do so would result in it failing to do either.

At high school you are still learning basic things which you need to be a functionally independent human being. Reading and writing, fundamental knowledge of history and society, basic sciences, physical education, etc... the stuff that is really detrimental if you don’t have it. Because it’s so important that you learn this, it’s highly regimented and the only reason someone would drop out is if they have serious problems in their personal life that make it impossible.

At University, you are doing everything yourself, but you’ve got total freedom.
You have to go through texts yourself, manage your own time, do background reading etc... but you can also not do these things. But you are old enough to understand the consequences if you don’t, while a teenager probably doesn’t.

And the stuff you are learning on the course, well, it’s not essential. Definitely beneficial and the evidence that a college education is an asset is pretty overwhelming, but you’re not going to be completely hopeless.

Combine them though, and you have kids not learning basic math and going nowhere. No good.

My view is - they should either (a) shape up, die, or be clearly exposed as ornamental symbols of less and less relevance tot he real world.

YouTube can teach you as much about Philosophy as it can about science or engineering, which is to say, not much.

Mastering these subjects takes considerably more than watching a few youtube videos. You need to read the source material at the very least, and you need to underatand it’s context and meaning.

Even lectures by academics can only go so far in this regard.

Very true - obviously painting with a broad brush makes you skip over many specifics. Definitely individual programs at individual schools will add value - and even within some less valuable ones, ONE inspired and honest teacher can make a huge difference ... the question is - will the college retain its status as the exclusive provider of higher education? As a whole I think it's already lost that kind of respect ... I have 4 university degrees so I definitely value it I'm just worried about the trends ... watch the documentary Ivory Tower - there are many super interesting alternatives emerging in the US! Especially for working class folks who don't want to go hundreds of thousands in inescapable debt for an education of questionable value ... but of course there are tons of exceptions to this reality

@fpinto I’m going to be honest here, I simply don’t believe you have four degrees yet would cite a “documentary” film as evidence of the problems with academia.

@InternetDorkWeb (1) google me, (2) have you seen it (let me answer for you: no), (3) documentaries as a whole are not valid sources of information for you, irrespective of who appears in them? Let me guess - you don't have 4 university degrees lol

@fpinto 1) “Freida Selena Pinto (born 18 October 1984) is an Indian actress who has appeared mainly in American and British films.”

2. Of course I haven’t seen it, I think I made it pretty clear that I’m not concerned with documentaries.

3)They aren’t peer reviewed, the editor is in total control of the content and with a title like “ivory tower” you don’t need to have a degree to know they’ve got an agenda.

I also think that someone who managed to obtain four separate degrees would have a more nuanced position on this than you do, seeing the value of institutions despite their flaws and not describing degrees as “ornamental”.

@InternetDorkWeb oh dear internetdorkweb, (1) how academically accurate of you to confuse me for another person, of a different gender, profession, and part of the world than me no less (although she's definitely hotter than me!), (2) but of course, (3) so the format of a work, to you, automatically dictates the validity of its contents? Are most non-fiction books peer reviewed? Are direct experiences of people with experience in a given field "peer-reviewed"? And do you naively believe the peer review process guarantees validity of content? Go read up on the Sokal hoax. Peer reviewed journals in the humanities are often a joke where jargon and buzz words rule. On the other hand, the "alternatives to colleges" cited in Ivory Tower, which I cited in my original comment, 100% exist. There is no "nuance" on this. They exist, I've looked them up, it's a fact. You could know about them, too, if you actually viewed, and verified the content, as a person interested in truth over argument would be. But oh right, it's not "peer-reviewed" so it must, naturally, be all fake ... I guess you are better off arguing about them while not actually knowing anything about them.

As for nuance, did you skip the parts where I wrote "obviously painting with a broad brush makes you skip over many specifics", or where I qualified that the alternatives would be especially of value for "working class folks who don't want to go hundreds of thousands in inescapable debt for an education of questionable value", or again, when I wrote that degrees would become ornamental IF colleges don't get their act together? I'm sorry but I didn't write dozens of pages on this here, just a few posts, so I'm not going to make it all about nuance. There are major points to be made here- about the insane rising costs of education, and the highly questionable ways in which US colleges are being run. If you don't know about these things, there is this really cool documentary I think you should watch ...

@InternetDorkWeb, I'm not really sure what "peer reviewed" means for a documentary. lol

@fpinto You're right that there are many alternatives to a ulniversity degree in order to be educated. If I had time I might have 4 degrees, too. Too many children to look after, though. lol