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Buy the Book
The College Racket
A comical and bittersweet romp through the Republic of Absurdistan.
Crazy U: One Dad’s Crash Course in Getting his Kid into
College
By Andrew
Ferguson
(Simon & Schuster, 228 pages,
$25)
For a majority of Americans a college degree remains the first-class ticket to the Good Life. The pathway to opportunity. The first rung on the ladder of success. The key to unlock a financially secure future. (Pick your favorite hackneyed metaphor.)
That’s what the higher education industry wants us to believe anyway, and as long as the majority continues to believe this we have little choice but to buy the $200,000 ticket and take the ride.
In Crazy U: One Dad’s Crash Course in Getting His Kid into College, Andrew Ferguson takes us on a year-long journey through this Republic of Absurdistan — the author’s pet name for the college application process. It’s enough to make one violently carsick.
Ferguson, a senior editor at the Weekly Standard, gives us the idiocies of the college “proctological” essay where self-absorbed teens are forced to share their most intimate and embarrassing moments with anonymous admissions reps, who will decide not only their fate, but the fate of the nation. And the first lesson tomorrow’s leaders must learn is how to effectively market themselves like any other surplus commodity.
We learn that in these days of universal higher education, attending a select college is one of the few ways status-starved meritocrats can still thumb their elitism in our faces. We meet the SuperKids, students who have gotten straight A’s their entire lives (no trick in these days of grade inflation), who have founded nonprofits and charitable foundations and spent the last five summers curing AIDS patients in Honduras.
Along the way, Ferguson documents educators’ never-ending attempt to scrub the SAT of bias. In one of the more enlightening chapters, he answers the SAT’s critics who say the test is designed by white men to favor white men. Or, as one opponent put it: The SAT only measures the size of a student’s house. (The critics choose, however, to ignore the fact that Asian immigrants continually outperform white students.) Ferguson’s sound conclusion: the rich will always have an advantage on the SAT, as they do in life in general.
Ferguson immerses himself in the literature of the higher-education industry where every piece of advice is contradicted by another, and the Principle of Constant Contradiction is in full force. He shows how college administrators game the system and fudge the numbers to increase their all-important rankings in the best colleges lists. “We encourage everyone to apply, so we can turn down 90 percent of you and keep our acceptance rates nice and low! Whoops, did I say that out loud?”
THE JOVIAL ATMOSPHERE of Absurdistan darkens when we arrive at the money chapter. Here the process turns sinister. And the reader — many of whom will be going through similar tribulations with their 17-year-olds — shares in Ferguson’s frustration and pain. This is the ivy-covered realm of oily college administrators, the used car salesmen of the education industry, who have managed to convince a nation of 18-year-olds to go $80 billion in debt annually, and to enter adulthood with an average debt load of $22,000.
Ferguson recalls how, in his day, college tuition was wholly affordable. An industrious lad could pay his way through college selling magazine subscriptions. The tuition at the most select school used to account for a mere 15 percent of the average family’s median income. Today that “investment” is nearing 60 percent. Before long it will be double the median family income.
Why the dramatic increase? Because colleges can get away with it. Most of us don’t have the option (or don’t think we have the option) of not attending college. Worse, higher education has become like the health care system where the ordinary rules of the free market do not apply and where there is no incentive to cut costs. Simply put, the people consuming the services are not paying for the services. As one financial expert explains: “The self-regulating system of supply and demand breaks down. Normally, an increase in price reduces demand, which in turn moderates prices. In higher ed, that doesn’t happen. When the price rises, subsidies increase.”
Learning? It plays hardly a role at American colleges, where only 26 cents of every dollar spent goes to actual classroom instruction. College, is in fact, little more than a long, expensive, and ineffective jobs training program.
Sadly, for the foreseeable future, there appears no alternative to this quackery. The best we can do is educate ourselves about the degraded higher education industry. Andrew Ferguson’s memoir/exposé/self-help guide, is an advanced course at a ridiculously affordable price.
(For TAS’s earlier review of Crazy U, by John R. Coyne Jr., which ran in the June issue of The American Spectator, click here.)
About the Author
Christopher Orlet writes from St. Louis.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (80) | Leave a comment
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DaveD| 7.21.11 @ 8:15AM
In the late 60's and early 70's I worked my way through college at a minimum wage job. Every weekend, every break, every summer for four years. I wanted my children to have the same experience as I believe it was formative - at least, if I wasted my education I wasted my own dime, not somebody else's. However, by the 90's prices had gone through the roof and that was simply impossible. Price, however, did not reflect improved education and in several instances I am better educated then they are.
Miss Jones| 7.21.11 @ 8:38AM
Hopefully your kids would write: "I am better educated THAN they are." Sounds like you ARE well-educated.
Stormzeye| 7.21.11 @ 10:06AM
And you Miss Jones sound like a pedantic martinet.
masly | 7.21.11 @ 11:24PM
They MUST BE confronted, called out and
prosecuted for an entire century of economic
mess-making and legion EUGENICS crimes
against humanity.
I am a 28 years old doctor, mature and beautiful.and now I am seeking a good man who can give me real love , so i got a username Andromeda2002 on--s'e'ek'c'ou'ga'r.c óm--.it is the first and best club for y'ounger women and old'er men, or older women and y'ounger men,to int'eract with each other. Maybe you wanna ch'eck 'it out or tell your friends!
DaveD| 7.21.11 @ 10:54AM
I don't claim to be well educated, at least not formally. However, I was actually taught things in college as opposed to sitting through hour-long political indoctrinations - if my daughter's experience is anything to go by where she endured rants about George Bush in English Lit.
Oh, and thanks for kindly pointing out the typo.
Dave Williams| 7.21.11 @ 1:35PM
...and while they're at it, not use "hopefully" incorrectly.
Quartermaster| 7.21.11 @ 6:28PM
Pedants shouldn't throw stones:
"...not use "hopefully" incorrectly."
Try "don't" or "do not."
mzk1| 7.21.11 @ 6:26PM
So he's not a typist?
Lawrence D. Cannon| 7.21.11 @ 9:08AM
Big College has a monopoly on jobs in this country. Once upon a time, someone could get a law degree, a Professional Engineers license, or be a policeman or fireman, without getting a college degree. All you had to do was study and pass the tests.
Now, because of "Big College", 18-21 year old kids have to go through the gauntlet of taking courses that have nothing to do with what they want to do with their lives.
I see the future of post-High School education being with on-line courses. Why pay six figures to go to school just so you have to either: 1) listen to some student assistant give a lecture in bad English, or 2) get indoctrinated into Marxism by some angry old hippie?
With the onset of On-line courses, a student could receive an education from the best teachers in the country without even having to leave the house (or maybe leaving off on your own and making it in some new city, without being forced to live in student dormitories). Why pay $500-5000 per semester hour for a classes of 15-30, when you can pay $5-10 per semester with classes of 150,000-200,000 watching online? The best professors would get paid what they deserve, while the sorry ones would have to go back to waiting tables at the local Greek restaurant.
With today's technology (4-D computers, ID verification), this is easier than ever, and would soon be the wave.
The dorms could be converted to game-day condos for old alums who want to come back to campus for football games (I'm an alum from the SEC).
PolishKnight| 7.21.11 @ 10:15AM
I talked to a marxist/leftist who works at a government job and he told me that when 500 people applied for an open position, the first thing they did was throw away the online degrees (perhaps precisely because such people aren't members of the marxist elite.)
Nice try.
Mark in LA| 7.21.11 @ 10:47AM
They throw them away because most of them are rubbish filled with students who can't really do the work at a high level but can bluff their way through. The on-line university is less likely to flunk a paying customer than the real one.
The Big E| 7.21.11 @ 11:33AM
From my experience in dealing with graduates from "real" colleges (at least graduates in the last ten years or so), most of the "real" colleges must also be rubbish filled with students who can't really do the work at a high level but can can bluff their way through. Most of the "real" college graduates who have come through my office (and I'm not talking about my criminal defense clientele) spent four years goofing off and drinking and now think they know everything because they have a piece of paper that says they managed to get through four years of "school" without getting kicked out. Most of them can't find their ass with both hands, and since they already know everything, have no interest in learning how.
Sure, there have been and are still a lot of fly-by-night online degree programs, but who would you rather have working for you? Someone who spent four years laying up drunk in a frat house and who has never worked a day in their life but who has a degree from a "real" university, or someone who busted their hump supporting themselves and their family while taking courses online at night and on the weekends to improve their lot in life?
Personally, I'd rather have someone who understands what it means to EARN a living and who will get the job done right the first time (even if I have to train them myself), than someone who can't even understand that if the firm opens at eight in the morning, that means you are to be at your work-station with your computer up and running and actually working on something that will earn the business money AT eight in the morning - as opposed to straggling in at 8:15 and then spending the next 20 minutes Facebooking your friends to find out who got laid last night.
Of course, all of what I just wrote is meaningless if, like the government, you're more concerned about making sure your employees have had the proper political indoctrination than you are about whether or not they can do the job.
Online education is in its infancy. In twenty years it will either be the norm, or traditional colleges will have reformed themselves. One of the things the nation's current debt crisis is doing (I hope) is teaching our young people that's it's more important to start out your adult life with your head above water financially than it is to have a fancy degree for which you are way over your head in debt. That's a lesson I wish I'd learned early in life.
Ned| 7.21.11 @ 12:57PM
I look for a good mix from applicants - somebody who has had an actual job, doing actual work, for actual money (sorry, interns, that ain't you) in parallel with school. If I can discern that an applicant put themselves through school - and even better, without a lot of debt at the end, they stand a good chance of getting on the short list.
But, no, an on-line degree doesn't get you far here.
An Ivy degree with no parallel job history *might* get you on the short list, but only if there's indication that they were doing something significant outside of campus. By itself that hugely expensive Ivy degree buys you nothing with me. In fact, I have been known to ask why somebody with a $250K degree is even applying for a $30K job.
Back when I did my degrees I could earn enough in the summer to pay for the next year of school. My son just graduated (major public university) a month ago, and there's no way he could have earned each summer the $18K it cost us for a year of school. But he came away with a fairly prestigious degree and no debt, and now works here with me for the summer, getting hands-on time to go with the technical program he starts in September.
Ground Control| 7.21.11 @ 5:14PM
"...filled with students who can't really do the work at a high level but can can bluff their way through."
From what I have seen personally, most of these "students" don't need to bluff their way anywhere. The college profs are all too eager to carry them through, as long as they learn that most vital of lessons: Communism = Good, USA = Evil. A significant portion of the student body I saw should never even have graduated High School, much less been admitted to a University.
Mark in LA| 7.21.11 @ 5:47PM
I remember there was one of those 60 minutes type shows years ago. It showed that alot of government employees that needed a degree for advancement would turn to these diploma mills and their friends in HR would turn a blind eye.
I am sorry that you are blind to reality but anybody who really wants to learn something at a high level needs to be in the vacinity of people who are doing it now. That excludes the faculty of most on-line colleges. I went to UCLA and we had some great professors. One in particular started Broadcom. He specialized in large scale integrated circuit design and build. He had a course series where students designed and sent out for fab their own IC. They tested and debugged it. This level of hands on work is not available to on-line students.
One more laugh your ass off thing. I worked at a company where one of the employees in my department had a Phd. Nobody could figure it out. One other employee figured he must have bought it. One day it spread around the company that he was supposedly also moonlighting as a professor at one of these diploma mills. Everybodies immediate response was to burst out laughing when they read what his supposed engineering specialty and research interests were.
Quartermaster| 7.21.11 @ 6:37PM
The so called "Professional Societies" have been the biggest offender in these matters. The "American Society of Civil Engineers" has pushed for years to require a BS to gain licensure as an Engineer. The Land Surveying Societies have been pushing teh same racket as well. While I have no trouble requiring training, I have serious problems with spending 4 years in a classroom with a Prof that went from zero to PhD, with *ZERO* industry experience, then went to a university to inflict himself on unsuspecting students. The majority of Engineering profs these days have never done any day to day engineering, and it shows. We see the same disease in Surveying programs as well, it's just more serious there than engineering. They may be qualified as far as the accrediting agencies are concerned, but they are utterly unqualified from a professional standpoint.
Few licenses should require a degree that can not be obtained without worshiping at the academic altar. About the only exception I can see is Medicine, and the fact you can practice as a physician in Europe with a BS, and they get first class medical care, is an indictment against the AMA.
Rein in the conspiracies hiding under the guise of "professional societies" and you will go a long way to curing the disease of credentialism. We already have a ton of credentialed uneducated people and don't need anymore.
Petronius| 7.21.11 @ 9:23AM
college-n: a vehicle for propagandists who are otherwise unemployable due to their self limitation of despising commerce, and possess no marketable skills in any case. 2. an institution that conducts rituals of mandatory hoop jumping, after which the jumper becomes eligible to join the managerial class.
Ground Control| 7.21.11 @ 5:17PM
Axiom: Those who can't do, teach [badly].
Corollaries: Those who can't teach, teach Gym. Those who can't teach Gym, go into politics.
The Big E| 7.21.11 @ 9:59AM
I have already told my daughter (she's 11) that I will be happy to do all I can to pay for her to get a college education, however, I will not pay for her to waste four years of her life putting off growing up while obtaining some meaningless degree with no employment options beyond assisting others in obtaining meaningless degrees. If she wants to finish her education with a license or certificate which grants her entry into the job market, or with a degree in the hard sciences or math, or with a degree which puts her straight into business, then I'm all on board. But if she wants to get a degree in anything ending in "Appreciation" or "Studies," or any other such useless degree, then I'm taking the $200,000 and buying an Aston-Martin.
Ground Control| 7.21.11 @ 5:19PM
This is the most focused, cogent, inteligent, and insightful comment EVER!!!
Quartermaster| 7.21.11 @ 6:41PM
If more fathers had as much as he demonstrate, the academic fraud would end post haste.
Suzanne Rhoades| 7.21.11 @ 10:30AM
Our 17 yr. old daughter has decided against college and the debilitating debt that comes with it. We're surrounded by parents, however, who seem to be deriving their own sense of self-esteem based on where their kids "get in" to college. We've started telling everyone she's taking a "gap" year because they think we're committing child abuse by not sending such a smart young woman to college. I read a lot of these cry baby articles by the parents bemoaning the college system but for what? Their children end up attending anyway because, in the end, they've bought into the whole corrupt system. I would much rather read a book about someone actually bucking this system then succumbing to it. Obviously, certain forms of employment require degrees (doctor, lawyer, engineer, accountant, etc.) . But the parents who piss and moan and pay anyway are the ones supporting this house of cards.
MATT M.| 7.21.11 @ 10:35AM
I have a 16 year old grandson who will be attending college next year. The last thing in his mind is any difficult subject. He is interested in the "college experience". Which means a college in a pleasant climate with good bike trails.
Occam's Tool| 7.21.11 @ 11:57AM
That's useless, Matt. He should go to work. I was a Bio major, pre-med. I had fun with my GFs and maintained a magna cum laude.
MATT M.| 7.22.11 @ 9:25AM
I have suggested that he work a real job for a year, save his money, then his parents match what he sved and that is what he has to spend for college. When that runs out, repeat.
ActorProf| 7.21.11 @ 10:51AM
I teach college. I've insisted that both of my kids learn a trade along with earning a degree. My daughter can fix and program computers, and is earning her degree in History. My son can weld and is earning his in Business. My trades were finish carpentry and offset printing, both of which I did while in graduate school and post-doc.
I beleive in Higher Education (I work at a midwest State school, which is still -- barely -- affordable). My university is pretty representative. There are truly great minds who are committed to imparting their knowledge. There are hacks who just coast on tenure, which really browns me off. And there are the political correctness police. I advise my kids and my students to read extensively and demand their money's worth.
Still, in order to make a life and a living you should have both a profession and a trade.
Bottom line is an old Jewish saying "A man who does not teach his son a trade prepares him for brigandage."
Occam's Tool| 7.21.11 @ 11:56AM
True, ActorProf. My problem was the opposite---I was in pre-trade studies, and I wanted to get some education along the way. (Science degrees are useless very quickly without continuing ed in your field.)
By the way, may I briefly shill for TCU here? (I'm an alum, not an employee) It has a wonderful selection of merit based academic scholarships, including full tuition Chancellor Scholarships (which I held for my entire time as an undergrad---required a 3.5 to maintain.). Well worth looking at. For the guys---some excellent profs, good facilities, GREAT pre-med program, and the most gorgeous women alive outside of Cullman, Alabama.
Butch | 7.21.11 @ 5:19PM
Sent one of my daughters to TCU, Occam, and she got a very good education, BBA in accounting and Master of Accountancy. She is a CPA now. Have to agree with you about the good-looking women, too, but that's just Texas for you (although about half their students, I believe, are from out of state). Good school, expensive but not ruinous, not enough propaganda in the core courses for her to mention it. She entered a girl, and exited as a well-educated adult.
Ed| 7.21.11 @ 12:03PM
I teach college courses as well (in general biology and anatomy and physiology). The best teaching these days is done at four-year, private liberal arts colleges, four-year state universities in the Deep South, and two-year community colleges. The community colleges have a lot of part-time adjunct teachers, but these teachers tend to be conservative. It is almost impossible for a conservative or libertarian to get a tenure track position (or tenure) these days, especially at the "big name" institutions. So, let the buyer beware.
POST American| 7.21.11 @ 11:12AM
---Putting aside the decades and decades
of Marks-ist ideological domination, and
Freemasonic control of virtually the entire
American educational establishment ---
WHY is the pressing and chronic problem of
the rediculous costs of college NEVER EVER
an issue ---even at election time?
Never even a passing mention when discussing
college generally. ---WHY? ----WHY?
ANSWER ---This is how we're training generation
after generation that debt serf-dom is 'normal'.
That's WHY
Truncheon| 7.21.11 @ 12:15PM
What I demonstrated to my children, is that books and information are in fact obtainable outside the confines of academia.
My kids also witnessed the typical family conversations between my high-school dropout self, and the many Doctored relatives that get together each Christmas.
Through example I showed them how real intellect and knowledge is good-humored, cogent, succint, and honest. My relatives demonstrated that "university" knowledge is bitter, incapable of being stated succinctly, and revolves round other things than honesty.
Since I'm regarded as among the most successful in my extended family, and everyone knows who to call should they need a small loan to tide them over, I've managed to spare my children the illusion that college is a requirement.
Perhaps in some earlier decade, wasting one's early youth listening to lunatics spew Marxism for 200,000 USD was a good deal...
The Big E| 7.21.11 @ 1:18PM
"Through example I showed them how real intellect and knowledge is good-humored, cogent, succint, and honest. My relatives demonstrated that "university" knowledge is bitter, incapable of being stated succinctly, and revolves round other things than honesty."
Amen. The idea that one's level of education is necessarily indicative of one's intelligence is ridiculous. One of the things about the political environment in this country is the number of people who assume that just because so-and-so went to a prestigious school they are better equipped to govern than someone who did not. Leftists are the worst in this regard, but they are far from alone. It also amazes me how many blue collar union members routinely pull the level for leftists who view them as subhuman because they do not have degrees from prestigious universities.
Education is wonderful and I'm all for it, but education and intelligence are not the same thing and frankly, that's a fraud which needs to be exposed and dispelled.
YeloStalyn| 7.21.11 @ 12:18PM
The way to change it is for those who do the hiring to start hiring people based on potential rather than credintials.
Once the degree means only that you went to college, rather than that you are a master of some field, then hopefully people will stop going causing the insitutions to change accordingly.
It is also a shame that VoTech schools are looked down on. Not everyone is an acedemic. And not everyone should be. There's no shame in being a plumber making more money than the lawyer who looks down on you because he's got some caligraphy on paper framed on the wall. Go figure.
Beer f.m.h.| 7.21.11 @ 12:33PM
I took a pass on fathering children because I did the math and concluded that I just could not afford them. This article confirms the wisdom of my choice. It cost me my marriage, but at least I won't spend my old age in poverty.
Thomas Baker| 7.21.11 @ 1:38PM
No, but you will spend it in loneliness. No one will care about you in your old age.
You will have no visitors in the nursing home.
Hope your money is a great comfort to you then.
Delta Zelda| 7.21.11 @ 3:39PM
You are not alone. I'm sorry it cost you your marriage. I understand to a point. The single guys all wanted children and the divorced guys already had them. Since I was determined not to raise children, that pretty much covered the bases. On my best day I have never understood why people get pregnant. (I am anti-abortion.) If you like having your heart carved out and served to you daily, have kids; they'll do it. You give up your whole life when you have a child, because they come first. If you feel bad, you can't take to your bed, and you can't do what you want when you want. Kids are a bottomless pit into which you throw money. You are stuck with each other until one of you dies. I have nieces and nephews whom I adore, but I can send them back to mommy and daddy.
PJ| 7.21.11 @ 5:17PM
With an attitude like that about kids, the world thanks you for not having any of your own!
What a shame your mother didn't have your attitude in her fertile yrs!
Delta Zelda| 7.21.11 @ 3:40PM
You can have as many kids as you want, but there is no guarantee they will be around to take care of you in your old age. With money you an hire someone to look after you.
DaveD| 7.21.11 @ 5:40PM
And that's the bottom line? That your kids will be around to take of you in old age. That's the reason to have 'em. What a selfish twit. Sure am gald I'm not your kid.
Steve A| 7.21.11 @ 2:41PM
Beer, It's all about you & the math buddy. As long as you can now afford your cell phone & BMW, it's all good.
Tina| 7.22.11 @ 11:23PM
I agree.
simon templar| 7.21.11 @ 1:20PM
Other than the business schools and the engineering departments and some of the science areas, universities are indoctrination centers for anti-American, left wing propaganda. They are tickets to nowhere. They are largely responsponsible for the social and political damage to this society that has taken place since post World War II. Until parents WAKE THE HELL UP and start paying attention to what their children are being taught in these institutions, the conservative movement and traditional American values will continue to erode and vanish. This is the front of the war and most people do not even recognize this FACT.
cicero| 7.21.11 @ 1:21PM
Cicero's first law of economics: "Debt expands to meet the money allotted to it."
As the government throws more and more money at the educational system, the system sucks it up through higher salaries, more employees, and more expensive facilities. In the meantime, in order to get more and more students into the schools, and keep them in so that they can keep the money flowing, the standards have been lowered so one and all can get in and stay in.
We now have university presidents making more that $1million per year; professors teaching 1 to 2 classes a week for $400 - $500 thousand per year; not to mention football coaches at $4million per year.
Back in the day, just before student loans became popular ( My last year in undergraduate, you could get $600.00 per semester. Most students used the money for the Spring trip to Florida.), I was able to work the midnight shift in the auto plants, and go to school during the day. Law school was prioced so that the books were more expensive than the tuition.
All of our social problems and maladies can be traced directly to one government program or another.
Adam| 7.21.11 @ 2:35PM
Reading through these posts it seems like a lot of sour people who never attained a college education. You know, not every professor is a "Marxist". My most "liberal" professors were all centre-right at minimum. Not all colleges are equal. Some are objective, others are not. Do not generalize all of higher education.
Please, do not denigrate the accomplishments of other people because you have negative conceptions of something many of you never experienced.
Much like what you're writing in complaint, no one knows everything and therefore no one should behave as though they do. Stop being so arrogant.
Steve A| 7.21.11 @ 2:45PM
Adam, What college did you attend?? 10-1 you do not respond.
Adam| 7.21.11 @ 3:14PM
McGill University.
Your odds were wrong.
I fail to see how anti-elitism is not just elitism with a different colour.
Steve A| 7.21.11 @ 4:22PM
So, good ole McGill University. I have to send my kids to another Country to get a "Center Right" faculty. Is this what you are telling us? Can you rattle off a dozen or so colleges in the US that fit your description out of the thousands?? 10-1 says no.
PS: Um, sorry, but I'm not buying the notion of a "Center Right" in Kanuckland.
Adam| 7.21.11 @ 4:50PM
I have never attended any university in the USA. I cannot comment honestly and objectively on the best institutions. What I will say is given the number of educational choices in this country it is hard to believe they are all rotten.
Why do you not buy the notion of centre-right in Canada? They have a vastly more conservative government than we do. Don't think socialised medicine means a bunch of communists -- that's just simplistic.
Currently, Canada has a Conservative Party majority in Parliament; in addition, the past several years have been Conservative-based coalitions. The country has a reasonable tax climate without all the absurd loopholes for special interests, a low corporate tax rate and they drill-baby-drill. They are incredibly open to skilled/educated immigrants. They weathered the financial crisis well given their conservative banking climate and no mortgages for the undeserving. Do you actually know anything about Canada? Have you ever lived and worked there? I often find Americans mock me for my Canadian education merely because it's Canada.
It must be nice to sit on your high-throne in AmeriKKKa and mock Kanuckland, eh? (Your spelling with a "K" was completely unnecessary)
Quartermaster| 7.21.11 @ 6:54PM
Canuckistan's definition of a conservative is far different than in the US. A Canuck Conservative is quite liberal on the political scale. Canuckistan has also shown itself to be a very leftist country in its laws. All we have to do is read the reports of teh human rights commissions and all the other government PC nonsense that is enshrined in Canuckistan's laws, and I breathe a sigh of relief that I don't live in your paradise. here I can also own any fire arm I please without having to worry about some idiot leftist who thinks they can control crime by preventing the law abiding from arming themselves.
There are insane states, like Massachussetts, and Kalifornia, but I'm quite able to stay away from those socialist hell holes.
The US ain't great, but it beats the pants off Canuckistan's Nazisim.
Adam| 7.21.11 @ 7:13PM
Just because you say that Canada has a leftist government does not make it true. I gave three examples of reasonable government policies in Canada -- fair taxes, low corporate rates and conservative, profitable banks. Just because a country has a large segment of its population that cares about human rights doesn't mean they have a horrible government. The Maritimes/Quebec have vastly different views than the Prairies or BC. Do not try to claim the entirety of the population prescribes to "PC nonsense". I can pretend that 1) all Americans are gun-toting morons who believe Jesus Christ speaks to them on the daily or 2) that all Americans are liberal atheists who want a Workers' Utopia. Ya know, generalising an entire population because of the behaviour of a few.
So what laws you speaking about? You didn't name a single one.
Have you ever been to Canada? If you aren't in a major city guns are easy to own. This would necessitate you'd visited the country and perhaps lived and worked there. Ya know, possessing a basis to legitimise what you spout.
Also, Canada has far less violent crime than the USA -- care to explain how? It has nothing to do with gun ownership rates. Guns neither deter nor create crime: people commit crimes.
Nazisim? How? Because they have a broader social safety net than the USA and a social health insurance system?
Kilgore Trout| 7.28.11 @ 8:38AM
Easy, far fewer blacks.
Matt| 7.21.11 @ 4:23PM
I enjoyed most of my college classes and had good grades. I really studied more than I partied, but must admit it was largely a waste of time and money for what I ended up doing. My wife and I have discussed this at length, and we will encourage our kids to enter the workforce first and then explore college if (and only if) they think it will further their career.
Adam| 7.21.11 @ 4:51PM
The problem with this strategy is entry level jobs worth having require a 4-yr degree. It's sad but true.
Thom| 7.21.11 @ 5:43PM
Nursing, long haul truck drivers and making $28.00 an hour to start on a UAW assembly line with just a high school diploma or GED don’t require 4 year degrees. These jobs aren’t worth having Adam? 30 years ago the primary purpose of a degree requirement in business was to filter out applicants for interviews because the Government (Public) school system diploma was already useless as a measure of education. Thirty years ago it took a 2 year degree from a Community college to get in the door or certified military training related to the job you were applying for. Now Master’s and PHDs are the new standard for filtering down applicants to do the same jobs . If you are going to speak about “elitism” you might avoid phrases like “jobs worth having” because when I was making market rates with a four year degree in a field I’ve now been in for nearly 40 years, “sanitation engineers” in NYC were making more than anyone where I worked doing the job I did. The average postal employee salary is equal mine today and it does not require any degree to become one of those.
Quartermaster| 7.21.11 @ 6:58PM
The reason for credentialism is that Companies used to administer IQ and aptitude exams to determine if a person had the brain power to be trained in a certain pursuit. It ended with the so called Duke Decision because some ill educated black guy couldn't pass the tests and alleged racial discrimination in a lawsuit. he just couldn't bring himself to see that he didn't have what it took and to go find something he could do. the scoff law courts gave him his wish, and the country has suffered for it ever since.
Thom| 7.21.11 @ 7:40PM
Twenty, thirty years ago there was a nationwide push to raise up “teacher” salaries to improve education outcomes even though most teachers were paid well for their 180 days of “work” vs the normal 240 for the rest of us. “Accreditation” was the gold plated buzz word of the day back then and I knew someone that tried to become a teachers and eventually gave up because what “Accreditation” ultimately produced was a teacher’s Guild that restricted those that could enter the profession to the extent that what you thought or what government protected group you belonged to was more important than if you could actually teach anything at all. We see the results 30 years later. Everyone has all sorts of credentials but the outcome has not improved due to it.
DaveD| 7.21.11 @ 5:44PM
That problem is exacerbated in today's economic climate. When you get 100 applicants for a single job the quickest way to legally winnow the field is to throw out those lacking college degrees. Then you can pick out a couple older folks for courtesy interviews and get on with finding the best of the rest.
Adam| 7.21.11 @ 5:54PM
Nursing requires a degree.
If you want to support a family, then jobs that require a 4-yr degree (rightly or wrongly) are the best bets. It's not a fact, and there are exceptions, but it's not worth denigrating degrees over.
Mark in LA| 7.21.11 @ 6:03PM
Hospitals used to have nursing schools that gave the equivalent degree in three years instead of 4. Most of those programs are closed now. Nursing is a very good job that doesn't ebb and flow with the economy like trucking or the trades.
Thom| 7.21.11 @ 6:18PM
My local hospital system still teaches Nursing, it is not the equivalent of a four year degree and there are several levels of Nurses, many just have two year degrees and some intern training. The higher up the pole you go the higher the standards of training and skills but the bulk of the 1200 nurses in the system I worked in do not have 4 year degree equivalents. I know nurses with 2 year degrees, four year pre-med and Master’s but it does not require a four year degree to become a nurse.
Thom| 7.21.11 @ 6:38PM
No it does not require a 4 year degree. I know plenty of nurses since I worked in the health care system here. Who is denigrating degrees? I had five years of credits related to my two degrees when I graduated in 1988. I've added another year on top of that since and a fair amount of specialized training related to my career field. I've spent a lot of my life on "campus" but I still know people in my field that don't have any degree and were very successful at what they did and paid off their homes early because they didn't carry the "college debt" problem through the first ten years of their working life. If it takes a 4 year degree for Long Haul truckers (making 60,000+ a year) and "sanitation engineers" to support their families we are going to end up with the same chronic shortages of these jobs as we have with Doctors and Nurses going on two decades now. No nation can afford for every job to be accompanied by a $200,000 higher education bill on top of a nominal $100,000 Public education. None.
Thom| 7.21.11 @ 6:09PM
Pretty close. I've seen some pretty disgusting practices in regard to EEO stuff that added to your list interviewing someone of “color” when race was specifically excluded on the applications to prevent application discrimination and said interviewer had to call enough applicants until they could determine via their voice inflection if they were “black” so as to make sure a fitting quota was met to keep EEO off the division’s back. As James Earl Jones used to tell students he talked to, if you got the goods doors will open for you, if not they will still open outward for you.
I worked for the same corporation back in the seventies but in two different divisions. One division serviced NASA, the other the military. I did the same job (position and grade) for both but NASA required a four year degree period which naturally bid up the cost of each position and excluded me from even consideration while I did the same job for the military which required clearances, etc. I don’t mock the value of a good education but much of what higher education has become today would get you thrown in jail under racketeering laws if so applied.
As many freshly newly minted products of “university” are learning today, much of what they’ve been promised over the years has the same value as the cost to print their degrees.
Oldefarte| 7.21.11 @ 4:55PM
Good thoughts/ideas/comments, most. My business/accounting degree from a Catholic university allowed my above average earnings and retirement after 35 years of employment with a major corporation. In retrospect, I probably would have obtained a better professional-oriented education from a much cheaper state university [without the necessity of 48 hours of philosophy and theology required courses], but I do feel that I possibly obtained an appreciation for the beauty of artful things of life from my liberal arts courses. As a senior, I do think that the educational process does not devote enough resources to non-college education. The vastly needed revision of our public school system should include it inclusion of employment related instructions such as welding, carpentry, electrical wiring, etc that would allow HS graduates not financial able or willing to attend college to gain education in subjects interesting to them and enhancing their employment/income earning capabilities. Additionally, possibly the government should encourage/establish community college type trade schools free to students that would teach these crafts-subjects. As stated by some of you, not everyone is dedicated/desirous of attending college in order to OBTAIN AN EDUCATION AND A DEGREE. They are sometimes more interested in the college life affording them the social life opportunities of spring breaks etc, and correspondingly the college experience is a total waste of their time and of their parents' money. If Sally Sue sole ambition is to get married to rich Jim Bob and have babies, then her college degree would be worthless. In this economy and with this president and his fellow socialists Democrats currently destroying our economy as we once knew it, a college degree may be worthless to just about everyone anyway!!!!!!
Mark in LA| 7.21.11 @ 5:59PM
Maybe if the Republicans hadn't been so intent on destroying manufacturing jobs and the trade through massive immigration, legal and illegal, and guest worker programs we wouldn't have everybody thinking they need college.
Blaming the Democrats exclusively for the destruction of the middle class is just plane stupid. It has been a bipartisan project.
Quartermaster| 7.21.11 @ 7:04PM
True, but the Dems have been the prime examples of anti-business behavior. The regulatory environment we have, combined with our onerous tax structure, had driven much of our manufacturing offshore. The main push behind the regulatory environment has been the looney left. And that includes the Dems and the Republican left (the Rockefeller wing that included people like Ford in the past, and Romney, Graham and McCain today. Liberalism is the key to this, not party.
Thom| 7.21.11 @ 7:21PM
A friend of mine has no degree, in his mid-forties and is supervisor of a type of work that pays him $33.00 an hour forty hours a week even if he doesn’t leave the house and per diem when he and his “helper” are on the road which is most of the time. His “helper” starts at $20.00 an hour and gets paid for every hour he works including overtime rate and most of the time they are waiting on others to do their part so they can do their one hour gig and get paid a full 8 hours for day in and out. All that is required for this job is a high school diploma, US citizenship and a clean bill of health with Home Land Security, a couple weeks of very specialized training and a willingness to work day, night, weekends and holidays some times and spend a fair amount of time away from home in a year and out in some weather at times. He can’t keep a steady helper despite paying an entry level position over $40,000 a year plus overtime and tax free per diem at government rates. A year or two on the job and most can handle the job well enough to become their own “crew” and take on their own “helper” which expands the business yet it is difficult to expand the business because people with high school diplomas won’t take a job that pays over $40,000 and requires some inconveniences. That’s why most of the jobs off shored have been exported to other countries where people are willing to work whereas here everyone wants a “job” but many don’t want to work. My profession has the same problems and has been exported to places where the same work is done for 1/10th of what it cost here for the same product. The shipping cost of my product is essentially zero thus I have to compete against people all around the world that can produce the same product for much less. My friend doesn’t have that problem and can’t keep his entry level positions filled long enough to grow the business, particularly with the younger generations. If I lost my job I would work for him until I could get my income level back but most of the currently unemployment won’t even try. That is why the bulk of the jobs exported have been. Many Americans want a college level pay check for jobs that require them to do something that might make them sweat or be uncomfortable without doing the work required to cover the cost of their labor and benefits. Ask the million UAW workers on pension, many from early buyouts how costing the company so much that it can only make a profit on $30,000 vehicles and up how that works out in the long run when most people can only afford a $20,000 vehicle with five year loans….
Thom| 7.21.11 @ 5:19PM
Everything government subsidizes has an unrealistic demand curve and run away cost…..Education, Healthcare, Housing are just three large examples of this.
By the time I left my four year college in the winter of 1988, after 8 years in night school and working a full time job, my tuition had jumped from about $24.00 a credit hour to over $88.00 or a threefold increase. During this same time the “first Black Governor of Virginia and descendent of slaves” had reduced the “state’s” subsidy to Colleges/Universities either down a few points to 68% or from 68%. The affirmative action crowd at the school was outraged they would actually have to pay more for their right of “education”. Even the “first Black Governor of Virginia and descendent of slaves” was offended by the back lash this received.
Needless to say, by the time I got my degree I could no longer afford even my portion of the tuition cost (plus new books). Then the College became a “University” with residency and tuition rates shot off the chart. My school often sends me requests for donations for the alumni association and can’t seem to grasp why I don’t subsidize the school I could no longer afford over 20 years ago….. The “state” doubled down on stupid about the time I graduated by offering a guaranteed price protection program for parents that only allowed tuitions rise by a mere 8% annually if you paid a certain amount into a state college fund for basically a decade or so in advance of your yet unborn children’s need to go to “college”. Such a scam.
The Education and Healthcare industry have a great deal in common today but I believe the Education industry has outstripped the price inflation of the Healthcare industry for some time yet there is no King ObamaEd program to bent the cost curve down, give “free” educations to millions more, etc… Clearly we need to “means” test in order to control the cost of subsidized college “educations”…
Calling this a racket is being too kind. This is what Fascism (private industry in bed with government to protect it from competition and feeding off the public treasury) breeds. John Galt would probably understand that better than most….
I got from my college education what I needed for my career and my school was ranked in the top ten in some liberal arts programs. My field of study was in applied sciences and targeted to meet a growing demand in business that has served me well but price inflation then and now far outstrips what the market will bear for the same course of study today.
The unsustainable fiscal monsters government has created through its subsidy programs will ultimately collapse and do far more harm had it not endeavored to make stuff “free” for some at the expense of most in the end. A good education should be a precious thing but for most today it is just a merit badge used to get the foot in the door of all the jobs that require a college degree to even get an interview. This is usually what happens when you debase the value of something by making it “free” rather than earned. Find a college graduate today who can actually tell you what his “education” cost and you will get a better feel for this.
Quartermaster| 7.21.11 @ 7:07PM
It has been said that the Education is bubble is the last bubble remaining, and it will burst soon. It's not sustainable.
Thom| 7.21.11 @ 7:23PM
You are absolutely correct. Housing, Healthcare and Education bubbles are all created by government.
Jeamar37| 7.21.11 @ 5:57PM
This is nothing new. When I graduated high school in 1955 and started applying for entry-level receptionist positions, I was beginning to see the ads for receptionists stating, "college degree a plus." Didn't make sense then; doesn't make sense since I acquired a degree years later.
Intelligent Design| 7.21.11 @ 8:54PM
Brick and mortar colleges are headed in the same direction as newspapers, brick and mortar book stores, and the buggy whip. With colleges being so grossly over-priced, it is inevitable that they will lose business to online schools.
Thom| 7.21.11 @ 10:05PM
One can only hope because I could not afford to get the education I got at today's prices... In 1988 the actual cost of my tuition plus the average cost of new text books per class (122 credit hours, $275 total cost per credit hour plus $2000 in text book cost and no residency room and board) was around $35,500 or half the mortgage on my house I bought two years later. If everyone has to have a 4 year degree to get a job in this society everyone will be paying two mortgages for most of their life, one on the house and one on their education which doesn’t include the nominal $100,000 Public Education everyone gets between K-12.
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POST American| 7.21.11 @ 10:30PM
----GET the Rockefeller sleaze ops
--and Freemason control grid OUT of education,
and out of the churches,
and even their Marks-ist front op would
fold.
AGAIN, for the source of the poison look
no further than the capstone EUGENICS
and Globalization (ie cultural destruction)
foundations.
They MUST BE confronted, called out and
prosecuted for an entire century of economic
mess-making and legion EUGENICS crimes
against humanity.
They MUST BE dismantled and put away for life.
There is NO OTHER WAY.
Richard Baker| 7.22.11 @ 9:31PM
The part I despise is that during the admission process the applicant must prove he has so many hours of volunteer hours or as my wife calls them "slave hours" and which I call compulsory volunteerism. Ah yes, the Marxist professoriat.
Nice| 7.22.11 @ 10:58PM
if my daughter's experience is anything to go by where she endured rants about George Bush in English Lit.
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http://www.honey-gifts.com
D Roamer | 7.24.11 @ 3:47PM
Most of us do not need a college education. Graduate from high school with good communication skills and then learn a trade at your community college and or tech school. An auto mechanic would make $ 40K to 50K. Liberal arts grad will not match that.