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The Spectacle Blog
James Poulos, himself a man of letters, thinks there’s a fatal flaw in today’s higher education:
College should be for everyone, we believe, because no college means no job, or none worth having. Americans without a degree are closed off to the lifestyle that gives our modern lives meaning. They lack access to spending power that strengthens apace with their personal identities as career professionals.
At the heart of this view, which seems to accord so well with reality, is a belief that one’s status as a member of legitimate society is determined in America by economics - and that one’s economic status, as a rule, is determined most of all by whether or not you’ve been admitted to college.
This is an illusion - as the very economic value of a college degree shows. For what is it about going to college that results in a job and a “future”? In a few technical or theoretical fields, the answer is still the education. Some students still get hired for mastering a disciplined training in highly specialized skills.
More are hired simply because they have a degree. Relative to that credential, the particulars of their coursework, field of study and sometimes even academic performance are irrelevant.
We do not fixate on higher education as the key to employment because it trains Americans how and where to take their place in the economy. The market does that for them.
We fixate on higher education as the key to employment because no other institution but college really acculturates Americans into “legitimate” society. Those who do not attend college are second-class citizens in a cultural sense first, and in an economic one only second.
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More Blog Posts by Joseph Lawler
http://spectator.org/blog/2011/07/01/college-as-culturalization
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Oldefarte| 7.1.11 @ 12:48PM
This article illustrates a partial sad fact of life concerning a college education, and that is that same determines who has, obtains and maintains a job or employment. Most office-related, professional-technical type jobs require a college degree. More precise, most if not all businesses also demand/require a business-oriented degree, as these companies simply do not have the time/desire to have to waste time tutoring non-business degreed graduates on the fundamentals of business practices/procedures [which a business degree would have afforded them, knowledge wise]. A liberal arts degree is/was great for one wanting to say proclaim poetry to passing strangers on a street corner, or perhaps at a gathering of friends at a cocktail party, but businesses have no use or desire for hired employees possessing the ability to state historical dates/events, poetry, or other type liberal arts type feel good, trivia. Liberal arts degrees are wonderful if pursuing an advanced degree in say LAW, but otherwise is most worthless [unless of course your name is perhaps Gates, Buffett or Trump]!!!!!!!!!!
PCC| 7.1.11 @ 3:26PM
Apart from demonstrating mastery of the bleeding obvious, what is the point of the blog post?
LC JB | 7.1.11 @ 3:58PM
Liberal Arts and the other silly majors, such as Women's Studies only prepare one for teaching or becoming a 'professional' political activist. I have clerks making just above minimum wage with 'soft' degrees such as art and media. It's tragic that someone along the line didn't tell them the truth.
I have to agree with PCC, I don't see a point to the post. ????
Quartermaster| 7.1.11 @ 8:23PM
High School is supposed everything Poulos attributes to College. This reminds of the old European saw about the US, "you can get an excellent High School education in the US, you just have to go to 4 years of college to get it." The High Schools these days are pretty much worthless for acculturation. Colleges have reached that point as well since the Gramsciians have taken over.
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