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The Spectacle Blog
A new study released by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity reports that 37% of employed college graduates don’t need their degrees to perform the jobs they have.
The implication of the study is that attending college is a waste of time. This assumption might be true if a person’s reason for attending college is solely to gain practical training for entering the workforce.
At a liberal arts school, students study many subjects which might not seem relevant to a person’s livelihood. Literature, language, religion, art, and history aren’t considered worthwhile by realistic, money-driven types. They don’t produce jobs like the fields of finance, computers, medicine, and engineering do.
A liberal arts education might not direct a person towards any one particular profession, but it does hone one’s skills in reasoning, problem solving, critical thinking, and writing, all of which are highly desirable for a career in any field. Having a true education, rather than a certificate which denotes your competency to perform a task, makes for a more cultured, well-rounded, interesting individual who is appreciative of the world and how it works.
Vivek Ranadivé wrote for Forbes last year that “A Liberal Arts Degree Is More Valuable Than Learning Any Trade”:
I think we should make the liberal arts education more rigorous. If you teach students one trade, that skill might be obsolete in a few years. But if you teach people how to think and look at lots of information and connect dots – all skills that a classic liberal education gives you – you will thrive.
College used to have value. Now it’s a post-graduate assumption. With almost 70% of high school graduates now going on to college, not going to college has a stigma attached to it.
It’s impossible to have such widespread higher education and keep quality high. A college degree no longer sets a person apart, but keeps him afloat. Graduates feel lost when their degree in a narrow, specified field doesn’t get them the job they envisioned. If people want a technical job, why squander four years and thousands of dollars of debt on an education that’s often just prolonged job training sprinkled with liberal indoctrination along the way?
Tech schools, community colleges, and apprenticeships are underrated. Not everyone is suited for college, and not everyone wants to go. Everyone in America feels pressured to attend, and a college degree is now, according to Dr. Marty Nemko, a career consultant who appeared on John Stossel’s feature about “The College Scam,” “like a hunting license for a job.”
A college education isn’t necessary for most jobs, but a degree has become a requirement simply to apply for many. The result is paralyzing student loans for a generation, and a diluted sense of what education means. If people do decide to attend college, they should be rewarded with an education that will prepare them for whatever the economy might bring.
View all comments (12) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Teresa Mull
http://spectator.org/blog/2013/01/29/more-liberal-please
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mike 3/505| 1.29.13 @ 5:49PM
A liberal arts education might not direct a person towards any one particular profession, but it does hone one’s skills in reasoning, problem solving, critical thinking, and writing,...
Obviously not, considering the number of folks with liberal arts degrees who vote Democrat.
JD| 1.30.13 @ 12:06PM
Actually, engineering and business degrees tend to hone those skills more than liberal arts degrees, which mostly tell people WHAT to think.
Bob K| 1.29.13 @ 6:13PM
Re the comment above from Forbes--the new and more liberal Forbes:
The working men who built Vivek Ranadive's current mansion have trades (or skills) that aren't obsolete and won't be for a while. The $50,000.00 a year computer programmers Vivek hires can't help Vivek here.
Pecos Pete| 1.29.13 @ 7:38PM
I have a granddaughter who graduated in May 2012 with a Masters in Language from a name brand school (meaning they charge a lot of money). She is currently working for $10 an hour as a medical records secretary. Woe is me.
mike 3/505| 1.29.13 @ 8:56PM
"Pesco,"
No insult intended towards your daughter.
Regards,
Mike
Pecos Pete| 1.30.13 @ 8:27AM
Mike, not a problem. She votes strong conservative. My problem is the money wasted on a liberal education that provided her with an education that has a very limited commercial value.
Looking forward to seeing you at the Contest this coming Friday.
PCC| 1.29.13 @ 8:35PM
Go to college to get an education, liberal arts or otherwise; it's not vocational training. If that's what you want, there are better, cheaper, faster, more practical courses to pursue.
A big problem for recent university graduates is that many of them have little or no work experience at all, not even a paper route or shoveling snow or cutting lawns, let alone white-collar experience.
Their understanding of work, capitalism, profit, customer service, responsibility, reliability is almost non-existent.
ggoblue| 1.29.13 @ 11:59PM
hahahahahaha general motors is full of college educated idiots...thats why we are fixing frozen pipes on hte roof in a thunderstorm. they think their diploma makes them smart, but they are so dumb they dont even know they're dumb.
the day they stopped promoting [by merit] off the shop floor, and turned to college grads....thats the day they lost control of the company.
anyone who thinks a lib art degree is better than a trade has simply never built anything. sorry.
ggoblue| 1.30.13 @ 12:04AM
and what is a trade but reasoning, problem solving, critical thinking, initiative, inventiveness....???
anyone who doesn't realize that is not qualified to comment on the subject...but of course they're so ignorant, they believe their own bull...
spike59| 1.30.13 @ 6:26AM
"if you teach people how to think"
----------------------------------------------
if only our institutions of higher learning stuck to that; however, it's more a case of teaching them WHAT to think
Ralph Gizzip| 1.30.13 @ 6:59AM
"The problem isn't that Johnny is dumb or even that Johnny can't think. The problem is Johnny has confused thinking for feeling." - Thomas Sowell (paraphrased)
Denver Todd| 1.30.13 @ 11:17AM
My 2-year AAS earned at a public vocational institute has done more for me than my 4-year BA. I have always been able to put food on the table with my skill. Not so with the BA, which is totally stale. The AAS is just a name though. The skill behind it is what has kept me going.