Ohhh Henry: “It seems that the more repressive a country is the higher the value placed on obtaining advanced degrees.”

I think there is something to that. In most repressive states, the paths to success lead through the military or the government. Also, tradition cultures value those offices far more than they value business. The path to those offices often lie in education. The US is adopting that culture as most college grads want to work for the guv or a non-profit NGO.

It’s more subtle, but I think socialism encourages education, too. Early socialists believed that greed and attachment to property could be educated out of people. Find people who are obsessed with education, and more likely than not they’re socialist.

I don’t think that it’s socialist/bureaucratic obsession with certification that leads to the obsession with education. I think it’s the *democratic* ideal that all people are “created equal”. It follows that, if some people are not as successful as others, and if racism or some other form of prejudice is not involved, then the explanation must be that those who are not successful just don’t have the right training. After all, in America, everybody is as good as everybody else (if not a little better). It never occurs to some people that they will never be as successful as others no matter what educational oportunities they have, because, in fact, everybody is not born equal. This also leads to degree inflation, because if a university holds high standards, it will be accused of not giving everybody a fair chance.

It all comes down to the fact that the democratic myth that we are all “created equal” willfully ignores the reality of the bell curve (one bell curve, not three).

Only three things kept me out of college- grade 10,11 and 12.

RWW,

I mean that even if there is only one bell curve for society, not three (one for whites, one for blacks, one for Asians, as per Herrnstein and Murray), my point still holds. In other words, I’m not saying (nor do I mean to imply) that those on whom higher education is wasted are predominately of any particular race or ethnic group.

Parents: Be adults and take an active approach to your children’s education!

At an early age, you need to communicate with your children and understand their goals and desires.

Then help them formulate a plan to achieve those goals.

I did this for both my kids and they graduated from the top private schools in their fields and they were both employed before they graduated. Here is how they did it.

First they selected the college they wanted to graduate from when they were juniors in high school. During their senior year at high school they attended the local community college part time and acculated 12 credit hours. Once they graduated from high school, they continued at the community college taking transferable core classes. Since they had college credit from high school, they were able to work while going to school.

As a transfering junior, your college grades are all that counts. No need for high SAT, extra activities or countless AP courses. So, these schools that would not give them the time of day when they were seniors in high school, were offering them all types of scholarships to attend their schools.

The end result is a top school degree, a great job in their field and no debt! But it all starts with open communication with your kids, make sure everyone is around the dinner table.

My parents did not help me and all I have to show for it is a couple degrees in economics. Looking back, I should have trained to become an underwater welder!

Tertiary education being necessary for career success is a myth. I’m a young man who only has a high school diploma. I turned down a scholarship to study in a university and immediately set out to find a job.

I’ve worked in several industries I knew nothing about in several countries I’ve never lived in, always starting at the entry-level, and within a year I was in the head office of all of them. I simply approached my work with consistent vigor and the enthusiasm to learn and perform better. These were qualities I rarely noted in my degree-bearing colleagues.

Hard work, true hard work, with a pinch of curiosity and determination is the quickest ticket to success. A hunger for success, if you will.

Harper makes some good points, but neglects the biggest obstacle to both finding and selecting a college worth attending. That obstacle is the deliberate indoctrination and dumbing down of the potential college student during their attendance of public schools prior to college.
The student’s parents, more than likely, also went thru this manipulative process during their school years.
This leaves both student and parents with the inability to recognize a ‘good’ college from a ‘bad’ one.
The lack of colleges and professors that support “a philosophy of freedom that is founded on moral precepts”, as well as the other important considerations listed, also results from the predominance of college faculty and administration members that have been unable to free themselves from their own indoctrinated and dumbed down public ‘education’.
There is substantial evidence that this ‘schooled’ manipulation is by design for the purpose of creating a drone-like work force that doesn’t question the supposed ‘natural order’ of things. That ‘natural order’ being, the many directed and controlled by the select few.
Anyone read or seen the movie Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut?
Vonnegut certainly saw the ‘agenda’: in effect, the masses are handicapped and manipulated by an un-handicapped elite class.
Until this agenda is eliminated it’s going to be rough going for anyone looking for a college worth spending their precious time and money.

david horowitz was reborn many years ago as a rightwing enemy of the left after his many years as a hard left agitator. however i firmly and strongly believe that he was always a cia agent.

i cannot accept russ’ argument that college degree requirements whether valid or not are used to keep out cheap labor. american firms have been offshoring entire factories and labor teams to get cheaper labor and it’s not just blue collar jobs – especially in technology. thus i conclude that there are other reasons to require a degree when there is no connection between job content and college course work.

companies can and do test. so degrees are a method of screening rather than testing. but that raises the question of degree quality. is a degree from mit worth the same as one from west georgia college? how do you score that in hiring? how can you say that someone with a degree and an act of 16 is the same as someone with a degree and an act of 24?

i do agree that indoctrination depends upon where you go to school and what your major is. however a lot of indoctrination is already embedded in school policies such that overt propaganda may be waning a bit…

more power to hard rain but the reality is that most jobs require a degree and online systems even screen for that now. meaning that pre-qualification questionnaires ask if you have a degree before allowing you to complete applications.

Don’t forget the other main purpose of higher education in the West, which is to serve as a kind of giant sponge or reservoir for the government to sop up millions of productive adults and keep them poor, unemployed, feckless and dependent on handouts. And to make them actually like living in this condition and believing that they have lived the best part of their lives. The lost generation, indeed.