Is College Worth the Investment?

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[URL="http://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2013/03/04/lets-help-academia-destroy-itself-n1523876/page/full/"]Look at how law [/URL]school applications are in free fall.[COLOR="DarkBlue"] I hire lawyers and train them myself. They usually have about $200,000 in debt. To service that debt, I’d have to pay them about $133,333 per year. Do you think I pay a kid with zero experience $133,333 a year? There are far too many graduates and too few jobs, so I can hire a new lawyer for $50,000 – which is less than I made when I started 20 years ago. And that’s one near the top of his class at a prestigious school. Supply and demand is awesome for me; for young people, who largely voted for Obama, not so much. They get the hope but those of us who are established in liberal-approved fields like the law get to keep the change.[/COLOR]

So, we have a higher education system that 1) empowers our opponents, 2) costs too much to both individuals and taxpayers, and 3) provides a crappy product 4) for which there is little market. What can’t go on won’t go on, and we conservatives need to help the Complex to die, preferably without dignity.

Let’s start by rejecting the insane notion that everyone should go to college. Fortunately, the old idea that your kid is a failure (meaning you, as a parent, are a failure) if he didn’t go to college is fading away. There are plenty of successful folks out there who avoided the schooling scam. In fact, getting some real life experience actually doing something useful is now the guarantee of a good career that college used to be.

[COLOR="Blue"]Electricians, technicians, plumbers – people like that can't not get a job for good money. Let the smug gal with the sociology degree sneer at the auto mechanic pulling in $75,000 a year as she hands him his grande Javan Sunrise. Maybe her tribal tatts and self-esteem will keep her warm when she and her roommates can’t pay the gas company.[/COLOR]-...-The centuries-old lecture hall model will crumble. Distance learning is coming, and while the big name schools like Harvard will always have suckers lined up to park their kids for a four year vacation, the mid- and low-prestige schools are going to dry up and blow away. One piece of the puzzle, credentialing (which is all higher education is about anyway), needs to be worked through, but once folks like me who hire people realize that there is little meaningful difference between on-line degrees and in-person ones, the levee will break.

AS POSTED ELSEWHERE

A word to the wise. The other guy is reading this, too. There are so many plumbers, electricians, hairdressers, painters, welders in this locale that you may not actually believe it. Some truly know their stuff. Some 'might just do'. Many are just idiots who turned to welding after their pub folded, which was after their construction company also folded: do you catch my drift? There are no silver bullets and magic tricks. There is no greener grass on the other side of the fence. I heard stonemasons envy architects because they supposedly earn great and do next to nothing...and architects envying stonemasons...while the greatest profession, job or trade turns ideally out to be one neighbor's, this seldom proves to be the case..."oh, but that guy from the op-ed, internet chat, forum said he makes seven figures tax free and spends six months a year in Florida...Oh yea...do you really believe everything you're told? You can't beat MY GUY, tough...in addition to that, he has a line of nineteen year-old topmodels begging him for dates...and here's a secret...I DO, TOO...too bad then I wake up because it's toilet time at 4h35AM. PFFT!