Is College Worth the Investment?

[ham]

It's all a giant con always going on...
If you ever wondered WHY, EXACTLY Weiss (White) assumed the stage name HOUDINI (HOW-DEE-NEEH), which has become a trademark for that kind of tricks, you may learn of a French conjurer named JEAN ROBERT-HOUDIN: that's why Houdini was pronounced a la French after all.
What Weiss might have thought as an homage, or an easy capitalization on Houdin's true fame (much as Lon Chaney, Jr. chose his father's name as screen name...but who has ever known who Lon Chaney Sr. is...since the 1930s?) became a sort of con to defraud Houdin of his renown over time...how many of you knew of him, anyways?

[ham]

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011 | Posted by Lucy Pitt
Half Of Graduates Unemployed Or Underpaid


UK – A new study has found that half of all new graduates are either unemployed or in underpaid work six months after graduating.

A survey by The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) found that 52% of the 15,655 people who left university last year had not found jobs or been forced to undertake menial work.

Around 59,000 (20%) of graduates had not had a job this year, the highest percentage in a decade and twice as many as at the beginning of the recession in 2008.

The study found that those who graduated in historical and philosophical studies, law, and language were the most likely to end up in underpaid employment. Those who graduated in medicine and dentistry fared best, with just 0.1% unable to find gainful employment.

In the report, compiled for the Association of Accounting Technicians (ATT), the CEBR said the education system was ‘letting a lot of people down.’

Head of ATT, Jane Scott Paul, commented that if the government was asking students to pay £9000 a year in tuition fees they should be entitled to expect a ‘credible return’ on their investment. She went on to say that over 50% of graduates were ‘nowhere near’ benefiting from their degree and that the situation was worsening.

A spokesperson for the CEBR said they expect 55% of all 2011 graduates to be unemployed or under-employed six months after leaving university.

Teenagers are being advised by some commentators that they may be better off skipping higher education and entering into the world of work earlier. Teens are also being urged to carefully consider whether attending university is worth the investment.

http://www.pabnews.com/9365/half-of-grad...underpaid/

[JLydon]

Teens are also being urged to carefully consider whether attending university is worth the investment.

When there's no future
How can there be sin?
We're the flowers
In the dustbin...

[Virtual Bison]

Teens are also being urged to carefully consider whether attending university is worth the investment.

When there's no future
How can there be sin?
We're the flowers
In the dustbin...

The Sex Pistols rocked!

I really miss them

[Martin Eisenstadt]

Katie Kieffer
Why College is Not For Everyone

Peter Thiel is rocking the boat of higher education. The libertarian entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and co-founder of PayPal is sending liberal college administrators into a tizzy with his latest push to encourage young innovators to ditch college for two years and pursue entrepreneurship.

Last week, Thiel awarded 20 young people with “20 Under 20” Thiel Fellowships: $100,000 and two years of mentorship to develop entrepreneurial ventures in science and technology.

Thiel’s dismisses conventional wisdom, which says that college is the necessary next-step for success after high school. He understands that conventional wisdom is conventional ignorance now that the American university system is broken.

Today’s students pay bloated prices so universities can hire a fleets of non-academic staff to monitor student speech codes, distribute cookies in campus lounges and court elites like Bill Clinton to speak on-campus and warn young people never to believe: “There is no such thing as a good tax…”

Tuition is rising and debt loads are mounting while students at institutions as prestigious as Stanford’s Graduate School of Business are failing to learn basic skills. When Stanford graduate students rely on private coaches outside the classroom to teach them how to write for business, you know higher education is deteriorating.

I took a hybrid route for my own higher education. I went to college and started an entrepreneurial venture at the same time. My path was unique and challenging, so I understand first-hand that Thiel is offering young entrepreneurs the opportunity of a lifetime.

In college, your liberal arts professors may provide you with tips on how to outline your thoughts, but they generally expect that you already know how to give a 10-minute presentation or write a 15-page paper. Meanwhile, your business professors do not teach you how to run a business. Rather, they lecture you on business models, assign you to read case studies and tell you to look for an internship.

Looking back, I realize that I really did not need college. I think many young people do not need college to become successful. The real world lessons I took away from my college experience came from running a conservative student newspaper on a shoestring budget out of my dorm room and from the experience I gained during my internship in commercial real estate.

Today, historic numbers of high-school graduates are going to college. More than ever, parents are pouring their hard-earned savings into college educations for their children.

Venture capitalist, author and parent James Altucher argues that it is irrational for parents to blindly pay for their child’s higher education. New York Magazine reports Altucher as saying: “What am I going to do? When [my daughters are] 18 years old, just hand them $200,000 to go off and have a fun time for four years? Why would I want to do that? … The cost of college in the past 30 years has gone up tenfold. Health care has only gone up sixfold, and inflation has only gone up threefold. Not only is it a scam, but the college presidents know it. That’s why they keep raising tuition.”

It is not cruel and unusual punishment to expect an 18-year-old to finance his or her own higher education. In fact, forcing them to do so could help them decide whether they even need college. My parents told me, “You’re on your own for college.” So, I chose to be a college student and an entrepreneur simultaneously because I had a boatload of self-motivation, I was blessed with an academic scholarship that allowed me to graduate debt-free, and, because I had developed a growing network of accomplished mentors who generously coached me along the way.

Parents, before you feel tempted to write out that six-figure tuition check, consider doing yourselves and your child a favor by honestly assessing the skills that your child demonstrates. If your child thrives within structure or if they want to pursue law or medicine, then college is likely the right path. However, if your child thrives in a creative environment, is self-driven and is constantly innovating, you should consider offering them your own version of Thiel’s 20 Under 20 fellowship as an alternative to subsidizing their college tuition.

Thiel contends that many parents shy away from even thinking about a nontraditional path for their children because they view college as an insurance policy. “I think that’s the way probably a lot of parents think about it. It’s a way for their kids to be safe … an insurance policy against falling out of the middle class. …Why are we spending ten times as much for insurance as we were 30 years ago?”

That’s a good question. More high-school students and their parents should consider whether there is an entrepreneurial, Thiel-style alternative to success before they impulsively jump into college debt.

[ham]

See? Even people critical of the model cannot go without extolling the virtues of subsidies, scholarships and the like.
Which are just a way to perpetuate the system...self-proclaimed anarcho-socialist-libertarian Jewish-American philosopher Chomsky in his famous "manufacturing of consent" 1992 2h50 movie, extols the virtues of free and independent press...then gives us examples...a row of "*** studies" and of militant left-wing outfits...among tempered remarks about Stalinism in East Europe and praise of the 1936 anarchist government in Spain that had brought the boon of self-organization to the exploited workers...
Of course there is politely no mention of the 7800+ crates of Spanish gold that the righteous salad bar of "honest" lefties transferred to the USSR via France (as "safekeeping"...what else?).

[Winston Smith]

More teens asking: College? Who needs it?
Anti-college backlash is a result of soaring tuition rates, political forces, and a desire for more accountability in higher education
From wire service reports

He calls it the UnCollege movement: Nineteen-year-old Dale Stephens is urging his peers to rethink the need for college, arguing that they can get more out of pursuing real-world skills than completing homework assignments and studying for exams.

“I want to change the notion that a college degree is the only path to professional success,” said Stephens, who grew up in Winters, Calif., and now lives in San Francisco, where he is building the UnCollege movement and developing a web-based company.

Stephens is part of a small but growing chorus of entrepreneurs, free thinkers, and former students who are questioning the value of higher education. The attack is coming from multiple directions: those who say college costs far more than it should; those who say students learn far less than they should; and those who argue that graduation rates are abysmal.

With tuition rising much faster than inflation, borrowing for college has reached record heights. Two-thirds of graduates now leave school with debt, with the typical borrower owing more than $34,000, according to FinAid.org, an authority on student lending.

Nationwide, student debt is likely to top $1 trillion this year—signaling to some that education is the next mortgage bubble.

The backlash against college comes, paradoxically, at the same time demand for higher education is soaring. Applications to the University of California and California State University reached record numbers this year.

But it could be that the economic downturn is responsible for both the rise in college applications—as students seek a leg up in the job market—and the sentiment that college isn’t necessary, as they take on more debt to get their degrees.

In any case, the growing anti-college movement could put campus officials on the defensive, forcing them to explain why tuition has risen so sharply in the last few decades and how their programs meet the needs of today’s students.

“As family incomes, particularly in the middle class, are stretched and strained, and tuitions rise and state support lessens, [it's not surprising] you would begin to hear voices that say, ‘What’s the value here?’” said Jerry Lucido, executive director of the Center for Enrollment Research, Policy, and Practice at the University of Southern California.

The high price of undergraduate education is at risk of hampering technological innovation, said a spokesman for Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist who founded PayPal and was an early investor in Facebook.

“By the time people are 24, 25, or 26, they often have so much student debt and are tracked into certain careers that they can’t take a short-term risk and start a company,” said Jim O’Neill, who heads the Thiel Foundation.

Last month, the Thiel Foundation named the recipients of its controversial fellowship for people under age 20, giving $100,000 each to 24 students who promised to drop out of college and pursue entrepreneurship.

Stephens was one of them. The money is supporting him for two years while he works on building the UnCollege movement and launching an associated business called RadMatter that’s aimed at making it easier for job-hunters to market themselves to employers, regardless of their educational credentials.

Stephens dropped out mid-way through his freshman year at Hendrix College in Arkansas when he realized that “the direct impact I could have on the world by engaging the community around UnCollege far exceeded the impact I could have by completing homework assignments,” he said.

He said he was frustrated by learning things in the classroom that weren’t applied in real life.

“There were people with good ideas, but we weren’t applying them. We got to talk and write research reports, but there was no execution,” Stephens said.

In promoting UnCollege, Stephens is urging young people to do the opposite—get experiences in areas they’re passionate about, without worrying about the book knowledge that comes from school.

Attacking higher education from another direction are two professors who recently published a book called “Academically Adrift: Limited learning on college campuses.”

Richard Arum of New York University and Josipa Roksa of the University of Virginia argue that many students gain surprisingly little knowledge during college. Their research shows that over four years of college, 36 percent of students “did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning.” Too many students, the authors say, are “drifting through college without a clear sense of purpose.”

That, said UnCollege member Erica Goldson, is exactly why she left after one semester at the State University of New York, Buffalo.

“I didn’t know what I wanted to go to school for,” said Goldson, 19. “I felt like I had been pressured into thinking college was my path, and I was going through all these majors but I couldn’t see myself being happy with whatever jobs I was researching.”

Now she’s living in New Jersey, working as a waitress and making plans to move to Argentina to learn Spanish. Goldson wants to support the UnCollege movement by helping other students persuade their parents that it’s OK to drop out.

Many of those arguing that college is unnecessary for success are like Stephens—technological whizzes who have taught themselves computer programming and other highly marketable skills. Some hope to follow in the footsteps of two famous college dropouts: Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg.

Those guys did not need a degree to make it big in the business world. But for the majority of Americans, piles of evidence show a college degree is increasingly valuable.

College graduates earn 65 percent more on average than high school graduates, according to a College Board report last year. And during the recession, employment rates have been far higher among college graduates than those with less education. Economists predict that the labor market of the future will demand even more college graduates than today—a million more in California alone.

“We are not saying that every single person has to go to college,” said Hans Johnson, a researcher at the Public Policy Institute of California, which has determined that by 2025, 40 percent of the state’s jobs will require a college degree.

“But, by and large, when you look at the averages, you are much more advantaged and have more opportunities if you have more education.”

[Armando Ramos]

John Stossel
The College Scam

7/6/2011

What do Michael Dell, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Mark Cuban have in common?

They're all college dropouts.

Richard Branson, Simon Cowell and Peter Jennings have in common?

They never went to college at all.

But today all kids are told: To succeed, you must go to college.

Hillary Clinton tells students: "Graduates from four-year colleges earn nearly twice as much as high school graduates, an estimated $1 million more."

We hear that from people who run colleges. And it's true. But it leaves out some important facts

That's why I say: For many people, college is a scam.

I spoke with Richard Vedder, author of "Going Broke by Degree: Why College Costs Too Much," and Naomi Schafer Riley, who just published "Faculty Lounges and Other Reasons Why You Won't Get the College Education You Paid For."

Vedder explained why that million-dollar comparison is ridiculous:

"People that go to college are different kind of people ... (more) disciplined ... smarter. They did better in high school."

They would have made more money even if they never went to college.

Riley says some college students don't get what they pay for because their professors have little incentive to teach.

"You think you're paying for them to be in the classroom with you, but every hour a professor spends in the classroom, he gets paid less. The incentives are all for more research."

The research is often on obscure topics for journals nobody reads.

Also, lots of people not suited for higher education get pushed into it. This doesn't do them good. They feel like failures when they don't graduate. Vedder said two out of five students entering four-year programs don't have a bachelor's degree after year six.

"Why do colleges accept (these students) in the first place?"

Because money comes with the student -- usually government-guaranteed loans.

"There are 80,000 bartenders in the United States with bachelor's degrees," Vedder said. He says that 17 percent of baggage porters and bellhops have a college degree, 15 percent of taxi and limo drivers. It's hard to pay off student loans with jobs like those. These days, many students graduate with big debts.

Entrepreneur Peter Thiel, who got rich helping to build good things like PayPal and Facebook, is so eager to wake people up to alternatives to college that he's paying students $100,000 each if they drop out of college and do something else, like start a business.

"We're asking nothing in return other than meetings so we make sure (they) work hard, and not be in school for two years," said Jim O'Neill, who runs the foundation.

For some reason, this upsets the left. A Slate.com writer called Thiel's grant a "nasty idea" that leads students into "halting their intellectual development ... maintaining a narrow-minded focus on getting rich."

But Darren Zhu, a grant winner who quit Yale for the $100,000, told me, "Building a start-up and learning the sort of hardships that are associated with building a company is a much better education path."

I agree. Much better. Zhu plans to start a biotech company.

What puzzles is me is why the market doesn't punish colleges that don't serve their customers well. The opposite has happened: Tuitions have risen four times faster than inflation.

"There's a lot of bad information out there," Vedder replied. "We don't know ... if (students) learned anything" during their college years.

"Do kids learn anything at Harvard? People at Harvard tell us they do. ... They were bright when they entered Harvard, but do ... seniors know more than freshman? The literacy rate among college graduates is lower today than it was 15 or 20 year ago. It is kind of hard for people to respond in market fashion when you don't have full information."

Despite the scam, the Obama administration plans to increase the number of students getting Pell grants by 50 percent. And even a darling of conservatives, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, says college is a must: "Graduating from high school is just the first step."

We need to wake people up.

[Don Dresden]

Mike Adams
This Year Keep Your Kids Home From College
8/8/2011

I am frequently asked whether I would be willing to spend the money necessary to send my own kids to a four-year brick and mortar college. The answer used to be a qualified “yes.” But college isn’t what it used to be. So my answer is now a firm “probably not.”

While I once considered college to be a good investment for most high school graduates I have come to believe that it is a bad idea for most of them. Note that I am not saying that college simply doesn’t deliver the good things it once did. I am saying much more than that; namely that it often hurts young people. And it does so in at least four distinct ways:


1. Spiritually. Three out of four Christian teens walk away from church after they leave home. The fact that they do so is largely the result of what they encounter in college. Here in my department (Sociology and Criminology) at my university (UNC-Wilmington) the anti-Christian indoctrination begins in freshman survey courses. Feminist professors are seemingly incapable of discussing important issues like same-sex marriage without engaging in ad hominem attacks against Christians. For example, those who adhere to the majority view (in support of traditional marriage) are characterized by their feminist sociology professors as advancing “hetero-sexism” driven by “homo-phobia.” It is no wonder that in classroom discussions the students voice support for the professor’s opinion. They want to avoid being attacked personally. And so a false consensus emerges. Eventually the students abandon their worldview in a move based on the false premise that their views are somehow out of sync with social progress.

Just in case the student retains some of his religious upbringing an array of special programs and special offices – designed to indoctrinate on religious issues –is there to reinforce your child’s spiritual drift. Our own LGBTQIA Office organizes specific lectures teaching kids that their biblical views on sexuality are actually a form of mental illness, or phobia. This helps explain the second way kids are often harmed by college.

2. Morally. I don’t know when it first hit me. Maybe it was when I saw our (former) Women’s Resource Center director handing out condoms to students during orientation. Or maybe it was when I read about the “sexual health expert” who gave a lecture (on a UNC campus) called “Safe Sodomy.” Or maybe it was the time they erected (sorry) a vibrator museum on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill. No, I think it was the time our Women’s Center put pictures of nude little girls in the lobby of Randall Library. Yes, that was the moment it really hit me. It was right after seeing the exposed breasts and pubic hair of a thirteen year old girl on public display (sorry) in the library that I arrived at an important conclusion: Our universities are being run by some deeply disturbed people who, with feet planted firmly in mid-air, are simply incapable of providing moral leadership. Incidentally, the child porn display was posted only a few feet from a display advocating national health care for, you guessed it, prostitutes. I’m sorry. Sex workers.

It is little wonder why these people attack our Judeo-Christian heritage. Sodom and Gomorrah University cannot thrive in the presence of God. And that is why your child stands almost no chance of being improved morally in the typical college environment.

3. Intellectually. Put simply, college makes most kids think less, not more (and certainly not better). If you don’t believe me try having a conversation with a current college student. And pick a topic like economics – one that should be dominated by reason, not emotion. Throw out a few rational observations and note the emotive responses. You might find yourself in a conversation like this one:

Adult (who went to college prior to the 1990s): Social security simply is not sustainable. When the program was established we had over twenty workers paying in for every retiree drawing out. Now we only have a few workers paying in for every retiree drawing out. If we do not abolish the program we will have to increase the age of eligibility.

Emotional college student: I feel like social security is a good idea. It would be calloused to abolish it and I feel like it would be wrong to increase the age of eligibility.

Adult: The stimulus package was a failure – even if we judge it only by the standards of its proponents. In other words, it fails objectively by the standards it was promised to deliver.

Emotional college student: Even if it failed before, I feel like it could work if we tried it again.

Adult: The national debt just reached the level of our current GDP. And the Dow dropped over 500 points recently. It’s tough to understand how we’re going to be able to afford national health care and another stimulus package.

Emotional college student: I just feel like national health care is something we need to do – something we need to provide for our weakest citizens. I feel like we could afford it if we would just stop fighting all these wars.

Author’s note: Unfortunately, you have just read excerpts from a recent conversation between this author and a college student who has never drawn a paycheck. The author will return to this issue momentarily.

4. Financially. My university is facing budgets cuts of over 15% in the coming academic year. We could easily cut more than 15% from the budget by doing two things: a) Getting rid of six-digit high level administrators who have overlapping jobs and limited responsibilities. b) Getting rid of the unnecessary offices that house unnecessary mid-level administrators. Start with the Queer Politics Center (The LGBTQIA Resource Office). But don’t stop there. Get rid of the Black Separatist Center (The African American Cultural Center). Then, close down the Abortion Politics Center (The Women’s Resource Center). Let these people pursue politics on their own dime.

It will never happen, though. The administrators will all stay employed and the offices will all remain open. They’ll just raise tuition to cover the shortfall from the proposed budget cuts. In this economy, that means that after your kid graduates from college his part time job as a bartender will become his full time job as a bartender. And he’ll need those extra hours because, guess what? Now he’s got debt! And the interest on student loans is about to skyrocket.


There are many jobs out there that require a college education. Doctors must have degrees before they can go to medical school. Lawyers must have degrees before they go to law school. But college is no longer affordable. And that means college is no longer a place to go to figure out what you want to do with your life. So if your teenager is uncertain about what he wants to do then tell him to stay home for a year or two and get a job. And save some money.

After your teen draws a paycheck for a year or two he’ll be less inclined to adopt an economic philosophy based on feelings, not reality. He will be able to use his savings to keep his debt under control should he decide to go to college later. And, best of all, he’ll gain some maturity that will shield him against the spiritual and moral decline his professors call “enlightenment” and “liberation.”

[ham]

Emotional college student: I just feel like national health care is something we need to do – something we need to provide for our weakest citizens. I feel like we could afford it if we would just stop fighting all these wars.

Why doesn't he provide an answer to this?
Oh, wait...it has not to be based on emotion, right? But maybe Cheney handing out contracts to his paymasters...people running away with crates full of money from Iraq and covering the ass of [omitted] in the Middle East is not going to help the cause...so, hell...emotion is what keeps us alive after all, give them the good old crap

Three out of four Christian teens walk away from church after they leave home

Being brainwashed by someone else, perhaps?

Our own LGBTQIA Office organizes specific lectures teaching kids that their biblical views on sexuality are actually a form of mental illness, or phobia. This helps explain the second way kids are often harmed by college.

It took a while, but it finally got to you...now enter all those proud germanophobes, wartime spin-doctors, politicking filmmakers, scared you-know-who etc etc that big brother let loose to forge the great victories of 1918 (yes, it goes THAT far) and 1945...now you realized that while it was fun to lampoon the Germans (Japanese, Ottomans...) as mentally ill to help the cause, those very same anodyne doctrines can be indifferently used to nail just about everybody...yes, they were used to discredit German stuff during WWI, then Jews, then Germans again, then Communists...but you too can be a target...

Adult (who went to college prior to the 1990s): Social security simply is not sustainable. When the program was established we had over twenty workers paying in for every retiree drawing out. Now we only have a few workers paying in for every retiree drawing out. If we do not abolish the program we will have to increase the age of eligibility.

Sure...let's start with YOUR pension/retirement/whatever..."oh, no, wait! I was from a cohort that did pay, work long hours, never abused public services" yadda yadda...oh, yea...
You mean this is THE honest university teacher worth of his salary while all others are politicking liars having a good one at OUR expenses?