August 13, 2008, - 10:12 am
Charles Murray is Right: College is a Waste of Time
By Debbie Schlussel
I’ve always said that college is a four-year artificial way to keep people out of the work force. For most, it doesn’t teach them anything, unless they are studying engineering or some of the biological sciences. Poll after poll shows that college students are ignorant and dumber than ever–yes, even at the over-rated Harvard and Yale. And the four years in a scenic setting don’t make ’em any smarter. On the contrary, it’s usually the other way around.
Today, scholar Charles Murray–one of my favorite sociologists and writers–has an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, “For Most People, College is a Waste of Time.” It’s an essay from his upcoming book, “Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America’s Schools Back to Reality.”
In his essay, Murray points out how silly and unnecessary college is for everyone except those studying a few scientific disciplines. He proposes, instead, standardized examinations akin to the CPA exam for aspiring accountants. He points out that standardized exams and measurements would actually open up accreditation in most fields to those economically unable to go to college. Everyone, instead, would have to do well on the same exams and could study whereever and however they wanted for those exams.
Of course, you know this will never happen. Colleges are big business. They have NFL, NBA, and NHL players to train. They have talentless, left-wing professors with the same lecture notes and syllabi as 20 years ago to which to pay $100,000 plus salaries. And, after all, doesn’t everyone need to experience a drunken frat party to say they’ve truly lived? College presidents and giant, established bureaucracies that have been built around this mass gathering of airheads, bong-hits, and Barack Obama rallies, would never allow their tax-sucking, rent-seeking, hate-America-pimping, ever-growing fiefdoms to be destroyed. Why stop this genius way to drain America’s hard-working, middle-class families of all their savings and transfer it into the pockets of lazy left-wing intellectuals who look like Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh? It’ll never happen . . . at least, not in my lifetime.
Plus, we will hear the usual stale claptrap ojections that we hear from self-anointed civil rights activists today about the SATs and ACTs–whines and complaints alleging that standardized tests are “racist” and “discriminatory.”
Still, I like Charles Murray’s idea–even if, for now and the foreseeable future, it will sadly not be in the cards. To date, employers continue to put a value (though the value is decreasing rapidly) on a degree at Schmo U. Here’s an excerpt:
Imagine that America had no system of post-secondary education, and you were a member of a task force assigned to create one from scratch. One of your colleagues submits this proposal:
First, we will set up a single goal to represent educational success, which will take four years to achieve no matter what is being taught. We will attach an economic reward to it that seldom has anything to do with what has been learned. We will urge large numbers of people who do not possess adequate ability to try to achieve the goal, wait until they have spent a lot of time and money, and then deny it to them. We will stigmatize everyone who doesn’t meet the goal. We will call the goal a “BA.”
You would conclude that your colleague was cruel, not to say insane. But that’s the system we have in place. . . .
The solution is not better degrees, but no degrees. Young people entering the job market should have a known, trusted measure of their qualifications they can carry into job interviews. That measure should express what they know, not where they learned it or how long it took them. They need a certification, not a degree.
The model is the CPA exam that qualifies certified public accountants. The same test is used nationwide. It is thorough — four sections, timed, totaling 14 hours. A passing score indicates authentic competence (the pass rate is below 50%). Actual scores are reported in addition to pass/fail, so that employers can assess where the applicant falls in the distribution of accounting competence. You may have learned accounting at an anonymous online university, but your CPA score gives you a way to show employers you’re a stronger applicant than someone from an Ivy League school.
Read the whole thing.
Charles Murray is, without a doubt, one of the great thinkers of our time. If only we would follow even a fraction of his suggestions.
True. Imagine the shock for me when I read a memo from my supervisor (MDOC) that reads like the village idiot wrote it. Or another one where the higher ranked administrator was so (common sense) stupid that she allowed herself to be manipulated by a small group of prisoners so that a memo she puts out CONTRADICTS written policy and procedure. In favor of the prisoners and against officers! It took her about 2 more years for her to get fired for over familiarity. She works at the Wal Mart in Belleville Michigan. Yeah college educated a–holes have been a hinderance for the most part. Their condescending attitude isn’t a plus either.
samurai on August 13, 2008 at 10:53 am