Glenn Beck apparently did something on his TV show last night about how the idea of going to college and running up debt is a really bad concept. He was working on clarifying what he meant today on the radio show. While people who need skills like people who design rocket ships needs to go to college, people in general don’t benefit from a college education.
Okay, that’s one perspective – especially from someone who dropped out of college – but then Glenn stated examples from history who didn’t go to college – and he chose Thomas Jefferson.
Message to Glenn – outside of his role in government, the single most important aspect of Jefferson’s life was he founded the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
http://guides.lib.virginia.edu/content.php?pid=77323&sid=573588
Up until that point, Pat and Stu were playing their role as the Amen Chorus, but they went quiet at the mention of Jefferson. Jefferson’s view was the self-government only works if people have a good education. Glenn holds the view apparently that college is a trade school whose only purpose is to train people for jobs and provide him a source of free interns.
I went to college twice and ended up with a masters degree in engineering. I value my my college experience because it opened so many career doors. But I strongly object to the premise held by most employers and state licensing boards that you must have a college degree from an accredited school before you’re allowed to even attempt to take the state professional engineering exams. In my opinion Glenn was correct on his TV show yesterday when he pointed out that for many college degrees, spending the same amount of time in a good library would provide more useful information than you absorbed in class, and it would be thousands of dollars cheaper! To bring college tuition costs under control America needs to restore the apprentice option that served us so well until the GI bill allowed the WWII vets to try their hand at college. Fast forward 30 years and the 4-year college degree has replaced the high school degree as the minimum standard for white collar employment. And both college and high school have been dumbed down accordingly to fit the new education model while costs have risen sharply.
Now connect that to Thomas Jefferson if you can.
I agree with most of what you said – the left’s control of the entire education process and the related professional organizations has much to do with why very little will change for generations – but when you have Pat Gray egging Glenn on that the world is only 10,000 years old and wanting to bring back the Scope trials, he pushes me away from what he might be trying to do and Beck just seems like a populist who is starting to believe his own press releases and getting intoxicated by his power.
Fortunately for him, there is a large pool of people who slept their way through school and get their knowledge from passive entertainment, often missing the line between fact and entertainment.
Many people assume that universal publicly fnded childhood education has always existed – some would even argue that’s a socialist progressive idea and should be left to individuals to make their own decisions and pay directly for their children’s education.. Libertarians might make that case – but don’t invoke Thomas Jefferson as evidence of the validity of your point of view – he felt quite the opposite.
You are correct. Jefferson argued that a solid education of the decision-makers (landowners, voters?) in the arts and sciences was necessary for the new nation to be able to survive and compete head to head against Britain and France. I believe he was (and is) correct. There are a lot of people who quote Lincoln and Jefferson without understanding what they really believed. There are times in his life when I suspect even Jefferson himself wasn’t sure what he believed (see Louisiana Purchase). To bring the discussion full circle, I wonder if Jefferson would be as supportive if he saw what passes for higher learning today.
prboylan, I also studied engineering (electro-optics) and must concur… nowadays, most ‘graduates’ do not get a college education, they receive a college indoctrination.
In most degrees, the first two years are now spent covering remedial subject matter. i.e. 30+ years ago, those were the college prep classes you took in high school.
Much of it is now a racket… from book publishing and sales (e.g. changing textbooks every semester to nullify the ‘used book’ market) for the benefit of publishers, to the large cadre of foreign students who are allowed to be TA’s in the name of ‘diversity’ –but can barely speak English, let alone teach– mostly concentrated in the technical or science departments, since most ‘American’ kids now tend to avoid those programs.
The entire agenda seems focused on keeping the huge university/college ‘industry’ chugging along with foreigners, student loans & grants, and bloated faculty salaries and benefits (which are conveniently ignored as a cause of rising tuition rates).
BTW, back in Jefferson’s time, becoming a lawyer did not require a college degree… it was an apprenticeship. Today, the ‘Bar’ frowns upon practicing law without a license, yet in most states there does not seem to be any actual criminal penalty for doing so.
I didn’t look it up at the time, but Jefferson was a college graduate – he attended William and Mary College. He came from a rich family that could afford to send him to the finest schools.