Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Get Rid of College

"...by the time children are six, they are completely educated." - Ray Bradbury


A friend of mine who is a podiatrist told me he could teach his entire job in six months. I believe him. A woman I know studying to be a nurse had to drop out – temporarily, she hopes – because she could not pass the algebra course.

Why does a nurse need to know algebra? She doesn’t. Algebra exists in real life, but not for most people. Another woman told me years ago she became a nurse in ten months. Now a four-year college degree is expected.

I could go on, so I will. An old girlfriend, who has an MBA in Accounting and Finance, had to take a calculus course twice to pass it. Does she ever use calculus? No. Will she ever? No. So why did she have to take it?

Many college degrees are worthless. Whatever happened to Jimmy Olsen, cub reporter? Now to work on a newspaper a four-year degree is required. I have one. They’re worthless. Everything I learned I could have learned in six months on a newspaper.

Apparently college degrees are supposed to be filters. What they’re supposed to filter out, I don’t know. It certainly isn’t the worst, considering how many journalists are liberal idiots. As for MBAs, some of them are the publishers of newspapers (how did that happen?) and none of them saw the collapse of the Mainstream Media at the hands of the internet.

I’ve worked for MBAs from Harvard and Yale. They didn’t know what they were doing. It should be as it was in the past – people should start at the bottom and work their way up.

I am amazed at the stupidity (or is it just ignorance?) of so many college graduates. In college I once had to borrow a typewriter (yeah, a typewriter) from a girl I knew, whose father was a Political Science professor.

When I picked the typewriter up from him, he said, “The bomb is armed. Just put it next to Hitler.” I laughed. When I returned the typewriter, I told him, “The bomb went off but Hitler escaped. Now they’re after Rommel.”

His eyebrows shot up to his hairline, and he said, “I’m glad to see that not all of my daughter’s friends are political and historical ignoramuses.” Again I just laughed.

I learned about Rommel being involved in the attempted assassination of Hitler when I was 11 years old. These days, you can get a Ph.D. and still never have heard of it.

Is the purpose of college to make people stupid? And of schooling (which certainly isn’t education) in general? Jefferson, Washington and Franklin had almost no “formal” schooling. They did pretty good.

I know a very old man who became a lawyer merely by passing the bar exam. He never took a law class in his life. It should be like that today.

You could close down colleges, get rid of all the degrees, and it would make no difference. Did Andrew Carnegie have a degree? Did Bill Gates? You could dump the MBA completely and the only difference is that things would get better.

If you want to be a doctor or dentist, you should be able to apply to doctor or dentist school without a degree, take the entrance exam, and see if you pass.

School, if anything, cripples many kids. Public school was boring. Even college was boring, although not as badly as what I endured before college.

Degrees don’t mean a damn thing anymore. College doesn’t, either.

10 comments:

Wraith said...

What are you, with the NSA? Get out of my brain! ;)

You're absolutely right. College(STEM fields perhaps excepted) is nothing but a way to suck large amounts of money out of people who are vain enough to want recognition, but not useful enough to earn it.

Keoni Galt said...

I learned more from teh Interwebz in 4 years then I did from 5 years (I changed majors in year 3) at my State University.

Nowadays, I make my living doing trade work I learned while working my way through college.

My degree is useless.

One Fat Oz Guy said...

My understanding is that companies use College as a defacto IQ test since choosing applicants based on IQ was deemed discrimination.
So companies assume the better the college you went to the higher your IQ (since you either need high marks and high IQ or be a minority to get in).
But a turd driving a Mercedes is still a turd, regardless his qualification!

Unknown said...

I had some good classes, but otherwise my degree is worthless. Fortunately I graduated with no debt.

Anonymous said...

Apparently college degrees are supposed to be filters. What they’re supposed to filter out I don't know.
----------------------
Money from parents.

Educators are a cut brighter that general population.

And they have shamelessly used their authority to con the world into thinking they're that vital.

Anonymous said...

And they have been aided in that by the erosion of common sense ongoing since modern liberalism began in the 60's.

Think about it.

If you can convince people that splashing a bucket of paint on a canvas is art, then convincing the world that an expensive degree is needed to measure blood pressure or check prescription drugs for interactions is pretty easy.

Carnivore said...

The problem we have is the demise of focused "colleges" (as opposed to "universities") and technical/training schools where men could quickly come up to speed in their chosen career in addition to the inability to "learn on the job" anymore.

Universities have evolved into progressive hives and its occupants will do anything to maintain their position, status and income. It's quite clear we are in a college bubble, but our ruling elite will do everything possible to prop it up.

Wyowanderer said...

Nurses need to take algebra because the schools of higher learning employ teachers who teach it, and the schools need to justify those positions. Same with much of the art history/poetry/fluff classes. An engineer doesn't need to learn poetry, but he might need the course to pass.

Glen Filthie said...

I have no use for the liberal arts degrees and the humanities but this time you are out to lunch, Bob.

They should teach advanced calculus in high school. There should be no excuse for failing it either. Everyone should have a rudimentary grasp on math and the sciences. Taking and passing these courses proves you can LEARN. That is important in North America where half the citizenry are unproductive, uneducable fucktards.

You need an advanced education because I guarantee you that for any good jobs out there - your bosses will be educated and you had better be able to talk to them on their own terms. Everyone needs critical thinking and problem solving skills - math teaches that in spades.

My position is we need to throw out the snobbery and elitism that goes along with degrees. Everyone has some kind of advanced education these days and if some liberal snowflake has a useless degree he needs to know he isn't special. Everyone should be able to clean up a puddle of puke, scrub the toilets and empty the garbage too.

Education alone won't make us better people - we need the 'can do' attitude to go with it.

Ian Sutton said...

I dropped out of a three-year television production and journalism course more than 50 years ago because a flunked touch typing (twice). The college in Canada wouldn't let me advance to the second year for that reason. I didn't want to be a stenographer. Many of the greatest journalists type with two fingers (including the late Ed Murrow). I have spent the last 50 years as a broadcast and print reporter/editor and continue to to use the two-finger method. I'm glad this happened, since most journalism schools are a waste of time.