Tell me your thoughts.
Below, an excerpt:
...[L]ots 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.
3 comments:
I read about Peter Thiel's idea to encourage people to drop out of college earlier and my first thought was the same then as my reaction to this article: your Mark Zuckerbergs and Bill Gates are not the norm. A very small percentage of people are going to be able to succeed that astronomically.
Yes, the system is broken and college is not for everyone who actually enrolls. The incentives for colleges to get students (and their money) should perhaps be toned down to decrease this large minority of students who are wasting their time in classes. But the fact remains that most students neither have the luck/skill/inherent smarts to be a Zuckerberg nor are they destined for the lifestyle that never needed college in the first place. I'm willing to bet that most people reading this post will look back on their college career as very beneficial.
Overall, Stossel was just too broad. Not all professors are incentivized through research- that describes only one type of school. Not all people can get a leg up without an education. He recognizes a problem that is real and urgent, but in my opinion, swings the pendulum too far in the other direction.
Relevant links:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2011/04/higher-education_bubble_0
http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/is-college-worth-it-answer-may-depend-on-accurate-net-price-estimate/36848
http://chronicle.com/blogs/techtherapy/2011/07/05/episode-85-how-harvards-new-cio-is-planning-for-the-next-mark-zuckerberg/
Thanks for the links, Ben!
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