You do NOT need a College Education...
- Sophia Angeliqueposted 13 years ago
0@Aya, yes. And that is the point of this post. Obama actually wants people to be educated in order to increase employment. He thinks that if more people are educated in the States, then they will increase the job market.
However, it's not 'education' that's lacking. It's skills. And one doesn't need to go to university to gain skills!
I also have a degree that I don't use. It is singularly lacking in skills with little worth in the market place unless I go back and study for another 5 or 7 years and pass masses of other examinations to enter the 'profession'. Not willing to spend one more ounce of my life in a classroom!
I'm just figuring what the chances are that you are someone else, and just joined up specifically to say this to me anonymously.
Oh, dear.
However, if that is not the case, then there is a difference between an education and a qualification.
An education is obtained throughout life through persistent informal study. A qualification is obtained in order to be able to earn a living.
When the debt incurred in order to gain a qualification is so vast that one spends the rest of one's life paying it off, and furthermore, education gets confused with qualification, then things begin a downward spiral.
The point of my initial post was that 'educating' 25% of the population was not necessary in order to get this country going again. And I think that the confusion is that many are confusing qualification for work with education for life.
Yes, I understand that.
And that's what is so screwy...
They've got the cart before the horse.I did see that in your OP, Sophia. But the college requirement these days is not limited to doctors, lawyers, etc. Like I said, in the company I worked for, you had to have a Bachelor's at minimum to become a secretary or receptionist, and most of those folks were studying for their Master's.
Take a look at the availability of jobs out there. Employers can pick and choose who they want out of hundreds or thousands of applicants for each and every job. Most of the time, they're going for the college grads.
Agreed on the tenure of the "most successful." Problem is, I doubt folks like that would be applying for a job in my company. Besides, most jobs don't need a Bill Gates or Richard Branson personality. They need worker-bees -- people who can follow the rules and get things done on time and within budget, and play well in the sandbox with the other children.
Obviously, you do not understand the basic driving force behind the US economy.
Debt.
In order to obtain a college education - you must go heavily in to debt. This debt is unlike any other debt in that it can NEVER be written off - EVER. You cannot go into bankruptcy to avoid this debt. There are special laws written that protect this debt.
You are then "rewarded" with the ability to spend a good proportion of your working life repaying this debt by being offered a higher salary by the "system" which needs you to be indebted in the first place. Thus college graduates will always be paid more than their "uneducated" brethren and it will always be "better" to have a degree.
The higher the debt burden of any profession, the higher the rewards in later life. This is why doctors are paid more than physiotherapists.
You do not need to be a member of Mensa to understand this.
Dear me. I never said any such thing.
But - the USA has and does use the education system to place a substantial debt burden on it's citizenry - and this debt burden is legally protected like no other debt burden.
In the UK, we are only just starting to use that tool - we have used public health care, property prices combined with cheap loans and more recently speed cameras to achieve similar debt burdens. As the US is now adopting public health care - we are creating a loan system similar to yours.
In France they tend to do this with confusing inheritance taxes and "living taxes," because free education is a "right."
All roads lead to Rome it would seem.Sorry you did not understand in that case. Yes - your choice. Want to drive your car to work because that is the only sensible way to get there? No sweat - your choice to buy gas at $3.50 a gallon.
The fact is - the system will adapt if enough people "choose" not to go into debt - as with the health care. You think it is coincidence that it is being introduced just as a substantial portion of the masses "chose" not to buy it ?
Next up will be "free" college education - same as "free" health-care. I suggest you avail yourself at the earliest opportunity.BTW I believe USSR had the highest percentage of college educated population in the World. Yet another indication of where the USA is heading to.
Wouldn't surprise me. Proof that communism was working. Look at all those college degrees.
public education. America would have NEVER allowed socialized education
- EmpressFelicityposted 13 years ago0
My first thought, Bingo!
I guess it's all capitalism's fault
Seriously, I am really puzzled by your personality Sophia - we share so many thoughts including this one about education, how come we are so gravely opposite on the capitalism/socialism thingy?Misha, I understand that. it's not that we are that different. It's that I'm using words that have a different meaning in the US. The word, 'socialism' has a different meaning in International English to what it has in American English.
Also, many people disagree with my initial statements. However, after they've studied the reasoning behind it, they tend to accept what I have to say and agree with it.
Unhappily, it's not always easy to voice something in three words or less. And I don't want to write reams - which I have a habit of doing...Please Sophia, I am not an American either, in fact I spent most of the first 40 years of my life in the flagship hardcore socialist country, the USSR.
You seem to be a very reasonable person in everything - until it comes to socialism and/or rich. Then you loose me completely. You are talking most of this thread about the dangers of over-pushing equality - but isn't equality the motto of socialism, across the globe? Isn't the failure of American education system the result of socialistic approach to it?
Get rid of public schools, let the market do its job and reward the schools that teach better with higher demand and therefore ability to set higher prices and buy better teaching materials and pay teachers better - and pretty fast the status of a school graduate will change.Misha, that's got to do with our definition of socialism. What you're referring to as socialism, Europeans refer to as communism.
Socialism, in terms of the European (not Russian) definition, has absolutely nothing to do with making people equal. It has to do with taxes paying either completely for SOME services that are common to everybody like education and the military of subsidizing them like bus fares, etc.
Every single country I have ever lived in has had socialistic policies, including the United States.
When the States pays for 12 years of schooling, that is socialism. When the state pays for pensions, that is socialism. When the state pays for medicare for pensioners, that is socialism. When the state pays the wages of military and looks after the army, that is socialism.
As my initial thread asked: Why is it that Americans see communism and socialism as the same thing when in the rest of the world they are two completely different things, not even closely related?
I finally figured it out It is because the old USSR was called the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics!!!!
America was much closer to the cold war than the rest of us were. So, the inclusion of the word 'Socialist' in the name of the country you come from, is why people associate socialism with communism here.
With regard to the super rich, I have no objection to some people earning more money than others. I happen to have come from a fairly wealthy home so I'm not anti-wealth. However, there is a vast difference between the environment I grew up in 50 years ago to the one that there is now.
In order to understand that environment, you need to read the works of Robert Reich, the past secretary of labor for the USA. Also, I am not the only one with this opinion. Many, many have arrived at the same conclusion that I have. I see before me the same conditions developing that brought your home country and France to their knees. Remember that Mother Russia killed its Czar because the bulk of the people were incredibly poor and they resented the super wealth of the very rich. I see that happening here within the next 20 years.
Also, there will be wars waged in the next decade as a result of food shortages. This is not something I dreamt up. This is the evaluation of the Pentagon.I do agree that this country is heading into some quite turbulent times. I can't say I agree on your reasoning behind it though, neither I completely agree to your reasoning behind French and Russian revolutions - though what you mention certainly did play its role. I also think you (and possibly most Europeans and - surprise! - Americans) might benefit from opening a dictionary and reading the definitions of socialism, capitalism, and communism. Reading Marx's manifest - it is just one page - does not hurt either
And please, eurosocialists praise themselves on equality. Scandinavian countries are proud that their professors earn just a couple of times more than their cleaners do - it is exactly how it was in the USSR. The difference seems to be that Russians were "early adopters" - or may be too stubborn - and therefore needed to be forced into the system, and Europeans and Americans crept there slowly and much more peacefully. Still, when you rape the human nature and spew on natural laws you eventually reap the same rewards - utter failure. USSR was the first. Iceland is already there, too. The rest of Europe and the USA are on the way...When I feel an urge to get personal on somebody, it usually means they managed to touch on one of my "cognitive dissonance" things. You just got personal on me over socialism at least second time in the last several days. May be the "classical history" that you learnt at school 50 years ago needs some revision, based on your life experience since then?
Sure, here it is getting personal:
if you were really concerned with my understanding, as a polite person you would have said something along the lines: "I guess I did not manage to explain myself good enough. Let me think about it and try again later"
And here is why it is not about my not sophisticated enough English, but about you saying opposite things on the same thread:
To spell it out. The first quote comes from the history course you learnt long ago. The second quote comes from your life experience. The first talks about wealth equality/inequality (not equality/inequality before the law!) being the reason for revolutions, and you state you share these views - therefore you think this kind of inequality is bad. The second quote denies this however and states you do not care about any equality but before the law. They contradict each other, don't you see? And you believe both. Such a situation is called cognitive dissonance.
Now, on some level of your consciousness you know these believes are incompatible, but you don't want/don't have time/energy to reconcile them. Me touching on this point makes you angry, cause you are not ready to reconcile your believes just yet, and I am pushing you. In order to continue masking this dissonance from yourself, you blame my English and claim I did not understand what you said. I did understand though
We all have myriads of those in our minds, thanks to government/religion sponsored education that indoctrinates us from the very early age with a BS that contradicts our life experience. I am no exception, too - though I am actively working on eradicating my very own cognitive dissonances.
- kimberlyslyricsposted 13 years ago0
why on earth wood anyones go to collage?
dang
Yes, I know. I stayed in London before I came here, but if you can imagine it, this is far worse.
I think it's a trend that has taken hold in many countries, particularly those countries where equality of one sort or another was been sort by a larger part of populace.
Well, I'm a HS drop out myself. In fact my 16th birthday was on a Thursday and I did not even stay until Friday!
Now, the reason I dropped out was NOT because I was dumb. I actually was bored to death as I read every textbook from cover to cover in like 3 weeks.
I honestly, truly saw nothing more I could learn there. Or at least not anything I thought I could learn by myself faster and better.
Now here I am today, doing better than ever, working totally at home for myself and earning more each year.
I learned every single thing by myself, with no schooling past 10th grade. I have never regretted dropping out, ever.
So not everyone benefits from school. For me it would have been a waste of life, which frankly is how I see most schooling.
But to each his/her own.Thank you, Bill. I agree. It's what a friend of my says. Those that achieve at university, don't achieve because they went to university. They would have achieved anyway. One can achieve just as much by not going to university. Learning is something that one either likes to do or doesn't like to do.
Bright people generally do. That's why they drop out.
Or start your own business.
Drupal is not the kind of software corporations use. Try to get a job supporting IIS without at least bachelors in computer science and MCSE, this will be a better test.
I think you are talking two very different parts of the job market ladies, I've been to both, and in my experience Lisa is quite correct about big corps/government, and Aya is quite correct about small businesses
of course, it doesn't 'resemble' it, but if done effectively, it teaches participants how to engage in discussion, work through thought processes as to why something will or won't work, consider outcomes of different methods used, etc.
there are businesses now which won't hire based on one's ability to work together in a team setting. if a student has never been required to participate in group settings, they may not have the initiative or confidence to speak up and be heard.
I guess it's how we look at it. If someone in the workplace does not know how to work together with fellow employees, they're not going to have a job for long.
there are various factors that contribute to someones inability to think independently, starting at home. I think it's a combination of factors that make for 'non-thinkers', not simply group settings.
look at some of the 24/7 media outlets..
I don't disagree with the premise that one doesn't need a college education to achieve success, but I do think someone must have enough motivation and self-determination to educate themselves in order to make their own success. Many don't have that, so they sit and become satisfied with their mediocre existence, or fall by the wayside.
as you mentioned earlier very well,
off now to do some errands. Happy New Year to all.Ediggity. Going to College in America doesn't prove anything, except to Americans.
If you live outside of America, you will understand how low the quality of education is here. People in many other education systems learn at school what Americans learn at college. It is not the college that is the problem.
One should be learning that stuff during one's first 12 years at school. The exceptions are the professions like law, medicine, science, accounting, etc.
Change is a natural process of growth. One doesn't go to University for personal growth. One goes there in order to learn a job skill. Supposedly.Normally the majority of people going to college in America who are American want to continue to live and work in America post college. Additionally, I've never met one person who went to college in America who tried to "prove" anything to anyone outside of America. I've lived outside of America many times over the years, and there are many people from other countries who fight tooth and nail to become accepted into the American collegiate education system. I've met very few people trying to leave America to become educated somewhere else, besides study abroad semester classes. Those individuals usually just wanted to check out a different country in Europe for a few months in the summer.
Your right one doesn't need college for personal growth, but it does happen there. In America one does not only go to college in order to learn a "job skill" In America that would be called trade school.
That is the educational system across the board. It is a symptom of a larger sickness which this nation is in danger of succumbing to. Sheer stupidity. That is why we are hated. That is why we were attacked. That is why we are falling. Still time to turn from this path, but not a lot. Strange things are happening. Migratory birds on the coast not acting normally. Weather is strange. Spring here. Oregon coast. Hmmm. No time left for higher ed. RUN! Nevermind. When in Rome....
I highly agree with you there. That was exactly why I dropped out. I already learned what I could and knew I could learn more, faster and have more fun doing it myself.
I really think I learned better on my own. Nothing like screwing things up to learn the best way to do things. All the information to learn whatever you want is out there for free.
Wow, interesting article!
Quoting a bit from right at the end:
"It's the exceptionally gifted adult who feels stifled that stands most in need of a high IQ society. The tragedy is that none of the super high IQ societies created thus far have been able to meet those needs, and the reason for this is simple. None of these groups is willing to acknowledge or come to terms with the fact that much of their membership belong to the psychological walking wounded. This alone is enough to explain the constant schisms that develop, the frequent vendettas, and the mediocre level of their publications."
...and another reason for the backbiting/schisms (I would guess) is that high IQ societies don't have a clearly formulated mission, just something along the lines of "let's hang out together and congratulate ourselves on our cleverness". (Although never having belonged to such a society, I can't say for sure.)
If you get a bunch of really clever people working together towards a common cause, such as cracking the Enigma code during WWII, then I imagine that a lot of the backbiting would disappear. Same with any humans, not just hyperclever ones.
I know I've gone off topic a bit, but I just thought I'd put that idea out there
- oh yeah Misha!
very true pcunix, intelligence doesn't guarantee achieving success as you have shared. gifted children/adults often perceive they're better or different than others and have difficulty with relationships and interacting in the classroom/workplace. I've worked with young gifted children who didn't like being smart. often the same principles apply to both the slow learner and the very gifted - learning how to use and apply the abilities they have.
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