HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Charles Cooke: Why Should Your Degree Guarantee You A Cushy Job?
In the West, we are hard at work establishing a culture that fetishizes education, and instills the belief that college — regardless of its content or application — will, and should, inexorably lead to a better job, or a better life, or even a better America. Worse, that one has a right to these things. In doing so, we have created a Potemkin aristocracy, one based upon the erroneous and tragic conceit that having letters after one’s name intrinsically confers excellence. We are happily encouraging our children to join its ranks, regardless of whether there is any evidence that to do so will be in their interest. This is supremely ironic, given that so many of America’s billionaires — i.e. those who pay for more educations and create more jobs than anyone else — are college dropouts. Indeed, both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates failed to finish college. Can we say with a straight face that this has adversely affected them, or America at large?
On Thursday, I met a guy down in Zuccotti Park. He speaks six languages, but he has nothing useful to say in any of them. He is the movement’s perfect spokesman.
If an education doesn’t add value — that is if it doesn’t let you do something useful that you couldn’t do before — then it’s not valuable in terms of employment. Why should it be?
Posted at 6:37 pm by Glenn Reynolds
This is a serious problem. A nation with many highly indebted graduates who feel entitled and are frustrated is a nation with a serious problem.