General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhy Getting Higher Education is a Mistake
Well, first, of course, there's that Godawful cost and the debt load you take on.
But even if it were free, higher education is still a terrible idea.
Educated people are always coming up with complexities and indecision. It sometimes just about paralyzes them into inaction while they're trying to figure out what to do.
On the other hand, take my Uncle Willie. He only made it through fifth grade, but he can come up with a simple solution for the most vexing of problems.
The Middle East is a mess? Uncle Willie has a solution: "Nuke 'em all."
Satellite data showing the polar ice caps melting? Uncle Willie has a solution. "Stop putting up them Goddam satellites."
Your car's engine light keeps coming on? Willie: "Disconnect the Goddam little bulb."
Skyrocketing unemployment? Willie: "Cut taxes for the job creators and shut off the unemployment checks. Make the lazy bastards work for a living."
See? Every one of those problems has the experts tied up in knots because of their hifalutin education. Uncle Willie, with his five years of schoolin', has a simple solution for every problem without even having to think about it.
yeoman6987
(14,449 posts)Unfortunately many "Uncle Willie's" are serious in these solutions to our Nations problems.
valerief
(53,235 posts)ProfessorGAC
(65,058 posts)You know who i mean!
aikoaiko
(34,170 posts)MisterP
(23,730 posts)that's the best reason anyone can give for taking it!
mrdmk
(2,943 posts)Do you know rocket fuel is needed to deliver them satellites into orbit
for the literally minded
KansDem
(28,498 posts)"Don't live next door to 'em."
I actually heard this comment from a "good ol' boy" during the 1960s.
rurallib
(62,416 posts)Keep them worthless Canadians out!
for the humor impaired.
lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)George Bush has degrees from Harvard and Yale.
YoungDemCA
(5,714 posts)Son of George Bush (son of Prescott Bush, who was the son of Samuel Bush...etc.) Being a Fortunate Son tended to help.
How well did Bush do in his classes?
Also, keep in mind that higher education was strictly an elite thing in FDR's time (and not all of the elite went to college, either). Nowadays, a lot of highly educated people (particularly young people) are lucky to have a decent job, period. The kind of employment for someone with no education beyond high school simply doesn't exist anymore.
Some of us believe that quality advanced education should be available to and affordable for the masses. Others disagree.
GeorgeGist
(25,321 posts)lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)AverageJoe90
(10,745 posts)Unfortunately, I can't really expect to find a steady job at any point in the near future due to my particular life situation; for one, I'm 24, but I have very little work history at all, not to mention that I'm definitely not physically fit; I can't constantly lift stuff over 40 pounds, or stand for more than a couple hours at a time, tops, without having some real issues. And even if I do manage to complete college, I'd have no idea what to major in, anyway. So yeah, not a good thing for me right now.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)You'll note that poor whites without a HS diploma vote more Democratic than any other white demographic save post graduate degrees.
http://themonkeycage.org/blog/2012/03/23/voting-patterns-of-americas-whites-from-the-masses-to-the-elites/
What does this say about Americas elites? If you define elites as high-income non-Hispanic whites, the elites vote strongly Republican. If you define elites as college-educated high-income whites, they vote moderately Republican.
There is no plausible way based on these data in which elites can be considered a Democratic voting bloc. To create a group of strongly Democratic-leaning elite whites using these graphs, you would need to consider only postgraduates (no simple college grads included, even if they have achieved social and financial success), and you have to go down to the below-$75,000 level of family income, which hardly seems like the American elites to me.
The patterns are consistent for all three of the past presidential elections. (The differences in the higher-income low-education category should not be taken seriously, as the estimates are based on small samples, as can be seen from the large standard errors for those subgroups.)
librechik
(30,674 posts)once I passed the oral and submitted the thesis I was blacklisted out of existence. Cuz all the positions in my field were filled with tenured professors already. Duh. Thus passes 18 years without change in the position area.
doesn't matter how qualified and talented you are-- if there's no position, there's no position.