Higher Education

Anyone who knows me knows that I have been a lifetime advocate of universal access to a higher education.  This is in no small part due to my lack of access to a higher education when I graduated high school despite my being academically capable of taking advantage of a higher education.  I was eventually able of obtaining an undergraduate degree thirty years after graduating from high school.  While it was personally satisfying, it did not actually provide me with any educational growth, as it was more or less affirmation of what I already I knew.

A lot has changed since I graduated from high school fifty years ago.  Now, if you can garner admittance to a college or university you can generally go to the college or university.  It is no longer a matter of affordability as it was in my time.  While there were some student loans available fifty years ago, they were somewhat limited so if you were not on scholarship you had to have some external form of financing to go to college.  Now, student grants and, in particular, loans have expanded in size to the point that a student can obtain a degree with little or no money out of pocket.  The result is that the former student is burdened with loan payments for much of their working life, sometimes chasing them into retirement.  Regardless, I am sure that I would have taken advantage of these loan opportunities if they existed when I was of college age, as this would have allowed me to realize my educational dreams.

Much has been said and written about the financial burden place on the student with this loan system.  Particularly as regards at “for profit” institutions that sell students the idea of an education in their dream profession.  Often the cost of the education is astronomical or the job situation is such that the student cannot support the cost of the training; either there are insufficient jobs in the profession or the pay scale for the profession will not support the repayment of the training loans.  While there are periodically attempts to correct the more egregious situations, all too often this continues to be a problem.  One would suppose it would involve “trade” schools.  While that seems to be problematic in that area, it also occurs in such areas as “for profit” law schools.  Therefore, it crosses the gamut of types.  There is always someone willing to steal money from the uniformed – see Trump University.

However, there is a much bigger problem I was seeing when I was still working.  A quick perusal of current trends in Colleges and Universities shows that the problem is growing.  It is what I call the Vanity Degree.  Students are going to college and majoring in a subject or discipline that they have absolutely no plans on pursuing as a career. 

I will not even mention the type of disciplines as I do not wish to embarrass people but, really, if it does not have any bearing towards the career you want to pursue you are being stupid.  Most of the ones that come to mind have no career opportunities except to teach others in a college setting.  You know better.  As a former employer, a well-rounded employee is desirable but a stupid employee is not.  I worked in Information Technologies.  Do you want to guess what classes I wanted a recent graduate to have studied in college?  I would have no problem with non-IT classes.  In fact, it would identify a person who had other interest and thus a student that could associate with people in the real world.  Nevertheless, a degree in some other subject with a few IT classes, regardless of how well they did, put this applicant in the “second” pile.  That is the pile you went to if the top candidates did not work out. 

As colleges and universities are cranking out more and more graduates degrees are becoming required for positions that did not require them in the past.  The irony is that, quite often, where any degree was acceptable in the past as that was all that was available, a position-specific degree is much more readily available now and any old degree just does not cut it anymore.

I know that my opinion is going to fall on deaf ears but take it from someone who has been there:

• Just because you can get the money to go to college, make sure you have a realistic plan to pay it back before you go.  Go and hope is not a plan.
• If you going to a “for profit” institute, do due diligence and independently verify:
  • Their placement statistics.
  • Their professional certification.
  • Annual income.
• Choose a major that reflects you career plans.  If you want a career, start pursuing it in college.