Not saying that people without higher degrees are ignorant, of course there are many ways to learn. But I think many people wouldn't find the motivation to learn without the social pressure to get a degree. So that pressure effectively achieves a society with less ignorance.
In the US you should fix the problem of the crazy tuition fees that send people into bankrupcy, though. In countries like Germany, tuition is free, i.e., the whole society pays for your degree. I find this reasonable: as a member of society, it benefits me that e.g. we have competent doctors for when I get sick, and that they are the best possible (i.e., selected by knowledge and skill, and not by being rich enough to pay for a degree).
On one hand, I agree.
On the other, you hit the nail on the head. This is a socialization issue. As much of the USA gives a nod to individualism, the fact is we are taught to not take that too far.
The status quo feeds the higher edu beast. But there are too many blindly chasing the promise, and only piling up tons of debt. The wrath of Higher Edu Industrial Complex continues. No questions asked.
Yes. We can fix the tuition issue. But that also means saying "Sorry Charlie, you don't qualify." This latter bit, no one wants to discuss.
In addition, the truth is, cost is a function of demand. Edu prices - like housing prices - were driven up by demand; demand that was increase with cheap loans and easy availability.
Edu's charge more? Because. They. Can.
But everyone gets to go. Some use the opportunity wisely. Some do not.
But if the pay model changes so must the who gets to go where model.
All that said, edu is not a gateway to success. And the edu model is broken. It's going to implode. When AI replaces the vast majority of jobs (including white collar) then there will be an excess of edu'ed people with too much free time on their hands (and too much debt with no viable way to pay).
Perhaps higher edu isn't the only thing headed for a reckoning?
The missing part of the equation is that Germany also has high-quality, well-regarded vocational education. In the US, university is widely regarded as the only reasonable route to a secure middle-class lifestyle. In Germany, about half of school-leavers go into the Duale Ausbildung system, spending part of their time working as a paid apprentice and part of their time studying at college. The role of universities in society is completely different when there's a good alternative.
I’d be okay with publicly funded education (all levels) if the admissions requirements were a lot stricter.
In the US today, it is happening neither in high school nor in college (at least for most people at most high schools and colleges). The former is mostly about keeping youth supervised while parents work and enabling sufficient standardized test scores to get into college; the latter about getting the piece of paper that allows you to get a livable-wage job.
The same is true for most of the EU, except, notably, the UK, which is the other developed country, besides the US, where higher education is a proper industry and where students often get some serious debt to go to university.
I did all of my studies in the UK, though I'm from Greece. From the start I was struck with how much the public discussion around education is focused on money. It's not so much that university studies are aimed at getting you a (better) job, it's more like the UK society has lost its ability to measure the need for education with any other metric than how much more money you're making afterwards.
With the debate focusing on money like that, I think it will be pretty hard for the US or the UK to do anything about their "crazy fees" like you say. They now see those fees as a kind of investment: you pay some money up front to get a return to your investment later.
That is certainly a broken way to do education, higher or otherwise, but the solution is not to tear down higher education altogether. The obvious (to me) solution is to make it publicly funded again, as it used to be in both countries in the past, so that younger generations can benefit as their parents and grandparents did, without taking on extravagant debt.
It is not always free, but at least at public universities it is really cheap compared to US universities.
Problem with this is, in the list of degrees, useless degrees far outnumber useful degrees.
as someone who keeps thinking if i should go back to finish my ph.d., i can’t help but think of how dogmatic most graduate programs are in addition to being logistical nightmares. there’s basically no time or space for one to explore one’s own thoughts and program unless it specifically matches up with what someone else (namely an advisor) wants to do. there’s so much hand holding through required coursework (and homework) that one can’t hardly think deeply about anything actually original.
the book disciplined minds touches upon this. that those born in institutions will carry that institutional conservatism with them. i have felt this. i went to talk about some of my ideas to a well known and respected researcher. before i could even finish my sentence that began with “i’m interested in...” he cut me off shaking his head and, literally, said “i don’t believe in it...”. goddamnit.
Take an actual graduate course in pure mathematics, very little hand holding.
>there’s basically no time or space for one to explore one’s own thoughts and program unless it specifically matches up with what someone else (namely an advisor) wants to do.
Not necessarily true. Find an adviser that will support YOUR interest (they exist). Sounds like you have some biases against PhD programs without actual experience of being in a good one.
> Take an actual graduate course in pure mathematics, very little hand holding.
i have taken many. and you missed my point. i didn’t mean having one’s hand held through the actual material. that isn’t true at all of course, in part due to poor teaching and in part due to the difficulty of the material. i meant that one is forced to take x amount of courses. i believe, past a certain level, that this becomes extremely limiting. you spend all this time and time effort doing coursework and going to class rather than researching. learning within a context is much better than learning without context, aka most courses. and many schools hardly take any coursework transfers. there aren’t many good reason for this.
and of course i have a bias because that’s what personal experience yields. but there’s no reason for you to insult me. i would wager my bias is shared by many who have been through ph.d. programs. and of course it’s not necessarily true. there are excellent advisors. but they are rare.
I don't find this too troubling - it's important to have a shared fundamental knowledge so you can communicate effectively and not reinvent the wheel, and I don't think most programs are giving you busy work (that's really against the whole ethos).
Is it possible the problem is particular to the US postgraduate system? In UK PhD programmers you are not required to follow any courses. That said, at least at my university as a PhD student you have the right to follow any courses you want for the duration of your PhD (obviously at no extra fee), which I'm absolutely taking advantage of.
I should also point out that a PhD is not just a time to do research- it's an opportunity to become an expert in your chosen field. And you don't do that just by inventing new knowledge. You need to also become familiar with the work others have contributed before you- and by "familiar" I mean "learn it very, very well". Perhaps the US universities are just trying to make sure you don't spend all your time with your nose in your own research, while ignoring everything others are doing around you?
I wouldn’t expect a pure mathematician to be good at this nor to care about it either.
Did you ever read “How to Solve it?” Polya says he became a mathematician because he was too clever to be a philosopher and not clever enough to be a physicist :)
After that you enter into the Ph.D. for 3 years(max 4) and you are right, you can almost do whatever you want. Just bear in mind that either you publish in top journals or your academic career ends here.
Then there's the program itself. DTCs (doctoral training centres) now mostly run 3 + 1 programmes, where your first year is a master's, involving taught classes and a research project. This is to get everyone up to speed on how to actually do independent research, and to build core skills. While it's true that teaching doesn't always form a mandatory part of a doctoral degree, working as a teaching assistant for at least one semester is often mandatory.
In short, you've mischaracterised doctoral education in England and Wales (Scotland may be different) to quite an extraordinary degree. I see no reason to comment upon the "more than our top share" claim, for reasons which are, I hope, obvious.
Well I'm not sure that many people without a first would seriously consider doing a PhD, so this isn't relevant in most cases.
> DTCs (doctoral training centres) now mostly run 3 + 1 programmes
Right, which is a big disadvantage of them. DTCs are just one way to do a PhD and they're not the traditional approach in the UK.
> In short, you've mischaracterised doctoral education in England and Wales
I don't agree! This matches from I see of students going into and coming out of the system today.
Too many have come to believe a degree is the magic. In some cases it is. In plenty of others it's a curse. The time and money could have been better spent elsewhere.
Unfortunately it is, in a grim sort of way, with grads' wages being siphoned off for decades to pay for debt and interest. Over a 15 year time scale even the largest educational debt loads are reducible, but they may be very uncomfortable to reduce for someone making, say, $60,000 a year.
This specific system has very little to do with war or piece - it's only causal link with the society at large is it's funding - how much, by whom and by witch terms.
This is not to say all academia is problematic - but too large areas, as claimed by this article, clearly are.
I believe one could argue rather successfully that we need more poets, painters, cinematographers, musicians and artist of all shades and stripes over scientist if peace is the ultimate goal.
Another citation required. Liberal arts and philosophy majors aren't useful in spreading world peace? Ancient historians would strenuously disagree.
The US was / is involved in 5 to 7 "conflicts." Edu isn't helping to stop that. In fact, anecdotally, I see educated people part of the problem. They have become less open minded, less willing to change position because their info was incomplete.
We need thought, and people willing and able to use it. Not education.
See also John Taylor Gatto's "The Underground History of American Education" and Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States".
Oh and your assumption that education somewhat prevents wars is completely false. Societies like pre ww2 Germany and Japan were full of well educated folks.
http://news.gallup.com/poll/7768/war-support-education-gap.a...
"The results provide evidence for both the grievance and stability arguments, providing strong support for the pacifying effects of education on civil war"
> There is a modest decline in war support as educational levels increase from high school or less, to some college, to college graduate (with no postgraduate education). However, the largest gap occurs at the highest level, between those with a postgraduate education and those without. Only among the postgraduate group is the majority opposed to war, 56% to 40%, while the other three categories all show majority support.
Postgraduates almost don't count since there are so few of them in a civil society. So virtually no difference between high school level and college graduates, which does not support your point.
Yes, and these educated folks opposed the Nazis. The parts of [Weimar culture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_culture) that were the centre of art, music, literature, poetry, mathematics, and science was the parts that did not become Nazi.
Out of their Nobel Prize Winners, many of them were Jewish. Out of the places that participated most in that culture was Berlin (famous for the [Berlin Circle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Circle), also the area that voted least for the Nazis).
The people who were cultured were less likely to be Nazis. The gay clubs in Berlin were later shut down by Nazis. Nazi conservatism was to some extent a backlash against the permissive and flourishing culture - and they associated Jews, gays and Marxists with that culture.
I'm not saying cultured people can't also be barbaric - they can. But it's also not true that somehow the most cultured place in the world was hiding a dark secret - the parts that were cultured were not the parts that instigated the backlash.
Negatively correlated? We'd need hard and reliable data to compare and make proper judgment here, and it is going to be difficult since almost everyone involved is not neutral.
The problem is that as humans, we tend to believe that the ones who support different parties/ideologies have low IQ compared to our own parties/ideologies.
It is far from being obvious because intelligence and education is usually widespread among various groups and currents of thoughts.
As individuals it is actually very dangerous to think in this way, because it leads us to underestimate our adversaries wherever they are.
It's not much different than the housing crisis / crash. The unaware are fueling the fire, only to find out they're stuck with a bill beyond their means.
It's only a matter of time before higher edu implodes. It's not sustainable. It's not practical.