Teachers and leaders of American Society need to stop telling our kids to go to College!

[Ail]

mrstickball said:

richardhutnik said:

mrstickball said:

richardhutnik said:

JoeTheBro said:
I agree with the general idea but not those hogwash ideas in your post. If you don't have the drive to go to college of course you shouldn't go. But if you are on your way to becoming the next Bill Gates, you should not be forced into trade school. And 4 years of a language goes against your main point. If a kid is just going to do construction, he should not be forced to learn German lol.

What is needed is high schoolers get sufficient education to enter into the job market at a competent entry-level position on the higher end.  The college system is now broken.  It produces twice as many graduates as there are positions for, all saddled with debt that doesn't match what the pay is.  I would say to add two more years of technical training on top of high school, to get people ready for the work force.

Working with a lot of kids, I think it'd be better to cut the last year off of HS and add an extra year for trade school or college prep (if they want to go that route).

A middle ground that would work is the last year of high school now be training for a trade, and then the following year be an internship where they go into the field.  You end up adding one more year of schooling, but the last one would be work, preferably paid.

I understand colleges are graduating twice as many people as there are positions for.

Its not surprising. I've said it a thousand times, but looking at bachelor's degree statistics by decade is very eye-opening.

Here's a link:

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_300.asp

From 1976-7, approximately 919,000 million degrees were conferred to men and women.

In 1989-90, it was 1,050,000, or an increase of 10,000 degrees per annum.

From 1989-90 to 1999-2000, it jumped to 1,237,000, or an increase of 18,700 degrees per annum (a 87% increase in the growth per annum in just 10 years).

From 1999-20 to 2009-10, it jumped to 1,650,000, or an increase of 41,300 degrees per annum - an increase of 120% in 10 years.

 

What should that tell you? The growth of degrees conferred has ballooned 413% in just 20 years. Just like home ownership, that creates artificially high prices, meaning our students are over-paying and under-recieving when it comes to college. Even worse, the critical STEP degrees are doing horrible. There has been virtually no growth in the number of students in ~30 years. Those are the degrees that *really* matter, as they create technologies that drive our economy forward.

That's not how you compute an increase or a rate of growth..

An increase of 120% over 10 years like you write it would mean 2.7 million degrees in 2009-10.