{"id":779,"date":"2011-04-18T01:08:31","date_gmt":"2011-04-18T06:08:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/?p=779"},"modified":"2011-04-16T12:10:48","modified_gmt":"2011-04-16T17:10:48","slug":"a-couple-of-thoughts-about-college","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/2011\/04\/a-couple-of-thoughts-about-college\/","title":{"rendered":"A Couple of Thoughts about College"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n<p><strong>Watch out for the coming <em>college bubble<\/em> where tuition at prestigious universities crashes. Maybe some of those universities will crash as well.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I read a couple of things this week about college. They seemed to be related (in my mind at least). The first item was on <a href=\"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2011\/04\/10\/peter-thiel-were-in-a-bubble-and-its-not-the-internet-its-higher-education\/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29\">TechCrunch<\/a> and it discussed the <em>College Bubble.<\/em> Consider this qoute:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Hmm.  That does sound like college. I believe in learning. That used to mean  that I believed in\u00a0 college. I still believe in learning, but I am not  sure that I believe in college these days. Consider the things that  current colleges believe warrant degrees:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Administration and Supervision PK<\/li>\n<li>Telecommunications<\/li>\n<li>African and African American Studies<\/li>\n<li>International Policy<\/li>\n<li>Applied Behavior Analysis<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I could go on, but are you kidding me? How about we go back to degrees in<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Math<\/li>\n<li>Chemisty<\/li>\n<li>Physics<\/li>\n<li>English<\/li>\n<li>Art<\/li>\n<li>Psychology<\/li>\n<li>Pre-Med<\/li>\n<li>Pre-Law<\/li>\n<li>fill-in-the-blank Engineering<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>and how about lumping a lot of degrees and calling them<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Bachelor of Arts<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>College seems to have gone off the deep end. I prefer to go back to plain old education.<\/p>\n<p>College  Bubble? Yes, I think that bubble is about to burst. Why pay $40,000 a  year so you can have a degree in Conflict Analysis and Resolution and  then have a career in day care where the pay is just a little above that  of a hamburger cooker at McDonald&#8217;s? I don&#8217;t get it.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/sethgodin.typepad.com\/seths_blog\/2011\/04\/buying-an-education-or-buying-a-brand.html\">Seth Godin<\/a> discusses a similar <a href=\"http:\/\/www.typepad.com\/services\/trackback\/6a00d83451b31569e2014e60e8d7d7970c\">topic<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Does  a $40,000 a year education that comes with an elite degree deliver  ten  times the education of a cheaper but no less rigorous self-generated   approach assembled from less famous institutions and free or   inexpensive resources?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I can imagine that attending  Duke, as just one example, is a lot of fun. I can also imagine that  being around such a nice place with many other people seeking to learn  can be a good education. I can also imagine many other environments  where a person could learn more for much less money.<\/p>\n<p>I worked for  many years with many people who attended prestigious universities. They  didn&#8217;t impress me with either their knowledge or their performance on  the job. I was quite disappointed to learn about what prestigious  universities do.<\/p>\n<p>For the record,\u00a0 I attended two &#8220;cow colleges&#8221; (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/dictionary\/cow%20college\">a provincial college or university that lacks culture, sophistication, and tradition<\/a>). <a href=\"http:\/\/www.selu.edu\/\">Southeastern Louisiana University<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lsu.edu\/\">Louisiana State University<\/a>. The cost was low, hence the return on investment was high.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Dwayne Phillips Watch out for the coming college bubble where tuition at prestigious universities crashes. Maybe some of those universities will crash as well. I read a couple of things this week about college. They seemed to be related (in my mind at least). The first item was on TechCrunch and it discussed the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[142],"class_list":["post-779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-learning","tag-learning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=779"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":780,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779\/revisions\/780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}