This issue may be the hardest of all to go after. How can you have anything but praise for the education system? Well, if it is failing our citizens then it needs to be challenged is my thought.
Let me try and narrow this down to a couple topics and shortly discuss each of them. I am really interested in sparking conversation and hearing from a critic or two. There are many great experiences to take away from college. For some, it is a care free time. A time to "find" yourself. The bigger issue I have is with "value". Costs keep going up at a rapid pace. Educational course content is not changing at the same pace as tuition.
Let me start out with the good. College is a great place to meet people , network and make lifelong friends. You can develop a new relationship with your schools sports team and ride the emotional roller coaster that comes along with that. The resources available to you are endless. Having these incredible resources is the only point related to education I could make and it was a stretch.
I want to clarify that I am not against education. I am 110% for it. I think we have to consider ourselves as students for the rest of our lives. Always give ourselves the opportunity to learn something new, even when we are not in the position of being titled "student". In order for your Nation to stay strong and powerful the education system plays an intricate part. In order to build the best technology, best ways to acquire intelligence and keep the national GDP up starts with education. That is why this topic should be so personal to everybody.
Let's judge our education system at the university levels' ability to prepare us for a career. Not sure how to judge this one so I will just enter my opinion. They fail. A doctor can not come out of college and apply to a hospital. A lawyer can not come out of college and open his own practice. You can't come out of college and be an account executive either. Being a doctor or a lawyer will take additional schooling. To be an account executive you do not need additional schooling. What you do need for this job (and just about every other job) is experience. This is it, the number one thing a college education does not offer to 90% of its students.
Students who go to school to become a teacher are required to sit in a real school in a real classroom and eventually teach the class. Perfect! Job training and job experience all in one. Yet, this is so uncommon with any other major within a bachelors program. There are internships but usually private. Or internships where you pay to go to school, but work for a company. I can't believe they can still get away with this.
The masses are enrolled in general education programs or in some other bachelor of the arts program. These programs are designed to give students who do not know what they want to do yet, a broad spectrum of education so they may find something to peak their interest. This is not the college being "nice" and patiently waiting for a young mind to find out what their passion or specialty will be. It is a smart business decision. Another "customer" shopping, that has no business being in the store.
The motivation of the university is not to mold young minds. It is to earn tuition. Right now I could tell you the education system is failing because they do not even share the common goal with its students. The student's goal is pass their classes, go to a lot of parties, and then come out of school with job offers being thrown at them left and right. The Universities goal is to get as many students as possible to pay tuition. The end. They have other goals as well. Sell apparel, exploit the college athletes and profit off their likeness. There is no discipline for them if they graduate all of their class and not a single one of them lands a job within 3 years.
Meanwhile they have the best technology, the newest features inside the classrooms and new buildings are always being built. Stadiums are state of the art. For me, what it all boils down to is value. Is the price of tuition worth what you get out of it? It can definitely propel you to some things, but the problem is we have no guarantee and the price tag is not affordable.
To justify $30,000 per year for 4 years, me personally, am going to have to get quite a bit more out of that. I would need a company to hire me on just based on the education I was getting and let me know that if I complete my requirements at school, they will have a spot for me at X amount of dollars. People may think that is absurd but I don't see anything wrong with it. The point is that college is not for everyone. Not even required for every job. Yet, our education system at the lower levels and society as a whole has put so much emphasis on college and needing to go.
That is just free advertising for those greedy universities that are way overpriced when you look at what you take away from them. I understand you need to pay staff and faculty and their are many expenses with running a school. Still, I can't say the juice is worth the squeeze and we need to look at exposing this scam so that the true integrity of education will not be spoiled. Because education is extremely important. When you come out of school with $150,000 of debt and a job that pays $10 an hour you may wish you had done things differently. One of those different things may have been to get a 4 year head start on that $10 an hour job. At the very least, you would know what you did not want to do with your life having done this first.
It is not an industry that is easy to infiltrate and propose change. Talking about what issues are at hand is the first step. I am interested to see what others think about the system we have in place. All comments are welcome.
Disclaimer: I went to one of these universities and for the most part, my college was paid for.