Has 'the market' corrupted education?
After spending some time thinking about economics and posting some thoughts about the workings of the economy, I feel as though education has become corrupted to the dealings of the economy or the realization of wants and desires that the market entails. In a previous thread about a feeling of alienation a philosopher might feel, much like the alienation the average person might feel being liberated from Plato's Cave, I feel that education has been corrupted to the maximization of utility for an individual via devoting one's time to working for the economy. Is there some need for policy in place that would ensure that not only engineers or computer scientists are rewarded for their time and hassle in college?
After being in college myself, for only a year, I feel that education lacks direction or some form of policy in regards to what the end goal of the time spent in college should be worth for. People have become in some sense shackled (via debt accumulation in the US educational system) to the working of the economy. Has education lost its way or am I just become more Marxist as the years pass by?
After being in college myself, for only a year, I feel that education lacks direction or some form of policy in regards to what the end goal of the time spent in college should be worth for. People have become in some sense shackled (via debt accumulation in the US educational system) to the working of the economy. Has education lost its way or am I just become more Marxist as the years pass by?
Comments (49)
http://www.gbt.org/text/sayers.html
Also check some of the ideas of Ivan Illich.
We need to return to classical liberal arts which equips every student with critical tools with which to learn effectively anything they choose to set their mind to.
People are not shackled to the working of the economy "in some sense". They are shackled to the economy lock, stock, and barrel (to use an expression the NRA likes). This isn't new. Economies are "totalitarian" in that they pervade the entire society. This has always been so. "Economy" per se isn't the problem.
Quoting Posty McPostface
Indeed it has. Since you are becoming more Marxist, try this on for size. It was provided by one of my Classics Professors at the U of Minnesota. (I am recalling and paraphrasing)
"Schools have always functioned to prepare people to operate in society. The roles that needed filling have changed over time. [jump forward to the mid and late 19th century US] In the late 19th century, early 20th century American schools prepared immigrants to fulfill their roles of workers and consumers. They needed literacy, cultural knowledge, skills, and science/math (not talking about rocket science). Late in the 20th century (this lecture was given in 1985), demographics, work, and consumption had changed significantly. Preparing workers had become less important, because a lot of jobs were being exported, and computerization and automation was simplifying work. The citizens role of consumer had become much more important than the role of producer.
Schools (especially high schools) were no longer the ideal place to teach citizens how to be consumers. Media provided 24/7 access, ocean to ocean coverage, many channels (TV, radio, film, print -- cell phones and the internet weren't here yet), and there was an advertising industry prepared to produce the necessary messages about "how to be an American, how to be a citizen, how to be (in essence) A CONSUMER."
Schools are "old school" for most people. Are there no decent schools? Yes, there are. 20% of youth (max) still need high quality education to fulfill their future managerial, entrepreneurial, technical, and creative roles. There are good schools which provide old fashioned good education for them.
What about the rest of the population? Well, they are free insofar as they obey. If they keep consuming, everything will be fine. That is the task of most people. Buy stuff to keep the economy running. (individual consumption accounts for 2/3 of the US economy, minimum).
Like this cartoon says:
In many ways we do that. That's why the specific college degree isn't very important. A college grad with a liberal arts degree (most university departments are in the Colleges of Liberal Arts, except Tech and Medicine, Agriculture, et al) has proved that he or she has the intelligence to take varied and sundry courses in everything from math to modern art and succeed at least reasonably well. So whether their degree was in Sociology, Math, English, or Studio Arts, they have proved that they are at least somewhat capable and flexible.
Most vocational training is on-the-job. The best jobs I had required I figured out how to do them once I was hired. Was I able? Sure. I have a major in English. We know that English majors can learn to do everything from tutoring college students to designing gritty public health programs to scrubbing floors. I've done all three. Ideal training. Major in English.
The crisis in education (it costs too much, one has to be practical-goal oriented, etc.) has one big root in the way state colleges are funded. When I was in college (1964-1970) in Minnesota, the State provided the bulk of funding -- maybe 60%-70%. Tuition was low; on-campus and crappy off-campus housing was quite affordable, too.
The states (pretty much across the board) have cut back on their share of college budgets, from 60%-70% down to 25%. Tuition is consequently much higher, as are all sorts of other costs -- like textbooks. The decision to major in English (or music, sociology, French, math, art, biology, library science, geology... whatever) was fairly safe. One would get a good education from a state college, and one would probably be able to leave college with minimal debt. Scholarships were fairly plentiful too -- or very low interest loans.
That's pretty much all over. Ancient History (another good major). Whatever one majors in had better pay off, because one almost certainly will be leaving college with hefty debts.
Finding a good job for which one is well suited is always somewhat difficult; kind of a crap shoot. That part hasn't changed any over the years. Luck still plays a role.
College freshmen who lack critical judgement skills are going to have a tough curve to climb, so this really needs to begin in elementary school. (In a good school, it does.) Students should leave high school with a good set of working skills. Unfortunately, a lot of students don't. The school districts, not the colleges, are failing on this score.
But yes, once in college a classical liberal arts program is excellent preparation for a lot of jobs.
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/has-the-market-corrupted-the-goal-of-education.929945/
I don't think I'm following here. Why is there a need for a policy? Won't it just naturally happen that, in the absence of centrally-planned intervention, degrees that people find unrewarding - whether financially, emotionally, spiritually, or in some other way - will cease to be offered because too few people sign up for them?
I have a lot of complaints about how higher education is structured - especially about the conflation of teaching with research, and cross-subsidy of the latter by the former. But I couldn't see anything to complain about in the issue raised in the OP.
Yeah; but, there's pressure on those people to commit to their major and follow through with it regardless of what they feel about it. That pressure (at least in the US) leads to a skewed distribution of students graduating from STEM-related fields rather than other ones. That's my take at least on the matter.
Quoting andrewk
Well, it's more of a 'hey look what I think, do you agree or not?'. Personally, I think the education system is in shambles due to focusing on fulfilling the needs of the economy. I don't expect things to change anytime soon. The side effect is that you'll just have a lot of people that aren't happy with their jobs. So be it.
McPostface, get real.
Like I said above, the economy is everywhere in a society, including the hallowed halls of ivy. Even in the "good old days" when states subsidized the cost of education and places like the University of Wisconsin in Madison were gold plated liberal arts establishments, Milton scholars, for instance, had to think about how they would make a living after they got their PhDs. (generally in teaching at universities).
How could it be otherwise? Only the independently wealthy (inherited the family fortune) can study whatever they please without thinking of employment. Or, only the intentionally poor can afford to do that.
Going to college JUST to become learnéd, without thinking about supporting one's self is not a good idea. I didn't give enough thought to how I would support myself after I graduated. I supposed I would teach -- until I discovered that I was not cut out to be a high school teacher. Had I thought more carefully bout work, I would not have wasted all that time in Education classes.
Thanks for keeping it real. I don't think I'll be returning to academia anytime soon. God, but the desire is still there. Perhaps this whole thread is some rationalization to the contrary.
Yes, but that's not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that education no longer gives you the tools necessary for independence in the economy. Education just trains you to be an employee.
Quoting Posty McPostface
Perhaps.
It would almost certainly be good for you to return to college and complete a degree. I realize there are practical problems that might make this difficult. One of those practical problems is you. You have to willingly engage in college, as well as willingly incur the cost, and all the inconvenience that might arise from being a student. I believe you when you say the desire is still there. I'm not sure you are willing to engage (just based on what you have said).
If you don't go to college, you will probably become a learnéd autodidact, at which you probably will do a good job.
From the Greek autos (self) + didaskein (teach) = autodidact, self-taught.
In a way, we are all autodidacts. Nobody can learn anything for you. College students just get many more suggestions about what to learn next. They also get a list of courses they took and a degree -- which in this economy is a big deal.
If I was a young man in 2017 with 1 year of college and ambivalent feelings about the whole thing, I really don't know what I would do. I am immensely glad I did go to college, even the run of the mill state college I attended. The experience of being a student and learning all sorts of stuff, helped prepare the village idiot that I was for the wider world. Without college I would have been so totally screwed I hate to think about it.
It's actually funny that the Marxism-friendly professors sit cozily with tenure while not giving a damn about the condition of graduate students, adjuncts, and teaching (except on paper). They're all for revolution, so long as somebody else does the revolutionizing. Meanwhile, they'll continue propping up the very thing they're supposedly against: corporate-bureaucratic models of education that suck obscene amounts of money out of students to pay for their hefty salaries.
Everyone knows I am critical of current-day educational institutions, however, despite that, I pretty much agree with this advice. I am grateful for having been fortunate enough to attend University, I too learned a lot there that you can't really learn on a job, or at least not that fast. It takes quite a long time until you're ever given real responsibility working on a job.
For me, college wasn't very helpful directly. There was pretty much nothing that I learned studying civil engineering that helped me either in engineering or in working for myself in any major way.
But there were a few important lessons that I learned indirectly because of the experience:
If you are a very ambitious person like myself, I don't think you'll find Uni helpful directly, and if you already know those lessons above, then perhaps you could skip it. However, if you lack ambition, just want to have a job, etc. and you have the good fortune to be able to go to University, then I think you should. You've got nothing to lose at least.
Then surely intelligence and aptitude tests would serve the same function? Chuck in an extended essay task to be sure, if you like. Job done - in a day.
If you want to test the ability to soak up info, then that could take a bit longer, I admit. Call it a week,and rank everyone at the end. I doubt you would get much different rankings than what a university takes years to do.
You were fortunate in that you had the aptitude to program. Spare a thought for the teeming thousands of entrants to computer science degrees who only found out that they didn't have this aptitude until they had already enrolled. It is one of the scandals of higher education of recent years. Your professor was laughing all the way to the bank.
You speak of corruption. I will certainly agree that school has not been ideal from my perspective (I'm in grad school now). I can imagine a better way, or at least a better-for-me way. But that kind of imagination has haunted my entire life. For instance, the way that time is structured in formal education disturbs me. Instead of being given a series of tasks to complete, one has a long sequence of homework deadlines and test days. Why not a battery of tests that can be taken as the individual feels ready? Why not a fixed set of papers to be written ? Then passing those tests, completing those papers satisfactorily could result in the degree. Maybe one hardly needs lectures, prefers to learn from books. Maybe one would like to focus on English first, pass all of those tests, and then move on to the next subject. Instead one is forced to distribute one's self over lots of subjects at once, show up at certain times, deal with idiosyncratic and constantly changing standards. One learns to show up on no sleep, deal with this eccentricity and that eccentricity. One "reads" the professor, adapts to an initially ambiguous "manager" who will formally judge one's performance. One carefully constructs a semester's schedule for hard and easy classes. Maybe half or even more of one's energy is spent not on the message (the stuff to be learned) but the medium (figuring out the criterion, and the "inauthentic" or counter-intuitive lifestyle that makes satisfying this criterion possible).
Returning to the "hardiness" points, that "waste" of energy is not completely a waste. It filters out those who "want it less." If this is an accidental byproduct, it still serves as a sorting mechanism. Arguably the "market" needs this psychological hardiness. Does the world suck? Is the world corrupt? Give me superpowers and I'll change the shape of it. But otherwise it's the world you and I have to adapt to. The sufficiently heroic soul may be able to succeed without this frustrating compromise, but that only means meeting the market directly, right? Selling oneself without credentials. It can and has been done, and it's impressive. But not every career choice is possible without credentials. One can also just accept a less glamorous job and practice one's passion in one's free time. I did that before I decided to return to school. But getting older changed the appeal of that. It's annoying to be well-read and interested in intellectual things and work a relatively unskilled job. I personally think it's worth the hassle to earn those credentials.
But I haven't got that good job yet (still in school). So maybe I'm wrong? Job or not, I have in my own view become far more worldly and mature by wrestling with the "medium." It's painful but illuminating to see just how many smart, disciplined people are out there. I think I see the world far more accurately now. I've also had the experience of living an entirely intellectual life for more than 5 years now. My "job" is learning and (just as importantly) proving that I have learned. Enduring being up against other people's standards like that is itself quite an experience. It takes nerve and it proves nerve. Lucky for me, I've done well. So the scooby snacks I've been tossed in the form of grades have only encouraged or substantiated my otherwise untested faith that I could hack it like the others. If I meet others who did well as undergrads, I therefore know quite a bit about them. I know what they've successfully wrestled with. I can assume important social skills and a general reliability.
I think this is the gist of what separates the greatly endowed from the rest of the population. Knowing some deep and undiscovered truth about 'the market' over someone else in the classroom can jump-leap one's career in academia regardless of one's grades and the whole schtick with dealing with the system as you've mentioned. This has been my motivating muse for the desire to go (back) to college. I honestly, can not stand the mundane process of learning something over and over again over a generation if nothing of use can be produced out of it. But, that's the college life for you.
Being in college is daunting and there's little inspiration to be had in it nowadays unless you are gifted in some domain where your understanding of a subject can be applied. However, as you and I know, college has become a monkey see monkey do a type of interaction. I could not stand that, it was soul-crushing for me to not be able to examine the implications of questions (read, reason through) and instead just recite the answer to them as a parrot does.
But, the realization of the above leaves you with few options. Either, continue your regurgitation of information as well as you can and hope to land in some institution like the IAS, or go into the market with this 'truth' about it and derive the benefits from it. I don't know, some people just have better neural nets than I do or a more hardened psyche to endure the triviality of reciting information, that is often forgotten very fast (have a picture of the forgetting curve when I say this).
I hope I'm not ranting; but, school has become a soul-crushing experience in my opinion. I have no idea how one can change that in any way. I'm wary of returning back to school having a cat-like mind along with an above normal intellect.
I guess the issue boils down as to whether one prefers understanding or knowing something. I'm of the former, not so great with the later.
Quoting Posty McPostface
To be fair to school, I must emphasize that I learned my specialized subject (math) in a way that I wouldn't have otherwise. First and foremost it was learning a skill. Calculus is something I can do. (That's an entry level skill for a math major.) Similarly programming and statistics classes were just pure value. No real filler to speak of. So my only complaint about these content-rich skill-based classes is the time-stretch.
So the regurgitation metaphor has its limits. But I do think it applies (or did apply) to lots of my humanities classes. So I'd advise the ambivalent consumer of school to get better value and learn skills (major in something skill-like) from those who can also certify those skills. Then do philosophy-literature in one's free time, completely free to think and write what one thinks and feels.
Yes,it's crazy pedagogically. The only explanation is that the institutions of education, their traditions, their vested interest groups, are all that matters to the education system. The emperor not only has no clothes, he has stinking BO. And many have become "nose blind"!
Well OK, but are you saying that a traditional "liberal arts" degree is tedious? I thought you were singing its praises....
Good points, BC. I feel like a wolf in a cage after 6 years. Soon I'll be able to more or less choose what I study. But six years is a long time to wait.
We live in strange times. What does it all mean? We are atomized rats. I keep myself open to the massive cognitive dissonance, seduced by the heroic image of the philosopher. So maybe it's harder for me (and you perhaps). Men are perhaps more likely to be disagreeable, rebellious, questioning. Or philosophers (as a personality type) tend to be that way. There's a little part of me that says "ah f*ck it, let's go be a poor artist-writer-musician again," but I don't think that voice is going to win out. Another voice reminds me that a certain amount of money will buy me peace and quiet, relative security.
In short, I can see that the structure is 50% bullsh*t. But I can also see that it's still arguably the best actual worldly option. Of course life remains ambiguous. I don't know which path is best. I am forced to act on an always evolving image of the ways of things. If that's not difficult enough, I for one am still figuring out what I want in a worldly sense (beyond the obvious advantage of more money). So not even motive is stable.
Best worldy option? To what ends?
Quoting Bitter Crank
Well maybe life wouldn't be so tedious if the education system didn't condition people to accept tedium so readily. I suggest that any inclusion, acceptance and validation of tedium on a liberal arts degree flies in the face of what the course is purportedly trying to achieve. No such course or institution running it would dare say that tedium is on the curriculum, even indirectly.
But I guess you are right to say that the tediousness of education works. Employers gain a subservience filter, albeit of a higher functioning sort at higher education level They also have a similar lower status one for all younger school attenders of course. And universities gain easy business, while students gain a spell of social adventure and an opportunity to be a higher paid drone. Social adventure at the higher drone level apart, it ain't pretty that's for sure.
There is not a single nation on earth beside the U.S. that has a super carrier, yet we are about to build 10 more, ontop of the 10 we already have. They cost 4-6 billion a piece. Why are taxes spent on this shit? The 'market' has corrupted everything; education, war, medical care, and food. Is that not obvious?
Liberal arts education, no less than factory-like k-12 schools or trade training programs, is a component of "the maintenance and reproduction of society". The kind of society that is being reproduced (in our case, a mature capitalist society) governs what life is going to be like. You or I may not like it, but until society is changed, that's the way it is going to be.
Even if we lived in a perfected society where individuals were free to leisurely pursue all their interests, there would still be tedious activities. Example: memorizing Latin declensions. Even if you greatly desire to learn Latin, and find learning Latin a pleasure, committing all that to memory (especially as an adult) is just plain hard work and, at times, quite tedious.
Quoting Jake Tarragon
It works, but I certainly wasn't endorsing college as a means to prepare subservient workers. Besides, learning subservience can't wait until the college level. Subservience gets trained into people in elementary and high school. By the time people are in college, they either have learned how to be subservient, or they probably never will. Those who never will are going to have a lot of friction to deal with. I am one of those people who doesn't like being subservient, and can attest to how much friction one can arouse by resisting.
Quoting Jake Tarragon
University can provide a spell of social adventure, true enough, at least for some students. The ones that are working three part time jobs and taking a full load at the same time don't have enough spare time to sleep, let alone having social adventures.
Drones. The drone-role is baked in before one gets to college. Some college freshmen are drones from the first day on, and others are not drones after finishing their PhDs (though not very many -- PhD programs pretty much destroy non-drones). Think back, there were drones in kindergarten.
Have you heard of Summer Hill? A. S. Neill founded it.
I really like the idea of Summer Hill -- but I never attended a school that was even remotely like it. Summer Hill is for children and youth, but it would be good if at least some colleges ran with a similar open plan. "Production" needs less emphasis and "experimentation" much more. Experimentation carried too far, of course, would result in too much jumping from thing to thing without enough persistence to actually acquire knowledge--like solid working knowledge of geology, for example.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the US about this in a speech at the end of his administration in 1960. He sounded a very clear alert about the dangers of "the military industrial complex" composed of the armed services, suppliers (like Boeing, General Dynamics, Sikorsky, et al), and the congress that would reliably fund projects benefitting their state or district.
We build new fighter planes, aircraft carriers, hydrogen bombs, better missiles, etc. NOT because they are needed or have any actual utility, but because arms industries are very profitable (capitalists like that), they employ a lot of workers (people like having jobs), and the military likes having the stuff. But, after you have 10,000, 20,000, or 30,000 nuclear bombs, how many more can one really use? Even if you have 100 super carriers, other countries possess the means to destroy them -- one way or another.
Take for example the Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Cole: It had a huge hole blown in it by some Yemenis who tooled over to the side of the ship and blew up a bomb--October, 2000. Yemen? Able to disable a destroyer? Sure.
The nice thing about higher education is that students now have to finance it pretty much on their own. When i started in college (1964--yeah, I know--ancient history), states supported about 75% of the cost of college education. Tuition was low. Books were relatively expensive back then, but nothing like the $150+ textbook of today. Room and board was manageable, or one could live off campus--ratty, probably, but cheap. Today states provide only 25% of the cost of education. Tuition at state colleges is not as high as private schools, but still hefty. So, the cost of college education has become increasingly privatized. If you can't afford it, or can't get scholarships, your kind of shit out of luck.
Quoting XanderTheGrey
Thanks for bringing it up. It can't be said too often (well, maybe it could) that the priorities of the ruling class suck, suck, suck.
That is indeed the question. To be clear, I think it's a personal matter. For me it looks to be the best path. What is life about as a whole? What is the big or final purpose? For me the point is to live 'heroically' in the dissonance. Death waits at or as the end. Something like style is my religion. It is more beautiful or noble in a primary and ultimately 'irrational' way to live with a certain force or ambition.
In someone else's case, this may have nothing to do with school. I was, however, intensely unwordly and rebellious in my 20s, so the respectable world was still open as a new frontier. A person who has always been respectable and safe may just as heroically charge into the frontier-for-him of the margins, of a certain 'authentic' riskiness. I suppose I'm describing Jungian individuation. We become rounder and richer personalities by marching into whatever the frontier happens to be for us.
You make some great points. That's the dark side, which is there. But let's acknowledge that the highest level drones are no longer drones at all. Or can we think of leading scholars, scientists, and engineers as drones? If I am not already rich, then I can settle for the jobs I already qualify for (themselves likely tedious) or embrace a different tedium that has the potential of opening a less or non-tedious way of making a living.
One could argue that dwelling on the faults of institutions is a way to rationalize settling. I have been the rebellious idealist. But in worldly terms that meant working a menial job and living with extreme frugality so that I didn't have to spend much time on that menial job. A young healthy person can get away perhaps with having no health insurance. But it's not a very sustainable situation. Finally, the tedium of formal education comes with a positive of being forced to prove one's supposed ability. I was an autodidact. I knew lots of things, but (in retrospect) I was a fairly disorganized and untested ball of knowledge, more promise than performance. Even a liberal arts degree at least requires the writing of papers, and that's perhaps what's really important: being forced to present and defend one's thinking.
Summerhill gets wheeled out a lot in these sort of discussions, I find. That's probably because it's such a rare institution. But if you delve into it, you will find it is all about delivering a standard curriculum of standard gradeable subjects and exams - it's just the means are more laid back. I am pretty certain that if it abandoned such a commitment then the government, which is always snapping at its heels, would shut it down. The British law is designed to prevent educational routes being offered (except as a live parent) that are different from what the government deems as acceptable. Interestingly, in Bertie Russell's essay "Freedom Versus Authority in Education" he describes how his education was sabotaged by the authorities of the time - his deceased father had stipulated in his will that his son was to receive an education that was free of religious and patriotic indoctrination, but the courts overturned it.
Quoting Bitter Crank
For sure. But let no one study geology seriously who is not seriously and happily interested in it.
Quoting Bitter Crank
The overarching point is that one should only study something if one is ready, and motivated positively. Seeing as you mention Latin, I feel i can wheel out something else from Russell's essay in the form of a quote
The traditional pedagogue, possessing knowledge not worth imparting [...] imagined that young people have a native horror of instruction, but in this he was misled by a failure to realise his own shortcomings. There is a charming tale of Chekov's about a man who tried to teach a kitten to catch mice. When it wouldn't run after them, he beat it, with the result that even as an adult cat, it cowered with terror in the presence of a mouse. 'This is the man,' Chekov adds, 'who taught me Latin'.
I worked at a Job Corps back in the late 60s, after finishing college. The corpsmen were poor boys, 18-21, from New York City, Puerto Rico, and up-state New York. Almost all of them were functionally illiterate, innumerate, and possessed no work skills. They were very disadvantaged. Half of their day was spent in work -- learning how to "do basic stuff" like using a hammer, saws, measuring, and so on. The other half of the day was spent in school, where we started from wherever they were at.
We had a fairly large group of elderly volunteers who worked with the corpsmen on a one-to-one basis, for an hour or two a day in the education program, if they wanted or needed it. (We had about 50 students in the morning and another 50 in the afternoon.) All of the instruction was "programmed" that is, used workbooks. Within the 12 to 18 months that a corpsmen could be there, we raised most of their reading levels from zero to between 6th and 8th grade--a few higher, taught them rudimentary writing skills, basic arithmetic (a few went beyond basic arithmetic). The corpsmen were also provided with health care, clothing, on-site housing (this job corps was in the middle of nowhere), and 21 very good meals a week.
The program was very structured, and firm discipline maintained in work, school, and dormitory. The really good thing about the staff was that they were uniformly committed to helping these guys progress from "boys to men", and while I can't say we were uniformly successful, a lot of the corpsmen got the first decent treatment they had had in their lives, and they flourished.
President Nixon closed most of the Job Corps in 1969 when he took office.
The program taught me that with good methods, positive inter-personal assistance, and good support at least 75% of these not-very-promising guys could be given a much improved chance to succeed. Of course it was expensive -- around $8,000 per corpsmen. That would be $52,344 in today's dollars. That's more expensive than a year in prison, but also more effective.
Let's hope trickle down will eventually work to raise all floundering boats. Here's me hoping.
Brilliant insight and explanation. But, one has to understand that it wouldn't be an issue if tuition was so high. So, how does one lower tuition is the next logical question if there is at all any answer?
Tuition will be lowered by reversing the policy and process that raised tuition, starting in the early 1980s. At that time legislatures started reducing the state's share of state college and university budgets. Support fell from about 75% down to it's current level of 25%. Colleges made up the difference by raising tuition and seeking more contract work in research departments (like engineering, medicine, agriculture...). Students made up the difference by going deeper into debt, or working more during their college years to pay for tuition.
Low tuition, and affordable accessibility for state residents was based on policy, and so is high tuition and limited access for state residents.
In the politics of the last 37 years since the election of Ronald Reagan, "privatization of public resources" has been the leitmotiv. Neocons don't care whether the average citizen goes into debt to go to a public school. Debt is a profitable business, so fuck 'em. Rich people have always been able to afford the much higher costs of private college, so, no problem. Those who have get more, and those who have little get screwed out of their pittance. It's scriptural.
From some perspectives, there are way too many people getting college education. It's good for people to get education, but it isn't necessarily correlated with getting a suitable job for an individual. Mechanics, building trade workers, machinists, and so on are in demand and college doesn't prepare people to do this work. The wages are often quite good, and for many people material work (rather than symbolic work) is preferable. But there is that drum beat of "go to college, got to go to college..."
One problem is the parasite class of University professors, many of whom have given themselves very high salaries. And even more so University management, which has even more ridiculous salaries. Some of these people can earn up to $3m/year. Uni of Chicago President earns around that >:O . Why does he earn that much? Because:
The problem isn't just the Uni fees, it's that the quality of the education doesn't deserve that much. If you went on to earn $150K/year after college, sure, but that's not the case. Many people go to college with the expectation that it will help them be big boys and girls who get to have a say in what happens in the world, and who can have an easier life after. But that's not the case. Rich people who go to university - I met some amongst the non-EU students in the UK when I attended university (they have much higher fees, something like 3 times higher, so they pay like £25,000-27,000 per year just in tuition fees) - seem to go to University precisely as an insurance policy... most of them go to work for their family business anyway, and the uni degree is useless except as an insurance policy in case their family business goes completely belly up and they need to find a way to survive. For them, it's pennies anyway.
So the problem is that the worth of education is highly inflated. College professors have you believe that you'll be a big boy after you attend their institutions, but this is false. Colleges are pretty much in the business of producing wage slaves today. From the people I've been with in school, and the people I've been with in University, I'm the only one being self-employed (or starting a business). Everyone else either has a job (most of them), or as I said before, they work for a family business. So most of them are wage slaves. Uni didn't give us the skills not to be wage slaves. I had to learn them myself in my case, and it was very stressful and 24/7 work for like the first 1-2 months - it also helped to start work as self-employed in a developing economy, less competition.
Sometimes I miss physical work, but I've been indoctrinated by my culture that physical work should be avoided if possible. I worked in construction as a labourer for an NGO, but only when I was super young, like 16-18, can't remember the exact age. You worked a lot, but at night you fell asleep so peacefully, and I remember you'd be so tired, even food tasted better when you finally had dinner. Nowadays I only do mental work - web development and marketing. It's easier physically, but more taxing psychically - I think we were designed to find happiness in some degree of physical work.
Well in certain cases yes, due to medical costs or family. But it really depends on the individual person and the country/social system under which they live.
Quoting Hanover
I don't think so, even today, I have often thought about doing a business that involves something physical, not services / IT (but I probably won't because I don't feel as confident in my abilities there). It's something that I guess you understand once you work in something like this. It gets psychologically tiring working with computers all the time. Though the problems you do solve are interesting, and sometimes you even get to learn something different in the process too.
I've always loved responsibility so long as I could handle it. Quite the contrary from what you seem to suggest, I've always looked to take on more and more responsibility - even in construction back then, the supervising engineer said I was the most productive of the workers. And both in school and university I took all the additional social (& academic) positions that one could take.
But a lot of this depends on your environment. I'm a very ambitious person by nature, so if my environment allows for it, and there are opportunities, then I grow. For example, while at university, there was an opportunity for me to work in research, so I did it - I always loved taking additional responsibility. But if there are no opportunities, then, well, there are no opportunities. Conserve strength, and wait for the right time.
But at the same time, I am keenly aware that loss hurts more than victory, so I always try to minimise loss first. This basically means that I fight a lot fewer battles than I could fight, but I also lose very little, if ever. I hate losing more than I love winning as strange as that may sound.
I think your anecdote illustrates how "education" can be transformative when it has an agenda fully aimed at taking individuals as they are, and "improving" them in some aspects. Normally, the education system takes in cohorts, frowns at how unsuitable they are for learning the curriculum, but teaches it to them anyway, before spitting half of them out as failures
I think such a thing literarily doesn't exist. I haven't found a thing that I can't do if I put in the time. Really, and that includes things I'm naturally clumsy and incapable at. It's all in the mind. If you have the right mindset, and are determined never to give up no matter what, then you'll find a way. Most people give up too soon.