Tag Archives: college

Education Meltdown

15 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by in Economy, Life

≈ 1 Comment

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I have recently read a few articles about education today (one of them here) and I have to admit that I do agree with most of them. I agree for example with an apparent fact that people today do not learn how to think, only learn (better said, memorize) how to solve tests. Schools, expensive as they are, spit out automatons without an idea how to think and solve problems. Those people know only where to find previous exams to use them as template to solve new, upcoming ones.

To add to the problem, so-called paid schools offer so-called education to just about anyone with enough money to afford tuition. True, this development comes as a consequence of skewed job market, but still education should show more constraint and responsibility with giving away degrees. Many of those people who attend such schools are people who really want to learn and gain something from the courses offered, but I am afraid majority counts just on a fancy paper and nothing else and those people should be taught differently or showed the door. In current process, value of the degree becomes diluted and many start thinking that if they can pay for a degree, why not have it done in shortest possible time? This is where we get our politicians with degrees based on copied work. In Europe such degrees are slowly becoming common place, just have a look at German and Austrian politicians.

People chasing degrees kill their value. Schools do not care what they churn, money is now all important. I am really glad that there are still universities in Europe offering free education, because those provide competition to rampant paid education (or basically, stores with pretty looking names and diplomas). It pains me to see such development as I know now that my MBA, although acquired through hard work, has lost in value because just about anyone can have it. Can buy it, if you want me to be frank, not earn it. This has a very profound influence on job market as a vicious spiral starts to develop: people hiring college graduates notice that graduates of cheaper ones are not offering any value and turn to more expensive ones with hope that there they may find good talent. And on it goes, as either students go for more expensive schools with hope of finding a job or schools rise prices in order to compete. Just as it is described in blog quoted above.