Not much is learned in 'Education' today. Too Much Higher Education

Universities are now filled with students who were once learning trades in high school or the armed forces. Their teachers today would, in the past, have been endorsing Stalin as labor or 'community' organizers.

The father of a close friend of mine in grammar school and junior high was a famous commercial and artistic photographer. As a talented commercial photographer, he photographed advertising for brand name food and gourmet magazines for decades. My friend's father did so well, that they moved to the very affluent Brentwood Area of Los Angeles from the more middle class Wilshire area. My friend's photographer father never went to college. He learned his trade in the US Navy as a Photographer's Mate.

Today, the daughter of an acquaintance, now attends a four year university course to learn photography.

What has changed, except photography today is multiple times easier by virtue of its digital nature. Just twenty years ago photographic talent and trade included a strong knowledge in chemistry and lighting.

This is just one example of how much in time and money is wasted in "higher education." ♘

Too Much Higher Education by Walter E. Williams on Creators.com - A Syndicate Of Talent

9-11-11

..."From Wall Street to Wal-Mart," by Richard Vedder, Christopher Denhart, Matthew Denhart, Christopher Matgouranis and Jonathan Robe, explains that college education for many is a waste of time and money. More than one-third of currently working college graduates are in jobs that do not require a degree. An essay by Vedder that complements the CCAP study reports that there are "one-third of a million waiters and waitresses with college degrees." The study says Vedder — distinguished professor of economics at Ohio University, an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and director of CCAP — "was startled a year ago when the person he hired to cut down a tree had a master's degree in history, the fellow who fixed his furnace was a mathematics graduate, and, more recently, a TSA airport inspector (whose job it was to ensure that we took our shoes off while going through security) was a recent college graduate."

The nation's college problem is far deeper than the fact that people simply are overqualified for particular jobs. Citing the research of AEI scholar Charles Murray's book "Real Education" (2008), Vedder says: "The number going to college exceeds the number capable of mastering higher levels of intellectual inquiry. This leads colleges to alter their mission, watering down the intellectual content of what they do." In other words, colleges dumb down courses so that the students they admit can pass them. Murray argues that only a modest proportion of our population has the cognitive skills, work discipline, drive, maturity and integrity to master truly higher education. He says that educated people should be able to read and understand classic works, such as John Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding" or William Shakespeare's "King Lear." These works are "insightful in many ways," he says, but a person of average intelligence "typically lacks both the motivation and ability to do so." Mastering complex forms of mathematics is challenging but necessary to develop rigorous thinking and is critical in some areas of science and engineering. ...

-read on at link above-