[ExI] big rip in education

Thu Mar 7 16:30:07 UTC 2019

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of Dave Sill
Subject: Re: [ExI] big rip in education

On Wed, Mar 6, 2019 at 7:13 PM Dan TheBookMan <danust2012 at gmail.com <mailto:danust2012 at gmail.com> > wrote:

I’m wondering why no one here has discussion Bryan Caplan’s on education:

https://press.princeton.edu/titles/11225.html

>>… — why the BA and BS degrees have become the new high school diploma.

>…Yep. And higher education is big money…

Huge.  Like plenty of other big money endeavors, education is an impacted industry.  It is reacting as impacted industries do.

>… Education *should* be about more than just acquiring the skills needed to perform a job...such as the skills needed to perform living a good life…

Society is in the process of defining what education is really all about.  If people come out of school knowing all about {insert plenty of the subjects where degrees are still being offered} but not having mastered modern skills and technologies such as how to find reliable information online, how to minimize taxes legally, how to invest and so on, that person lacks life skills and is not ready for prime time.

When I was in college, we sometimes encountered liberal arts students (most of the campus was that.)  If (s)he and I compared our curricula, we might comment in unison for the first sentence “What you are getting here isn’t even higher education.”  Her second sentence would be “What you are getting here is mere job training.”  My second sentence would be similar, but would lack eloquence, since engineering students are not required to master language skills.  We only make things.  Such as… money.

>…I think independent skills testing/certification is the future.  -Dave

Ja, more employers are recognizing this.  They need people who can develop new products at minimum cost and maximum speed, with little or no need for the skills for which the universities are coaxing students into ruinous debt.  Certification is faster, it is lower cost (much lower) and it goes around the traditional admissions process.  It’s a big win for the usual losers in that process.  It levels the playing field.  Anyone anywhere on the planet can get an excellent technical education, at home.

spike

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