On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 1:25 PM, McDonough, Terrence <[email protected]> wrote: > .. but this could be done with a job interview upon leaving secondary school > which could give you as an employer other important information or by just > looking at the secondary leaving test results without bothering with the > subsequent 3-4 years. The process we participate in is very expensive. Most > students learn less than a comparable period in "the real world" would teach > them.... >
It is funny Charles Murray has been saying much the same thing recently. His argument is that most college students except the very high IQ ones, do not have the brains to benefit from an education in the classics, so except for science and engineering, college education is really wasted on most people. So college should ideally be replaced with "vocational training". Instead of more state universities teaching literature and the arts, we should have more Devry institutes to help students become better (and better-paid) servants to industry. See for e.g.: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/magazine/21wwln-Q4-t.html I find this philosophy very unappealing. Even if we accept all of Murray's premises, why not think of the college years as a form of forced leisure? Would you rather have young people enter the labor market at a even earlier age? For all the reasons that reduced working hours is good, I'd argue college education is good too.. -raghu. -- I like to leave messages *before* the beep. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
