HAH-VAHD From the Economist: Why legacy places should be abolished Note: Legacy applicants university are children of parents who are previous graduates of an institution of higher learning. Which makes parents think that their children should have privileged access to "their alumni". Excerpt: Americans put their faith in the "individual freedom", whilst Europeans think that governments must pave the way to success. That homily is far too simplistic, but not completely untrue. Still, what makes Americans think that freedom of choice includes getting their kids into privileged institutions of learning (like "Hah-vahd"). Because they know that "connections" gets one jobs. These "connected kids" get preferential access to universities that have a finite limitation on "seats". And the rest of us can go to state-schools. Why, I ask, do most people think that graduating from a First-class institution of higher-learning means that you are one-helluva-smart-person? Real Jerks (IMHO) come from all walks of life and all universities. It is not the "better access to real knowledge (that is, the supposed better teaching environment) that will make you a more effective worker. Rather, on-the-job, it is one's ability to employ that knowledge to a given situation successfully. The outcome of which - especially in complex situations - is very largely often a matter of not merit but "chance". Some people manage outcomes better than others. It's a "knack" that is often inbred and not necessarily learned - though, indeed, it can be learned. IMMHO ...
Wealth, fame and power means better access to things like higher education and parents like this can pay all the costs up front so business sense since colleges are businesses its sensible to take the ones who won't take up time. And since such young people are by default future leaders due to their privilege a good education does make sense over a poor first generation young person who needs lots of loans and help everything else being equal. Lastly such families give lots of money to such schools if they need a new housing fund covered they are far more likely ante up a lot of money. Especially at elite private schools where no money means no school, if your from Harvard and Harvard turns down your child after you donated maybe a million plus dollars I would likely not support you when a fundraiser or other need is there at all. Now at States schools and the military service academies it might be different but an officers child still might have a leg up over someone else especially if the family is one rich in legacy and many did serve as officers.
PERPËTUAL POVERTY! And where is your sense of Social Democracy (aka "fairness") whereby access to a decent education is hampered by the fact a state-school tertiary-education is out of financial reach for the poorest amongst us*. A state-school four-year curriculum costs on average around $50K ($12K a year not counting room&board) to a family below the poverty-threshold making $24K a year on average. Do the maths, it doesn't work - so they don't go! Those below the Poverty Threshold ($24K a year for a family of four) simply try to survive, and if the kids graduate from high-school (because about 92% do indeed graduate) their education stops there. They then take any work they can find - even at the Minimum Wage ($7.25 an hour, $290 a week, $15080 a year). So, these families can't afford Postsecondary Education degree and are stuck at or below the Poverty Threshold. So they get married and both make $30K a year (if they have no children) and the poverty-cycles starts all over again when they do - and it repeats, and repeats and repeats itself. Ain't no way to live in Perpetual Poverty but 14% of the American population do so - that is, 45 million men, women and children across the US! Which is equivalent to the entire population of California and South Carolina combined! Wakey, wakey ... ! *So, to find the talent they need, American high-tech firms go to India to get it. Because in India a postsecondary education is paid by the Indian government! And America is too poor to do the same! (Yes, too poor because the DoD swallows half the nation's Discretionary Budget!)
Well there are options for the gifted I mean the most intelligent young adults, or brilliant artists or top athletes there are scholarships if you have a genius IQ you're going to get help to go to a university. And if you get into a military service academy then you earned the education and will serve the defense of the nation so there is that. You can join the armed forces or work for a company like WaWas which offer help going to university. One can not go to a university one can go to an apprenticeship and learn a good trade or do the same at a good technical college most two years or less or community college over two years and later earn a two four degree. One can work and pay as you can going to a university that way going part-time. Or just work and then get certifications and credentials with the new job market its actually practical not to be too specialized if one can do many kinds of work your better off in the temp economy long term. The biggest factors for doing well is not going to jail and get in trouble with the law, having a decent job so yes some job training is a good thing not necessarily college, getting married before having children, staying married, going to a religious center so you have that community or a similar arrangement and working on you skills all the time even if simple. I don't put college grads on some pedestal if they earned a degree in Gender Studies and a minor in Writing I would laugh in your face however get a degree in Nursing your smart you took something useful. I will note I earned a college degree almost in Philosophy I paid my own way my mother got sick and I was needed but I never had a debt and sure it took me awhile but I appreciated the education you give something free or virtually free where is the sense of earning something and it costing you something other than time. By the way I'm for tuition free college for the top 20% of performing college students on three conditions one they must financially need the help ruling out the wealthy, these must be designated State public schools or Federal ones and the degree must be pre-approved and the one you complete but one can wait two years and in this no degrees deemed of no value to employment as the one chosen a minor or a second major would be fine. Taxpayers are paying so taxpayers will only support meaningful education. But I would add a lot more technical education K-12, apprenticeships (in any work a college degree isn't REQUIRED) and various incentives like a fine for not hiring people who are disabled big enough to hurt and job training for them. Make it a jobs program with part of that college.
Yes, all that is true as well in Europe. BUT, a post-secondary training here in any skill is "free" (in Europe) and a postgraduate degree costs a meager $1000 a year at the very most. (Sole exception, the UK where it can cost annually around 9K pound-sterling for a Bachelor's degree level and 14K pounds at a higher level.) Why the much lower costs in the EU (than in the US)? Because it is considered that a postsecondary schooling is an investment that benefits the nation with overall lower unemployment and higher-skills mean better salaries.
Bollocks! Going to university is moment when young adults must decide what they want to do in life. University provides them the opportunity to meet&greet different disciplines and thus help them make a choice. And a flexible post-graduate program would assist those who want to change disciplines if they think they've made a mistake. You keep pointing (as quoted above) to outcomes that can happen and they are singularly irrelevant - for as long as one has the financial opportunity to return and redo a formation. Which is pretty damn difficult in the US were a private-school diploma costs (on average) more than a state-school diploma by a significant margin but the outcome is well worth the effort: My point being that if we are to get more people "up the income ladder" they need better/more qualifications that just a high-school diploma - and the fact of having no diploma whatsoever is even worse for society. Around two-thirds of penitentiary inmates have no high-school diploma! So (dammit!) why shouldn't a postsecondary degree - like a secondary-school degree - NOT BE FREE, GRATIS & COST NEXT-TO-NOTHINGµ? The investment made by a Federal government that subsidizes such a program is well worth the money spent - rather than pissing it away in an awesomely expensive DoD ... ! *For preferentially children of parents whose annual earnings are less than $40K a year that go to a state post-secondary education?
TAXPAYERS foot the bill then the TAXPAYERS through the government elected officials and their organs the various agencies can damned well say a degree is useless for employment and they won't pay for it. I'm not opposed to a talented art student studying art or musician studying music or writer studying writing or even studying philosophy if its going to lead to a career just prove the degree plan has employment value. As for the higher income and more employability of course a degree may be helpful but not everyone goes now. Even at Florida State in my own state you have to get in and work to some degree and it shows you are kind of smart. You do offer a blank check I can tell you exactly what will happen State schools and others if they are included will lower standards, move to take in a lot more students and even average people will get the sheepskin in whatever they take and it becomes glorified High School with some better than others and a lot of money needed since cost containment won't be in there. Right the reason going to Yale matters is its damned hard to get in and once in you won't likely not earn some kind of degree that's easy they won't let you fail it makes them look bad. I will always argue its fine to educate the best we have and I'm all for the talented top 15% getting a lot of help with education even in graduate school for others having skin in the game is good it makes them appreciate their opportunity the military veteran, student who has to ante up some commitment of work to pay for school and others now could schools help - yes. I would do three laws. One endowments must spend 75% of all earnings on interest and investments on tuition and housing costs to get them down for private schools this could drive costs down a lot Harvard is sitting on a fortune and the University of California system. Two streamline the curriculum cut out fat and focus on one major with electives or two minors and electives or a minor and certifications in skills all leading to degrees and make degrees terminal 90 credit degrees or standard degrees leading to graduate level or professional work (doctors could be excluded on fast track skipping a bachelors to go right for the medical degree). Lastly this would be for everyone a fund for continuing education to cover courses and work employers would fund some by taxes, employees could put in a share and the government a share this for further education and training. Combine these it might help a lot and cover lifelong learning and many options.
Pathetic rebuttal! Taxpayers are also citizens who want the best for their children - and a post-secondary education is what would do them the MOST GOOD towards finding a decent-job in this Brave New World of the the Information Age! Some sad people like you just cannot understand "the connection" nowadays between free tertiary-education and the general good economic fortune of the nation. And the sadness of it all was that historically in the US attitudes have not changed! When the Industrial Age (beginning in the latter half of the 19th century) insisted that its workers have at least a high-school degree, the same "BULLSHAT" was the reason why America took a good "half-century" to implement a "Public Secondary Schooling Program" throughout the country! We shoot rockets to moon and other planets, and don't understand that education is The Key Functional Necessity of Any Proficient Economy nowadays? Which is why it should be made available free, gratis and for nothing. Stop the world, I wanna get off ...
I realize I am being naive and idealistic, but school is supposed to be about learning. Who a person's parents are or how much money they have should not have an impact upon that person's admissions to a particular school. As a society, we rely upon the wise and clever of future generations...it is in our best interests to ensure that the best and brightest have access to the best education, regardless of their family connections, skin color or financial status.
But who decides "where the best education is being delivered". Money? Which is the basis for the present scandal in the US of rich-families that paid well to have their children accepted to the "best schools"? I went to school in a large American town that had a good-but-fairly-ordinary university, but also two:three "best universities" (according to the local mentality). I never met anyone that demonstrated "particularly splendid intellectual brilliance" that came from a "best university". (Maybe I was not looking hard enough?)
Connections CAN and DO get you jobs... but who's to say you cannot make those connections yourself? One of the things I learned quickly on as a young adult, was that "you are the company you keep." Hang out with losers, and you will also be a loser. Hang out with people who have ambition and you too will push yourself to succeed. Through my career thus far, I've gotten about half of my jobs through connections... IE: friends I made in public Community College... haha. The rest of my jobs were cold-interviews where I literally knew no one, and I found the job online. There's something to be said for landing an exceptional job right out of a good college, but there's also something to be said for hard work and building your own personal network. Personality is what causes people to truly "embrace" opportunity... regardless of how you get it. The assumption of course is that wealth stays with the wealthy. Less than 40% of the 1% in this country got their money from inheritance or family. The other 60% of the top-1% in America earned it outright.
Well first shouldn't the whole debate be from the employers side what the employees need to know in jobs they have to be adequately trained for them and then decided how the government can help get us there? Let's say we need more college educated people and they need a list of skills for a degree in an area to be deemed employable and do the humanities and other majors not tied to a career (not say business or a STEM field or education) lead to that. I don't really care if Jane Doe studies Gender Studies if that leads to a career or offers the skills employers need. But why rule out other options if a company needs construction workers and there is a need for them and it might easily be acute as the older workers age then maybe channeling students to those jobs might be preferable by apprenticeships out of High School where they take half their classes in technical studies would be better than college. Did anyone decide on what students need to work on through their school lives and what they need to know to be productive adults maybe that should be figured out before jumping on the college for all bandwagon paid for by the taxpayers. As for the Public Secondary School mentioned earlier yes it took time but guess what they tracked students in my fathers peers they had a technical high school where he went (half the classes were leading to working in various areas including foot in the door well into trades, he left a trained bookkeeper and could work in an office, my mom worked in retail and led to managing a store department for Kmart by 20), or went to the Agricultural High School where half the classes were farming focused or the Academic High School the smallest which led to college about 12% of the students went there he figures. It was never college for everyone BS we have now each student went to the school best suited for them many went to work after High School so the schools made sure employers were happy giving skilled workers. The slow ones took general classes not challenged much but they worked in factories on lines at the time so they just needed enough to do that and be decent citizens but even they could earn a diploma just not in focused areas, the dumb kids. So my take is why not focus on everything but four year college starting in High Schools and then apprenticeships, career diplomas, two year degrees and certifications then maybe college can be fixed but the whole system is bad in my view.
I suppose I made the discussion turn in another direction with the use of just one word: best. Sorry, didn't mean to... But while we're there... It seems that we have confused the words 'best' with 'oldest' when it comes to Universities. Tradition somehow got into the mix when determining the effectiveness of the teaching and the success rates of graduates. Its foolish, of course, but folks sure seem to like their 'traditions'!
