David Safier at Blog for Arizona has been diligently unpacking this week’s Goldwater Institute’s report contending that Arizona’s university’s are heavy with administrative bloat. Here’s one example:
Maybe, I said, based on G.I.’s history, some of the facts and figures in the report were distorted and misrepresented, and someone who knows how to critique research reports would discover problems.
Remember that G.I. still maintains that Bus Drivers are Bureaucrats, I reminded the press. Based on G.I.’s past history, maybe a bit of academic review of this report is in order.
A visit to blogforarizona.com will yield more.
Greg Patterson at Espresso Pundit takes the opposite tack in suggesting that a university education really isn’t all that valuable:
Meanwhile in all but a few fields such as (Accounting and Engineering) the future economic benefit of the degree is worth less than the cost, while many degrees (sociology, literature, gender studies) have nearly zero economic benefit.
Students are beginning to realize that they will be left with very few incremental skills, limited additional earning power, enough student loan debt to finance a decent house—and the same job at Starbucks that they had while in high school.
Maybe Greg is right about the uselessness of some college degrees—although this chart, lifted from Matthew Yglesias’ blog, suggests that you’re a lot better off with that degree than without it.
We’re of the opinion that there’s more to college—and to life—than learning how to be a good earning cog in the machine. YMMV.
This article appears in Aug 19-25, 2010.
I recently worked a temp job (Census) with a newly degreed fine arts graduate who was lamenting the lack of finding work in his field. Just a few months out of the box, so to speak, he was embittered beyond understanding. Was he thinking a fine arts degree was a pathway to immediate student loan repayment or instant gratification from society? I don’t know but in my view, college isn’t about job training as much as it’s about learning to be a productive member of society.
Leave it to the Professor/Senior Writer to gloss over the pointless and huge student loans these people carry…