Day 53 of 1000

Charles Murray authored a book titled Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America’s Schools Back to Reality.  It is about the bankruptcy of the American education system.  He is a big proponent of the idea that it is bad to get a Bachelors degrees that costs tens of thousands of dollars in communications, sociology, or some other soft field where the few available jobs do not pay enough to retire debt incurred to get the degree in the first place.  He and Peter Thiel, one of the founders of Pay-Pal, teamed up to defeat two academics from Duke and Northwestern University on the topic “Too Many Kids Go to College“.

I think Murray and Thiel have a very strong case, but the thing that caught my eye in the article was this statement by Murray during the debate:

When I agreed to debate on too many kids are going to college, I thought of college as being four-year colleges leading to the BA. I didn’t think of it as a whole range of community colleges and the rest. Anyway, that’s the way I’m going to argue tonight because if the proposition were that too many kids are trying to get more education and training after high school, I wouldn’t have accepted the position on the affirmative. Almost everybody needs more education after high school. What they don’t need is to chase after this fraudulent, destructive, antediluvian thing called a BA. The thesis of my argument really is that the BA is the work of the devil.

I think Murray has it just about right. A BA is OK for some kids, but a whole lot more kids need to do self-learning or get their education in apprenticeships and community college certificate programs.  I think he has it just about right.  Kelly got very high score on her college entrance ACT, has the right ethnicity, does volunteer work, knows the right people, and could probably get into one of the Ivy’s.  Her cousin has degrees from both Dartmouth and Harvard.  One of Kelly’s schoolmates is a high school senior who is dual-enrolled with Kelly at the community college.  He is applying to ALL of the Ivy’s as well as Duke, Stanford, and some other big name expensive colleges.

Kelly asked me, “Should I be applying at the Ivy’s, too?”

Her question was answered for her when she saw this image from Dom Giordano’s Facebook page.  She can go to Stanford or an Ivy for grad school on a teaching or research assistantship.  Which would I rather have as an employee, a self-satisfied, entitled kid with an Ivy League education or this guy?  It is a no-brainer.  I want this guy:

Update:  It appears the 99% Occupy crowd is active in Eugene, Oregon.  Seems about right.

Update II:  More education sob stories from NRO.