85% of college students are wasting their time and money

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Sunday, June 23. 2013

85% of college students are wasting their time and money

A strong claim, but there must be some truth in it:

Trunk says you should skip college unless you’re really great at school or got accepted into a top ten school. Instead “you should just go to work.”

In her recent article published on LinkedIn, Trunk advises young people to re-think college and focus on internships, saying that anyone can teach themselves the skills needed to be successful. She gives the example of an MIT program that gave iPads to illiterate kids in Ethiopia who then were able to teach themselves how to use it, program it and read it in English without a teacher or curriculum.

Posted by The Barrister in Education at 13:30 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)

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I taught college level courses for of over 25 years. I am in complete agreement. Most of the students should never have set foot into a college level class. They didn't have a clue and truly desired not to be there. They weren't ready.

If the government would stop handing out free money to everyone, these institutions of higher learning wouldn't be putting out degrees like a Mexican tortilla factory. It is the federal teat that is to blame for this. The institutions are dying for the handout regardless of the fact that the student is the loser.

Sad truth, high school counselors are the pimps that tell them it is their God given right to go to school. Loans? Who cares? I had 30+ year olds taking beginning level classes because they knew how to avoid starting to pay those off. Just take a night course, enroll and you are still in school. The loan is still there waiting and waiting and waiting.

90% of the students that I taught would have been better prepared for life if they had tracked vocation ed in high school. Oops, I forgot...that is so un PC.

#1 mcnorman (Link) on 2013-06-23 14:08 (Reply)

mcnorman,

From what results I've seen on this side of the border (I'm not a teacher/professor) I agree with you.

We also had a Provincial Gov't that cancelled GR 13 from our high school curriculum which was a huge mistake. Most Gr 12 grads aren't ready to focus on their life's journey at that age.

TC

#1.1 Garry on 2013-06-23 21:32 (Reply)

So, if the student population is reduced by 85% what happens to college funding? Nothing bad I assume ;) At least the professors will learn where they stand in the pecking order as administrators hang on to their jobs or bail out on golden parachutes leaving the teachers to root about in the muck for bucks. Now that would be an education.

#2 chuck on 2013-06-23 15:08 (Reply)

They'll find internships...where? As I read the news, working somewhere for free, unless it's as a volunteer in a volunteer position, is illegal.

#3 Sam L. on 2013-06-23 18:10 (Reply)

Education is not for the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think
--Albert Einstein

The ultimate end of education is not a perfection in the accomplishments of the school, but fitness for life; not the acquirement of habits of blind obedience, and of prescribed diligence, but a preparation for independent action.
--Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi

Now, far more than 85% of college students fail to achieve these definitions of education. Not really their fault, probably 90% of the professors don't comprehend education defined this way. But then the colleges aren't set up to help students learn to think or order their thoughts. The problem with the luxury accommodations at colleges is that they are a distraction, most features are defined to provide students with something to keep them from thinking.

As to the MIT study mentioned, those kids provided with an iPad had not been inculcated with "school helplessness" and didn't have a lot of distractions to keep them from thinking and working to solve the problem, i.e., how to gain access to the world using the iPad.

#4 JKB on 2013-06-23 23:29 (Reply)

Education is not for the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think.
--Albert Einstein

"Bingo".

TC

#4.1 Garry on 2013-06-24 08:54 (Reply)

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Sunday, June 23. 2013

85% of college students are wasting their time and money