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On
Education
Should
everyone go to college?
Should
everyone go to college
or university? My
answer is that probably most people should not go to college. But
this is a very complex topic that goes to the heart of every persons
desire to achieve a higher place in society. The mass media
constantly shows people who have achieved monetary success and or
fame, and at the same time presents non-college occupations as
something of less value and less importance. In the past, college was
something for one of two categories of people. Either the children of
wealthy families or people who wanted to go into the professional
fields. The wealthy people, who in most cases in the past, were
trained at home by the best tutors, went to college to broaden their
understanding of the world. Somewhat later, certain groups of people
started sending their children to college for the purpose of entering
into professional fields. Today, these professional fields, such as
accounting, engineering, law, medical and similar, are protected and
restricted through a licensing structure. The question that I have is
why would a person from a non wealthy family attend college and study
a field that has little chance in helping them start their own
business or has little chance in helping them get a job working for
someone else? Further, many people today continue after four years of
under graduate college, to get a masters degree or even a doctorate,
again in a field that will not assist them in the future. From what I
have observed, much of the first four years of college is a
repetition of what the student learned or should have learned, if
they were studying, in high school, with little more advanced
information. Here in New York City, I run into many people every day
who have obtained master degrees in fields that have very limited job
opportunities, working "temporarily" as waiters,
waitresses, construction, sales persons and similar. These people
often blame the economy or politics or other reasons, for their
perceived lack of a job in the field that they studied in. The fact
is that they probably should not have gone to college in the first
place. They probably are working in the field that they are most
qualified in. I wonder why undergraduate fields always require four
years to complete. For example, art, photography, film making,
physics, math, sociology, all fields are always four year programs.
Why? Should not certain fields, such as math or physics, be perhaps
six year programs, while perhaps fields such as art and film making
should not be taught in college at all, but instead people wishing to
enter into those fields should go into an apprenticeship program of a
person known the that field. It would seem that college often times
has the effect of holding a person back by a number of years, before
they go out and try to make their mark on the world.
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