One reason so many people go to college when they aren’t suited to it (and probably don’t want to go) is that, these days, you are expected to have a college degree to become a receptionist. My grandfather was a successful accountant and he never went to college — he went to accounting school. We need to have more schools focused on specific careers which do not require 4 years of dubious general education classes or leave students tens of thousands of dollars in debt.
The phenomenon is similar to inflation of the currency. Turning out an oversupply of college graduates debased the currency of the degree.
When only 5% of Americans had degrees, the progressive fallacy was that if everybody had a degree everybody would get a great job like the 5%.
The reality is that there are only so many great jobs. When only the best and brightest have degrees, the fallacy is that their success is due to the degree. When nearly half the country is degreed, but the vast majority are midwit mediocrities, the fallacy becomes apparent.
Higher education has turned into an indoctrination factory, given a fertile field by overeducated average intellects at best who are disgruntled because their degrees mire them in debt and don't deliver on the promise of a lucrative career.
Bottom line: the push to college educate the masses was a false promise for many and has resulted in an electorate brainwashed in communist propaganda. We should scale back and emphasize trade school training for youth for jobs that can't be destroyed by AI or outsourcing.
Trade schools need to make a come back. Electricians and plumbers make more than double of what a grade school teacher makes with a 4 yr degree.
Just a thought, but who built all the old ornate buildings used for libraries, post offices, and federal government? Nobody builds anything like it now. Where did those skilled craftsmen get their training 200+ years ago?
At that time skilled tradesmen inherited their craft which was passed down from generation to generation. It only takes one generation to lose the accumulated knowledge of centuries.
I taught in a university for 30 years - agree with everything you say. In my later years we simply took attendance and were encouraged to maintain student credit hour production using grade inflation. One suggestion I have is to do away with the federal loan guarantee and have universities co-sign all student loans.
Although Bass does not mention it, the same dysgenic trend exists for High School. Decades ago many more lower IQ children dropped out of high school because they could not do the advanced work. They found productive work on farms or manufacturing, in noble trades etc. Today, because of social promotion, we have kids languishing in high school majoring in causing trouble because they cannot do anything else.
I taught psychology for one semester at a college that was formed to cater to the marginal student. They received huge federal subsidies (many DEI etc.). We had an iatrogenic policy that required us professors to reach out and practically babysit any student that was falling behind. As I was lecturing one day, I scanned the classroom and realized not one of the students was smart enough to be taking my foundational course, Intro Psych. I doubted there was a person in the class with an IQ above 90. Stupid indeed.
We should not have colleges for marginal students, period. This was misguided social policy. Bass is correct.
Could be worse - could be in Canada where they claim 60% are now university educated, meaning a lot of them are below average IQ, many likely a lot below. Great cannon fodder for the radical left and goes some way in explaining why Canada is a lot further along the road to being totally and utterly fucked.
Interesting hypothesis although, if IQ is a major causal factor then wouldn't the "elite" universities be less weird than the rest, just because their mean IQs are higher? And is that what we see? I attended a very down to earth, non-weird university 40+ years ago but my limited brushes with elite universities at the time suggested that they were weirder.
My contention is that wokism is basically a philosophy of resentment weaponized by less competent strivers, peri-elites who use it for mobility. It is much more status oriented at ivy league universities. Affirmative action almost certainly widened the student competence gaps. But I agree that my mechanisms need refinement for a number of reasons related to the question you just asked.
It was designed and inserted by the controllers to cut into the natural advantages of higher IQ people over lower IQ people. The benefactors serve the desires of the controllers.
"elite universities" are pay to play. People with money aren't any smarter than the general population. They just have more opportunities and connections
Rot? I'll posit that we just send too many kids to college. Why?
The economics demand it. Colleges need an on-going inventory of tuition payments. Government has obliged with college friendly debt offerings and college friendly legislation around that debt. I'd start with making college debt extinguishable in bankruptcy and for the colleges to have to eat the losses. This would be the quickest and surest way to slow down college inflation.
All of this is so true it hardly needs to be written. But it was because…
Well, people are dumber than they used to be.
The elitist part is very concerning however. And not because of the assumed implication. The Ivy’s have ALWAYS been about elitism. And not from an intelligence POV as they like the masses to think but rather the top tier universities are stratified by class.
If legacy admissions to the Harvards, Yales, and Stanford’s were permanently obliterated America would go from what is and always has been the pinnacle of opportunity to a different strata.
For the most part, people don’t succeed relative to their ability because of class barriers. Not racial discrimination, not poverty per se.
Educational opportunities and thus highly paid and desired professions are passed down. That is what all blacks, whites, Asians, Hispanics, and anybody else should be raising hell about, if not rioting.
Very true. Take into consideration that the highly qualified individuals are often discriminated against because they don’t fit the prevailing quota requirement; therefore, are eliminated from the playing field entirely. The admitted college students are less suited to finish much less achieve a high level of excellence needed in their field. Just read about the young brilliant Asian male who was turned down by 16 CA schools, then got hired by Google, will be left to educate himself (probably better off). UCLA was once a highly respected accredited University with a 95% graduation rate. I was told recently that they are in trouble because their graduation rate is just a bit over 50% now; too many admitted in preference over the best and brightest, when they have insufficient capacity to finish, thus cheating those who could have actually succeeded but were denied.
This conclusion may result from looking through the wrong window. I dimmly recall accounts of college board scores dropping over the years. Are young Americans in general dummer than in prior decades? I could certainly imagine why: They are being brain damaged by too many medical interventions. Their foods are degraded by factory farming, food processing, soil depletion, microwaving, , grab-and-go culture. Their environments are infiltrated by EMFs. Their hormones are disrupted by disordered light exposure and estrogenic environmental pollution. Too many live programmed childhoods and barely develop a "self".
I totally agree that we have a culture problem. It jumped into focus when I heard of a town mayor who was a baker (in France).
In many countries "undergraduate employment" is a growing problem while acceptance of conversation about it varies, but I will predominantly focus on the east; china, india, indonesia (my own country)
The gaussian curve tells you which segment of population should achieve which level of "education". having 40% graduates defies the biology, it just means you have shifted the whole educational system down (or left).
One reason so many people go to college when they aren’t suited to it (and probably don’t want to go) is that, these days, you are expected to have a college degree to become a receptionist. My grandfather was a successful accountant and he never went to college — he went to accounting school. We need to have more schools focused on specific careers which do not require 4 years of dubious general education classes or leave students tens of thousands of dollars in debt.
The phenomenon is similar to inflation of the currency. Turning out an oversupply of college graduates debased the currency of the degree.
When only 5% of Americans had degrees, the progressive fallacy was that if everybody had a degree everybody would get a great job like the 5%.
The reality is that there are only so many great jobs. When only the best and brightest have degrees, the fallacy is that their success is due to the degree. When nearly half the country is degreed, but the vast majority are midwit mediocrities, the fallacy becomes apparent.
Higher education has turned into an indoctrination factory, given a fertile field by overeducated average intellects at best who are disgruntled because their degrees mire them in debt and don't deliver on the promise of a lucrative career.
Bottom line: the push to college educate the masses was a false promise for many and has resulted in an electorate brainwashed in communist propaganda. We should scale back and emphasize trade school training for youth for jobs that can't be destroyed by AI or outsourcing.
Trade schools need to make a come back. Electricians and plumbers make more than double of what a grade school teacher makes with a 4 yr degree.
Just a thought, but who built all the old ornate buildings used for libraries, post offices, and federal government? Nobody builds anything like it now. Where did those skilled craftsmen get their training 200+ years ago?
At that time skilled tradesmen inherited their craft which was passed down from generation to generation. It only takes one generation to lose the accumulated knowledge of centuries.
I taught for 15 years at a CA college and it's not just the students.
I taught in a university for 30 years - agree with everything you say. In my later years we simply took attendance and were encouraged to maintain student credit hour production using grade inflation. One suggestion I have is to do away with the federal loan guarantee and have universities co-sign all student loans.
Although Bass does not mention it, the same dysgenic trend exists for High School. Decades ago many more lower IQ children dropped out of high school because they could not do the advanced work. They found productive work on farms or manufacturing, in noble trades etc. Today, because of social promotion, we have kids languishing in high school majoring in causing trouble because they cannot do anything else.
I taught psychology for one semester at a college that was formed to cater to the marginal student. They received huge federal subsidies (many DEI etc.). We had an iatrogenic policy that required us professors to reach out and practically babysit any student that was falling behind. As I was lecturing one day, I scanned the classroom and realized not one of the students was smart enough to be taking my foundational course, Intro Psych. I doubted there was a person in the class with an IQ above 90. Stupid indeed.
We should not have colleges for marginal students, period. This was misguided social policy. Bass is correct.
Could be worse - could be in Canada where they claim 60% are now university educated, meaning a lot of them are below average IQ, many likely a lot below. Great cannon fodder for the radical left and goes some way in explaining why Canada is a lot further along the road to being totally and utterly fucked.
Interesting hypothesis although, if IQ is a major causal factor then wouldn't the "elite" universities be less weird than the rest, just because their mean IQs are higher? And is that what we see? I attended a very down to earth, non-weird university 40+ years ago but my limited brushes with elite universities at the time suggested that they were weirder.
My contention is that wokism is basically a philosophy of resentment weaponized by less competent strivers, peri-elites who use it for mobility. It is much more status oriented at ivy league universities. Affirmative action almost certainly widened the student competence gaps. But I agree that my mechanisms need refinement for a number of reasons related to the question you just asked.
It was designed and inserted by the controllers to cut into the natural advantages of higher IQ people over lower IQ people. The benefactors serve the desires of the controllers.
"elite universities" are pay to play. People with money aren't any smarter than the general population. They just have more opportunities and connections
Rot? I'll posit that we just send too many kids to college. Why?
The economics demand it. Colleges need an on-going inventory of tuition payments. Government has obliged with college friendly debt offerings and college friendly legislation around that debt. I'd start with making college debt extinguishable in bankruptcy and for the colleges to have to eat the losses. This would be the quickest and surest way to slow down college inflation.
All of this is so true it hardly needs to be written. But it was because…
Well, people are dumber than they used to be.
The elitist part is very concerning however. And not because of the assumed implication. The Ivy’s have ALWAYS been about elitism. And not from an intelligence POV as they like the masses to think but rather the top tier universities are stratified by class.
If legacy admissions to the Harvards, Yales, and Stanford’s were permanently obliterated America would go from what is and always has been the pinnacle of opportunity to a different strata.
For the most part, people don’t succeed relative to their ability because of class barriers. Not racial discrimination, not poverty per se.
Educational opportunities and thus highly paid and desired professions are passed down. That is what all blacks, whites, Asians, Hispanics, and anybody else should be raising hell about, if not rioting.
Very true. Take into consideration that the highly qualified individuals are often discriminated against because they don’t fit the prevailing quota requirement; therefore, are eliminated from the playing field entirely. The admitted college students are less suited to finish much less achieve a high level of excellence needed in their field. Just read about the young brilliant Asian male who was turned down by 16 CA schools, then got hired by Google, will be left to educate himself (probably better off). UCLA was once a highly respected accredited University with a 95% graduation rate. I was told recently that they are in trouble because their graduation rate is just a bit over 50% now; too many admitted in preference over the best and brightest, when they have insufficient capacity to finish, thus cheating those who could have actually succeeded but were denied.
"Enshitification" isn't just a theory to explain what's going on with the Internet. It encompasses our entire civilization.
Doubleplusungood crimethink! To the memory hole with you.
This conclusion may result from looking through the wrong window. I dimmly recall accounts of college board scores dropping over the years. Are young Americans in general dummer than in prior decades? I could certainly imagine why: They are being brain damaged by too many medical interventions. Their foods are degraded by factory farming, food processing, soil depletion, microwaving, , grab-and-go culture. Their environments are infiltrated by EMFs. Their hormones are disrupted by disordered light exposure and estrogenic environmental pollution. Too many live programmed childhoods and barely develop a "self".
I totally agree that we have a culture problem. It jumped into focus when I heard of a town mayor who was a baker (in France).
I think 57 percent of high school grads now go to college.
In many countries "undergraduate employment" is a growing problem while acceptance of conversation about it varies, but I will predominantly focus on the east; china, india, indonesia (my own country)
The gaussian curve tells you which segment of population should achieve which level of "education". having 40% graduates defies the biology, it just means you have shifted the whole educational system down (or left).