Monday, December 17, 2012

On Credentials

Paul Krugman has a Nobel Prize (I still have a hard time typing that) and Rachel Maddow was a Rhodes Scholar....and so what exactly? A mitigation of the fact that they constantly deceive and have achieved a true-believer status that even Eric Hoffer himself could have never envisioned? I'm sorry but, no. And if you think that I am in any way coming at this from a partisan slant, I can assure you, I feel THE EXACT SAME WAY about well-educated buffoons on the right such as Ann Coulter (Cornell and the University of Michigan Law) and Laura Ingraham (Dartmouth and the University of Virginia Law). A jerk is a jerk is a jerk is a jerk.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

I'm so tired of the elitism that comes from people who are obsessed with "education" and trying to spend 4 years of their life trying to study self-explanatory, economically worthless subjects like political science and sociology that you can probably self study at home for a fraction of the cost of a college education that don't improve employment prospects in comparison to STEM and other math and science oriented types of majors. All you have to do is look up the syllabi for the college courses for these majors and either buy or check out the same books from the library and do the reading on your own and possibly start a blog if you want to get your political opinions out there along with listening to talk radio and watching the news and reading various news and government websites.

To a certain extent, with all the vast amounts of information posted on many different economics blogs and the help of a local library, there's really no excuse for the general public not to know anything about economics beyond the high school level, yet we still have much of the populace obsessed with cultural amateurism like The Jersey Shore and Honey Boo Boo and too stupid to do any outside investigation of the issues on their own. Some people even believe that if you have an opinion different from their own, they will blindly assume that you get all your information from either FOX News or MSNBC, even though that person is obviously caught between the fake left vs. right nonsense that has been perpetuated through these news channels and pathetic watchdog groups like Media Matters and NewsBusters.

People like Krugman, Maddow and many others make me question the declining value in gaining a college education, especially if you go into the liberal arts, which I have nothing against obviously and believe are important, but at the end of the day, due to the rising tuition costs, paying off those student loans and putting food on the table becomes way more important.

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

Back when I was young, Roberto, a person could overcome a nonbankable major simply by working their way up and/or going back to school ('cause it was far less expensive back then). Today it isn't so easy and, so, yeah, I definitely agree with you and I now counsel young people to get something tangible FIRST and then, if they want to, go back and do something else for self-fulfillment down the road.

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

Oh, and another thing that underscores what you're saying is the fact that we currently have over 3 million jobs in this country that employers cannot find qualified people for. Maybe we simply need to counsel more people into vocational schools, 2 year community colleges (many of which also offer 18-21 credit certificate programs; computers, pharmacy tech, recreation, etc.), and apprentice programs in an effort to ameliorate this.

BB-Idaho said...

It seems there will always be a need for electricians, carpenters,
plumbers and the like. Hard to offshore those jobs. Health related jobs are hot, but hot jobs seem to cycle. Colleges recruit to
liberal arts by pushing 'critical
thinking', and business seems to
appreciate that as well..but it has been noted that many majors
offer little real critical thinking. As Will notes, and from my academic and business experience, whatever the education-a person that communicates well writing/speaking, that can work in teams, focus and stay motivated will do well.

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

That's a good point. I knew this chick a couple of years ago who "only" had a BA in liberal arts and she was taking down over $100,000 a year at some business. She tried to explain it (what she actually did) to me a couple of times and I still can't tell you what it was.