The College Trap And Silly Forced Diversity Ad Nauseam
A college education has become an expectation as much as obtaining a driver’s license, and most parents state emphatically that their kids must, and will go to college. What they don’t explain is the logic behind the push, and the blank statement—must go to college—continues to be shouted as a marketing call to arms like an ad for contraceptives, and as popular as bell bottoms in the 1960s.
Most don’t even bother to qualify the plan as the pursuit of a specific field of study, but rather as a simple quest for a college diploma. Any diploma will do! And there lies the core of the problem as to why an alleged education by a college has become extremely expensive, with many degrees resembling a collage of mostly useless information that can be obtained online and free of charge.
Apart from STEM—and there’s plenty of waste within these fields as well—a college education hinges vastly on teaching courses that are repetitive and quickly forgotten and deliver degrees in fields that are extremely useless. From Philosophy to Women’s Studies, Liberal Arts to African American Studies, there’s virtually nothing of value to be learned, not to mention the fact that, unlike math, there’s extreme subjectivity and a student's grades depend on the instructor’s personal bias. To add insult to injury, some instructors even call themselves professors although most of their chosen fields are nothing more than scripts that could be used in Comedy Central.
A bachelor’s degree is replete with nonsensical information unrelated to the degree being sought, masked as general education that should have been covered in high school. Must also point that some required courses are meaningless and inapplicable in some fields, such as calculus in medicine. Why waste valuable time learning something that will never be used and ultimately forgotten? Is it about “critical thinking” and developing one’s intellect? Not a chance, because one either has “it” or doesn’t, and a college education will never transform a dumb human being into a genius.
A four-year degree should be converted into a highly specialized two-year degree with an unpaid residency as a third year. That change will reduce the overhead in universities by eliminating useless staff and faculty, bringing tuition costs down. In addition, and to improve teaching quality, tenure must be abolished because the practice inflates the ego of the faculty and protects them from malpractice which is endemic in colleges across the country.
Lastly, the political search for social justice for all the wrong reasons states that a college education is a right and entitlement. Let’s be clear: some human beings were not designed to attend institutions of higher learning and natural selection in a competitive environment must determine the outcome. Forced diversity, affirmative action and all that jazz are yet other silly attempts to mask people’s shortcomings and address someone’s misplaced guilt in the process. Here’s the latest:
Both Princeton University and Brown University recently announced that they are moving away from standardized testing requirements for graduate admission in the name of creating a more diverse student body.
Diversity quotas hurt those that have the merit but don’t possess certain physical characteristics—a.k.a. the usual suspects—and leads to a lower quality of graduate and wasted resources.
There's a simple statistical example that speaks for itself, with a quote from Johnny C. Taylor Jr., president and CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, a Washington D.C.-based, nonprofit organization that represents 47 public HBCUs—Historically Black Colleges and Universities—and 55 years have passed since the Civil Rights Act, or enough time to rebuild a country from ruins.
“Nationally, for all schools [black and white], the graduation rate is 60 percent,” Taylor said. “So, no one really is doing a good job.” The graduation rate for HBCUs is only 35 percent, Taylor said.
It's not as if HBCUs can blame any racial group but themselves. After all, everyone has equal access to books, materials and all the information used in college courses throughout the country, and the statistics undermine the slogan "diversity is strength." Otherwise, why not train all horses to be racehorses because they're horses.
To conclude, the simplest of concepts often overlooked by politicians is called supply and demand, which is driven by human self-interest, not some magic economic model.
Regardless of the product or service, the higher the supply, the lower the price, and vice-versa, and if there’s an abundance of people with degrees, not that they are necessarily qualified, the price of labor declines (lower salaries). Meanwhile, if the demand for educational services increases, more teachers and resources are required and costs rise (higher tuition), regardless of who pays. It's always the same group of individuals, either directly through savings or indirectly through taxation, that picks up the check.
In addition, higher labor supply leads to more unemployed college educated people, and lower salaries means lower income taxes used to pay for higher education costs through taxation, not to mention unemployment and welfare benefits. Sure, the rich will pick up the bill, the experts will say. Think again!
As a reminder, free lunches are always a mirage, and today’s generation will be saddled in the future with the cumulative and ever-expanding bill for the bad decisions of today, from pointless education, to forced diversity and welfare. Unless the madness is stopped, the USA will become a banana republic hopelessly bankrupt in its attempt to feed the inept and the OK Boomers will not be paying for it—guaranteed.