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Originally Posted by bababouey
So what are the solutions? It seems like the young generation always blames student loans and wants relief from them, but never turns their guns on academia who has run up the cost over the years. There is plenty of blame to go around. I blame all the liberal arts schools scattered throughout this country that churn out a garbage product that doesn't do much for anybody, except the professors wallet. and yes, erau is just as guilty as anybody.
I 100% blame academia, the proliferation of BS degrees, and stigmatizing trades. 20 years ago when you could just live below the poverty line for 4 years and graduate debt-free, sure major in whatever you want. But now, there's too much to lose. Advisors told me in high school and early on in college that I probably wouldn't make it through engineering so I should focus on gen eds and find myself. Take poetry, history of rock n' roll, maybe a dance class, and maybe take pre-calculus as my only math/science. My freshman orientation counselor actually 'did me a favor' and changed all my classes down a level. I immediately changed them back when I got home, but she wanted me to redo my junior year of high school. Had I taken their advice I would've spent another year in college, easily, and a lot of kids fell for that BS. Once I was in engineering the majority of my friends, most of whom were smarter than me, dropped it for easier degrees because they 100% believed any degree would pay for itself because that's what everybody told us (our parents, high school teachers, counselors, university recruiters, counselors, etc). College was sold as this big coming-of-age experience where you get to live on campus alone for the first time, sneak beer into your dorm, chase girls, go to class in pajamas, go to parties, make lifelong friends, etc, etc. Whatever it costs doesn't matter because if you do fancy stuff with math it'll definitely pay for itself in the long run, as long as you get ANY degree, which most of us believed (even me until I ran the numbers like my sophomore year when I was thinking about doing meteorology instead). My college admitted over 1,000 people into the civil engineering program every year, and graduated less than 100. The majority of those other kids ended up in degree programs where the university could shove 500 kids into a lecture hall for 4 classes a semester, give them a scan-tron mid-term and final with questions verbatim from the slides that were posted online, then after 4 years they graduate with a degree that's worth exactly as much as the effort they put into it. It was a complete scam. Meanwhile, tuition doubled from the time my step bro (4 years older than me) started until I started, then it doubled again while I was there.
I was on scholarship too, so I even paid out-of-pocket to take physics II and circuits at the local community college, because at my university it was taught be a TA who learned English as a 3rd or 4th language. And good on him for that, but he didn't exactly have the vocabulary to articulate how electro-motive force functions. The professor just showed up for the first class to read the syllabus and tell us only 1/3 would make it through with a C or better. At the community college, for the night class, we had less than 20 people and our professor was an engineer at Motorola who just liked to teach. Best classes I ever had, and ironically, half the kids I met there were my study group for upper division engineering.
So, to make a short story long, the acadmemic system is very broken, the value of many degrees have become diminished into participation trophies, but universities lean on those degrees to be their cash cows. Meanwhile, most kids think they'll be a loser in life if they don't go to college, while the trades are stigmatized even though many offer a better financial outlook. The experience is fun as hell, not gonna lie, but not worth 20 years of debt. Universities hide that well with all the buy-in from educators and parents, and they've exploited loopholes that allow them to continually race to the top with more and more outrageous tuition costs. Now a college degree is required for most entry level jobs with paychecks that don't come close to giving a decent ROI.
If I were king, I'd just adopt Europe's model and end the circus. It seems to work well and gives them a balanced work force.