Bill Bennett: Is College Worth It?

Fair point on the correlation of degree and intelligence.
I'll rephrase. The last thing the GOP wants is an electorate that has learned the value of critical thinking.

They despise humanities because those disciplines tend to attract those damn liberals. So out with the humanities.
They despise science because science tends to disprove the laughable belief that the Earth is 10,000 years old and that man once shared the planet with dinosaurs. Out with the sciences.

Now that you've whacked that many majors, why not go ahead and trot out Mr. Virtue himself, gambling addict Bill Bennett, to trash the entire concept of higher education?

 

You don't seem to know many members of the GOP. And that whole "critical thinking" thing? Physician heal thyself.

 

quant, I've been wondering. Do conservative professors wear special headgear or do you have to get cosmetic surgery to remove the point?

 

I'll make another concession. I was excessively long-reaching in my umbrella statement about Republicans and their contempt for education. I withdraw that all-encompassing claim.
Having said that, I'm pretty confident in saying that if there's somebody out there thumping the philosophical canon against education, that person is going to be a Republican, a Tea Partier or somebody of that end of the spectrum.


1) Nearly 100% of those who opposed the notion of the federal Department of Education when it became a separate cabinet division were conservatives Republicans.
2) I haven't heard of anybody save hard-liner GOPers who have beaten the drum for the elimination of majors or departments at public schools. This is the pet project of the Republican governor of North Carolina and a couple of his flunkies in the legislature, one of whom floated the concept of closing an entire campus.

 

You know, of course, the goal of the GOPbaggers is to get rid of public education completely. Period, full stop.

 

Yankee Fan: I don't think the Education Department stats you referenced earlier actually say what you believe they do. But I may be off.
Here's the way I read that chart: that 13.7 percent of degree recipients in 2009-10 were black and 66 percent of degree recipients were white. If so, that's almost entirely in line with both races' shares of the country's population at large. Therefore, it's inaccurate to suggest that whites receive degrees at greater rates than blacks do.

Again, I'm not entirely sure myself.

 

"the point"?

 

I've listened to conservatives for decades railing about pointy-headed professors. How do conservative professors handle this?

 

LOL ... maybe that explains that blackout I had right after my final dissertation defense. I always wondered where that band-aid came from.

 

You'd think Bennett should push his views on the community that continues to look to government to train workers, which is the business community. His goal should be to get businesses to not use degrees as a minimum requirement.

 

There are many who suggest that the trend toward degree-as-minimum-requirement flowed from the Supreme Court decision in Griggs v. Duke Power. I find some holes in that line of reasoning, but not so many as to dismiss the idea completely.

 

To me, the power (and cost) of college (and who's top-tier) comes from businesses that set minimums or hire only from certain schools. That's why, even though there are real efforts (not University of Phoenix-type efforts) to make free or low-cost online classes available, they'll never "replace" college until such time as employers accept them as viable substitutes. That's because most employers don't hire based on getting the best employee with the greatest potential. They hire based on covering the ass of whomever is doing the hiring. "How was I to know this employee would turn to shit? He went to Harvard" is a lot easier to justify on the back end than "Yeah, this guy went to a community college, but he's got some very strong skills and interviewed well" is to justify on the front end.