After spending tens of thousands of dollars on higher education, often taking on huge debts along the way, many face a job market that doesn't seem to need them. Not only is the American economy producing few new jobs of any kind, but the ones that are being added are overwhelmingly on the lower end of the skill and pay scale.
In fact, government surveys indicate that the vast majority of job gains this year have gone to workers with only a high school education or less, casting some doubt on one of the nation's most deeply held convictions: that a college education is the ticket to the American Dream.
Therein lies the problem--universities continue to sell college as the route for economic gains. That is what I refer to as a ponzi scheme. Higher education is about way, way more than learning a few tricks, or how to use a tool ... If higher education were only as utilitarian and materialistic as that, well, I won't be in it :)
But, what colleges seem to do is promise students--particularly from low and low-middle income families--that a pot of gold awaits them upon graduation ... and then four years later students find out that is not the case :(
Professor Harry Frankfurt noted that whenever we begin to market, to sell--whether it is a candidate, or a consumer good--we begin to bullshit
, and truth goes out the window ...
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