“(1) for a lower middle or working class origin student, practical skills are what’s needed…(2) the ‘liberal arts’ education they’re getting isn’t that traditional liberal arts education, and (3) the level of rigor they’re getting isn’t even close to the rigor even the the faux liberal arts educations at the elite schools.”
Well said #13. Most of the job applicants I have interviewed for administrative positions at our University have degrees in Sociology, Literature, and other Liberal Arts. They spend four or five years and lots of money only to graduate with no marketable skills and no idea how to get those skills. For them, attending four-year college was just a way to prolong adolescence. For the most part, they started college with no particular ambitions or goals, and they left in the same condition.
My advice to parents whose kids are still “finding themselves,” don’t know what they want from life, and are looking for a major that doesn’t make them work too hard (i.e., involve too much math or science) is DO NOT send them to a four-year college. Use your money to send them through a Certificate program at a Junior College or technical school where they will learn a job-related skill. Train them to be web designers, admin assistants, mechanics, veterinary technicians. A college degree is meaningless if you have no skills, no ambition, and are a politically-indoctrinated stooge with no critical thinking skills.
As for the level of rigor issue, I went through a Public Administration Master’s degree program at a state university. You would think that a “Masters” level program would require students to work harder and have a higher level of engagement than undergrad. Wrong. It got to the point that me and several other ambitious but disillusioned grad students would embed bizarre statements and comments into our papers just to see if the professors would catch them. Not one of them did–they weren’t even reading those papers. Everyone got A’s, high GPAs and the University could market it’s program as producing superior grads. And the University got to collect lots of cash from Sallie Mae for all those student loans.
