It’s not just Derb and me saying that college is a huge scam, even college advisors are beginning to admit it:
I’m an academic advisor in natural sciences at a 4-year state school; day after weary day I advise students with bad grades who have unrealistic expectations and cannot accept the fact that — contrary to what they’ve been told all of their lives — they cannot be a dentist or doctor. Virtually every day I advise one or more students with “D” averages in math, chemistry, and biology who persist in the belief that they will get into medical school; all the while accumulating debt and wasting time. I don’t even really have the hope that one day they will wake up; I forget who said that “most people can’t stand too much reality.”
I also see student after student who has finished one expensive degree and immediately started on another — often requiring 60+ hours to finish. Also, a great many — indeed, most — have no idea what they will do with the degree; indeed, the utility of the degree is a secondary consideration to having the degree itself…. Other than engineering and business degrees, most college BSs and BAs are worthless.
Actually, I’d say that business degrees are worthless too. Nursing and technical two-year degrees, on the other hand, tend to be a lot more worthwhile. Regarding the usual defense that the purpose of college is learning how to learn, a conversation with just about any college student will demonstrate the complete spuriousness of that argument. Over the last seven years, the most pig-ignorant, clueless, and illogical critics from whom I have heard have usually been college students. And the very worst of them are graduate students, whose complete ignorance of the real world is only exceeded by their blind faith in their “education”.
I understand that the HR departments of the world often require an education ticket. But that doesn’t mean that the sheepskin-sellers aren’t scam artists, it just means that the great college scam enjoys external support.