Reply to No college? Another way?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "No college? Another way?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]DH and I had a conversation the other day with friends that roughly overlapped with the theme of this thread. We are all highly educated, advanced degrees, all went to top colleges including multiple Ivies, and the argument was that no one goes to a top college such as Harvard for the education anymore. You go for the name. Harvard or Penn or insert your favorite top college name here aren't offering a superior classroom instruction, they're offering the name. We all agreed that the quality of education at the top colleges in the humanities and social sciences have been seriously compromised in the past decade although the warning signs were already there when we were students 20 years ago. And before anyone accuses us of being Trump supporters, we're all staunch liberals, liberals who believe in free speech. And one only needs to read this college forum to see the intense obsession among many parents for a prestigious diploma, but it's *never for the education* and always for the post-graduation opportunities it might open up for the child. I don't know what the long term outcome but I won't speculate that far.

Nonetheless, like it or not, a college degree is a near requirement for advancement in today's world. It is much more difficult to achieve a middle class, let alone upper middle class, status without a college degree. It can happen, and people on this thread have pointed out examples, but if your child is capable of graduating from college, why stack the odds against him? If you want a straightforward, solid and pragmatic education, whether STEM or the liberal arts, then going the in-state route at one of the flagships is probably still a good option. And there are many specialist technical programs. If your child isn't geared for the liberal arts, look at schools like Drexel or Rochester Institute of Technology that offer many technical training tracks and have pretty good placement post-graduation.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics