Over the past few years I have written extensively about the joke that is modern “higher” education. I started with my own experience. The only ideas I learned in college were essentially self-taught lessons in (elective) areas that interested me (philosophy, classics, etc.). Only too late did I realize my mistake with a business major. The only things I remember from business school is that: 1) about 3% of targeted people respond to advertising campaigns, and 2) let the calculator do the amortizations.
Law school was a similar fiasco. “Government good. Government all powerful. Government give some rights. Thanks be to government for government…” Bullsh!t! on that!
Lately I’ve explored the PC circus permanently encamped on our campuses. Outside of the hard sciences there is next to no education, just indoctrination in the wonders of victimhood, white guilt, and socialism. No formal learning. Anything of value actually picked up is done so incidentally and autodidactically. And they pay big money for all this garbage.
This is how it is possible for so many to come out of four, five, seven, and eight+ year programs and know nothing – literally with the experience and mentality of seven-year-olds (along with bad, snooty attitudes and loads of debt).
People outside the ivory towers are beginning to notice the decline. And they’re reacting accordingly:
Ernst & Young, one of the UK’s biggest graduate recruiters, has announced it will be removing the degree classification from its entry criteria, saying there is “no evidence” success at university correlates with achievement in later life.
In an unprecendented move, the accountancy firm is scrapping its policy of requiring a 2:1 and the equivalent of three B grades at A-level in order to open opportunities for talented individuals “regardless of their background”.
In other words, at Ernst, a college degree may be an enhancer for some, but it is no longer a base requirement. Why? Because, as stated, there’s no longer any evidence it means anything. Time was when a degree meant you had a smart, well-read, and hard-working man on your hands. Now, it likely means you’re interviewing an SJW, know-nothing, nitwit and future HR headache, someone who understands little and will accomplish even less. Ernst is not alone in this development.
Martin Armstrong also commented on this story:
The best education has ALWAYS been an apprenticeship – not some university course taught by someone who has never practiced what they teach.
Roman_school
In ancient Rome, at between nine and twelve years of age, boys from affluent families would leave their basic education behind and take up study with a grammaticus, who was a teacher that refined his students’ writing and speaking skills. They would be versed in the art of poetic analysis and taught them Greek if they did not yet know it. They would be taught logic and how to think. By this point, lower class boys would already be working as apprentices. If someone wanted to be a sculptor, he would apply to be an apprentice at a sculptor shop. Girls, both rich and poor, would be focused on making themselves attractive brides and, subsequently, capable mothers. It was the women who often ran the household.
We still have trade schools, which are regarded as less than university. Yet, our education in university was supposed to follow the Roman model of apprentice for the lower class and higher education for the upper class. But somehow, university moved beyond grammaticus and pretended to prepare someone for a skill, which the Roman system did not seek to accomplish – merely refine the character of the student.
Even economics at its beginning under Adam Smith was regarded as part of moral philosophy. Economics was not taught as a subject by itself until 1901.
From Greco-Roman through Victorian times, all trades worked through apprenticeships. All – cobblers, chimney-sweeps, sailors, lawyers, doctors, economists, teachers, masons, carpenters, manufacturers, salesmen, architects, fishermen – all of them offered apprenticeships.
Higher education, elite education, existed all throughout those times. It was intended, for those of given aptitude and circumstance, to gain a level of understanding and intellectual exposure above and beyond the ordinary – and above what was required in their chosen field of employment.
Socrates – no degrees. Leonidas Drosis (Athens) / Wikipedia.
Today, there are a precious few institutions still in business that provide the basics of a real advanced education. Very few and very far between. We’re lucky to have them.
We’re even luckier to have the internet. Essentially 100% of the contents of a good college curriculum are available on-line and mostly for free. Any enterprising person with a basic grasp of reading and math (all that’s afforded by most “lower” schools anyway) can learn anything they like about any given subject.
Share this information with young people you might know and care about. If you, at any age, want an education, then get one. Don’t fall for the modern college/student loan slavery trap. Learn what you like, in your own time, at your own pace. And forget the degrees – there’s “no evidence” they mean anything and they are no longer golden tickets (manacles, maybe; tickets, no).
