Deflating the Higher Education Bubble by Bill Lalor
It’s been refreshing to see higher education given some real scrutiny and focus lately. For my wife and me, something like “focus” happened when we met with a financial advisor before we had our first child, Evan. Or was it blind panic? I don’t remember. The conversation was something along the lines that college will cost us about $500,000 per kid, we’d be working till we die, and we should increase our savings by approximately 673% (assuming an annual ROR of about 8.5%). Or just jump into the housing market, and then cash out those stupendous, easy money gains as needed, which was part of Plan A.
Since then we’ve adjusted a bit, and now the plan is, more or less, to hope really hard that the projections are all wrong, or that my kids’ impossibly cute mugs get noticed by Gerber, or they pick up a bassoon scholarship, invent The Face Book, or whatever.
I’m just kidding, kids. Your mother and I have a real plan, but for posterity’s sake, here are a few meandering thoughts about why I don’t think we really need to have $500,000 in the bank (per kid and net of a few retirement nickels) by the year 2024 (although a few prayers to Saint Jude for good measure may be worthwhile).
First, now that everyone thinks everyone has a God-given right to a college degree, and many folks not fit for higher education are nonetheless taking home college degrees, a lot of these degrees are worthless. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4969)
Showing posts with label colleges. Show all posts
Showing posts with label colleges. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Co-ed Dorms and Other Fun College Experiences
Co-ed Dorms and Other Fun College Experiences
How would you like to shower with that hot freshman who just moved into your dorm?
That’s not just a random voyeuristic fantasy question but rather a serious query faced by many college kids today in a milieu that has brought new meaning to the old hippie mantra, “If it feels good, do it!”
Back in the olden days–like a few generations ago–colleges and universities were expected to act in loco parentis, serving as parental surrogates and enforcing what was then considered the norms of societal views on interpersonal relationships and often took that responsibility to the extreme. Instead of simply mandating that doors be left open when boys visited girls’ rooms, suitors were stopped at front entrances to girls’ dormitories by gestapo-trained guards who sternly sent them on their merry, horny ways, curfews were strictly enforced, and behavior was rigidly dictated.
On the distaff side, females would no sooner approach a male dorm than they would pick up a phone and call a guy.
Times have changed, which may be the understatement of the twenty first century when applied to our institutions of somewhat higher learning where most real learning takes place not in classrooms but behind closed dorm doors, where calculus and theoretical geophysics take a back seat behind personal anatomical exploration and applied sexuality.
The relatively new phenomenon and serious ramifications for females of the human species of “hooking up”–a collegiate euphemism for sharing one’s intimate wealth with either “friends with benefits” or with guys girls met that night at a keg or frat party, or a frat, keg party–has already been discussed in this space.
(See “Hooking Up,” Parts One and Two, http://tiny.cc/8vev2, in which it is shown that girls are by far the principal victims of the new and rampant promiscuity. Males never have to stride ”the tart walk.” If anything, they regard hooking up, and the occasional orgy, as the greatest advancements in collegiality since the invention of The Pill.)
The companion phenomenon to hooking up, co-ed dormitories, are another worst dream of many parents who naively send their young Janies off to college to get an education and grow into full adulthood and will make parental heads spin. Their young Janies may have much less lofty visions than education and maturation. They may have visions of quarterbacks dancing in their heads . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=3268)
How would you like to shower with that hot freshman who just moved into your dorm?
That’s not just a random voyeuristic fantasy question but rather a serious query faced by many college kids today in a milieu that has brought new meaning to the old hippie mantra, “If it feels good, do it!”
Back in the olden days–like a few generations ago–colleges and universities were expected to act in loco parentis, serving as parental surrogates and enforcing what was then considered the norms of societal views on interpersonal relationships and often took that responsibility to the extreme. Instead of simply mandating that doors be left open when boys visited girls’ rooms, suitors were stopped at front entrances to girls’ dormitories by gestapo-trained guards who sternly sent them on their merry, horny ways, curfews were strictly enforced, and behavior was rigidly dictated.
On the distaff side, females would no sooner approach a male dorm than they would pick up a phone and call a guy.
Times have changed, which may be the understatement of the twenty first century when applied to our institutions of somewhat higher learning where most real learning takes place not in classrooms but behind closed dorm doors, where calculus and theoretical geophysics take a back seat behind personal anatomical exploration and applied sexuality.
The relatively new phenomenon and serious ramifications for females of the human species of “hooking up”–a collegiate euphemism for sharing one’s intimate wealth with either “friends with benefits” or with guys girls met that night at a keg or frat party, or a frat, keg party–has already been discussed in this space.
(See “Hooking Up,” Parts One and Two, http://tiny.cc/8vev2, in which it is shown that girls are by far the principal victims of the new and rampant promiscuity. Males never have to stride ”the tart walk.” If anything, they regard hooking up, and the occasional orgy, as the greatest advancements in collegiality since the invention of The Pill.)
The companion phenomenon to hooking up, co-ed dormitories, are another worst dream of many parents who naively send their young Janies off to college to get an education and grow into full adulthood and will make parental heads spin. Their young Janies may have much less lofty visions than education and maturation. They may have visions of quarterbacks dancing in their heads . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=3268)
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Where, Oh Where Has Our Education Gone?
Where, Oh Where Has Our Education Gone?
. . . Of course, colleges and universities, trying desparately to seem relevant and far above secondary school fare, have cloaked their curriculum offerings by gussying them up with grand course titles such as ”Dynamic Exploration Of Radio Talk Shows: A Process Approach,” “Aesthetic Early Cubism In Modern Sculptures,” and “Urban Italian Retrospectives In Today’s Society.”
But the proof is in the pudding and course content and they’re not succeeding very well in concealing the truth that course content, as opposed to course titles, is increasingly sophomoric.
In article on “Crazy College Courses,” Carol Berman takes issue with that contention: ”Study for an exam on Syrah? Take a lab in levitation? How about tuning into TV for credit? All this is possible in college today, even in the Ivy League. Courses not only sound more interesting than “Calculus 101,” they actually are! However, courses that sound fun may not always be easy . . . Easy classes do exist, but don’t get fooled by the creative subject titles. You will have to work.”
That’s a matter of opinion. I took Calc 101. Watching television for college credit could in no possible way be as difficult.
Berman also addresses a serious issue related to dumbing down, binge drinking: It’s difficult to teach hung over–and strung out–students. Nevertheless, despite that serious collegiate issue in one course at least one Ivy League school plies students with alcohol. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=2108
. . . Of course, colleges and universities, trying desparately to seem relevant and far above secondary school fare, have cloaked their curriculum offerings by gussying them up with grand course titles such as ”Dynamic Exploration Of Radio Talk Shows: A Process Approach,” “Aesthetic Early Cubism In Modern Sculptures,” and “Urban Italian Retrospectives In Today’s Society.”
But the proof is in the pudding and course content and they’re not succeeding very well in concealing the truth that course content, as opposed to course titles, is increasingly sophomoric.
In article on “Crazy College Courses,” Carol Berman takes issue with that contention: ”Study for an exam on Syrah? Take a lab in levitation? How about tuning into TV for credit? All this is possible in college today, even in the Ivy League. Courses not only sound more interesting than “Calculus 101,” they actually are! However, courses that sound fun may not always be easy . . . Easy classes do exist, but don’t get fooled by the creative subject titles. You will have to work.”
That’s a matter of opinion. I took Calc 101. Watching television for college credit could in no possible way be as difficult.
Berman also addresses a serious issue related to dumbing down, binge drinking: It’s difficult to teach hung over–and strung out–students. Nevertheless, despite that serious collegiate issue in one course at least one Ivy League school plies students with alcohol. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=2108
Monday, April 19, 2010
Hooking Up Part Two
Hooking Up Part Two
“In the spring a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love,” wrote Tennyson. Alfred had never toured a twenty-first century American college campus where, to the young men–and women–in attendance, every season is booze-filled spring and thoughts of lust.
“I saw it [hooking up] as a way to be recognized and get satisfaction,” said Boyle, shaking her blond ponytail. “I felt so empty then.”
Fannie Boyle, now a junior at Vanderbilt University, thereby capsulized the state and status of casual, random make-out and copulation sessions, at least for her. She made her decision after her freshman year to change her life and priorities, met with a great deal of cynicism and criticism, and is now among the 25% celibate minority. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1638)
“In the spring a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love,” wrote Tennyson. Alfred had never toured a twenty-first century American college campus where, to the young men–and women–in attendance, every season is booze-filled spring and thoughts of lust.
“I saw it [hooking up] as a way to be recognized and get satisfaction,” said Boyle, shaking her blond ponytail. “I felt so empty then.”
Fannie Boyle, now a junior at Vanderbilt University, thereby capsulized the state and status of casual, random make-out and copulation sessions, at least for her. She made her decision after her freshman year to change her life and priorities, met with a great deal of cynicism and criticism, and is now among the 25% celibate minority. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1638)
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