I just don't get it. Education is everything! How is the United States placing such a low priority on it!? It is really only a matter of time until we are blown out of the water by Asian countries, who seem to understand its importance.
Education is important but it doesn't have to be formal degree-oriented offered through what is effectively a cartel.
Education can and does come in a variety of ways. Expecting it to look exactly the same and work exactly the same for basically everyone doesn't make sense.
I'd love to see more of an emphasis around lifelong learning instead of demanding 18yo make lifetime decisions with near-zero life experience.
I do hire people every once in a while and I want them to be reliable, smart and educated in this specific order of priority.
Education is important, but I'm sure my plumber who charges a thousand bucks cash for half a day work earns more than most college graduates in this country.
There's an image problem with college in the US, largely the fault of some of the students/student organizations. Like that protest that took over a whole unrelated building, barring an innocent professor from accessing his research, and resulted in the professor being fired for trying to get it back. I hope we can return to respectable academia at one point. Where universities put furthering the body of human knowledge before bending over for their 'customers' who are more concerned with using the place as a playground to push their political views. I wouldn't be surprised if some medical university research program was on the verge of curing cancer but let their program be delayed because the students wanted to do a walk-in over something or other.
Wish the downvoters would give some explanation. I left my college with a vague sense of shame over the frivolous protests the student body participated in and the admin/professors allowed to disrupt class/activities/common-use areas. I'd have paid more togo somewhere protests had to be done off-campus or in a designated zone. At least in theory you're supposed to be there to learn.
Exactly correct. But valuing education is now as politicized as hurricane forecasts.
This is because education level is a major factor in voting patterns. So conservative pundits have made open war on it, to the nations serious detriment. They could instead work to lower the price of education but that is absolutely not the agenda for the same reasons.
It's not entirely unprecedented, universities have been called communist incubators for decades. What is new is the shift in portrayal from communist to being a bad investment (but with no intention of fixing that). Also new is the willingness to cast off the nations future for political gain which previous conservatives apparently were not willing to do.
There are similar patterns for climate change, guns and renewable energy.
> So conservative pundits have made open war on it, to the nations serious detriment. They could instead work to lower the price of education but that is absolutely not the agenda for the same reasons.
What? Conservatives have been advocates of school choice (shown to reduce the price of education) for decades. Conservatives have not made open war on education at all. Conservative pundits themselves tend to be some of the most educated people. I mean, I'm pretty conservative, and graduated out of a top-ranked, intensive engineering school.
