“Concerning the MSN article on the value of business degrees, companies have some gaul to blame business degrees.”
It didn’t come across to me that way. Corporate HR folks said that business majors were not prepared in a way that was as immediately useful as other graduates, and several universities were addressing the issue. Any field of study can always be improved, and it appears that many are trying to do that.
@bascar2 … all the neighborhood car repair handyman types I’ve known have the basic tools, including floor jacks, jackstands, and ramps. They don’t need to crawl under a Civic sitting on the ground. If you don’t own the basic tools, then of course you wouldn’t do your own routine maintenance.
Newer cars don’t need as much work, just like you say. About the only routine maintanence tasks an econonobox owner needs to do is change the oil & filter every 6000 miles or so, change the air filter once a year, put in new spark plugs every 25-30K or so, check the timing if required, & top off the fluid levels if they get low. None of those jobs is particularly difficult or time consuming That’s why I’m surprised people don’t work on their cars as much now as before. There’s less to do now. That’s the point.
It is true that some repair tasks are considerably more difficult now. Problems with the emissions systems for example are beyond most home mechanics reach. And jobs that used to be simple on 1970’s models, like changing out the water pump or the starter motor, on newer cars these jobs can be a bear.
One thing that helped this nation in WW II is that many of our servicemen had worked on their cars and could easily be trained to work on Jeeps, tanks, aircraft engines, etc. Many of these men had tinkered with radios so it wasn’t a big leap to handle communications equipment and radar systems.
Now, automobiles require less repair, but are often more difficult to fix if something goes wrong. Electronic equipment is often discarded when it doesn’t function. My last CRT television had a warning on the back panel that said “Do Not Open. No Uer Serviceable Parts Inside”. Lightning hit a pole near our house when the television was on and it immediately went out. I decided to take a chance and removed the back. One 50 cent fuse solved the problem. Had it been something else, I wouldn’t have known where to look. I have no idea what is inside our present flat screen television. It did have a problem during the warranty period and the technician came to the house with a new circuit board and changed it out in 15 minutes, but had no idea what the problem was. He said that the set only has three parts–the power supply, a board that handles the video and audio and the display. The only thing he does is just change out circuit boards. Back in the vacuum tube days, I did my own television repairs. I would bet that the circuit boards aren’t even available to the customer today.
Jt, I agree.
Sadly, I also agree that “many” are working to improve their programs. Unfortunately, many are not, especially the community college. Many are working instead to find ways to get more seats in their seats, and that means recruiting students with lesser foundational education and creating programs to get them in the classes. I wish I could be agreeing that ALL colleges were working to produce more skilled and educated graduates.
In many states, the problem is compounded by the politics. In NH, the community colleges were previously a state agency. Money in went to the state’s General Fund and appropriations to operate the colleges were made by the congressional budget committee and approved by the legislatiure based on the overall state budget forwarded to the legislatire by the Governor and Executive Counciil.
However, the stete’s budget has been in trouble for some years now, and the community college system was parted out and made a state-supported nonprofit rather than a state agency. What that means from a practical standpoint is that the state can simply cut their subsidy (they have) by millions and it becomes the colleges’ problem to try to make up the revenue. Ergo, the collegs now being abandoned like the child of a drug addct, they now hav eto do whatever it takes to survive. And that means people in the seats. It ain’t about academics anymore, it ain’t about providing skills to young citizens not college-bound. It’s about revenue and cash flow.
This thread touches so many education related issues for me personally and society in general. Back in 8th grade (Boston Public Schools…name withheld to protect the guilty) an English teacher commented on my “What I want to be when I grow up” essay. That was an easy subject since I loved shop classes, particularly woodworking. His comment basically was, 'you’d be wasting a good brain on menial labor.‘
That was the first step on my way to college, since I didn’t want to "waste a good brain on menial labor."
After seven largely mediocre or worse semesters at UM I flunked out. I ended up finishing my degree almost thirty years later but in the intervening years worked at all kinds of “menial” jobs. All along I’ve been a DIYer in plumbing, electrical, automotive, and of late even some carpentry…helping my PhD daughter remodel her house. That self education has been far more valuable to me than what I learned in college.
In my first seven semesters I accumulated relatively small student loans and finished paying them off around 1980. When I went back 1996-97 to finish I accumulated new student loan debt, despite Massachusetts’ “free tuition for veterans” at state colleges. Finished paying those off a few years ago and now that I’m “retired” I might actually see some benefit from my BA as I plan to do part-time substitute teaching and the pay rates are a little higher for those with a degree. I’d probably have to work FT as a sub for about 50 years for the pay difference to equal what my degree cost me. 
“Many are working instead to find ways to get more seats in their seats…”
They do have a product to sell. Is that a problem? And more jobs require a college degree and even advanced degrees than ever before. I don’t see a problem with education. It’s still up to the student to apply the studies in a meaningful way.
If you ask most educators, the product isn’t education. Students are the product, and the students aren’t the customers. Businesses that hire graduates are the customers.
When you consider in-state undergraduate tuition is subsidized by the state, the state is really the customer. Most in-state students pay between 25% and 33% of the total cost of an education, but with Republicans cutting education, that percentage is going up.
It takes a while to feel the pain, but cuts to education will increase poverty and grow the crime rate. It’s just a matter of time. The real customers (the people of the state), are the ones who will eventually feel the pain of education cuts.
put in new spark plugs every 25-30K
More like every 125-130k or so. IF that.
More like every 125-130k or so. IF that.
Iridium plugs…yes…regular copper plugs NO…Probably closer to the 40k range…but no where near 100k range.
We have lived through the mortgage crisis and that hit the economy very hard. I am worried that there is another bigger crisis on the horizon and that is the crisis in higher education. The college loan debt now exceeds credit card debt. If I can’t make my mortgage payments, the lending institution will foreclose and take my house and probably get something for it. If I can’t keep up the payments on my car, the bank will repossess it and will get at least something for it. However, if I default on a student loan, my education can not be repossessed by the institution that loaned me the money.
I joined the faculty at a mid-sized university back in 1965. We were told that our most important mission was teaching. If we did research and published articles, that was great as long as it didn’t take away from our effectiveness in the classroom. That has changed. In the last two decades, the incoming faculty are told to just “keep the lid on in the classroom” but if you want to earn tenure and keep your job, you had better publish and bring in grant money. More recently, faculty have to have good student evaluations as well. Far too often, professors appease the students with easy assignments that are not graded critically so that the students will give these professors good evaluations. I really liked teaching and working with students and I enjoyed doing research and had a good publication record. However, I got tired of reporting to administrators who believe that education is a product as opposed to a process, I got tired of having to teach material in upper division classes that my colleagues were supposed to have taught in the lower division classes but chose instead to entertain the students, so a year ago I retired.
A few years ago a community college with what seemed a very healthy budget offered me a lucrative position teaching 12 hours per week while managing 3 campuses with a total of 7 programs of automotive technology. I was somewhat impressed with the offer but a serious look at the situation made it apparent that the greatest challenge in the position was political. And although I make an effort to be professionally diplomatic I felt sure that I was not up to the task in that position. It was very obvious that the greatest obstacle that the instructors at that time faced were unruly, unmotivated students who had no ambition to learn, they attended often enough to draw stipends. But as mentioned above, keeping seats filled kept the federal and state funds flowing in.Honestly, it seemed that about 1 in 3 of the students was actually worth making an effort to teach. And possibly those who were motivated were able to get the training they deserved in spite of the obstacles. I hope so.
Rod, administration in academia is 99% politics. I spent some 10 years as the Director of a Center for Corporate Training for a college.
Self motivated students are able to get an excellent education in community colleges. Some of the best engineering programs, from Harvard and UMass Lowell, routinely accept credits from community colleges. One of my best memories was talking with a student that had used his courses at our community college to get accepted into Harvard’s school of engineering.
Unfortunately, for-profit and community colleges are now leaning more toward headcount and revenue than academic excellence. They’re lowering sdmiussions requirements, pushing programs constructed of courses that require no intellectual “heavy lifting” and creating lower and lower standards along with more and more “remedial” courses to collect many heads as possible. And they’re attaching awarded credits to these courses to enable them to qualify for finacial aid. Students are graduating with huge debt and unable to find work.
IMHO I see way too many students taking courses and building debt that really should not be wasting their time and money. They’re going from elective to elective in a liberal arts program and learning nothing. And way too little concern about that from the adminitration.
It’s a shame, mountainbike. Although I am somewhat averse to the ivory tower intellectuals of academia the politicians making campuses gravy trains for their friends trades one group of self-serving elitists for another.
mountainbike, actually community college are becoming more selective. Some CC’s are now turning away students. They can’t increase seats as fast as the demand is rising. In a recession, it’s a increasingly desirable alternative to sidestep 2 years of $20k-$50k tuition. 2 and Xfer.
I agree. Many states are cutting funding for remedial courses necessary to prepare students for college level courses. The K-12 system is graduating students that can’t read, write, or perform basic algebra, and the state is tired of paying the K-12 system and the community college system to do the same job.
Bo, the feds are considering doing the same thing by discontinuing remedial courses as eligable for financial aid.
Used, two years ago I would have agreed.
mountainbike, the recession is over in your neck of the woods?
@GeorgeSanJose
I have a couple of nice tool kits, but I still don’t work on my car; it’s mostly for those od jobs that may crop up around the house that may require a certain size socket or an odd shaped screw head.
Many people pop the hood of their car and see nothing but plastic pieces everywhere and aren’t really sure how to go about doing things, so they just let someone else take care of it. Some places offer a drop off service so you could leave your car and keys at the shop, catch a ride to work, and have your car fixed while you’re at work. If you put in a 12 hour shift, and your car needs a new alternator or timing belt changed, not many would want to do that after working so many hours. Plus, how many mechanics today get vehicles coming into the shop that need worked on because the owner botched something at their house and need to have TWO things fixed instead of one?
@Triedaq
They may not be able to repo your education, but the resulting hit on one’s credit score will make it difficult to get a car, or house, or, in some cases now, even a job.
A person may be perfect for a job, but because they couldn’t find work after graduating college, their credit score took a hit, an employeer might not hire them. In which case, a catch 22 is invoked and the cycle continues to repeat itself.
Bumping this topic