What’s College Good For?

What’s College Good For? - The Atlantic:

This is not your fathers education system, stuffy and concerned about making students work and think.

This is American Capitalism's race to the bottom being played out in our education system.

Sometime in the last thirty years or so, our education system realized there were boat-loads of money to be made by ramming young people through it whether they learn anything or not.

The more students you could grab, the more cash you could make. This gave us

• Lots of college marketing with new stadiums, new multi-million dollar training facilities, and new condo-like dorms to draw students in.
• Less work and and more play for students along with grade inflation to keep them enrolled.
• A play-now, pay-later financing scheme to make it seem so "affordable".
• More administration and fewer or at least "cheaper" professors at traditional schools along with new "for-profit" schools to put the cash in the right hands. 

So now, we've made a lot of money but have a system that doesn't teach most students what they really need for decent employment.

Mr. Caplan is a free-market libertarian so he blames the education system but I think he should look a little closer to home.

This is a perfect example of what happens when you let free-market capitalism invade an area of your economy that exists to help someone other than stockholders.

tnb

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