By Professor Doom
My conscience is
bothering me too much to let it slide…I’ve been deceptive. In a recent post I
noted that a study showed a
university education actually lowers your income, and I
just went with the flow there, instead of clarifying what’s really going on.
My justification/rationalization
is simple. Our criminals leaders in higher education have shamelessly
promoted the studies showing “college degree holders make a million dollars
more over a lifetime” to justify charging ridiculous amounts of tuition, money
that just flows into administrative bank accounts, to the detriment of our
students.
So, under the
assumption admin is being honest (bear with me) about believing the causal
effect between having a degree and making more money, it was a fair enough
rationalization to then accept the causal relationship in the new study showing
having a degree and making less money.
But the causal
relationship? It’s rubbish, in regards the studies showing degree holders make
a million bucks more over a lifetime. It’s also rubbish regarding the more
recent study showing having a degree reduces income, but first things first.
The old study
determined its results by looking at graduates from 1960 or so—you have to give
people 30 years to say you have a result that applies over “a lifetime” after
all. Even if there is a causal effect, there’s still no reason to believe in
any of it applies today.
Today’s economy
is nothing like the economy of 1960—there was actual manufacturing and
production in the United States back then, we didn’t have all our production
jobs shipped overseas. I could go into great detail on the economic aspects
here, but I want to focus on what changed in higher education since 1960.
The big change?
You couldn’t just walk onto campus in 1960. “Open Admissions” campuses were as
rare as Diversity Fiefdoms in 1960. The way how you got admitted into
university in 1960 was your application was reviewed carefully. You needed good
grades (demonstrating a work ethic). You needed public service (demonstrating
character). It was a good idea to show you had a particular ability
(demonstrating talent). And, of course, it sure didn’t hurt if your parents
went to that school, or were wealthy (demonstrating a genetic track record of
success, if you will).
The point? To get
into university of 1960, you needed to demonstrate that you already had what it
takes to become successful (incidentally, when I went to State U in the 80s, I
still had to do the same even though it was a party school). Once you showed
you were going to be successful anyway, the university accepted you…and took
credit for your success.
In terms of
success, university was a rigged game back then—they only took people that were
likely to make a lot of money (the definition of success in America), and so
there’s no causal relationship claiming “having a college degree”’ leads to
“making a million more dollars over a lifetime.” The only way to get that
college degree was to first demonstrate you were likely to make a lot of money.
You may as well
say there’s a causal relationship claiming “having a 50’ yacht” leads to
“making a million more dollars over a lifetime.” A relationship (correlation)
is there, mind you—I sure hope government doesn’t read this and start handing
out 50’ yachts to everyone!—but a yacht won’t cause you to make money.
So now let’s go
back to the new study showing having a university degree lowers your income, to
the point that you’ll make less than if you didn’t have the degree at all.
Again, we could
point to current economic conditions, but that doesn’t work—the guys without
degrees are making more, and they’re in the same economic conditions.
On the other
hand, I can totally point to the changes in higher education since 1960 to
identify why getting a university degree from a lower tier school (as identified in the study), or getting a degree
in a lame field (as identified in the study), is related to making less money.
The biggest
change, by far? Open admissions. While open admissions schools might not even
get accredited 50 or more years ago (because old
accreditation required restrictions on admittance), they’re
a dime a dozen today, and there are many more bogus degree programs as well.
In the past, you
had to demonstrate you had potential for success to get into university. Now,
you have to demonstrate you have an opposable thumb, because all that’s required
is to hold a pencil to check a box saying you want loan money. Heck, you don’t
even need that, as the explosion of the administrative caste means there’s a
$100,000 a year administrator available to hold the pencil for you, if need be.
Now, there still
are legitimate schools, mind you, and that’s where the people likely to be
successful will go—again, successful people, or people from a successful
family, are going to have the tools to stay away from the scammy schools and
bogus degrees that are now quite common to higher education today.
This is what the
study is really saying: the scammy schools are luring in suckers, and, bottom
line, suckers are going to make less money than people who are less likely to
be ripped off. This is every bit as obvious as why people that got degrees from
universities 50 years ago made more money.
Going to a fake
school, getting a fake degree, is basically the equivalent of putting a giant
red “L” on your forehead: getting such a degree labels you as a mark, a sucker,
a loser…the only kind word used to describe this kind of person is “victim.”
Bogus accreditation and the student loan scam has exploited legions of these
people, to create millions of victims.
It’s not that
getting a degree from a scammy school lowers your income, it’s that getting
such a degree marks you as a fool. When you put that you have a Sexual Deviance
Communications degree from JoeBob’s Fully Accredited Fly-By-Nite University on
your resume, you’re telling your employer “I was stupid enough to borrow
$100,000 to get an utterly useless degree where I learned nothing at all.”
Good luck getting
a high paying job with such a black mark, proudly displayed, on your resume.
Deanling:
“We showed improvement in the test scores, so we know the program works.”
Me:
“Looking at your data, I see you have a p-value of 0.37.”
Deanling:
“What does that mean?”
Me: “It
means that the improvement you have, half a point on a 100 point test, is just
luck, you cannot claim your new student service program is making any
difference.”
Deanling:
“That’s not true.”
Me: “Yes,
it is, it’s how statistics works.”
Deanling:
“You’re not being collegial.”
--the
Deanling, incidentally, has a Ph.D. in Administration, a research degree, where
the curriculum alleges statistical training (I checked to see with my own eyeballs). And sure enough, she managed to
get a pile of money to extend the program and hire more administrators, so
might does seem to make right after all. I’m so glad to be away from community
college…
No university Poo
Bah will tell the truth of the study, but few of them really understand
research well enough to follow my argument here even if I explained it to them.
Even if they did,
none of them have the balls to do as I have done, and tell the truth about what
current studies reveal about higher education. I’ll break it down into two
cases:
Higher education
of the past identified people who were likely to be successful, and educated
them.
Higher education
of today identifies the vulnerable, and screws them over.
It’s that simple.
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