It was a different world.

We could save billions by applying the disparate impact standard to the BA degree – which in itself means little in terms of what a job candidate can do – and encouraging the use of valid paper and pencil standardized tests to screen job candidates. But then, functionally illiterate college graduates would be making the minimum wage and our vast, bloated higher education system would collapse.

I have my grandfather’s 1918 high school textbooks. They are beyond the capability of the typical university graduate today.

One younger man of our acquaintence has a film degree from USC and substantial graduate credits in black studies. He’s working in a micro-brewery. His academic credentials are in what I consider essentially useless areas of endeavor, but at least they tell an employer he has some modicum of intelligence and the ability to see a project through to some conclusion.

The market sets the value of the college degree, not blog chat. Judging by the decades-long increase in tuition rates which colleges have enjoyed, a completed degree, even if it isn’t in Engineering, is a valuable possession.

Completing that degree puts him into a fairly elite group. Many students begin college. Far fewer students complete it.

Then again, I’m an English teacher — they very opposite of anything prgragmatic (and quite happy about it).

Go Fighting Blue Hens.

Education does not require schooling, not even college level schooling. Learning can be done from books, if one is motivated.

Most college degrees don’t provide that learning anyway. They don’t offer rigorous liberal arts anymore; what few liberal arts degrees they offer can be fulfilled by taking classes where they study film and television. They offer “studies” majors–women’s studies, gender studies, film studies, development studies; they offer communications degrees. They offer drivel.

College education would mean far more if colleges actually enlightened their students. There is little reason to believe that is happening, so yes, the degree is a waste, as is the time and the opportunity cost, not to mention the tuition for whomever footed the bill.

You’re assuming he’ll stay there. You’re also assuming that reading without discussion will teach him all he needs to know about history. The least informed people about history tend to be those who took it in high school but didn’t take it in college and read popular history books. They know facts, but don’t understand them. They’re nostalgists, rather than historians.

All that said, a student with a history major coupled with an appropriate minor and a good relationship from the first semester with the college career center will generally do fairly well.

However, you do make a good point about broadening people’s minds and the joy of learning. Of course we want everyone to do that! But, many of today’s college majors don’t translate into marketable jobs, and are in subjects you can learn just as easily (and free) using Google and Wikipedia. Like History, for example.

So, I end up agreeing with Jeff The Baptist. A College Degree, unlike a High School Diploma, is a big financial investment – an investment which must pay off with a better-paying job and a raised standard of living to be worth the time and effort.

In the case of that B.A. History guy above, I’d say this: If he graduated with huge student loans, then he screwed himself over. But, if he didn’t graduate with any student loans, you could at least call it a wash…