The University Has No Clothes

The University Has No Clothes

“   Pity the American parent! Already beleaguered by depleted 401(k)s and gutted real-estate values, Ponzi schemes and toxic paper, burst bubbles and bear markets, he is now being asked to contend with a new specter: that college, the perennial hope for the next generation, may not be worth the price of the sheepskin on which it prints its degrees. [NyMag.com] ”

Unplugged (ROLL) You get the gist of this NY Mag article. Not only are most degrees granted to students who will never use the disciple they studied, but in some cases (Journalism) can destroy an industry.  Ask most kids why they're studying economics and I bet they answer "to get a decent job."  In Economics?  Hell no. Any job.  If you want to get hired by any company today, with the goal of moving into management, you'll have to produce a degree.  Does it matter what the degree is in?  Nope.  It shows your prospective employer that you had at least enough ability to get into college, and finish.  I remember the plaintive cry from the 70's; "We're loaded with 5th rate economists, but nobody can fix the toilet."  Guess who's making the big bucks today?   But, I'm carried away here with my own biases and opinions (as if anything else matters, wot). “ Peter Thiel is a venture capitalist with strong misgivings about college [...] In 1998, Thiel co-founded PayPal, and six years later, he made the first angel investment in Facebook. [...] Thiel is deeply skeptical of top-down R&D and anything that smells like groupthink. [...] When I spoke to Thiel from his home in San Francisco in late February, he offered much the same justification for his major salvo in the fight against college—a philanthropic initiative called 20 Under 20. The program, also known as the Thiel Fellowship, will award twenty students 19 years old and younger $100,000 each and the mentor­ship of some of the most prominent entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. The catch? The winners have to stay out of college for two years. [ME ME ME!] They are to be announced this month. Is Thiel onto something?  Listen to the reaction from one of our smug media scolders, and decide. “ Jacob Weisberg, of Slate, has called the Thiel Fellowship a “nasty” and narcissistic idea that will retard the participants’ intellectual development and funnel whatever altruistic energies they have into getting rich, like Thiel. ” ME ME ME! This is a long article which explores other stuff, but which I ain't real it all.