The ‘jobs of the future’ do not require a college degree
One of the repeating themes in this blog is how I find it distressing that our society places such an excessive value on the college degree as a necessary prerequisite to a successful career, despite the fact the skilled trades can provide rewarding careers, both financially and personally. This short piece at Forbes nicely summarizes those thoughts, as well as bringing up an interesting (and troublesome) trend toward requiring college degrees (and excessive student loan debt) for jobs which really don’t need a degree. I think it’s well worth a look.
The ever-shrinking role of tenured professors
No comment is really necessary here. Higher tuition costs, lower emphasis on long-term educators who are paid a livable wage. This is why you need to escape the tower.
Rather than summarizing the whole thing, I’ll link to a Slashdot post which does a brilliant job of it. I found the Forbes post pretty hilarious when I first heard about it, but didn’t have the energy to put together a list of reasons why their conclusion was so absurd.
The troubling trends in dean-to-professor ratios
One of my biggest complaints about higher education recently has been the absurd rise in tuition rates, with an accompanying rise in the number and cost of administrators at colleges. At the same time colleges are complaining about a reduction in state funding, as an excuse to raise tuition, they are hiring administrative staff at a rate which far outpaces the hiring of people who actually, you know, educate students. At a time when academic career prospects are so bleak for academics, there are plenty of other people getting rich off of colleges. I’m relieved to see this article describing some schools where people have pushed-back against this absurd bloat, a bloat that has contributed to tuition rates DOUBLING in the last decade at many schools. Eliminating this level of corruption would be a great first step toward getting our higher education institutions back on track.
A group of adjunct instructors, working for pennies on the dollar to provide cheap educational labor for universities that continue raising tuition at rates that far exceed inflation, has finally had enough. At St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, a group of adjuncts are organizing and threatening to strike.
Good for them! The excessive use of adjuncts is one of the most exploitative, gross abuses of brilliant people with advanced degrees anywhere in the world. In many ways, it’s even worse than the postdoc scam. Seeing these underpaid, under-appreciated, over-worked, highly educated professionals finally taking a stand is incredibly refreshing. Hopefully this ignites a trend.
Read more at Philly.com
I just came across this article, regarding a lawsuit against a law school that has been “fudging” its student employment statistics to mislead potential applicants. With potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt at stake, this is absolutely inexcusable, and the sad thing is, I would not be at all surprised to find out that this is far more widespread than we currently know. I’ve said for a long time that the employment statistics for my particular field do not seem to mesh well with what I’ve seen from my colleagues.
