Above the Law is another blog that spends some quality time on the uselessness of higher education. While the blog normally focuses on Law school specifically, an artical by Elie Mystal yesterday draws some stark conclusions from this New York Times article. Elie's thoughts follow:
"Think about that for a second. The system of American education churns out thousands of people with totally useless liberal arts degrees every year. English, Romance Languages, Philosophy — these are all things that provide the backdrop for a fascinating life of the mind, but they hardly pay the bills. In fact, to make any of these degrees pay off, you usually have to find employment teaching these “skills” to others. And that requires you to get additional education.
But nobody in their right mind would pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to get additional education in some of this crap, because they know they’ll never make enough to justify the cost. The university needs to subsidize that education in some way — and so they turn to law schools.
Universities pay for advanced useless degrees by fleecing the kids who decided four years was enough time wasted in the pursuit of knowledge that would not lead to dollars. And thus the law students resign themselves to a life of paying back debts doing something they don’t really like, while the kids who stayed the “I’m going to become an expert in this totally useless field” course end up with cushy professorial jobs teaching “Thinking in the Digital Multiverse” to the next group of university students.
How do you like them apples?
It’s all in the game, I guess."
Elie's point is exactly what I was talking about yesterday - The fact that my generation can not wait to throw our parent's/the government's (and in some very rare cases, our own) money at higher education institutions that are ripping us off.
While reading the NYT article, I noticed that the advertising in the corner had been purchased by none other than Cooley Law School. That's right - the school that shames my beautiful home state by offering a legal education to anyone who wants one, providing they can shell out tuition. Cooley is like the law school version of diet pills - "just shell out your money and we will..... do nothing!" Maybe it's even worse than that - because the people who consume the Cooley product are not trying to lose weight the "easy" way. They are trying to build careers that will support their families in a state that is already hurting.
And then my head exploded.
If you are interested in more information about the problems with law schools, please check out Above the Law.
So much for higher knowledge,
Double E
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