Yeah, it seems to me that we have done a few things that make young people's lives a bit worse:

First, we have this credential inflation going on, where businesses are requiring four-year degrees for jobs that might have only needed two-year degrees or even just high school just a few decades ago. Being a secretary or file clerk or whatever hasn't become more difficult, but for some reason we now expect applicants to have a degree?

Second, the cost of college has blasted off way above the rate of inflation. Some people say that's because of the availability of education loans, and maybe that's right; I don't know. But the value proposition changes as college becomes more and more ridiculously expensive.

Third, we seem to like to tell kids that they can do whatever they want, be whatever they want to be, and everything in their lives will work out. Realistically, why does my university even offer a BA degree in theatre? It's not a well-known program; there are no well-known professors; there are very few famous graduates. I doubt if 10% of the program's graduates wind up working in theatre.

It is a disservice to our undergrads to represent programs like this as good preparation for a job in their chosen field. But I'd say that as long as we make that clear, that what those students are really getting is bit of socialization and practice at working and managing their lives, combined with a BA degree that may get them past the first cut at HR for a somewhat menial job, then we have warned them enough.

What I'd really like to see is a significant paring down of the diversity of undergraduate degrees. I think there's too much specialization, especially in liberal arts and social sciences (of what practical use is an undergraduate degree in, say, psychology, if one doesn't plan on going to grad school?).

I knew a girl who did this not that long ago; she had a full-ride scholarship, and what did she blow it on? Theater. Did she get a job in theater? Nope; she moved towards make-up and costumes in her senior year thinking that would be a more realistic career path, graduated, and ended up working at a hotel in customer service. A complete waste of a degree.

But is it really a complete waste of a degree? Is four-year college only valuable as a vocational program, or might there be advantages to general education, a particular social environment, and so on?

I don't think the Department of Education has an enforcement division

Actually, I was recently surprised to learn that the Department of Education does have an enforcement division, and that they are armed with Glock 27s and Remington shotguns.

Here's an article with some of DOE's purchase orders over the past several years:
https://www.muckrock.com/news/...

I'm so glad to see your comment. I don't have a strong opinion about Common Core, being neither a teacher or a parent (though I am favorably disposed toward it). But I do believe that we should argue the merits of CC on their own, without complicating the discussion with standardized testing and teacher evaluation. Those two are important issues, but they are not Common Core. It's frustrating to me that CC has somehow become a partisan issue, and that there is so much wildly manipulative misinformation swirling around the topic.

I am also generally in favor of reducing the number of standardized tests that students take. And I believe that teacher and school evaluation is an issue that must be taken on, but I don't know what the best approach would be (though I'm fairly certain that NCLB and the like is not it).

Sigh. Why do people take an argument and ad absurdum it without trying to understand what is being said and what isn't?

Seriously? Your GPP, titled 'Feel free to move into a cave,' does so little to understand the position of the article, with so much hyperbole, that it's essentially a straw man. Did you try to understand what's being said and what isn't in TFA? Pot, kettle, etc.

FTFS:

the district has been forced to postpone the Common Core-mandated PARCC state exams

But the Common Core DOES NOT mandate any particular exam or evaluation instrument of any kind. PARCC is, according to Wikipedia, "a coalition of 12 states and the District of Columbia that are working to create and deploy a standard set of K-12 assessments in math and English." PARCC is basing their assessments upon the Common Core standards, but it is PARCC that mandates the exams, not Common Core.

Common Core is, literally, just a list of skills that students should have at various grade levels. For example, sixth grade math students are supposed to be able to "Write, read, and evaluate expressions in which letters stand for numbers." That simple statement, and many like it, make up the Common Core. It has nothing to do with mandating exams.

The Common Core standards are freely available on the web, in case you would like to look at them: http://www.corestandards.org/r...

I know the PP is a bit trolly, but it's important to note that the investigators that were denied access belong to the GAO, not to the Congress. The GAO has a generally good reputation as being non-partisan and being genuinely interested in reducing government waste.

or worse, crap open the case and flip jumpers

I suppose you meant 'crack' open the case and not 'crap' it open, but from now on, 'crap' is the word that I will use to discuss opening a computer case.

In case you don't know what "over the top" means in this context, this is from Wikipedia:

In broadcasting, over-the-top content (OTT) refers to delivery of audio, video, and other media over the Internet without the involvement of a multiple-system operator in the control or distribution of the content. (A multiple-system operator or multi-system operator (MSO) is an operator of multiple cable or direct-broadcast satellite television systems.)

So, apparently, it just means streaming media over the Internet.

Q: How do you tell an Illiberal by his first sentence? A: An Illiberal would typically start talking with a personal attack.

It's because you literally sound like you're on the cusp of quitting bathing and spending the rest of your life pushing a shopping cart around downtown with a cardboard sign hung around your neck that equates Obama with the antichrist.

There's absolutely no value in your linguistic torsion exercise that 'proves' the 'fact' that Obama doesn't like America. Why in the world does this have to be so black and white for you? Is it not possible to like America while being dissatisfied by some aspects of it? Isn't that the entire purpose of democratic government, that the people can influence the way the country changes over time?

FTFA: Larry Ellison will remain CTO and Chairman of the Board of Oracle. He will still get paid more money in a year than I will likely make in my life.

When I got my iPod, one of the first things that it did when I turned it on is it prompted me to set up iCloud. Since I know enough to try to avoid the "cloud" whenever possible, I just skipped the iCloud sign-up. I'd imagine that the vast majority of people, when they turn on their iPhone for the first time, are prompted to set up iCloud and just go ahead and do it. They see it as just part of setting up their phone. They don't understand the security implications, and they trust Apple to not leak their private data to strangers.

Maybe people should be more security conscious, but I think there should be some significant penalties for corporations that leak data that they are supposed to be keeping private. (And maybe in this case it's not really Apple's fault, but there are plenty of other data leaks happening these days.)

Playing real sports is a social and physical activity. Both can be beneficial.

Okay, sports are physical, and video games almost never are. But they can certainly be social. Not all gamers are as you describe; some actually physically congregate and socialize.

It seems like reading books could be every bit as big a time waster as playing video games, when a person shuts himself off from the world and just reads books all the time. Surely, there's some balance to be found in life between doing things that you enjoy but are not "beneficial" and doing other things. That doesn't make the former activities a waste of time.

The vast majority of people who play physical sports also don't make any money from them. I guess that's a waste of time, also? Are there hobbies, other than education, that aren't a waste of time?

and completely useless in real life. Video games are a waste of time and energy like no other.

The first guy mentioned in the article, Lee Jae-dong, may disagree with you. He's made a little over half a million dollars playing StarCraft. There's a guy from China who's made more than a million just this year playing Dota 2. I can't quite call that useless.