Comment Re:Going bust not unique to drop-outs (Score 1) 281
Why not? That's exactly what was for centuries, and it worked well enough. Folks don't seem to realize this, or that the "college is for broadening the mind" meme is a fairly recent one.
First, that doesn't exactly count as historically accurate. Suffice it to say the earliest universities did offer what they would have called "vocational" education (by which they would have meant theology) with a hefty dose of the "arts" (by which they would have meant the seven classics - Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy) to produce a generally well-rounded individual. What little practical instruction they offered tended to focused on skills useful to those with the financial luxury to spend years not toiling in the fields, such as law and accounting
That said, I agree with you to the extent that any modern college not forcing students to take a core STEM curriculum have cheated them out of the skills required to produce a well-rounded individual in our world. Sure, you can major in Medieval French Lit, but you'd damned well better know how to apply Newton's laws, how to balance a chemical equation, how to calculate the risk and return on investment of your 401k allocation. But stressing basic STEM skills doesn't mean every uni should turn into a vo-tech school. If you want that, feel free to attend one; given the choice of "be one or compete with one", however, I'll take the latter.
First, that doesn't exactly count as historically accurate. Suffice it to say the earliest universities did offer what they would have called "vocational" education (by which they would have meant theology) with a hefty dose of the "arts" (by which they would have meant the seven classics - Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy) to produce a generally well-rounded individual. What little practical instruction they offered tended to focused on skills useful to those with the financial luxury to spend years not toiling in the fields, such as law and accounting
That said, I agree with you to the extent that any modern college not forcing students to take a core STEM curriculum have cheated them out of the skills required to produce a well-rounded individual in our world. Sure, you can major in Medieval French Lit, but you'd damned well better know how to apply Newton's laws, how to balance a chemical equation, how to calculate the risk and return on investment of your 401k allocation. But stressing basic STEM skills doesn't mean every uni should turn into a vo-tech school. If you want that, feel free to attend one; given the choice of "be one or compete with one", however, I'll take the latter.