Thursday 21 March 2019

Pondering Upon Higher Education

It's a story which rarely ever gets dragged out, but in the late 1990s....the US Army had this odd event come up where they realized that numerous individuals had gotten hired as GS workers, to jobs which demanded bachelor degrees. 

So various individuals had figured out the short-cut....fake degrees.  The Army had to go and review each requirement, the person filling it, and then eyeball the university in question.  Various individuals were brought in, and basically told they were unqualified, and 'let go'.

I bring this up because this new event going on, with various kids who had someone take their SAT tests, got the easy-going professors, and lounged/drank their way through college....are legit graduates but really unqualified for any type of work that is attached to the degree itself.

At some point, some HR group in a fortune 500 company will start to devise a test that you have to take....if you are a new guy coming out of college, and you have to answer 50 questions out of a hundred in your degree area.  Suddenly, you will have thousands of positions vacant because the graduates are unable to comprehend or pass the stupid test (even to get a 50 out of a 100). 

In some ways, this whole thing has opened up a Pandora's Box, and you have to ask the question....if you paid $100,000 for a stupid four-year trip to some Disneyland-like university, and didn't really learn anything.....why pay back to the debt to the government for the stupid loan?