Tag Archives: Degree

Commentary

Is a college degree worth the money you pay for it?

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Do college degrees really get you a better job?

It depends on what you study. If you study really hard stuff that is in demand, then it will help. But if you study easy stuff and don’t come out in the top 1% of those easy programs, then going to college is a huge waste of money. It’s also a huge “opportunity cost”, because you could have been working instead of going to college – which would get you not only a salary but a lot of experience, too. Instead of having $50,000 in debt, you could have $50,000 in savings, over four years.

Take a look at this article from the Chronicle of Higher Education. (H/T Hans Bader at the Competitive Enterprise Institute)

Excerpt:

“60 percent of the increase in the number of college graduates from 1992 to 2008 worked in jobs that the (Bureau of Labor Statistics) considers relatively low skilled — occupations where many participants have only high school diplomas and often even less.” This means that the great push to increase the number of college grads has apparently come to very little — only a minority of the additional grads are in occupations regarded as requiring a bachelor’s degree.  Of the nearly 50 million U.S. colleges graduates, 17.4 million are holding jobs for which college training is regarded as unnecessary. The number of waiters and waitresses with college degrees more than doubled from in the years 1992-2008, from 119,000 to 338,000, and cashiers with college degrees rose from 132,000 to 365,000.

We should not be taking money from working individuals and businesses to provide grants for immature students to study basket weaving. Providing money for so many people to study things that are not practical and that they are not even that good at is a waste of money. We are not getting a good return for this money if graduates just go on to do jobs that they would have done anyway. The real questions that should be asked by students is “is this worth the money? Will this help me to find a job?” And the real question that taxpayers should be asking is “do we need to stop wasting money on grants for useless degrees and leave the money in the private sector to create more good jobs instead?”.

It’s not good to be sending young people to universities that are run by leftists in any case, because it insulates them from real life and puts them at the mercy of perpetual adolescents (professors). For many students, college is wasted on partying and “studying” impractical and counter-factual areas like feminist studies, peace studies, black studies, Marxist studies, queer studies, etc. We do not need to be sending so much money into the pockets of unqualified leftists like Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, who bash capitalism while living off of the wealth produced by it.

Hans writes:

In “The Great College Degree Scam,” expert Richard Vedder points out that “[s]ome in higher education KNOW about all of this and are keeping quiet about it because of their own self-interest. We are deceiving our young population to mindlessly pursue college degrees” they don’t need.

Hans also talked about the problem of rising college debt here.

Podcasts

Brian Auten interviews William Lane Craig

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The interview is here on Brian’s excellent site, Apologetics 315.

The MP3 file is here. (29 minutes)

Topics:

  • The Reasonable Faith Chapters program: why?
  • Brian’s new Reasonable Faith chapter in Belfast, Ireland
  • WLC’s new book “On Guard” for beginning Christians (coming out in March!)
  • WLC’s upcoming debate with physicist Victor Stenger on March 1, 2010
  • WLC’s upcoming debate with philosopher Michael Tooley, later on in March
  • How did WLC become a Christian?
  • Which books and scholars influenced WLC the most?
  • What is the focus of WLC’s current research
  • What books should a beginning Christian read to start defending their faith?
  • What books should an intermediate Christian read to start defending their faith?
  • What degrees can a Christian do to be accredited in apologetics?
  • The importance of having a mentor to help direct your studies
  • What dicipline is an essential jumping-off for Christian scholars?
  • Whice argument for Christianity is the most effective?
  • What should a person study to develop their personal character?
  • What skills are necessary for study, and how do you develop them?
  • Which scholars does WLC admire as role models?
  • How can a person develop to improve their public speaking skills?
  • What does WLC do to prepare for this debates?
  • How does apologetics connect with the concept of “spiritual warfare”?
  • How can you use apologetics to help the development of your children?
  • How important is your marriage compared to your studies?
  • What is the ultimate goal of the apologetic enterprise?
  • Does God have a specific or a general will for each individual?
  • What legacy does WLC hope to leave behind?

Brian did a good job on this interview. He’s a very nice person, too.

In fact, he’s so nice that he managed to persuade Biola University to offer a 10% discount on William Lane Craig’s Philosophy of Religion DVD set. It’s big and expensive ($135!), but you only need to buy it once, and Brian recommends it. I think that this set is a lot better than the Kalam Cosmological Argument set that is also available.

Here is Bill’s previous debate with Victor Stenger, and here is his previous debate with Michael Tooley.

Commentary

Are women underpaid for doing the same work as a man?

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Here is a neat article from TotallyHer.com on this issue.

Excerpt:

Over the years there’s been much debate surrounding the concern for women receiving inequitable pay, relative to the same work men do. This continues to be an issue even in 2010! As a matter of fact, did you know that there’s an Equity Pay Day this year?

But it’s not just special interest groups who express the concern for women’s apparent lack of parity in their paychecks. President Obama signed legislation early in his presidency to ensure equal pay for women.

So is the President himself admitting that a woman can do the exact same work, for the exact same amount of time, with the exact same qualifications and experience as her male counterpart and get a smaller paycheck? Is that happening in the United States right now?

Click through to read the article and see what the research shows.

Thomas Sowell’s take on the pay gap

I actually have a book on my shelf by Thomas Sowell that tackles this very issue, among others, called “Economic Facts and Fallacies”. Here’s a short 3 minute video about the book.

There’s also a nice 4-clip discussion of the book between Dennis Prager and Thomas Sowell, (from Prager’s radio show). I’m listening to it now, and Sowell also preferred Fred Thompson in the 2008 Republican primary, just like me! This is a really, really good interview.

My thoughts

When I survey the best of my Christian male friends, we all agree that work really gets in the way of the things we would like to be doing. Some of us would like to be working more on our marriages and relationships, or playing with children, or writing, or teaching classes in the church, or organizing debate and lecture events, or lifting weights and playing sports… but one thing we agree on is that there is too much emphasis for men on the workplace as the theater of for our achievements. It’s just stupid.

I myself would love to work fewer hours if I could have more time for other things. Why work so hard just to pay more in taxes? I think men get trapped into marriage and children and then they are stuck working too hard to pay 40% in taxes for government bureacrats to marriage. High taxes are a real disincentive for men contemplating marriage. If women were smart, they would vote to shrink government, welfare and social programs. Then men would really be interested in marriage, because they could work less and still have time for other interesting things.