$$$ College Education $$$

If you can't pass a test to be admitted into college, you don't belong there. Take some more high school credits and than take the test again.

Agreed, but college is called higher education for a reason. It's for learning specialized skills, we need people working in factories and warehouses such as UPS and FedEx, janitors, people pumping gas, taxi drivers, bus drivers, mail men(and women), etc. Those jobs are important to maintain our infrastructure, I would say much more important than the corporate jobs. We need people to not attend college and work in those "lower-class" jobs if we are to avoid collapse.

So true. My high school grades were terrible, but I still scored well on my tests. Add that to the credits I'll be completing in community college, and that was enough for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas to accept me. I'll be attending UNLV by the winter term if I can finish my required credits in CC quick enough.

I was not aware we are talking about disabled students. Unless they are mentally challenged schools have ways of accomodating them, so I don't see the problem there. As for savants, they have a great ability to memorize things, but they don't understand a damn thing of what they are learning. For all intents and purposes, they are mentally challenged. I'm sure there are rare exceptions though.

We are talking about an optional advance in education, comparing college to food and air is ridiculous.

 

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Disabled / mentally challenged is a relative term ... there's almost always someone who can learn faster. But whether that's injustice is another debate...

You can never win with capitalism - if new technology comes along to automate jobs, there will be fear of too few jobs and too many workers. If you educate people, there's the fear of too many jobs and too few workers!

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My point is that education should be a basic right, not some resource to be doled out to a select portion of the population.

You make it sound like a college education is some magical object you can be given - wave it and the doors of opportunity open. But it's not about the certificate, it's about what a person learns and gains from going to college. The degree is only proof of getting certain, minimal marks.

Personally, I think anyone who is smart enough and prepared to work hard enough to gain from it, should be able to attend higher education. Denying it for any other reason seems shortsighted in the extreme.

The system in some European countries - where university education is free, but if you fail you have to pay to repeat the year - seems the best for now. At least it gives everyone a chance.

 

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It is one of the greater injustices that good education is restricted to a subset of the population. There is no good reason to assume that only rich people produce smart children.

There is a subdividision in education in for instance the Netherlands based ob learning capabilities. At some time points children have to do a test and it is assessed to which education form children are best suited to. This is not a bindind agreement but a serious advice. Some parents go against it and send their children to pre-university school despite a lower advice. In a pre-university school the first 1-2 years are usually shared with a lower tier of education. At this point it can still be evaluated to go on with pre-university schooling or to step down a layer (which would still be a 'college' level of education i guess).
You can even start lower and work your way up to pre-university level. It is not that once a decision is made you are stuck with it. So it is not a matter that a mistake will lead to a fixed and closed off future.

 

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No.. what I mean is that it's ridiculous to write a test designed statistically so that only 10% of the people will pass it. That's basically an IQ test.

What entrance exams should test is to see if you have the minimum level of knowledge required. IE here we have something called 'effective writing'. You need to achieve a certain english grade in high school or write some sort of english test in university before 2nd year.

 

An entrance test is always discriminative.

 

Oh, I see. I agree, that's the kind of test I had in mind when I replied to your post.

Yeah, only to the people who don't belong in college yet. I.E. people who don't posses enough knowledge and need to continue taking high school level courses until they are able to pass the test. If you allow people who do not posses the minimum amount of knowledge required to succeed in a college level class to attend college, you are just setting them up for failure.

 

This is discrimination and obstruction in freedom to pursue education.

 

How is telling someone to take high school level classes so they can succeed in college "obstruction in freedom to pursue education"? That's what community college is for, if they want to waste money to take college courses only to fail them, than the community colleges will be happy to take their money. But when it comes to a university, you need to posses a certain amount of knowledge to get in.

 

If They want to waste money whats the problem, They should always atleast be allowed to give exams, what if they pass say in next 7 years ?.

 

Than they are allowed in, that's what we've been saying the entire time. Have you actually been reading the posts? I take it English isn't your native language?

 

That's changing (leveling) gradually. Quite a number of college degrees are sure tickets to poor house.

 

That is BS. I was there. I was down to $100 in checking account, about to live under bridge. Tried to get any job to stay alive and couldn't until I lied on applications (hid that damned useless 3.95 GPA education). Therefore, if one is deep down on his luck in getting a job in the field, education (especially a lot of it) is just like a stone on one's neck. That "transferable skills" BS from books never works. One must be "premanufactured" and "preprogrammed" for a job (fresh graduates don't count) or one should know right people in the right places; or, one must die under bridge with all that education.

 

Yes, go to Canada. If you want to pay $12,000 a year....

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Go to Scandinavia instead. Education there is free.

 

Well, if ya' can't afford something, should you be able to enjoy it? Why is it some of you think that every-damned-thing should be free to you just because you want it? Does that actually make any rational sense to you?

Baron Max

 

Education should be free. If it is not, then you are practically ensalving people. Education should be a right, not a privilege.

 

Well, hell, if that's the case, shouldn't food be free long, long before education? I.e., a person who has starved to death surely can't be in need of an education!! So ...food should be free. But then where does one cook and eat it? Oh, a home! So a home should be free, too. And gas and electricity should be free so as to cook the food and keep the home warm/cool. Oh, and cars should be free so we can go get the food!

Hey, I have a great idea .....let's just make everything on Earth free to anyone who wants it ...no matter what it is or how expensive it is. Great idea, huh?

Baron Max

 

Food practially is free. Go to a soup kitchen or food hamper.

Modern society has a surplus of food AND idiots.

 

Well, yeah! Absolutely! Haven't we discussed this before?

Slippery slope....
But, yeah. Home should be free too. But that's harder to do.

Well, you don't really need those things to survive. But having them free is obviously helpfull...

That's going very far. But someday, who knows?

It's not that easy. Unless you can erradicate scarcity, it is really not easy at all to do that....

 

Yes.
It is still not that easy to find free food though....

 

And I’ve known many phd graduates who preferred to be unemployed for months rather than take a job that paid less than $50,000/year. Anecdotal evidence is wonderful, isn’t it?

By the way, what was your degree in?