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America's got some catching up to do!
- Thread starter stratovani
- Start date
We're pretty fortunate here in Massachusetts. The state has a scholarship called the John and Abigail Adams Scholarship (named for the 2nd President and his wife). You can qualify by scoring a "proficient" in the MCAS test, which is the state test for students here in MA. The scholarship allows a student to attend a state institution of higher learning tuition-free. My daughter got her Art History degree from Framingham State University without paying a cent of tuition! My son, on the other hand, opted to get his Biochemistry degree from Worcester Polytechnic Institute; he's currently in debt up to his eyeballs even with the partial scholarship he got!
Sometimes living in a "left-wing socialist" state does have its advantages!
My first year of college was tuition free, as I received a $1k scholarship for getting high marks on one of the STAR 9 tests, I believe it was in Science.
That's wonderful. Congratulations to your daughter and son.
With the prospect of being burdened with a heavy load of student loan debt, I think that drives a lot of students towards majors with a likely economic payoff at the end such as engineering, etc.
It closes options like Art History because there (generally speaking) isn't a career in that field to support the debt load required for the degree. So it's quite nice to have program that allows students to pursue those fields.
Maybe a side note. America has a growing immigrant population. More then other countries. I would dare say a fare percentage of them don't go through with college.
Yeah, it's not like people are risking their lives to come here. Sneakin' in all the time and stuff like that.
sandmangeck said:
I believe Canada has a higher per capita immigration rate than the US. I also believe that immigrants to Canada are more likely than Canadians to have a post-secondary education, and their children are also more likely to attend university than the children of Canadians. Not 100% sure on those facts, but I'm pretty sure I've seen those things mentioned in the media in recent years. I have no idea if it's a similar situation south of the border.
I could be wrong, but I was under the impression the last few posts were in reference to illegal immigration.
supposedly there was a skills shortage here a while ago, as a result of the "everyone to university" ethos that was being put forth at the time. and so apprenticeships etc lost out.
i think the important thing is school-level education. from there you can make your own choices.
i think the important thing is school-level education. from there you can make your own choices.
Tuition fee's were only brought in, in 1997 over here. They started off at about £1,000 a year slowly went up to about £1700 per year, then last year (possibly the year before) they jumped massively to just short of £10,000 per year.
(that's for undergraduate study, post graduate study had been about £4,500 per year, not sure what it can go up to now. International students have been paying £10,000-£15,000 per year for a while now)
I don't think everyone needs to go to college. I, for example, have no interest in learning anything that any university I have ever visited has to teach. I've reviewed a fairly large number of course catalogs and degree programs from around the country, and nothing has sparked any interest.
For my current career, there are no college options that would have prepared me for it. When I am done going in this direction, the next thing I want to do also has no apparent college application.
In short, I think college/university is seriously over-rated. I think our schools need to better prepare people to work rather than to go to college. Rather than more college enrollment, I think we need more trade schools with more variety, and we need more apprentice programs. I suppose the phrase "post-secondary education" could encompass that, but I think most people think "college" when they hear that phrase.
For my current career, there are no college options that would have prepared me for it. When I am done going in this direction, the next thing I want to do also has no apparent college application.
In short, I think college/university is seriously over-rated. I think our schools need to better prepare people to work rather than to go to college. Rather than more college enrollment, I think we need more trade schools with more variety, and we need more apprentice programs. I suppose the phrase "post-secondary education" could encompass that, but I think most people think "college" when they hear that phrase.
Many colleges have turned into a business. They say you'll get x job immediately after graduation, then when you graduate with a ton of debt because of their exorbitant tuition, you find that your degree is worthless, and/or you have insufficient experience/knowledge to get any job (even within your field) that pays enough for you to pay off those student loans.
I couldn't possibly agree more.
You hit the nail on the head here, except trade schools. what we really need is for high schools to start actually teaching useful stuff, and freaking teaching instead of just being slightly more grown up daycare centers. If they did that, we wouldn't have this issue.
i forget the exact statistic, but something like 60-80% of college graduates either never get a degree in their field, or end up re-training for something else completely different.
That should tell you we've got a bit of a problem with education.
Oh, and the fact that Art is even a degree, with multiple post-graduate degrees available, should worry ANYONE.
Right. I think that high schools assuming the role of preparing kids for college (which they utterly fail to do anyway) is a big problem. They need to prepare kids to work.
