An Ongoing Comment Overrun (The College System)

So, a topic that gets brought up again and again in a lot of contexts is the college system and how to fix it.

I approve of fixing it, since it is obviously broken.

However, I am not under the impression that doing this by itself is enough to repair our economy and get the nation back on track. There are many facets to the problem, and it's not simple enough to handle in one sitting.

So, I'm just going to tackle schooling.

First, all federally held student loan debt should be abolished, full stop. Although private loans are a private contract between the loan company and the borrower, the federal government should not be in the business of holding its citizens in economic duress.

Second and corollary to this is that any college, university, or vocational school that accepts tax funding should be tuition-free for resident students. Too many schools take tax dollars to help them support, run, and maintain the school, but then turn around and charge students - whose tax payments are already feeding the school - obscene tuitions, which lead to federally controlled loans, which leads to endless debt servitude to the government.

Third, we need to choose: either tax-supported schooling, "public," if you will, is the wrong way to pay for it, in which case it should be scrapped and replaced top to bottom by private, competitive schooling, or we need to make the universities and trade schools part of that same system, so that tuition isn't an issue anyway.

Fourth, the concept of "general education" needs to be flipped on its head.

See, right now, when you attend university, they require you to take classes based not on what your future job will require you to know, or what your course of study requires, or what your interests are, or even what you will need to become a productive citizen; no, they pursue the "Renaissance" model, in which everyone is expected to know everything, and if not demonstrate competence in it, at least be able to blather on about it long enough in a paper that they get a passing grade.

This takes place in the form of four years of required classes, most of which are functionally disposable for the students. A math major most likely doesn't need a literature class.

So, instead of the conventional consideration of what constitutes "general" education, we should instead be requiring certain classes as "basic citizen requirements." All of general education should be completed by the end of the second year of school, so that the remaining time the student spends in school is spent in their actual field of study. The school should require a certain amount of classwork in the major every semester, with elective classes counting as elective: they are optional and do not count towards the requirements for a major; they are taken entirely at the student's discretion, can be dropped at any time without penalty, and do not affect the student's grades. 

An elective class should be elective; the point of it is to let the student study something outside their primary field of study without risking their livelihood. Maybe they'll develop an interest. I would have enjoyed my Art History class a hell of a lot more if I hadn't been forced to take it.

So, general education: basic science. A solid grounding in physics, chemistry, biology, and "body science," that same being medicine, health, and nutrition. The anti-vax movement exists because people are so bone ignorant that they are unable to distinguish truth from fiction; that shouldn't be a thing.

English grammar and technical writing. Respecting the culture of others is all nifty as hell, but doing so to the extent that it leaves us functionally unable to communicate with 50% of the nation's resident is dumb. Requiring kids in college to not only understand how the common language works, as well as how to structure and communicate thoughts on paper, more than adequately satisfies that need, and will have tremendous positive impact on their ability to communicate in the business world as well. Additionally, as part of "citizen required education" - which I'll get to later - a class on writing resumes and passing job interviews. It's pointless to educate someone for 8 additional years and then have them unable to find a job because they don't understand the importance of coherent sentences.

Math, to an understanding of basic geometry and algebra. More than that is elective or a major course of study. Calculus is awesome, but most jobs simply don't require it. The average citizen never uses more than basic arithmetical skills anyway; there's no reason to force it on someone who has chosen a field of endeavor that steers clear of math on purpose.

History; to include three units: Ancient history, Western Civ, and American history. Once again, I find other cultures fascinating, but they're simply not relevant for most people in more than the faintest way. Studying the historical path our civilization has followed, and our specific nation's past, is relevant. More than that should be elective or a major field of study.

Logic. A logic class should be required; preferably both classical and symbolic, but a class on "how to think rationally" is something most students are sorely missing, even if they don't know it.

A class on study skills. This seems counterintuitive, but most students don't have any. Required material, first semester of school freshman year, mandatory.

Government, in the form of  a class on our government, how and why it does things, and how the structure itself works; a general grounding in macroeconomics, and then a "citizen required education" class, covering things like how to balance a checkbook, how to rent an apartment or a car, how to plan for emergencies, how credit and loans work, and...

Ahem. We can't actually call it a "how to be a grown-up" class, but I literally know no-one who has graduated college and not wished they had taken one. "Lesson one: When you move into a new place, take a toilet plunger with you the first night you stay there no matter what. If you plug the toilet and can't get a plumber because your phone's not hooked up yet / you don't know the area / nothing's open this late, your experience will be very negative."

The purpose of school is intended to be making our children into productive adults. Parenting is responsible for making them decent people; school is responsible for making them ready to venture out into the job market on their own.

Right now, it does a piss-poor job of that.

We could do it better, and we owe it to them to do so. Dragooning kids into taking heaps of classes in subjects they will never use and don't care about because that's how they did it in the 1400s has demonstrably failed, and we should let that model die.