College Education: The Squirrels Haven’t Gathered all the Nuts Yet!

In the “old days” it was character, competence, and commitment that mattered in professional life. A man could become a lawyer, without college, by “reading the law” as did Abraham Lincoln and James Byrnes, former member of the U.S. Supreme Court (1941). But we are in a “more enlightened” day and everyone has to “jump through the hoops” of various professional agencies (to control their turf and try to keep out most of the riffraff).

If one is going into a profession that requires an accredited degree, a student can go to an unaccredited college for undergraduate work then get an advanced degree from an accredited school that would accept his undergraduate work. Accreditation does not equal quality.

One thing parents should not do is bankrupt their family to pay for an overpriced education that probably won’t produce a good return on their investment. A huge number of parents have robbed their retirement plans to pay extortion (tuition) at second rate universities–even Ivy League universities. That is not kindness and responsible parenting–it’s called stupidity.

If a student wants to attend an expensive school, he can work a couple years before enrolling as they do in Europe. Or he can do what my wife and I did: work and attend college at the same time. My father wanted me to attend a state university and promised “not to send me a dollar” if I went to a Christian school. He kept his word. That was before Dad was a Christian and much later he trusted Christ and had a change of heart and life. I mean he really had a change of heart. He became a new person and totally supported my work, but by that time I had long finished my training.

During my college days in Chicago I worked as a painter, chauffer (in Chicago!), pumped gas, and parked cars on the glitzy Gold Coast where I rubbed elbows with Chicago’s rich and famous as well as the infamous. After marriage, I sacked groceries and carried them out for shoppers for .98 cents an hour while attending another college in Chattanooga. Yes, it was very difficult to work full time and carry a full college load, but it was worth it and I didn’t borrow a dollar or receive any grants.

Six million college graduates are now living with their parents (something I predicted in 1999) because they cannot find a job. (I understand that they lie in bed “looking up at faded Obama posters” while listening to an over-the-hill Barbara Streisand sing, “Happy Days are Here Again.”) Often those young people refuse to work at anything if it is not in their area of training or the salary is “beneath” them, so they sit at home mooching off their parents. Not in this household!

Often students graduate with a degree in literature (and don’t even have to read Shakespeare!), anthropology, medieval art, etc., and discover that while those are interesting subjects, they are not in demand. To make a good living, one must possess the skills that are wanted: business, computer, math, science, law (no, we have enough lawyers), etc.

About 40,000 Ph.D.’s are awarded each year while only 337 were awarded in 1903. At the University of Georgia, a Ph.D. candidate in creative writing can submit poems instead of a dissertation! And at the University of Michigan you can get a Ph.D. in literature without reading Shakespeare! Say what?

Most American schools of “higher learning” are monuments to bingeing, bureaucracies, buffoonery, bullying, and sports, the only thing in which they excel–often at the expense of education.
The loonies at the University of Wisconsin are teaching that it is “unfair” to be white as if we had anything to do with it. Whites cannot see racism when it takes place. Of course, that’s what the race hustlers, Jackson, Sharpton, and Obama have been saying for years.

Occidental College (where our sitting President attended!) offers a course in “Stupidity,” which compares the American presidency to the offensive cartoon television show, “Beavis and Butthead.” I feel many quips coming over me in waves, but I’d better stop.

Evidently the squirrels haven’t gathered all the nuts yet. There are plenty of them running our institutions of higher education, a misnomer these days.

Copyright 2013, Don Boys, Ph.D.

EVOLUTION

Fact, Fraud or Faith?

by Don Boys, Ph.D.

Only an uninformed fanatic says that evolution or creation can be proved scientifically. Christians believe in creationism because we believe in the veracity of the Bible but we also have scientific evidence to support our position. In every debate I’ve had with evolutionary scientists, the arrogant, asinine accusation is made, “Well, evolution is scientific while creationism is religion.” Evolution is about as scientific as a voodoo rooster plucking ceremony in Haiti. Almost.

Purchase Now from Amazon