Some thoughts on higher education

More Trouble Than It's Worth?

First we must ask the question, just how high is higher education? Consider the state of affairs in 1895 U.S.A. Below is the test, and you can see it in the link, of the final eighth grade exam in Salinas, Kansas in 1895:

This is the final exam 8th grade students had to pass in 1895 in Salinas, Kansas.

GRAMMAR (Time, one hour)
1. Give nine rules for the use of capital letters.
2. Name the parts of speech and define those that have no modifications
3. Define verse, stanza and paragraph.
4. What are the principal parts of a verb? Give principal parts of 'lie,' 'play,' and 'run'
5. Define case; illustrate each case.
6 What is punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of punctuation..
7 - 10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.

ARITHMETIC (Time,1 hour 15 minutes)
1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 ft. Deep, 10 feet Long, and 3 ft. Wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3,942 lbs, what is it worth at 50cts/bushel, deducting 1,050 lbs for tare?
4. District No 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?
5. Find the cost of 6,720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7percent per annum.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft long at $20 per metre?
8... Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance of which is 640 rods?
10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.

U.S. HISTORY (Time, 45 minutes)
1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus .
3.. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States ...
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, 1865.

ORTHOGRAPHY (Time, one hour) * Do you even know what this is?
1. What is meant by the following: alphabet, phonetic, orthography, etymology, syllabication?
2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals?
4. Give four substitutes for caret 'u'.
5. Give two rules for spelling words with final 'e.' Name two exceptions under each rule.
6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.
7 Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: bi, dis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, sup.
8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.
9. Use the following correctly in sentences: cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.
10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.

GEOGRAPHY (Time, one hour)
1 What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas ?
3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?
4. Describe the mountains of North America .
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia , Odessa , Denver , Manitoba , Hecla , Yukon , St.. Helena, Juan Fernandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco .
6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S. Name all the republics of Europe and give the capital of each..
8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?
9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.
10. Describe the movements of the earth. Give the inclination of the earth.

How did you do? This is a telling example of how education has evolved over the years.

https://www.creativitypost.com/education/can_you_pass_this_final_8th_grade_test

It's true that an eighth grade education in 1895 did not include high school subjects like algebra, but high school and college were available to those with the means and inclination. After all, there were doctors and engineers in those days. An eighth grade education prepared people for life in a more agrarian setting, enough to run a business or farm. Apprenticeships for boys would begin after eighth grade where a real skill would be learned.

One may notice that the lives of most people in our times seldom require skills taught in High School.

A question one may ask is, why are so many Americans going to college? Obviously, everyone wants the best for their children, and traditionally that means college. As college education became widespread, the advantage of a college education diminished. Many people attend college for the simple reason that it is the expected thing to do. As far as high school goes, one may argue that it is better to know algebra than not know algebra, but is it better to know algebra than metal working?

Once college loans were backed by the government, college exploded, aided by the fact that so many manufacturing jobs were going overseas that one could not count on having a good life by working in the local plant. The result is that we have a situation where employers can demand college degrees for jobs which should only require a high school diploma, or maybe even a proper eighth grade education. Indeed, it became a good way of finding employees who could read, write and do arithmetic. The result is what economists call a bubble, where the price of the product is much higher than its actual cost, and we should reasonably expect the bubble to burst. It hasn't burst yet, but it does seem to be leaking.

I would maintain that many of these college educated would be better off with a trade, or community college education in their desired field. There is movement in that direction due to the enormous inflation in tuition costs, much higher than that of the economy at large, partially due to the student loans decoupling tuition rates from supply and demand. We have many young people burdened down with college debt while starting out in life, and it has been noticed.

We have all noticed the extreme swing to the left that has occurred in higher education since the 1950s, and the subsequent infusion of these ideologies into the populace, especially through public education. This is important to those who wish to impose a totalitarian system of Neo-feudalism on the rest of us, which probably explains why they are so anxious to create free college and forgive student loans.

You will often hear that, well, college is free in Europe. True, but generally only the tuition is free, no room and board, no sports teams, etc., and being free they demand high standards of admission.

I wish to stress that I am not against higher education. I am a retired cyclotron physicist and spent 38 years working as such in a nuclear research laboratory at a major university. Let's just get back to the purpose of education being education, and being serious about that and not social engineering.