From Examiner.com, courtesy of Hans Bader, counsel at the Competitive Enterprise Institute:
Much of college “education” is a waste of time. I learned more practical law in six weeks of studying for the bar exam and a couple summers of working for law firms than I did in three years of law school. I spent much of my time at Harvard Law School watching “Married With Children” or arguing with classmates about politics, rather than studying (much of what I did study was useless). Even students who were high on drugs had no difficulty graduating.
(Higher education is no guarantee of even basic literacy. When I worked at the Department of Education handling administrative appeals, I was dismayed by the poor writing skills of the graduate students who lodged complaints against their universities).
I used to work for a polling firm, and found that people with a couple years of college were frequently factually dumber about the world around them, and more politically-correct, than people who had not attended college at all, in their responses to public-opinion surveys. An electrician with no college degree is far more likely to know who his Congressman is and to understand the economy than some liberal-arts college dropout.
The truthfulness in Bader’s statement changes the way one looks at the following sentence that opens a USA Today article on college-graduate unemployment:
Last month’s increase in unemployment was especially discouraging for the well-educated.
Years ago I sold industrial and commercial steam heating equipment. I mostly dealt with local, state, and federal contracts. It was my job to review and write the specifications for the mechanical systems. The vast majority of the mechanical engineers just out of college had no idea what steam heat was. Sure they knew all about solar, geothermal, and other "cutting edge" types but were never taught about archaic steam heat. Even though Boston, New York, Detroit, Chicago, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, etc. are all district steam cities.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBTW - I do not have a degree, learned it all on the job.
While I wholeheartedly agree with the basic thrust of Mr. Bader's piece, his comments on law school need to be taken with several grains of salt.
No one could learn enough law solely on the job to become a decent lawyer today. I realize that before the 1850s or so, most lawyers were trained entirely in law offices, but that worked because practitioners were acting partly as teachers (usually for pay by the student, or "clerk"). One needs to be taught property law, contract law, lien law, court procedure, etc., by somebody who knows it.
Granted, three years of law school is unnecessary. One and a half academic years would probably be sufficient for most people.
Also, regarding the ability of people on drugs to graduate: Bear in mind that Mr. Bader is talking about Harvard Law School (from which I also graduated). Pot-heads and other layabouts can graduate from Harvard Law because (1) the grade curve there is very accommodating, since the profs. all believe that anyone capable of being admitted deserves to graduate absent extreme incompetence, and (2) the students Harvard Law admits are skimmed from the top of the top and are therefore more able than most to teach themselves enough to get by.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt depends on the college, of course. Name-brand such as Harvard does not necessarily mean "good education." (Just read what Douthat has to say about how to skate through Harvard.)
I went to a small, private liberal arts college, and the education served me well, even though I earned a "useless" degree in the humanities.
Once you consider higher education as just a glorified trade school, you've already missed the point.
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