Saturday, December 10, 2011

A College Degree is a Hunting Licence - Nothing More

I was told this by my first intelligent manager. Here is what blogger and law professor Glenn Reynolds wrote in the Washington Examiner on December 3 and re- printed in the WSJ on December 6:

"The reason why a bachelor's degree on its own no longer conveys intelligence and capability is that government decided that as many people as possible should have bachelor's degree.

There's something of a pattern here. The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class have. If middle class people go to college and own homes, we'll have more middle class people.

But home ownership and colleges aren't causes of middle class status, they're markers for possessing the kind of traits-self discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc.-that let you enter, and stay in, the middle class.

Subsidizing the markers doesn't produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them. One might as well try to promote basketball skills by distributing expensive sneakers."

I've written on this subject many times. I quoted Garrison Keilor who quipped that all college graduates would be "Indian Chiefs" with no on to do the hard work.

That's what we have folks and that is the reason so many people enter our country illegally because they know they will find work that our citizens won't do, college graduates or not.

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