If only they’d wise up, abandon their dreams and goals, and accept that this is the society they live in. Sort of like victims of brutality by over-funded police or athletes who suffer from anxiety or lawyers who dare to sue huge fossil fuel companies. They made bad decisions and will just have to live with the consequences. /s
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They should have decided to be born rich and then they could do whatever they wanted to do… /s
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Regardless of what one studies, higher education is an intrinsic good that brings many tangible and intangible benefits to society. Nobody should have to go into poverty during or after university. The debate needn’t be more complicated than that. If a person wants to study something, anything, in greater detail after secondary education, they should be able to by all means. And not because of the promises of a job after graduation, but because the mind at that age is primed to learn so much; it is a waste not to do it.
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Society does value education, we spend more money on education than almost anything other than healthcare. Among primary through tertiary public and private education we spend at least $1.4 trillion per year in the US representing about 6% of GDP. That’s about 1/2 of healthcare spending and the same as what we spend to eat (as far as some quick Googling reveals). In relative terms, education is just as valuable to society as living.
To take this out of the US - this is an ongoing discussion in Israel. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, the state of Israel subsidized Talmud study to help replace the scholars lost. Any Yeshiva student studying the Talmud would be exempt from military service and receive a subsidy as long as they weren’t working outside of their studies. Now, 70 years later, there are over 60,000 “professional” Talmudic students and society is questioning the carve out. Needless to say, there’s also politics mixed in.
FWIW, advanced education is supposed to include questioning of the status quo. I’m not expressly advocating for x or y as much as trying to ask the questions.
But we don’t. Don’t gaslight us with numbers as if that’s the actual measure of what we value as a society. We can see just how much educators are valued and just how much those of us who produce knowledge are valued. We can see how valued they are by the people threatening to kill elected officials who are trying to protect educators. We can see how valuable they are by how college education has been gutted and the power taken out of the hands of the educators into the hands of bureaucrats.
I’m really sick of people like YOU telling ME that I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about and that I need to stop being so hysterical because it’s “not that bad.” I am telling you, I am here, I can see what’s happening, and it IS that bad.
Must be a fun thought exercise when you have no skin in the game.
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Again!?
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Especially since those of us with grad degrees – especially ones like you who teach in academia – understand that those numbers include funds applied to athletic programmes and administrators’ salaries.
ETA: We also understand there is an anti-intellectual strain in right-wing cricles that believes that the liberal arts are so useless that students in those fields are not contributing in a productive way to society and are effectively parasites (and therefore deserving of systemic victimisation like this student’s). Some of those who push this line veil it in “JAQing off” and gaslighting and other sea-lion tactics, but one of the benefits of a liberal arts education is seeing right through that.
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It sure as hell isn’t making it to funding the actual teaching positions! You know, the people who do the ACTUAL jobs of educating people!
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I ignored that clause, and taught two courses each semester at a local community college for my entire time in grad school. And guess what? That’s what got me my second, and actually FT-T/T job–the CC teaching experience.
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Possibly the most important thing of all.
Once you’ve figured that one out there are so many places you can go.
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This has veered far enough from the topic at hand in the Boing Boing post to personal-members territory. You’re welcome to open a community topic to discuss further.
