With AI threatening first jobs and the overall value of college degrees in question, the role of secondary education has come under fire.
First jobs are the kinds one gets right out of high school. These are typically service sector jobs and they deliver quite a bit of benefit to young employees in the form of learning to work as a team, instilling discipline and the acquisition of soft skills such as communicating with peers and the public.
Make no mistake about it.
Robots might do as good or better of a job flipping burgers, but they yield no long-term residual from having these jobs. Robots are designed for this sole purpose and do not compare similarly in the long term to youngsters who gain valuable experience they can use in future job responsibilities.
Personally, I’ve always considered degrees overrated. Obtaining one does not signify an individual is able to read and write well. Command of the English language should be established during grades K1-K12.
If you have the money or can get a student loan, however, you can obtain a college degree, and regardless of your spelling and grammar dysfunction.
The ability to obtain degrees exclusively online has by itself watered down the value of having one. Log on, do the work, show up when/if needed, pass your exams and you, too can have a college degree in hand. You can also have all the debt that comes with it.
My belief is that student loans are an undertaken responsibility one assumes with the intention of paying them back. There are exceptions to this of course when perhaps a pardon of at least some of the loan obligation is justified.
If you borrow money, though, generally-speaking you should pay it all back. If you think you won’t be able to for whatever reason, then reconsider taking out a student loan altogether.
Pre-college curriculum
Ask anyone in the know and you’ll hear universal agreement that what is taught in grade school, junior high/middle school and high school is at best outdated and at worst in need of a serious overhaul.
I would suggest a good deal of what is taught pre-college should center around how to run a business of your own.
The days of working for the same company your entire life are over. Employers have no loyalty and consequently, neither do its employees. While there are other reasons besides both employers and employees not having loyalty for one another, we are in a gig economy now largely because of this.
If young people can be taught prior to college what it is they need to be successful in order to run their own business, they can then reasonably decide at the end of high school whether or not pursuing a college degree is wise.
Alas, my understanding is that present-day pre-college class structure is more or less the same as it was in the 20th century. The main problem with this is that we haven’t been living in the 20th century for quite some time.
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