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"If Everybody Has a College Degree, Nobody Has a College Degree." (self.TRPOffTopic)

submitted by JP_Whoregan

Well I got into it this weekend with a Bernie Sanders acquaintance of mine, and he seemed to have no answer to this statement. I forget where I heard it (somewhere on talk radio), and it really made a whole bunch of sense.

And that's what it basically boiled down to. And if we think about it, the same governmental forces that made the High School Diploma useless, are now trying to do the same thing with the Post-Secondary Bachelor's degree.

Back before the days of government-mandated K-12 compulsory education, not everybody got a high school diploma. Many kids stopped going to school after 8th or 9th grade; some went into factory work, some went into the family business, and some went into vocational training.

But cue compulsory K-12, now everybody has a HS diploma; hence, it's a worthless piece of paper, because everybody has one. Bernie Sanders is basically threatening to do the same fucking thing to the Bachelor's Degree; free college for everybody, everybody gets a degree. That which is rare is valuable, that which is overly common is worthless.

All such a policy would do is bankrupt the country even more, saddle the taxpayers with even more debt, and none of these entitled millennial cucks are gonna have any more job opportunity than they do right now.

Hiring managers: "Oh, you have a Bachelor of Arts degree? Great, so do the other 200 fuckheads applying for this job. Get in line."


[–]rep127 points8 points  (4 children) | Copy Link

everybody gets a degree. That which is rare is valuable, that which is overly common is worthless.

I totally agree with you. We need people to collect garbage, paint roads, shovel shit, clean bathrooms etc. Those types of position do not require education, only vocational training. I've had people argue that education isn't only for gaining employment, that people will somehow gain a higher standard of living because they're educated. That is bullshit.

If you educate everyone to a college/university level you will make the lowest earners unhappy and leave them feeling unfulfilled. Anyone that spends four years dedicating their life to learning the intricacies of fine arts or reading and debating the great events of history, only to wind up working a minimum wage job requiring no skills or education will be unhappy.

[–]JP_Whoregan[S] 4 points5 points  (3 children) | Copy Link

That's basically what's already happening, but Bernie is trying to expand it to a mass scale. We have a whole slew of millennial, entitled brats today who are getting a worthless degree simply for the sake of getting a degree, then they're wondering why nobody will hire them with their Bachelor's of Basket Weaving degree.

Contrary to the popular belief today, college is not the place where you "discover what you wanna be when you grow up". College should be the place you go because you've chosen a life path, and want to get an education to further that stated goal.

And exactly, college/institutionalized education is not for everybody. The world needs HVAC technicians, the world needs electricians, and the world needs garbage men. Some guys who are currently racking up college debt would be far happier as motorcycle technicians. And a motorcycle mechanic can make some fucking bank, even if he doesn't have a college degree.

[–]rep122 points3 points  (2 children) | Copy Link

Here in the UK our student loan system is designed to make graduates pay a "graduate tax" on their salary. We repay 9% of any earnings exceeding £21,000.

Many of my former peers from secondary school/sixth form went to university and took out these loans. Half of them didn't need their degree to get the position they hold. Some of them don't even earn enough to repay the loans. These people never predicted their lives would play out like this; they were lead to believe education makes you rich.

It fucking doesn't.

Some of the wealthiest guys to graduate my secondary school worked shitty apprenticeships for £3 hourly, they stayed at home with their parents and saved their income, then they created their own companies and hired experienced tradesmen with no entrepreneurial thoughts. They don't pay the graduate tax. They recognised they didn't need a degree.

From what I can gather in the states the student loan system is even worse. How does it work out for you guys?

[–]JP_Whoregan[S] 5 points6 points  (1 child) | Copy Link

The problem with the US college loan system can be boiled down to two things:

  • the loans are government backed
  • any money that isn't guaranteed by the government cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.

So if you are the dean of Fuckhead University, and you know that your new students can never shed their debt and most of it will be backed by the government anyways, what are you gonna do? You're gonna jack up tuition rates, jack up the costs of books, and jack up the costs of room and board.

This all boils down the the same problem afflicting US healthcare; whenever the person getting the benefit is not the person who is paying for it, costs skyrocket. When a doctor knows a multi-billion dollar insurance company is paying for doctor visits, a $40 doctor visit becomes $400. And when Fuckhead University knows the government backed loan is paying for tuition, a $100 credit hour becomes a $500 credit hour.

It would be like if you went to the grocery store, but you weren't paying for your own groceries, the government was buying your groceries for you. You would load the fuck up on steak, milk, cheese, and shrimp, whether or not you could possibly eat it all before it spoiled. And the grocer would encourage you to do it, because the grocer is being taken care of by the government.

That's what's going on in the US education and loan system. Colleges don't give two fucks whether a student goes after a useless degree, or whether that student will ever be able to repay the loans, because the college knows that the US government is backing up the loans even if the student defaults on them in 10 years.

The school is getting paid regardless, and the US government will simply chase the student down for the money until the day they die. Then when they do die, that debt becomes a liability of the student's estate.

[–]TissueBabies1 point2 points  (0 children) | Copy Link

And just as an aside, that IS happening in our grocery stores. Food Stamps mean you can buy steak and candy while Joe Schmoe affords only ramen noodles.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children) | Copy Link

I think the problem is that a lot of the wrong people are in college for the wrong reasons. But they end up being college graduates and lower the value of a degree, so you have genuinely smart people who grow up being told that a college degree is useless.

For example I was interviewing for a Best buy sales position and the hiring manager told me he turned away a Masters graduate because he had no experience.

Society has a knack for producing total fucking sheeps and it really doesn't matter what happens because either way you are going to end up with a bunch of fucking morons either with a degree or without one.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child) | Copy Link

Sure. If you are a bolshevik and believe that jobs are a limited resource. Then everyone increasing their odds of getting hired means nobody has increased their odds.

But that's not how the real world works. Every year jobs demand more thinking from the worker, because we as humans do everything we can to make machines do the physically demanding tasks. Look at any labour-intensive job and you'll see that in comparison to 50 years ago 90% of the menial tasks has been taken over by machines, wether they be hydraulic or digital.

Now I'm not saying that the schooling system of today actually teaches people how to think, rather the opposite, but the idea of a better educated work force is not bad.

[–]JP_Whoregan[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children) | Copy Link

Now I'm not saying that the schooling system of today actually teaches people how to think

That's the problem with college educations and campuses today; instead of teaching kids how to think, they are telling them what to think.

And you completely misread me if you think I'm saying jobs are a limited resource; all I'm saying is that not every lucrative job requires a college degree. There are plenty of self-made men who don't have college degrees. Hell, Bill Gates is a college dropout.

[–]Complecs0 points1 point  (4 children) | Copy Link

This is why I love sales. I don't have shit for education but I fucking hustle and make more than the majority of my customers. TRP has a lot to do with my success in sales, to me it's more valuable than any degree I could've worked for.

[–]One_friendship_plz0 points1 point  (3 children) | Copy Link

I tried sales, I had to lie my ass off and it made me feel shit about myself. Are all sales jobs like that

[–]Complecs0 points1 point  (2 children) | Copy Link

What the hell were you selling where you had to lie your ass off?

[–]One_friendship_plz0 points1 point  (1 child) | Copy Link

Packing tape, car decals. Beer, and beef.

[–]Complecs0 points1 point  (0 children) | Copy Link

Try a more professional sales job then. The hours that a lot of sales requires means you need to be paid well. That job doesnt sound like it pays well.

You can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea.

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