AOC of all people should know who the real villains are behind the student loan debt mess

The higher education system that has convinced our society that your not worth much unless you buy the snake oil that they are selling. A system that convinced her and many like her to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a degree so she could get a job as a waitress. A system that sells a product that much of which doesn’t last very long and has little practical value.

The last thing we should do is to give more money to a system that takes longer than it needs to, costs more than it needs to and one that offers many of its customers little practical value. A logical and practical approach to higher education - including high school - is what the country needs. Yes America does have a real systemic problem here and hopefully we all can agree that real reforms are needed.

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Do you think AOC would be a member of Congress today, had she not gone to college?

I’m glad my oldest is pursuing a degree. It’s not ‘snake oil’. It’s specialized training.

I"m no fan of insular academia, or the corporate pipeline, but I live in a better world because of experts, in everything from continental philosophy to organic chemistry to linguistics to sound design.

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Yes…

No, I don’t think so.

A college degree does not an expert make. We had experts before we had colleges.

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I know so. She’s a result of personality, not paper.

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Collegia and academies have been a fixture of public life for thousands of years. These institutions are Hellenic words for that same reason.

Doesn’t change what I said.

How to tell people what they want to hear 101. Sure as hell don’t need to sit in classrooms for 4 years for that program.

What percent of it?

I’m just saying - I bet if you asked her, she’d tell you her education was worth it.

Completely agree! Just ask college dropouts like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Dell, just to name a few.

She got elected congresswoman, before that she was a bartender. If she would have lost the election which could have happened it might have been a different answer she would have given if the education was worth it.

I would agree with you that it is worth it a 100% even 10 years ago the price today is staggering in comparison and companies keep outsourcing and insourcing jobs many of the jobs in-sourced are college level jobs.

Not for the 40% of graduates working in jobs that didn’t require a degree:

And not for the many people who spent tens of thousands of dollars for a degree in fields that don’t pay well.

How many of these so-called white collar jobs actually require someone to sit in classes for 8 years (I’m including high school as well) before they have the capability to do the required tasks? Here’s one way I like to put it - does someone really need 4 years of schooling to sell insurance?

The system involves businesses who hire with a preference to degree holders. They account for a sizeable amount of the demand for college education.

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The notion of the “university” goes back to the ancient Greeks and the motivations were very different from what students are looking for today. There’s not a person today who wants to spend tens of thousands of dollars so to become a well rounded intellectual.

Well, of course. That’s the whole point.

I was 32 when I got my bachelor’s degree, and I worked as a waiter for a year after that. That’s the economy for you. Now I have a JD.

Yes, an education today costs way too much money.

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile.

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Raises hand.

I just got a JD, and there’s only a 50/50 chance I’m ever going to practice law. I went to school to learn how it all works - not for vocational training.

Is there anything you learned in that area in classrooms that you couldn’t have learned on the internet?