WE DON'T NEED NO EDUCATION

[Aesop]

And her I-Want-To-Be-Doing-_________-in-Ten-Years Master Plan is...?

[blackeagle603]

MFA and teaching is one track she's thinking. Stage Managing and directing seems to be a natural track for her too. She's an amazing do'er, organizer and planner/program executor. She could do alright right here in town at the various professional theaters if all she did was stage manage. Has a bent for organizing events. Already has some biggies under her belt -- various large parties including setting up hall rental etc.

Dream gig for her is right here in town as a member of the only full time Rep company in town. That would actually be a low middle class income on it's own. Add teaching/training and side gigs and it's a pretty good income. She's worked/trained with some of their members and was invited to a 2 week training program and fell in love with the place. We've had season tickets since the early 90's and it gone from good to great and keeps getting better. She's working the contact/nepotism angle now (unintentionally) since she wound up with a new voice coach who is a member in residence (currently leading in their show they just extended and moved downtown). One of our old neighbors and wife's gym friends is a founding member but not rushing to use that contact till daughter is clear of school and more fully trained/stronger resume'.

Other than that I wouldn't be surprised to she her get pulled into office/inside sales work. She'd be a world class executive assistant or office manager. Most of her housecleaning clients are youngish lawyers. For some she's doing more 'n more personal assistant stuff but is limited in bandwidth for that with her classload. She could probably go to full time with that stuff. She's learned not to work by the hour but to bid by the task and let them mention the first $figure. At least one has just hung out her own shingle in the past couple years and is a huge fan of all the order daughter #2 has brought in to her household and life.

Having said all that, better than even odds of winding up singing in a seal costume at Sea World days and gigging as a wedding singer weekends.

[MelodyByrne]

Having said all that, better than even odds of winding up singing in a seal costume at Sea World days and gigging as a wedding singer weekends.

And yet, since she'd have no student loan debt, she'd still have more cash leftover at the end of the month from her various gigs than many of the law students currently graduating. And more free time.

[skb12172]

It always cracks me up that people think Music or Theater degrees are easy. There might not be many job openings after graduation, but the degree requirements are not easy.

[MarkD]

I read this yesterday from my smart phone, but my response requires a keyboard for the sake of my vestigial sanity.

While a humanities degree has little commercial value, and arguably never DID, it has an important societal value IF DONE PROPERLY (which, as we've noted, is seldom is anymore).

Exposure to the humanities (which for my purposes here will include art, music, history and literature) is exposure to culture. IOW it's a study of what the culture finds Beautiful, True, Good and Honorable (and I capitalized all those words on purpose). Therefore, a study of Western humanities is a study of those things Western culture defines by those terms. A person who has taken the time and effort to understand these fields is a person who understands the people in that culture, perhaps even better than many individuals IN that culture. In short, he's in a position to be, if not a leader, at least an adviser. This was the gist of one of Albert J. Nock's essays (I think it was Isaiah's Job?). He's the man who can see what's happening around him and can stand up and say "No! Don't do that! They tried that in (insert historical reference) and it turned out badly!" Even the less well educated than that had a basic understanding of the humanities, so while they may not have been able to see the issue themselves they can understand it when it's presented to them, so when our prophet above says "No, don't do that!" they can say "Oh yeah, right, it WOULD be a bad idea, let's not do that."

Part of what's happened the last century or so (and it seems to have accelerated during my lifetime) is a denigration of Western culture. So instead of studying Plato we study Native American culture. Really? We throw out the philosophy of people who came up with Geometry and figured out that the Earth was round in favor of people who never invented the wheel and, while living undisturbed for a millennium in a place chock full of fauna, never managed to domesticate livestock? The Spaniards should have arrived and found huge pens full of white-tailed deer, raised for meat and used to pull carts. Or instead of studying the Dutch artists they want to study Indian art (Eastern, not American). Again, they throw out a society that figured out how to reclaim land from the ocean in favor of people who didn't tip to the fact that it's NOT a good idea to drink from, wash in, crap in and throw corpses into the same river, no matter how sacred you consider that body of water.

Perhaps the most insidious aspect of this is the loss of understanding that different cultures are different. There's nothing wrong with studying (say) Japanese culture, as long as you realize that their culture is FUNDAMENTALLY different from ours, so using their experience as a rationale for changing our culture is doomed to failure. I offer the example of gun control. The Japanese have a culture of obedience to authority, of fitting in, of politeness. Americans, less so. So of COURSE you can't use the evidence that something seems to work in Japan as proof that if should be implemented in America.

So when someone says that African music is "just as good as" Mozart, no, it isn't. 99.9999999% of ALL music isn't as good as Mozart. That's why we study Mozart and not Timmy Junior banging away on the piano and making every dog in the neighborhood howl.

[Aesop]

"You so racissssss!" (h/t - every collegiate undergrad for the last 25 years)

Right, and that's the reason for all education, and not particularly only that at the college level.

But since those involved are, by and large, exactly the people that failed to learn those same lessons going back to the 1950s, once you entrust your further education to their instincts and predilections, you've pretty much signed up to learn intellectual boatbuilding not from Noah, but from the designers of the Titanic and the next-of-kin of those who didn't survive trips over Niagara Falls in a barrel, and intellectual aerodynamics from the team that launched the Hindenburg, and came up with all those clever ways to not fly recorded in countless comedy newsreels from 1900-1930. If Wile E. Coyote was real, he'd have a Ph.D. and be teaching math and physics in the Ivy League. The history department would be chaired by Cliff Clavin, PoliSci would feature lectures by Emily Litella, criminology and law would feature Inspectors Closseau and Lessard, the English department would be run alternately by Borat and Latka Gravas, and Reverend Jim would be doing religious studies.

In real life, the actual folks holding down those posts are neither as funny nor as talented as that, being generally the kids you knew in kindergarten snacking at the paste jar, licking the windows on the short bus, and lovingly shepherded by teachers around town on various field trips with their padded helmets in place 24/7. Moving into the ranks of college educators is generally a necessity, as even being a letter carrier requires the ability to count from 0 to 40,000 without hints, and being able to correctly arrange the letters of the alphabet from A to Z, while walking a lot, arts which are gravely lacking from most faculty departments anytime in the last several decades. The ones too special to teach adequately invariably become the administrators, to the same degree one would imagine in any asylum run by the inmates.

Were the states to collectively set their state university systems adrift, and we let anyone open up a university (without requiring credentialing by the failed examples already in place), the average price of a college diploma would sink to that of a car payment per annum, if not become something achievable entirely online at the price of about $1/unit, providing vastly better-qualified graduates with a far richer exposure to actual knowledge.

Considering what I have access to on the internet for about $8/GB through my cell company, let alone for free at the local city library, it's a puzzlement that such hasn't happened long since. Therefore the only reason they haven't bulldozed those institutions and put up condos on prime real estate has to be the juvenile attachment of alumni to the sporting rivalries of their alma mater.

If one needs further evidence of how bad it's gotten, they need look no farther than most of the names on the list of the 25 Most Famous College Professors Currently Teaching. (Warning: Best not to visit it too soon after a hearty meal.)

What's funnier is that the idiots in charge of the asylums can't seem to figure out why, apart from law, medicine, and STEM fields of study, men are staying away from college in droves, imagining it to be some failing on the part of men, as opposed to an innate recognition of the worthlessness of the endeavor and a perspicacious appreciation of the utter lack of value of the purported rewards.

[MarkD]

Well yeah, traditionally the OTHER function of people well-versed in Humanities was to TEACH humanities to the next generation. The vast majority of whom would fall into the category of possessors of the basics, and maybe one or two per CAREER of whom were qualified for the expert to pass the torch to at the end of his career.

It used to be the same in every discipline. If you were good at something, you did it. If you were VERY good at something, you taught people how to do it. There was no such thing as going directly from college to teaching, you just weren't qualified.

[Termite]

Make me Emperor for a day.....er, better make it a week.... and watch me purge the public colleges. Not just the dipshit teachers, 50% of the student population too........

[skb12172]

Make me Emperor for a day.....er, better make it a week.... and watch me purge the public colleges. Not just the dipshit teachers, [strike]50%[/strike] 67.6% of the student population too........

Based upon my experience as a college professor for ten years...

[Aesop]

There would be no need for purges.
Simply flunking out everyone who couldn't maintain a 2.0 average at all times would suffice.

Then we'd re-visit the core curriculum for each major and general ed requirements, and nothing outside that would be allowed until all the gateway classes were fully staffed. General ed requirements would be based on the model of the Trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) for freshman and sophmores, and the Quadrivium (mathematics, geometry, music, and astronomy/physics)for juniors and seniors, taught in a matrix of classical literature and history, to include a minimum of 25 of the Great Books in depth per annum. {In a normal world, they'd have gotten this in high school, but this is the world that is, not the one we wish entirely into existence, so better late than never}.

Doing #1 first would largely solve the problem of #2.

Freshman comp would be pass/fail, with mastery at 80%, and a minimum of one essay per week, and at least two research term papers. It would be mandatory for everyone's first semester, if not the pre-freshman summer session, and a pre-requisite for continuation or taking any other classes. It would be solely in English, and spelling, grammar, and vocabulary would count to the least bit of punctuation.
After two failures, the student would be disenrolled, and invited to try college again in 2 years.
No remedial classes in any subject would be given, ever, in any way, shape, or form.

The students would grade the teachers as well as the other way around. Any instructor at the bottom of the ratings 3 years in a row or 4 out of any 7 would be gone.