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TL;DR? The essay doesn't knock college at all. It knocks the idea that the kid is better-educated at 21 than his father was, and that he has MORE opportunities

TL;DR? The essay doesn't knock college at all. It knocks the idea that the kid is better-educated at 21 than his father was, and that he has MORE opportunities because of it. It knocks the sad fact that the kid's father and grandfather were entrepreneurs, but somehow taught the kid that he has to have A Real Job with a Career Ladder and 401k - or nothing at all: "The parents and grandparents, like so many parents today, are disappointed in their son because he's not taking their advice, but in fact their son is taking their advice to its inevitable conclusion: he's holding out for the perfect corporate job." It has, in short, nothing to do with you, your school, or your defensiveness about graduating college. And if you think college graduates today are actually smarter than they were 30 years ago, I'm afraid you're sadly mistaken. Their facts may be more up-to-date, however, writing skills, reading skills, and whatnot, are down across the board.

yalurker 16y ago
It looks like we interpreted the author differently. I took the "more degrees" coupled with a graduation age of 21 to mean the son had a Bachelor's and the father had only a high school diploma. I was looking at it as college vs no college, not college today vs college 30 years ago.
- illumin8 16y ago
  Yes, the basic premise was that college is more expensive now, but that college graduates are not any more educated than they were decades ago.
  - Tamerlin 16y ago
    Experience leads me argue that they are LESS educated now. Look around on the web. Start paying attention to how many people consistently make basic linguistic errors like "loose" when they wanted to say "lose" or use the incorrect homophone for "there" or "it's" to indicate a possessive. Look for actual reasoning -- as opposed to pedantically regurgitating a collection of facts. The sad reality is that getting a degree these days has become a lot easier, and increasingly has very little to do with how smart one is, but rather how skilled one is at cramming for a test. The high demand and low supply in software developers has lead to both higher salaries and lower standards.

yalurker 16y ago

It looks like we interpreted the author differently. I took the "more degrees" coupled with a graduation age of 21 to mean the son had a Bachelor's and the father had only a high school diploma. I was looking at it as college vs no college, not college today vs college 30 years ago.

illumin8 16y ago
Yes, the basic premise was that college is more expensive now, but that college graduates are not any more educated than they were decades ago.
- Tamerlin 16y ago
  Experience leads me argue that they are LESS educated now. Look around on the web. Start paying attention to how many people consistently make basic linguistic errors like "loose" when they wanted to say "lose" or use the incorrect homophone for "there" or "it's" to indicate a possessive. Look for actual reasoning -- as opposed to pedantically regurgitating a collection of facts. The sad reality is that getting a degree these days has become a lot easier, and increasingly has very little to do with how smart one is, but rather how skilled one is at cramming for a test. The high demand and low supply in software developers has lead to both higher salaries and lower standards.