Education: Why my degree doesn’t matter.

Every month, I review my credit report and follow up with any inaccuracies. I found several around a year ago and have been vigilant about maintaining my credit score ever since. However, that is not what this post is about. While reviewing the credit report, I discovered that I have a simply staggering amount of student loan debt. I could easily buy a reasonably sized family home in my hometown, Kokomo, Indiana.

Opinion: It currently costs too much to seek education in the traditional way.

I realize that every situation leading into education is different. In some cases, parents foot the bill, in other cases the student is meant to get student loans, and of course in the best case scenario the student receives a full-ride scholarship. For most of us, there is a great deal of cost either personally or parentally.

Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI): According to their website it costs $247.90 per credit hour. We’ll for the sake of argument tack on an extra $32.10 to cover book costs and that gets us to $280.00 per credit hour. A full load of classes (12 hours) will run you $3360 minimum to get through a semester. This doesn’t even take into account things like parking, food, transportation, gasoline and personal time commitment cost.

Indiana University Kokomo (IU Kokomo): According to IU Kokomo’s website it costs $193.47 per credit hour to attend undergraduate classes. There is a sizeable difference here. Will I obtain a lesser degree by attending classes at IU Kokomo versus IUPUI?

Opinion: The current education system drives people into debt without much to show for it.

You may argue that you get a degree or experience. In my particular area of study most of my learning was self-imposed. Some of it was inspired in the classroom and some of it was pursued on my own. Education should be a self-motivated mission. You cannot simply pay for an educational upgrade. We haven’t reached Kurzweil’s Singularity, yet.

Colleges and universities are constantly trying to keep up with the technological demands of their facilities. They are upgrading their sports arenas and building additional parking garages (or at least they should be!) and in this process of constantly upgrading they are also running short of government funding to help augment the costs. None of this actually leads to a quality upgrade to the educational system. Why should it? An overhaul would cost more money that the university doesn’t have. So as the costs continue to rise and the quality of education remains the same your degree is rendered bewilderingly useless other than to meet the line item of “4 year degree required” on a job posting. Where does that leave you?

“Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.” ~ Oscar Wilde

This leaves you to embark on your own journey unaided or guided by curriculum and faculty. When you leave college you are still considered unprepared to work a job in your field.  Some people will turn you away and tell you to come back when you have more experience. Where then do you acquire this experience? Unpaid internships that further drag you into debt’s waiting maw? What did you say your degree was in?

“I think everyone should go to college and get a degree and then spend six months as a bartender and six months as a cab driver. Then they would really be educated.” ~ Al McGuire

Opinion: Education should be free because education benefits all mankind.

The student grows by absorbing knowledge and logic. Critical thinking should be taught early on. We should be prepared to process and adapt to changing resources, knowledge and technology. Our education should not have an expiration date on usefulness.

Ultimately, if students were guided towards advancing human knowledge we would all benefit. However, there has to be a paradigm shift in which we stop hoarding our discoveries. I am all for patents, temporary in nature, to take credit for your discovery. However, discoveries should be openly passed along so that the next step can be taken. All discoveries should be shared as should failures.

Take medicine for example. Why should we have to wait 10 years for the next step in pioneering a new treatment or combining two patented molecules for better results? Keep driving the research constantly and as a corporation you could still profit just by doing the most good for humanity instead of patenting the “premier” drug for “x” condition. This is not exclusive to temporary patents. I believe that it makes sense to be able profit from the work you do. It simply does not make sense to hold the endeavors of humanity back because you want to make a few million dollars first.

Why I don’t value the current educational path to a degree as much as I would value a family home.

I’m going to tell you.

You realize that you are paying someone to force you to read a book. This person, no matter how charismatic or interesting, is pacing themselves along a designated path in order to meet the requirements of curriculum for the numbered class you’re in. I have had some wonderful engaging professors in my classes. I am not discounting their abilities or their efforts. A few of them have been truly inspiring and have caused me to pursue my education outside the classroom. Dr. Scott Jones and Gregory Steel at IU Kokomo were instrumental in shaping the way I will forever approach knowledge and problems. Unfortunately, not everyone is as fortunate to study under such excellent instructors.

Education… has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading. ~ G.M. Trevelyan

Next problem, your instructors should be helping to advance the field and not simply regurgitating it. Education should be up to the minute, now, fresh and happening. However, because of the requirements and the perception of the need for uniform educational outcomes, it becomes impossible to keep coursework fresh. Students should be advancing the field right along with their instructors, stretching the realms of the existing knowledge. This isn’t exclusive to science even though it seems to resonate strongly within the scientific realm. There’s no reason that this couldn’t be applied to art, music, writing, political science, social work and so on. There’s always something to do, some envelope to push, a deviation to explore and a world full of ideas to embrace and abandon in favor of the next step.

How much do you value your degree?