[lbo-talk] say no to college

[Alan Rudy]

I think what you're saying fits with what both Miles and I said.
No matter how much more you know and understand about your profession over
and above newly minted college grads, w/o the certification of a degree you
fall below them in status and employability according to official standards.
But, more than that, Altucher's blindness to the facts of his families
wealth and pre-established networking - and the ways these conditions and
relations lay the groundwork for his kids success (and his view of college
as a scam) keeps him from seeing situations like yours, or that of the vast
majority of my students, as pertinent.
In my profession, there's often the further reification of
newly-mintedness-as-certification-of-quality (either that or prospective
malleability) when it comes to hiring experienced temporary or itinerate
faculty, something I know well and my wife, who may be about to lose her job
due to state budget cuts, already justifiably fears.
Yours,
A

PS: I'd bet that, unlike Diane's mom who lives in Port Charlotte and got a
degree as a grandma, your life experience may countas credit towards a
degree but not towards the kinds of professional courses or major you need
for the particular certification...

On Fri, Aug 6, 2010 at 6:23 PM, W. Kiernan <wkiernan at gmail.com> wrote:


> Alan Rudy wrote:
> >
> > Sociologists have been arguing for decades that college
> > is primarily - though not absolutely - about certification
> > and networking, not about learning, science or citizenship.
>
> I've been doing land surveying for 33 years now.  You can't get licensed as
> a land surveyor in Florida without a four-year degree.  No one employed as a
> land surveying technician can afford to get a four-year college degree,
> ever.  In this recession, all this is working out especially badly for me
> right now.
>
> yrs wdk
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>

-- 
*********************************************************
Alan P. Rudy
Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work
Central Michigan University
124 Anspach Hall
Mt Pleasant, MI 48858
517-881-6319