The Great college Degree Scam and Hyper-eduflation

Hay Gang! Thanks for joining us on the Front Porch!!

Today, an article by Richard Vedder appeared, citing the 'watering down' of the meaningfulness of today's college degrees. That's putting it kindly. It's an important read and leads into a Front Porch article, from August 14th, where we coined the term "Hypereduflation."

The eductaion hoax today rates right up there in consequence with the Climate Change Hoax, the biggest theft in world history---inflation of the US monetary supply, and government-run ponze schemes like Social Security. If you're concerned about what 'we're making' in our educational system, this is must-reading!!

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Professor Exposes ‘Great College-Degree Scam’

While the number of American college graduates rose significantly from 1992 to 2008, 60 percent of the increased number worked in jobs that the Bureau of Labor Statistics considers relatively low skilled, a university economist disclosed.

Those are jobs where many employees have only high school diplomas or less, and less than half of the increased number of grads have filled jobs historically regarded as requiring at least a bachelor’s degree.

That’s the finding of Richard Vedder, a distinguished professor of economics at Ohio University, who is critical of President Barack Obama’s insistence that the United States needs more college graduates.

In an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education headlined “The Great College-Degree Scam,” Vedder — director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity — points out that in 1992, 28.9 million college graduates were employed, and 5.1 million — about 17 percent — were in jobs the BLS termed “noncollege level jobs.”

But in 2008, total college graduate employment was 49.3 million, and 17.4 million — 35 percent — were in jobs classified as requiring less than a bachelor’s degree.

As an example, Vedder notes that in 1992, there were 119,000 waiters and waitresses with college degrees. By 2008, the number had increased to 318,000. The total number of waiters and waitresses rose by 1 million during that period, and 20 percent of those new jobs were filled by college students.

“The push to increase the number of college graduates seems horribly misguided from a strict economic/vocational perspective,” writes Vedder, who is also an adjunct scholar with the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.

“It is precisely that perspective that is emphasized by those, starting with President Obama, who insist that we need to have more college graduates.”

Vedder says his findings suggest “a horrible decline in the productivity of American education.” In many cases it now takes 18 years of schooling (including kindergarten and five years of college) to get an education to do a job that a generation or two ago was filled by a person with 12 or 13 years of education.

Vedder concludes: “We are deceiving our young population to mindlessly pursue college degrees when very often that is advice that is increasingly questionable.”

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HyperEduFlation---You read it first here!!

There has been a white collar crime committed in the past 100 years that exceeds our wildest imagination. I'm calling it HyperEduFlation.. First, a little review of terms, in particular relating to "degrees " of theft....

The theft we usually associate with stealing is relatively crude, simple, and limited in its scope and insidiousness. Lysander Spooner contrasted invidual theft with the State's form of theft in NO TREASON:

"The government does not indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the roadside, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is nonetheless a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardlly and shameful.

"The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a 'protector,' and that he takes men's money against their will, merely to enable him to 'protect' those infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful 'sovereign,' on account of the 'protection' he affords you. He does not keep 'protecting' you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy of your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villainies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave..."

(Note: this punctuation mark " ; " is what we used to call a semi-colon. You'll notice Spooner used it often during his day. Don't forget to explain this to the youngsters under 40 ---- see HyperEduFlation below. It has rendered such luxuries and extravagancies, along with logic, the Constitution, US history and balancing checkbooks as mere "niche" interests.)

Now, back when reasoning and logic were valued, pre-HyperEduFlation, this would have been a persuasive argument. Back in college, I asked several lawyers to read NO TREASON, and largely, none of them were inclined to, or apparently capable of, arguing with the book's primary premise (which is not a part of this discussion. It's just interesting. To me anyway.) The lawyers, properly morally moribund, had been trained not to be effected by arcane concepts like truth, intellectual integrity. I do know one lawyer who is. I think. OK, back on topic: Theft.

The fact is, governments have had a far more sinister means of stealing from the citizenry than direct taxation. They create a state-controlled fiat currency and inflate the money supply, merrily redistributing the sheeples' power and wealth right under their noses.
This article is not even about that kind of evil chicanery. But if you understand how inflation "works," and for whom, the next several paragraphs should be interesting....

If you're taking the ride with Glenn Beck through early American history, or if you are among the 1% (generous percentage) who already knew what Calvin Coolidge did to end the Depression of 1920, you know that once upon a time their were no state schools and no federal 'funding' and 'guidance' for state schools. You also know that back then, many of the brightest people were wholly self-educated. All knew when to use a semi-colon. High school educations were rare, and meaningful. You didn't graduate if you couldn't read or briefly explain the 2nd amendment. College degrees were truly exceptional.

So, even if you went through only the 6th grade back then, you could read GULLIVER'S TRAVELS or MOBY DICK and actually have a whiff of understanding about what metaphors were to be found therein. Unless you've been in an underground bomb shelter with no outside communication since birth, you know the chances of running into a 6th grader, or high school graduate, or, sadly, a college graduate in most cases who knows what a non sequitur is or who Dwight Eisenhauer was, are not so much.

Has it occurred to you that the same thing that has happened to our currency has happened to another form of "currency": high school and college dipomas? We seem to be aware that the former is next to useless for telling us whether the owner can read or add, and the latter is next to useless when it comes to being a useful, productive citizen. "Doctorates" are now handed out each year by the fistfuls. And how many of us know more than one possessor of a "doctorate" who is dumb as a box of iron ore?

What happened? I call it, as of today---ta-da!---HyperEduFlation. Folks we're way past merely 'adding a few years' to the educational process to get the 6th grade results in civics, history, economics that were expected 100 years ago. Our country, in particular, is the all-time Weimar Republic of education "inflation." Phony, useless dipomas, misspent time in schools of indoctrination, all to breed a public of sheeples who think they're entitled to a nanny state at someone else's expense, and can tell you who is on American Idol, but not who is buried in Grant's tomb.

HyperEduFlation. As Garet Garrett said way back, "The Revolution Was." We awaken in 2010 in a country where half the population voted for a President about whom they knew nothing. And got what we deserved. We squandor more money per pupil on fake education and sheeple indoctrination than any country in history. Oops. "History"? History is so yesterday...

If you have thoughts, observations, criticism, encouragements, share them with us in the 'comments' section---show your flag!!