<p>So goes the defense for the grand expansionin price and in volumeof the higher education business over the past few decades. Is it possible that the premise is just wrong? In that case the producers of education have perpetrated a fraud on the rest of us.</p>
<p>Its a clever fraud, built around a subtle logical flaw called the fallacy of composition. That is the fallacy that has you thinking a phenomenon true for any one person or thing can be simultaneously true for every person or thing. The classic illustration of the fallacy goes like this: </p>
<p>One person can see better at the ballgame by standing up, so if everybody in the stadium stands up they will all see better</p>
<p>“To see what’s going on, imagine that the country’s 130 million jobs are ranked by the extent to which they demand verbal and numerical skills. At the top, math professor; at the bottom, janitor.”</p>
<p>. . . and then imagine that all the janitors form a union . . .</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Why don’t you post this in one of the 20 or so threads Beliavsky has started in the past couple of weeks making exactly the same point (over and over and over).</p></li>
<li><p>Sometimes it’s not a fallacy. If one person runs, he will get where he is going faster than walking. If everybody runs, they won’t all get there at the same time, and some people might even have been better off walking, but mostly they will all be faster than if the walked.</p></li>
<li><p>The Harvard bit is just a cheap shot. My synagogue had a janitor with a Harvard AB for a while. But it wasn’t because he couldn’t get any other job, or was going to be working as a janitor for any extended period.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>The fallacy underlying all of these threads is that somehow education is a job training program. And, yes, I’m sure that there are many fields in which this is true. But, the purpose of an education is not to train you for employment. It is to educate you, hopefully, in ways which will make your life better.</p>
<p>My youngest daughter could probably go into sales right out of high school and be running the department within ten years. That’s the kind of person she is. She already makes enough money for an entry level right out of college job, but she WILL get a college education. </p>
<p>Why? Because one should learn to read and some art history and how to talk to people about ideas and how to think critically about politics and theory, and because, because, because.</p>
<p>People want education for the masses, and then they want it to be job training for the masses. Then, they want Harvard and UChicago and William and Mary and UMich to all be job training sites. That’s not what they are.</p>
<p>Even if education were just job training, I marvel that anyone with a clue could view the first job out of undergrad as a good test of an education’s financial value. Let’s see where that Harvard intern/babysitter is in 20 years. I’m guessing that absent tragedy that could happen to anyone, he’s going to be roughly where he wants to be in his career.</p>
<p>Custodians at that work in NYC DOE schools make a 6 figure salary (more than some principals) and get to take the equipment (trucks, snow blowers, etc) with them from one school to another. </p>
<p>I am willing to bet $ if that Harvard educated babysitter is working on the UES and is doing some tutoring/homework help, she is making a nice piece of change, or at least enough to keep himself afloat while working the unpaid internship.</p>
<p>The thing is, this example isn’t may not support the author’s premise at all. Without knowing more about they young man and his goals.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>What stands out here is “currently working part-time as an intern.” It seems to me that this person has an internship in his field and wants to supplement is income with some babysitting money. This isn’t unemployment.</p>
<p>This is a big “so what” to me. If the guy is caring, gentle and wants to work with children and will do a good job at it, how does that make him a failure?</p>
<p>Gee, I know someone with a PhD from Yale who works in public policy in a hands-on capacity with children. </p>
<p>It’s also notable that no one considers a woman a failure if she is at home with children but let a man do a job with small children and boy - what a waste of Harvard, yadayada.</p>
<p>That is a very poorly written article. This guy writes for Forbes?!</p>
<p>There isn’t much point to the article, and there is even less point to the “story” of the young man looking for babysitting work. So??? Paul Harvey always gave us the rest of the story.</p>
<p>Do all custodians receive six figure salaries, or are you simply saying that the top of the custodial salary scale is higher than the bottom of the principal scale?</p>
<p>As someone who works a non-janitorial job split between two sites, I fail to see how only being provided one piece of equipment is a benefit. Driving the truck, rather than your own car, between the two simply means you then have to drive it back to get your own before you go home, and lugging the snow blower around from place to place seems unpleasant.</p>
<p>Just imagine the dialogues the parents who hire that Harvard grad as a nanny could have on the YMCA soccer games’ sidelines. </p>
<p>HarvardMom2030: “Did you hear that little Susie is being recruited by Harvard”
IvyEnvy: “Really?”
HarvardMom2030:“They sent us a rep and she can stay as long as we want”
IvyEnvy: “OMG! That should help”
HarvardMom2030: “Yes, Susie is a shoo-in. Go Hornets. Go Hornets, score!”
Dookie2029: “Darn, all I get is some paper about the Early Genius program for third graders in Durham. Where do you sign up for that Hahvaad deal?”</p>
<p>My D is 2011 H graduate, and she and her two best friends started out with unpaid internships, in 3 different fields. Within two months, all of them were hired. I think a lot of businesses and professional fields are taking advantage of this internship/apprenticeship concept. I don’t like it, but I think it is fairly common, based upon a sample size of 3.</p>
and also thought the article was silly.</p>