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From: phil@unisoft.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: Student Loan FLAME
Message-ID: <246@unisoft.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 5-Apr-84 13:37:11 EST
Article-I.D.: unisoft.246
Posted: Thu Apr  5 13:37:11 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 7-Apr-84 04:25:38 EST
References: <6521@uiucdcs.UUCP>, <1222@ucf-cs.UUCP>
Organization: UniSoft Corp., Berkeley
Lines: 67

>> From: giles@ucf-cs.UUCP (Bruce Giles)
>> 
>> The single most important facet of our government is that all men (and women)
>> are equal in the eyes of the law.  In order to ensure this, the United States
>> has always at least attempted to provide universal eduation.
>> ....
>> But at the higher levels, a college eduation is mandatory.  A person with
>> a straight high school education will not know where to find the infor-
>> mation they need, let alone know what to do with it, without the training
>> they would receive in college.  It would be nice if it could be provided 
>> in high school, but it will still be a number of years before that could
>> happen.

Hmmm - the above may be a good argument against college education.

The ``United States'' has NOT always attempted to provide universal education.
Only since the end of WWII has there been much involvement at all by the
Federal government, and that was met (at times) with heavy opposition
from the states. In the end, the VERY LARGE carrot of Federal money overcame
the resistance. Up to then, the states had widely varying support of the
schools. For the (roughly) first half of our history, many states had no
involvement at all. The school district in Illinois where I went to HS in
was privately run for the 60 years (teachers rotated among the families of
the student, pay was mostly room and board).

There is a correlation between increasing Federal money and decreasing
``quality'' of education (I personally gave up all remaining vestiges of
faith in our ``higher'' educational system when I saw a UCLA history course
use as the course book one that compared Angela Davis to Thomas Paine. Lord,
take me now ...).

But then, since this IS net.flame, I feel obligated to contribute to the
combustion. Some observations on ``higher education'' --

In hiring people, the 3 or 4 top people I've ever seen all worked their
way through college. Some did have student or private loans, but the
bulk of the money was from their own work, not Mommy & Daddy or student
loans that they intended to default on. I was had a candidate casually
mention his intent to declare bankruptcy after graduation (MBA, 'nuff said).
These people valued and got the most out of that which they had to work
their asses off for.

BUT -- many student loans proponents argue that the loans are needed to
train our technological work force. Fine -- if you want to use an economic
argument, let's shut down all the political ````science'''' departments,
the athletic departments, history, etc. and turn out the techies.

In any case -- I'm tired of seeing Berkeley CS students that don't know C
and are taught Pascal. Ugh - using Pascal as a teaching language for CS
is like parachute training without the chute - you don't know how mistaken
you were until the end.

I really tired (what am I, Marvin??) of ``rounded'' college grads that
don't know why the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor, when the Great
Depression was, what the Bay of Pigs means, when the transistor was
invented, who the current leader of the Soviet Union/the UK/West
Germany/France, or even who our own VP is -- oh shit or ANYTHING!

I'm ready to see us try total abolition of all Federal/State/local
funding of education, it can be worse. Except, I'd lose my favorite
laugh of asking any teacher to explain how they can state that years
of declining SAT scores does not mean education is getting worse.

(wondering what I'm doing contributing to net.flame / it's not even a
full moon)

Send all responses elsewhere. PKR