Six reasons NOT to send your daughter to college

[EasterJoy]

I guess what I do not understand is why this person believes Colleges are training grounds for jobs.

I have a degree in Rhetoric and Dramatic Art from UC Berkeley. I also have a degree in Business Management from University of Phoenix Online.

When I graduated from Cal there were no jobs in the paper for Rhetoricians. I was working in my field for about 20 years when I decided to go back and get another degree.

I think, and I could be wrong, that the person who wrote the blog is also forgetting a basic truth that many do not want to face: on the average, women live longer than men. I do not want to tell you the number of people I have had to help learn how to write a check or pay basic bills after their husband dies. They discover that their wonderful spouse - who was a good spouse and loved them dearly - neglected to provide for them in the event they lost their life. Not all men think about this part of providing for their family. Their widow needs to go back to work to make sure there is food on the table and a roof over their heads. Nothing particularly wrong with that; however, it is very difficult to get a job if one has not been in the job market for 20 or 30 years. Those women who have done things like worked part time while children are in school and so have a work history sometimes have a better chance of getting a job if they need one.

While Catholic theology supports an intact family with the mother of children at home caring for those children, God often has other plans. To not prepare oneself for those possibilities is, in my opinion, foolish. I know many well educated women with advanced degrees who chose to stay at home and raise their children. That education kept them in good stead, and allowed them to interract with their husbands and their children in a full and graceful manner.

But what do I know? I’m a Dominican…GO BEARS!!! BEAT STANFORD!

How many people, after 4 years in college, still do not know how to balance a checkbook or make basic life decisions? They don’t teach those practical life skills at college, because you ought to have learned them before you left high school!

College is for developing your higher-order thinking, which generally requires you to learn how to learn a subject deeply as well as to gain an adult appreciation of a range of broader subjects. You go to learn how to think about things that must be thought about in order to be understood, not things that can be profitably learned by rote understanding. A university education is supposed to prime the pump for a lifetime of critical thinking. IMHO, even a very “practical” liberal-arts degree merely prepares you to learn what only your career will be able to teach you! The education can be very technical, but the education is not primarily technical in nature. It is academic. This is something that new college graduates often do not understand, but that the people who hire them understand all too well!

 

[JimG]

How many people, after 4 years in college, still do not know how to balance a checkbook or make basic life decisions? They don’t teach those practical life skills at college, because you ought to have learned them before you left high school!

That’s certainly true. It always amazes me the number of people who never learned how to manage money as kids, in grade school, in high school, in college, or beyond. Then when circumstances force the need upon them, it’s as if they are drowning at sea and unable to swim.

College is for developing your higher-order thinking, which generally requires you to learn how to learn a subject deeply as well as to gain an adult appreciation of a range of broader subjects. You go to learn how to think about things that must be thought about in order to be understood, not things that can be profitably learned by rote understanding. A university education is supposed to prime the pump for a lifetime of critical thinking. IMHO, even a very “practical” liberal-arts degree merely prepares you to learn what only your career will be able to teach you! The education can be very technical, but the education is not primarily technical in nature. It is academic. This is something that new college graduates often do not understand, but that the people who hire them understand all too well!

I agree with this entirely. I recall the first day of orientation when I started college back in the dark ages. The Dean gave a talk in which it was mentioned that college was not intended to get us a job. That caused a good deal of heartburn and consternation among the listeners.

 

[Sarabande]

How many people, after 4 years in college, still do not know how to balance a checkbook or make basic life decisions? They don’t teach those practical life skills at college, because you ought to have learned them before you left high school!

So true. I think most people today do learn these things before college, but there are some who don’t. The older generations were definitely true. When I worked at my father’s practice, I remember how many older widows had to learn how to balance a checkbook or even drive a car so late in life. For some it was extremely frightening. For others, it was liberating.

College is for developing your higher-order thinking, which generally requires you to learn how to learn a subject deeply as well as to gain an adult appreciation of a range of broader subjects. You go to learn how to think about things that must be thought about in order to be understood, not things that can be profitably learned by rote understanding. A university education is supposed to prime the pump for a lifetime of critical thinking. IMHO, even a very “practical” liberal-arts degree merely prepares you to learn what only your career will be able to teach you! The education can be very technical, but the education is not primarily technical in nature. It is academic. This is something that new college graduates often do not understand, but that the people who hire them understand all too well!

I completely agree. One of the main reasons why I wanted to go to college was to learn and to think more deeply. Although it was pounded into me and all of my contemporaries that getting a degree was so that I could get a job, I actually didn’t care about that aspect of it as much. The sad part is that so many people have bought into the idea that college is only for a better-paying job and nothing more. Most people I know who are my age and younger, still think that way. They thought all of the special courses we were to take were worthless. Why? Because it had nothing to do with their degree and making a lot of money. I found the courses fascinating and was poo-pooed for being a “brain” and “strange”. How could I want to waste my time? The exact phrase I often heard students and their parents say, “What does it have to do with getting a job?”

 

[EasterJoy]

I don’t see how this couldn’t all be solved by distance education. I mean (besides the debt part) it seems to strike a fairly reasonable balance between both sides.

+Sebastian

Great. You save money and go to college by logging into a computer in your parents’ basement and occasionally Skyping with a professor. Good luck with getting your research done with all the content filters your dad will have to put on the computer, though. Oh, and when you go out, make sure you always have a male relative with you, just to be on the safe side.

Me, I’d like to go to college and meet some human beings who aren’t on the other side of a computer screen. Maybe go out to coffee and talk, maybe go through a bookstore and browse books by myself, maybe go to see some live Shakespeare on the student rate, maybe go to a live sporting event or two, too. No offense, Mom and Dad, but there gets to be a point where becoming an adult requires some contact with someone who is not in my immediate family or my mother’s quilting circle.

 

[Kelfa28]

Me, I’d like to go to college and meet some human beings who aren’t on the other side of a computer screen. Maybe go out to coffee and talk, maybe go through a bookstore and browse books by myself, maybe go to see some live Shakespeare on the student rate, maybe go to a live sporting event or two, too. No offense, Mom and Dad, but there gets to be a point where becoming an adult requires some contact with someone who is not in my immediate family or my mother’s quilting circle.

No seriously…one of the best things about going to college was being exposed to so much I never would have discovered from home.

I went to a very artsy school when I was 18. I didn’t finish there…but that is besides the point.
I do remember the opportunity to see and experience art on a whole new level.
I had been a ballet dancer all my life…but this school had one of the best Jazz programs in the country.
That meant students pursuing this avenue were given the opportunity to “practice” at the local coffee shops on open mic nights.
These guys were amazing and I loved heading out to the coffee shop for a Chai tea and some awesome Jazz music.

One of our course requirements was all of the art students (music, dance, theatre) were required to see a sneak peak of projects we were all working on. Sort of like a dry run before performance night.

We’d regularly experience music for most of these classes but it was rare to see the theatre majors rehearse scenes and even rarer for us…the dance majors…to do our shows.
No one missed those days.

College should be experienced…in my opinion.

My husband and I are lucky enough to finally pursue our degrees (after marriage and a couple of kids later).
My husband enjoyed experiencing a live debate he was in his element for. This is something you just can’t do over the internet. Interacting with human beings and engaging in an intelligent exchange of ideas in a debate form in real time.

 

[Cat]

Years ago, I would have agreed with the arguments in favor of a liberal arts education just for the sake of developing an educated mindset and learning how to think.

I still agree that there is much value in learning for learning’s sake. I think it is good and valuable to know different languages (which I don’t), literature, philosophy, the various arts, cultures, history, etc.

Most of the time, learning about these subjects won’t lead to a job. But there is still value in learning them because they expand our minds and souls.

HOWEVER…in recent years, I have kind of sort of maybe ??? changed my mind about liberal arts education.

Even a state college costs so much nowadays, and unless they have high-paying professions (doctor, lawyer, CEO of successful company, etc.), parents can’t possibly save this amount and still pay expenses for a child’s growing up, especially if there are several children in the family.

Frankly, I don’t think it’s a good thing to deny children basic and special childhood experiences like sports, arts, various road trips, family vacations, social activities, etc. and tell them, “Sorry, honeys, we don’t have the money for you all to do this activity because we’re saving it for your college. You’ll thank us someday.”

I think we ought to strive to give our children a great growing-up experience. Not everyone has to get involved in figure skating, which is very expensive. But I think that parents ought to allow their children to pursue interests such as sports, arts, Scouts, etc., and I think that families should take family outings and vacations. There are ways to save money on childhood activities and family vacations, but some things just cost money and you can’t get around it. E.g., if you decide to send your children to Space Camp–a very valuable and wondrous childhood experience–you will have to pay some big money for this.

But I’m not really sure about the value of a liberal arts education nowadays. I’m really beginning to think that people should first secure some kind of job training that will lead to a job that pays a decent income. There is such a need for various manufacturing skills (we have thousands of openings in factories in our cities for trained people with certificates). There is also a need for various health care workers and dental workers.

I think kids should find a job first, and THEN get their liberal arts education and pay for it themselves. They don’t necessarily need a degree–they can just take classes, and the classes don’t have to be in a college setting. There are plenty of classes through museums, churches, clubs, etc.

For me, it’s a tough question. I value liberal arts, but I think it’s getting to the place where it used to be, where only the wealthy could afford college.

And one more thought–actually, everyone SHOULD get involved with figure skating!!

 

[marymary1975]

Great. You save money and go to college by logging into a computer in your parents’ basement and occasionally Skyping with a professor. Good luck with getting your research done with all the content filters your dad will have to put on the computer, though. Oh, and when you go out, make sure you always have a male relative with you, just to be on the safe side.

Me, I’d like to go to college and meet some human beings who aren’t on the other side of a computer screen. Maybe go out to coffee and talk, maybe go through a bookstore and browse books by myself, maybe go to see some live Shakespeare on the student rate, maybe go to a live sporting event or two, too. No offense, Mom and Dad, but there gets to be a point where becoming an adult requires some contact with someone who is not in my immediate family or my mother’s quilting circle.

LOL good one

 

[marymary1975]

Stop making so much sense. You’re going to give some folks a head ache.

Well that is the real problem with women getting superior education…they can become too smart

 

[fpt]

Thank you, thank you, for the citation from Gaudium et Spes, that is perfect. It is directly from one of the four Apostolic Constitutions, the highest level of decree issued by a Pope, and treats the question directly.

That is not to say that a parent might not discourage their children from an educational path that cannot be pursued without undue compromise of their morals.

I am totally on the same line than you. But the notion of "** the near ocassion of sin " and / or of " the undue compromise of moral "** does not has to be analysed, judged, discerned, via the prism of some wrong intellectual approaches, as the pessimism, the manicheism, the catharism, the jansenism, the puritanism, the victorianism, the sinful presumptionism, the externalism, the catholic integrism, the catholic fundamentalism…etc. The discernement, that has to be used, has to respect the catholic methods, in the details with all subtelties without the ideologies and heresies coming from the past.
*
The strong reactionism, the absurdity in the discernement are not catholic.*

It is saying, however, that females are not to be unjustly singled out when this kind of question comes up before parents.

I think your answer is what The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith would say. Perfect!

 

[Sarabande]

Well that is the real problem with women getting superior education…they can become too smart

God forbid that ever happens.

 

[manualman]

Embarrassing article… and yet they do come close to making some good points.

The critique that college is less about education these days and more about indoctrination and job training is unfortunately pretty close to the mark. I have a B.S degree and NEVER had to take a literature class or write a non-technical paper. It seemed like a relief at the time, but in reality I got robbed. I’m not alone!

They also came close to identifying a MAJOR problem in western civilization: college is indispensable to good paying jobs, but it also costs so much that you will be more than hallway through your fertility before most women can pay off their student loans. Not surprisingly, NO western nation has a birth rate above the long term replacement level anymore. NONE. Ponder that for a few minutes. What does that say about the innate health of our culture that it intrinsically cannot even support a long term even population? That’s the definition of NOT flourishing.

I’m pretty sure the solution is NOT to lock girls at home until Prince Charming comes along. But I’m also not sure what the actual solution is. As Chesterton said “Reformers are usually right about what is wrong, but are almost always wrong about what is right!”

 

[Joe_5859]

Embarrassing article… and yet they do come close to making some good points.

The critique that college is less about education these days and more about indoctrination and job training is unfortunately pretty close to the mark. I have a B.S degree and NEVER had to take a literature class or write a non-technical paper. It seemed like a relief at the time, but in reality I got robbed. I’m not alone!

They also came close to identifying a MAJOR problem in western civilization: college is indispensable to good paying jobs, but it also costs so much that you will be more than hallway through your fertility before most women can pay off their student loans. Not surprisingly, NO western nation has a birth rate above the long term replacement level anymore. NONE. Ponder that for a few minutes. What does that say about the innate health of our culture that it intrinsically cannot even support a long term even population? That’s the definition of NOT flourishing.

I’m pretty sure the solution is NOT to lock girls at home until Prince Charming comes along. But I’m also not sure what the actual solution is. As Chesterton said “Reformers are usually right about what is wrong, but are almost always wrong about what is right!”

One of my majors in college was writing and the last time I took a class in grammar was freshman year of high school.

 

[pnewton]

Silly article. Most of the reasons apply to sons as much as daughters, but I guess if your point is oppression such a distinction should be winked at. I fear this blogger is misguided in his understanding of Catholic teaching, as well as the importance an purpose of education. There are too many premises off to easily discuss.

 

[EasterJoy]

Embarrassing article… and yet they do come close to making some good points.

The critique that college is less about education these days and more about indoctrination and job training is unfortunately pretty close to the mark. I have a B.S degree and NEVER had to take a literature class or write a non-technical paper. It seemed like a relief at the time, but in reality I got robbed. I’m not alone!

They also came close to identifying a MAJOR problem in western civilization: college is indispensable to good paying jobs, but it also costs so much that you will be more than hallway through your fertility before most women can pay off their student loans. Not surprisingly, NO western nation has a birth rate above the long term replacement level anymore. NONE. Ponder that for a few minutes. What does that say about the innate health of our culture that it intrinsically cannot even support a long term even population? That’s the definition of NOT flourishing.

I’m pretty sure the solution is NOT to lock girls at home until Prince Charming comes along. But I’m also not sure what the actual solution is. As Chesterton said “Reformers are usually right about what is wrong, but are almost always wrong about what is right!”

There are not a few of us who think that college is wasted on many college students. There are also a lot of college students (and their families) who simply do not get the economic reality that just because they can get a loan to attend a particular university does not mean that they can afford to go there.

If we weren’t reproducing at replacement rate because everyone was forming monastic communities, I wouldn’t worry myself about the fertility rate in the technologically advanced countries. The planet has gotten by with fewer than 7 billion people, and it could muddle along with fewer again, even if the lion’s share of them were grey, provided that the reason that the population was dropping was that virtue and radical selflessness were so much on the rise. It would also not be some tragedy if the descendants of today’s Africans, Asians, and high-fertility American countries represented a greater slice of the world’s population. Let us face it, too: Access to college is so much unavailable to so much of the world’s population that we do not have to worry that all the “smart” genes are going to die out any time soon. There are a lot of people of very high intelligence in this world who never learn to read or write. Simple statistics says to me that most of people in the world who belong in the highest intelligence bracket still don’t get much (if anything) in the way of an education. It is practically certain that most of these are women (simply because more human beings are women than not and more people denied an education are female than not).

The greater question is this: What are the axiomatic assumptions going un-examined at today’s institutions of higher learning? Are they true? Are they virtuous and based on a true standard of justice? Are they compatible with the long-term survival of society? If we are sending our most capable thinkers to institutions that are silently inculcating falsehoods that will be played out in the professions, in the private and public schools, in our homes, and even in our churches, then that is the larger issue at stake. To send out even a relatively low number of people with false ideas in their heads when they are being sent to such key positions with regards to guiding our society’s future is a huge issue.

I mean that whether a university is a bad moral force on an individual woman is even less important than whether or not it is a bad moral force on the world in which she is going to have to live and raise her family. It is not enough to keep her out of bad universities. If we want our grandchildren to live where Christianity can be freely practiced, let alone in anything remotely like a Christian nation, we have to make an effort to make the bad universities into good ones.

 

[pnewton]

Okay, I’ll address on of these wrong-headed points.

*A woman needs to have something to provide income in case her husband dies, becomes disabled or leaves her. . … As for the husband leaving her, the possibility of being left in such a state would make a woman MUCH more careful about the man she decides to marry. Think about it. If you know you’re throwing your COMPLETE trust and future on a man, you’ll want one you can certainly rely on. *

I have a friend (non-Catholic) who tried what the blogger suggested and married a man, a professional minister, and was married for fifteen years. At the time, she did not suspect he was going to develop control issues. After verbal abuse for years, he progressed to physical and ended up slashing her throat. The “barefoot and pregnant” model fails because people fail. In Islamic countries, we see the oppression of women resulting in both abuse and death. People here are the same type of people. Some are really not very good people. The idea that a woman can know what the future holds just by being “careful” is simply naive.

The wife is not the dependent child of her husband. The author needs a better grip on the Catholic teaching of equal dignity of men and women if he thinks daughters should not have any more than minimum education.

 

[PRmerger]

The author needs a better grip on the Catholic teaching of equal dignity of men and women if he thinks daughters should not have any more than minimum education.

By no means am I an apologist for this author. In fact, I denounce his sentiments.

However, I think he has not stated that daughters should have any more than a “minimum education”. Rather, getting this higher education through sending your daughters away to college is not the way to do this. That’s his point.

 

[pnewton]

By no means am I an apologist for this author. In fact, I denounce his sentiments.

However, I think he has not stated that daughters should have any more than a “minimum education”. Rather, getting this higher education through sending your daughters away to college is not the way to do this. That’s his point.

Then let me clarify my term. I consider *minimum education *to be high school. I consider college to be above the minimum. The other option I guess is trade school, but I do not thing that is in line with what the blog guy want. I have never heard of any sort of home-school college. Maybe I missed what education he means beyond minimum.

 

[PRmerger]

Then let me clarify my term. I consider *minimum education *to be high school. I consider college to be above the minimum. The other option I guess is trade school, but I do not thing that is in line with what the blog guy want. I have never heard of any sort of home-school college. Maybe I missed what education he means beyond minimum.

Ok.

I guess I don’t think his point is that girls shouldn’t get higher education. Only that college is not the place for them to get it these days.

 

[Serap]

Hey, what do ya’ll think of this?

fixthefamily.com/blog/6-reasons-to-not-send-your-daughter-to-college

My opinion is that this article was written by a misogynist who wants to put a positive spin on their anti-women stance.

I read the article, closed it and put it out of my mind very quickly.

 

[pnewton]

Ok.

I guess I don’t think his point is that girls shouldn’t get higher education. Only that college is not the place for them to get it these days.

On that note, I think there were four dangers he gave in a college education, but they apply equally regardless of gender.