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College education, ie, an undergraduate system, is a distinctly American phenomenon. No other nation in the world has anything like it. In most other countries, when you finish high school, you go to professional/vocational school, depending on the results of your examinations. This "extended high school", as some have called it, is only present in the US. Its history, as best I have been able to figure out, started out with the Puritans and Harvard University. As soon as the Puritans had cleared out some farmland and learned to protect themselves a little bit from the elements and invading Indians, they established this 4 year system of "liberal arts" education to train educated and refined young men to lead their communities.
But this system is increasingly under scrutiny now. It is being seen increasingly as a luxury, rather than a necessity. It is a luxury that neither most kids, nor society at large, can afford anymore.
What are your thoughts? Should the US follow the rest of the world and just eradicate this system? Or is it that our populace is dangerously uneducated enough, and you take this away too, our whole system of democracy will be undermined. Because, after all,
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be...Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish and improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know, that the people alone can protect us against these evils (tyranny, aristocracy, etc...), and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose, is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles, who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.”
-Thomas Jefferson
But this system is increasingly under scrutiny now. It is being seen increasingly as a luxury, rather than a necessity. It is a luxury that neither most kids, nor society at large, can afford anymore.
What are your thoughts? Should the US follow the rest of the world and just eradicate this system? Or is it that our populace is dangerously uneducated enough, and you take this away too, our whole system of democracy will be undermined. Because, after all,
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be...Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish and improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know, that the people alone can protect us against these evils (tyranny, aristocracy, etc...), and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose, is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles, who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.”
-Thomas Jefferson