Just in from a TBM: “…Pound for pound with Pathways, Pre-Pathways Ensign College and BYU Idaho, high quality and extremely low cost education lifts people where they stand. Just the simple skill of English with a recognized certification raises lifelong income between 48 to 153% with a mean close to 100% against a control group…”
It's cheap, I'll give it that. But the Moridor has lots of affordable options including community colleges (Salt Lake City Community College is dirt cheap,) the U of U, Utah State, Idaho State, and the online Western Governor's University. None of them will break the bank, and students will be treated like actual adults.
I went to BYU, LDS Business College, and the University of Utah. Here is what I found:
LDS Business College: Back when I went it had excellent instructors, with real life applications and knowledge. The administration knew who you were, and they excelled at one on one interactions. The religion teachers would tell us they knew higher education was our goal, so they never pushed things, they kept it on the low. If it was still the same I would recommened it, but in the last 20 years LDS Corp. ruined it and changed the name to boot.
BYU: Met some great people there. But it was intrusive, judgemental, full of rules, paranoia, and stifling. Religious teachers thought they were a gift from God, and made sure you knew their classes were the most important thing on campus. I stayed just one semester, thats all I could stomach.
University of Utah: Paid my way as I went along. Sure it was bureaucratic, but if you paid attention and learned you could manuver the rules and regulations. Teachers for the most part were good, overall rules were just fine, and the instructors did not give a hoot about your religion. Student body was diverse and open minded. Saw all kinds of different cultures, behaviors\attitudes, and loved every moment. I could have a disagreement with any of my instructors, they would listen, have a conversation, and we would come to a joint resolution.
So today I tell young people to avoid any religious schools and choose something that will open their minds and give them a solid education.
However having grown up under the control of LDS Corp. and parents who enforced the indoctrination. I was at a disadvantage when it came to fully understanding the higher education concept.
It was the controlling leadership during and after my mission attempting to bottle my fearce independance that unlocked my desire to explore outside the fence line. In the long run they did me a favor.
That is why I always pull aside the young and unsure as they near the end of high school. To plant a seed that there is life beyond the control of religion. And there are other schools beside BYU, where you can find all kinds of Ice Cream flavors besides just Vanilla.
Any good college or university still offers English literature, history, philosophy, and many other disciplines that have no immediate career application. I took two courses each in astronomy, psychology, and biology, even though I knew I would never be an astronomer, psychologist, or biologist.
I do feel that due to the increased cost of higher education, most students nowadays have to have a clear picture of how their education will help their career goals. But in many or most cases they will be rounding out their education with other courses.
summer Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Any good college or university still offers > English literature, history, philosophy, and many > other disciplines that have no immediate career > application.
Sadly most of these courses don't teach you much about those subjects either. I dropped a course a few years ago due to the constant and obvious indoctrination. If I want to be bashed over the head by a ranting ideologue I can go to church instead.
No, indoctrination. It was bad in the 1980s when I was earning a STEM degree. My advisors did not like the decay in liberal arts one bit.
My beef is the watering down of accreditation to the point it is now essentially meaningless. My bestie has a MSEE. Whatever knowledge he gained from cramming completely evaporated. His grasp of even basic electronic theory makes me think WTF?. I'm sure bad accreditation is better than no accreditation, but indoctrination is what tips the balance. Industry does not need workers who are offended at every little thing.
So you’re saying it was industry that opposed accreditation because they didn’t want employees who were “offended at every little thing?”
And your proof of this is a bestie who appeared to you to be incompetent?
I’ve been through two ABET engineering accreditation reviews. They were daunting tasks, took a solid year each, plus several years of getting our ducks in a row (curriculum changes, catalog changes, program requirements, things like that).
For individual courses, we needed syllabuses, assignment, a copy of student work for a well done assignment, and an example of unacceptable work. Same with exams, we had to provide an example of A performance on an exam and poor performance. I don’t remember if we had to supply a middle performance example.
There were also student interviews by the accrediting team, and survey of program graduates.
We got provisional accreditation on our first ever review (CS was a pretty new field 40 years ago), with a required review after three years on specific points. We passed the interim review. The second 7 year review and two subsequent ones were all passed, but it was never a foregone conclusion.
Getting CS accreditation is seriously expensive in terms of both time and money. A surprising number of the top schools didn’t even bother. [I don’t know if that is still true] They had nothing to prove. It was the mid-level schools who wanted/needed external validation that they met professional standards.
Accreditation is essentially meaningless? I’m calling bull****.
ETA: In my two decades of teaching, I served for a cumulative 30 years on the departmental, college an university curriculum committees. So I come at this topic with considerable experience.
I don't understand your use of the word, "indoctrination." You vaguely mention the liberal arts with no examples. Then you bring in engineering, which is an applied science.
Just because one individual appears to have been poorly trained, does not mean that they all are. My brother and his classmates were all engineers, in a variety of fields, and they all did quite well in their careers. I observed my brother tutoring undergraduate engineering students, and those students appeared to be getting a standard curriculum, and have also done quite well in their careers. One is getting a promotion to a very prominent and important position.
In any profession, you will have a range of ability among the practitioners. Just because there are a few bad apples doesn't mean that they are all bad.
I seriously don't get the current use of the word, "indoctrinate." What do people mean by this, exactly? I think there are some serious misconceptions about what goes on in American classrooms.
Frankly, I don't think many that use it understand what the hell it really means. A lack of understanding of history and the basic subject matter. Look to russia for what the term really means. They are recreating the Hitler Youth. Here in the US it is a current buzz term like "woke" that really has zero meaning except something to throw their hate at.