Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Knowing Everything About Nothing
Today on Powerline, Steven Hayward quoted a paper from “Lorraine Whitmarsh, an environmental psychologist.” I thought, “Huh?” So I looked up environmental psychology on Wikipedia: “Environmental psychology is an interdisciplinary field that focuses on the interplay between individuals and their surroundings. It examines the way in which the natural environment and our built environments shape us as individuals … The field develops such a model of human nature while retaining a broad and inherently multidisciplinary focus. It explores such dissimilar issues as common property resource management, wayfinding in complex settings, the effect of environmental stress on human performance, the characteristics of restorative environments, human information processing, and the promotion of durable conservation behavior.”
Well, ok then. Now, I know what you’re thinking: Isn’t that pretty much just a cross between behavioral geography and architectural psychology? Yeah, the same thought crossed my mind, obviously. But Wikipedia addressed this hot-button controversy as well: “Although ‘environmental psychology’ is arguably the best-known and most comprehensive description of the field, it is also known as human factors science, cognitive ergonomics, ecological psychology, ecopsychology, environment–behavior studies, and person–environment studies. Closely related fields include architectural psychology, socio-architecture, behavioral geography, environmental sociology, social ecology, and environmental design research.”
So there you go.
My kids and I discussed this before college. I explained that Daddy was not paying for a degree in socio-architecture and that if they were going to spend years of their lives studying something, they might as well choose something that might help them and someone else at some point.
The explosion of fields of study that I’ve never heard of intrigues me. Where did all this stuff come from? Why? What kids go to their 1st grade grown-up day dressed up as a cognitive economist? And if they don’t aspire to such fields, what pulls them into these disciplines? And how do colleges tempt them to choose something they’d never heard of until this afternoon?
It’s not the job market, I wouldn’t think. I’m always amazed at how many waitresses have college degrees, and how many of them are in behavioral geography (or whatever).
Many of these kids borrow money – lots of money – to get advanced degrees in subjects that don’t matter to get jobs that don’t exist where they can earn no money. Why? What is their plan?
I understand the colleges’ motivation. They’re in the business of selling degrees. Fine.
What I don’t understand is the motivation of the students. Why do they choose fields like this? What is their plan?
Published in General
An Analysis of Negative Female Stereotypes in Punch & Judy.
(There’s no telling, Suspira.)
What? Isn’t that racist? (And you with a college education!)
Their plan is to have a good time in college, then get a high-paying job with whatever bogus degree they chose. They and their parents have been shown the statistics showing the income differences between those with college degrees and those without, and drew the conclusion that a college degree of whatever type is a magic wand that produces high-income careers. And, unfortunately, their bogus college education never reveals to them the fallacy of this style of thinking. The colleges and banks go away laughing, having made their money with either the hapless student or the taxpayers on the hook for the cost.
Maybe they have a plan. Or maybe they just have an idea.
😂😂😂
My step son would probably offer him a job. He is a high school graduate who builds custom homes in the Oregon wine country and employs one of his sons, also a high school grad. His other two sons, who have no college, are doing very well. One restores classic Porches and the other is working in a tech field.
I have five kids, three with advanced degrees. Only one is not a college graduate. He is a fireman and is looking forward to retiring in the the next couple of years. He is also the only one who owns his own home.
Most college majors have no market value. I am so old, I can remember when colleges had a vision of what a well-educated person knew and understood and then added some special concentration on top of that which was about achieving excellence in some particular field. The degree itself was a social marker regardless of the applicability of one’s field of specialty.
Now, in addition to being personally malformed, prone to accuse management of PC violations, and oddly misinformed about the world, the new graduate will not have any particular habits or cognitive skills likely to lead to some form of productivity.
Change may be afoot. :-) (via Mike Rowe’s Facebook page)
Stephen Moore, “The Corona Virus College Scam: My Son’s University Invited Him Back to Campus for $70,000 a Year. He Got a Job Instead” (Wall Street Journal, October 1, 2020):
The OP asked, basically, why?
And I think there’s myriad reasons. Here’s just a few:
Actually I think there’s better questions:
IMO the answer depends, to a very great extent, on what you want to do with/about the public school system.
This will significantly cut into the universitys’ ability to
educateindoctrinate the next wave.I’m going to disagree … but only mildly.
My long espoused Philosophy on education is that if you are in a ‘liberal arts’ major it doesn’t really matter which one it is…provided that you learn how to think, to calculate, and to communicate the results of those thoughts and calculations to others. It doesn’t matter if you learn how to think in history class or English, or philosophy or whatever. Thinking is a transferrable skill, As is the ability to so some math/arithmetic, to write, and to have some familiarity with the basics of accounting.
When my own children went to college I got to find out if I really believed this. They both majored in artsy stuff. But they both learned to think! And they did manage to toss in more than a few practical things along the way. Both are now gainfully employed … in real jobs with actual money and insurance and 401Ks and everything.
So I’m not going to degrade any major out of hand. It possible to succeed with a “studies” major. But you have to learn HOW to think rather than WHAT to think. And all to often those “studies” departments are agenda-driven not inquiry-driven. It seems like the whole purpose of these fields is to promote a particular agenda. So while it’s possible to succeed, it’s unlikely without some rigid discipline about elective courses.
Jeffrey Toobin?
It’s like you read my mind.
This was true of the general liberal arts degree years ago, which was why employers would actually pay more for college-educated employees. They really did represent a genuine education, and an educated man was supposed to have a degree of insight, critical thinking, character development, and ability to communicate that would not be found in the non-college graduate.
That sort of education is still possible today. But there is a problem. Presumably, the freshman entering college does not yet have the critical thinking skills or insight that a college graduate does (if he does, why go?) Yet to navigate college successfully, the student has to outsmart the administration by correctly identifying and avoiding the indoctrination courses vs. the genuine education courses. In other words, he has to have the insight and critical thinking of a college graduate to get that genuine college education in the first place. So he’s in a catch-22.
A solution is to have a genuine college level thinker (for example, a parent) navigate the college curriculum for his kids. This was essentially what I did. The student without a mature mind to guide him is at the mercy of the indoctrinators, and will end up graduating not being able to think but thinking he can: The Socratic worst case scenario.
The result of this situation is the unintended consequence that is, typically, the opposite of what the liberal mind intended. The idea of college is that is should be a great leveler: The poor kid from the inner city goes to college, becomes educated, and enters the upper middle class. What actually happens is that the poor kid, absent a college-educated parent to guide him, falls victim to social justice “scholarship” and is reinforced in his worst tendencies, graduating with no real improvement in his education but imbued with a complete set of victimology attitudes, making him even less employable than he was. The upper middle class kid, with parents wise to the scam, still manages to get a real education. (Or might. Upper middle class parents are still often very naive about what really goes on in college).
Could not agree more. Administrators -who you’d think would be the adult in the room – uprooted the Core curriculum /general education and actively participate in the indoctrination of the students. Parental /adult involvement is key. Much as I’m loathe to advocate increasing regulation… one idea might be to institute some Core courses curriculum requirements for student loans.
It sounds like Feng Shui.
Ew
We used to have such visions for junior high and high school graduates.
I am surprised it took this shlong to get around to the two most famous members of the CNN team.
I remember back when there was something called ‘applied psychology’ which was reviled by nearly everyone because it was about manipulating people through their environment – colors of paint, shapes of workspaces (I suspect cube farms are a result of this).
This is perhaps about manipulating for ‘good’ reasons.
Not all master’s degrees require a thesis. The diploma mill degrees that teachers get in order to get a bump in salary don’t usually require one, or at least didn’t back in my day.
I suspect rather few have the requirement anymore.
I’m pretty sure my wife had to write a thesis for her master’s. I typed it.
Well, when you catch on that a “participation trophy” is not going to get you very far, its useful to expand “disciplines” into the millions so that your final class standing can be high.
Finally got my Master in about ’92: Master of engineering, that is – the MS in engineering required a thesis.
Never worked for an employer that cared.
When I returned to college after a few months in Basic Training (Reserves), the National Defense Student Loan program had just begun. I applied for a loan and was told my major (premed) was not eligible as it was not considered worthwhile. Most premeds did not get into medical school. That was how it all began.