Thursday 14 October 2010

More worthless degrees please - Cabinet

Cabinet this week decided to take $55m of your money out of training new apprentices to instead create more undergraduate places in worthless degrees. Why worthless? Just think about this simple attempt at barter—a great way by which to measure real value:

I want an electrical engineer and computer programmer and a automechanic to make me a laptop, and I-Pad and a car, and in return I will give them "sociologicizing," a "lecture on women's studies," and a dissertation on deconstruction."

Is there any way in which that would be any kind of a bargain?

[Hat tip Small Dead Animals]

4 comments:

Carl said...

I was just reading this: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/10/sheepskin.html about the degrees arms race. Interestingly Stross is about as socialist as they come (although he has won a libertarian sci-fi prize)

Falafulu Fisi said...

I still think that humanity departments & courses are very useful for how civilization evolved. However, they need to be trimmed down in size (downsize). They should be only allowed the top 5 or top 10 students (in those corresponding subjects) every year to enrol. The rest must be rejected or otherwise encourage them to do other courses (business, law, commerce, science, engineering, medicine, etc,...).

If they maintain it at that level, I am sure that can be well funded with that small number of top students they have. Not only that, having only top students in those fields, ensure that they excel because of small class numbers.

I think that the Maori & Pacific studies at Auckland University should be chopped. Such papers should be taught at either history or anthropology. There is no need for such useless departments to exist at all.

Libertyscott said...

If all degrees were simply priced at cost then students would choose the ones that they find most rewarding.

People who think otherwise can pay for scholarships or whatsoever.

Anonymous said...

Only problem with the analogy is that we make none of those three things in NZ.