The Department of Education (“DoE”) has been investigating the gifts/donations/bribes paid to universities in the US. With links to China, Iran, Russia, and the Arab states, there is growing concern that our universities are becoming propaganda mills for these foreign governments.
Campus Reform has an article discussing the stonewalling of universities in providing the requested information to the DoE. I’m not sure why the DoE believes it has to look for statutory means to “influence” the institutions to providing the information. It seems pretty clear to me they could simply:
- Refuse to guarantee the loans of those institutions
- Delay any payments to the institutions until they comply
Higher Ed in the U.S. isn’t so high any longer. Information and training on everything is available on the internet by well qualified instructors and cheaper than the cost of these institutions. What we need are professional organizations to allow individuals to take professional licensing exams regardless of the individual’s educational background. This would remove many of the barriers to becoming a CPA or lawyer many minorities face.
Since you cannot practice law if you graduate with a law degree without passing the bar, and you cannot practice as a CPA with a degree in accounting without passing the CPA exam, doesn’t that tell you it is not the university education that is enabling you to practice? You need to successfully complete a bar prep or CPA prep course. Both are significantly cheaper than a university education.
One day, we might be able to breakup the monopoly the university system has on the job market. As a matter of fact, if HR departments in companies ever get their acts together and quit using degrees as a certain level of knowledge, we might find the monopoly the universities have on the job market goes away quickly.
