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'College Is A Ludicrous Waste Of Money'

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Robert Reich is a Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, who also is a team member at the Blum Center for Developing Economies (which is a center for those who are in an academic field to focus on global poverty and inequality) (“About the Center”), and was the Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Reich, is also known as a blogger who stated a very controversial opinion in an article. His article’s title is titled: “College Is a Ludicrous Waste of Money”. Reich’s post focuses on problems that college students of a four-year liberal arts degree encounter and provides solutions to them. Reich states that there is more than one gateway to pursue a valuable education without accruing a …show more content…

Reich supports this claim that not everyone can succeed in a four-year liberal arts college by bringing up three key problems: financial instability, lack of employment, and eventual obsolete education due to four-year liberal arts degrees.. Reich believes the main cause these issues are experienced by students are because of lack of awareness of gateways and the fact that very few gateways are opened to students. Reich argues that another gateway for success that won’t cause financial instability is to pursue technician jobs. In order to achieve mastery over technical knowledge only two years of study at a community college is required which can lead to a preference for students versus a four-year liberal arts college because of extremely low cost and time. Reich also believes that since technology is constantly changing specific knowledge from a four-year liberal arts college may become obsolete. The author also mentions how Germany is keeping up with the constantly changing technical education which has helped the German economy maintain their position of high leveled manufacturing and applied technology. Reich compares how students of Germany have no struggle to get jobs once they obtain their degrees due to education being based on industry standards. According to Reich, we shouldn’t replicate the German system since it demands families to decide on a technical career by the age of 14. However Reich states, we can create a gateway that is similar to German’s system that is far superior to obtaining a degree from a four-year liberal arts college as well as less financially stressful for the students. Reich states that a potential gateway may be combining senior year of high school and the first year of community college to create a curriculum that meets industry standards and the constantly changing

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