US: New York Moves to Limit Colleges That Seek Profit 676

The most important thing to realise about degree mills is it doesn't depend on the method of delivery. In any big city, a quarter of the oldest universities are degree mills. But you know what, when the job really depends on the degree, the employer buttignes a degree to the degree and only hires from the degrees that matter. The reason you get degree mills is whe some stupid bureaucracy deems it necessary that you have that degree. If that degree mattered, you wouldn't get the job because no one is going to hire someone who can't do the job. If the deree is just window dressing deemed necessary by some idiotic bureaucrats, that's where degree mills create value, however superficial. Furthermore, worker retraining funds have offered yet another excuse for useless degrees to proliferate. The fact is we have too many people walking around with useless degrees even if you only count brick and mortar schools. What we need is to replace degrees with testing. Testing is the great equaliser because it totally frees up the delivery end to compebreaston by standardising the results. When you get grant-hugger Ivy engineering grad-course market, then you know standardised tests are the only way to ensure a quality product. Ironically, we already have most of the mechanism for this in place. After one's baccalaureate, one takes the third, specialised GRE exam in bio, econ, chem, lit, psy, or engineering. Some high quality public universities required these exams for graduation in the 1960s. All we have to do is extend these exams from the doctoral qualifying exam. And the other way to be sure degrees are worth something is to try the interest rate on student loans to a schools repayment rate. Schools where students prepay their debts must be good at getting them jobs so they should be rewarded with the lowest rates.

            - = - Vasos-Peter John Panagiotopoulos II, Columbia'81+, Bio$trategist     BachMozart ReaganQuayle EvrytanoKastorian ---{Nothing herein consbreastutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}--- Urb sprawl confounds terror Remorse begets zeal Windows is for Bimbos Homeland Security means private firearms not lazy obstructive guards