Everything You Needed To Know About A $4 Cupcake

9 Replies to “Everything You Needed To Know About A $4 Cupcake”

1. Excellent article although I believe she’s peeing into the wind. The idea of college has morphed from getting a good education to having fun, getting laid and experimenting with drugs and booze. When the money is gone you come out with a useless degree, debt up to your eyebrows and few or no job prospects as well as having the inability to spell cupcake for many of the students. The path of least resistance in today’s world is littered with woman’s studies and social science degrees.The smart ones are opting for a trade or at least a degree in something useful. In this age of lazy entitlement they seem to be a minority.
   http://www.cnn.com/2011/08/29/living/bizarre-college-courses-mf/index.html?hpt=hp_bn8

2. We’re seeing the result of parents telling their kids to whatever they enjoy doing, regardless of what it is, when it comes to university education. Thus I see kids who figure that if they go deeply into debt to take a visual arts course that it will be a worthwhile investment. The scam is supported by high school “guidance” counselors who also tell students to do what they feel like doing.
   It would be a lot more appropriate to give students the actual numbers on what fraction of people who specialize in flower photography actually make a living at it. Better yet, provide students with a sufficiently broad basic education that they are quick at learning whatever job they end up getting. That’s probably considered boring as it would mean getting proficient at reading, mathematics and learning enough history to be able to extrapolate what trends will be (reminds me of when I was accused of creating neologisms when I used the word “extrapolate” in an English essay in high school and my response to the teacher was “look it up in a dictionary”).
   The best educational system would produce a graduating class of generalists with multiple skills that would be capable of dealing with any specialization that would come at a university level. Perhaps we should have a JOAT (jack of all trades) degree which would mean that the individual who attained it can pretty well walk into any job and learn it quickly as well as having the flexibility to learn whatever it takes to deal with unexpected events. Humans are generalists and the artificial specialization that begins at high school is more akin to hive insects than an adaptive biped.

3. Just heard on the radio about a fowl incident at one of our local institutions of higher learning:

   A fowl incident at the Alberta College of Art and Design Thursday afternoon.
   Calgary police are investigating after reports that a student cut the head off a live chicken in the school’s cafeteria. Duty Inspector Rick Tuza says officers were called to the school during the lunch hour.
   Tuza says police learned it was part of an assignment to perform and film a public protest. He says they’ve talked with the student, but it will be up to the Crown to determine whether any charges will be laid.

   Fowl Incident? Charges laid?
   Stop. You are cracking me up.

4. I agree with everything you are saying. However, the type of education you are talking about was what used to be provided by high school. I look at my dad’s peer group (he’s 81), and see a bunch of old men who retired after having good careers that now would demand at least an undergrad degree, some would require masters degrees. The most these guys had as high school. Some didn’t even have that.
   I have a college education and a university education. I ended a military career in my early 30’s and started an electricians apprenticeship when I was 35. Now at 48 i am making very good money and have a very good life. It turned out to be a lot better than it would have if I hadn’t become a tradesman.

5. Previous generations left high school and were thrown into adult life and were expected to sink or swim. In their early twenties they were commonly marrying and starting families.
   It wasn’t a perfect world, many of them would have been better off and better contributors to society with more education, but these days many are going on to higher education that they don’t need and won’t put to any good use. And they aren’t entering the working world more grown up than their straight-out-of-highschool counterparts of earlier times. The education system is in fact retarding their growth and delaying maturity.

6. When my kids graduated I talked to them about getting a trade. In Saskatchewan it can be very profitable. They all went to university and have ended up making more money than I do.
   Education can pay – very well.

7. Yes it can. And too often it doesn’t, and it costs a lot either way.

8. There was a cupcake bubble?

9. education for the sake of education, just a waste of time and money, and not learning anything use full. When I would interview full someone for a factory position, the more education they had, the less likely they would get hired.