Re: The Precautionary Principle Goes To Space
Reply #15 –
I had noticed that the topic went sideways... That's not a problem; it's to be expected -- these forums are more about conversation than debate, as they should be. (Although too often they devolve into school-yard taunting...) So, continuing as you'd prefer, ersi, is okay with me.
Some higher-ed is both needed and required for success in certain fields, certainly. Most forms of engineering. The hard sciences. (Physics demands a PhD, if you're not Freeman Dyson! ) The "soft" sciences seem to have been swathed in ideology; as such, they're mostly useless status games...
As has always been the case, post-grad work is as much or more about mentoring than instruction. No field displays this more plainly than medicine.
Degrees such as MBAs are as much about securing and keeping "contacts" as they are about any academic topics.
But BAs no longer provide a "liberal education". I'd hazard the guess that they token only perseverance and focus, traits that used to be commonly presumed of young adults... After-school (what we call high school here, say 8th through 12th grades) jobs instilled that adequately, way back when.
Why -you ask- does higher education cost so much in the U.S.? Mostly because the government started providing "cheap" loans to would-be students. Your presumption that a mostly worthless education should be heavily subsidized or free is part of the problem: Free has a certain psychological allure! But it usually is synonymous with worthless...
Of course, nothing is ever quite free: Someone pays, somehow. The idea that governments just print money is a perverse fiction. Fiat currency and deficit spending have consequences!
(Do you recall Keyes' retort about government's deficit spending's in-the-long-run cautions? He said "In the long run, we're all dead!" Well, while that's true, not everyone will be so lucky: Debt has to be settled, one way or another... )
Home schooling and autodidactic study are admirable, and valuable. But without mentoring they seldom yields expertise... Since the explosion of the internet, the resources available have become mind-boggling! Public libraries -specially in college towns- did, however, provide much the same. (Still do! But how many make good use of them?)
The problems with peer review are only intractable if science remains status/credential oriented...