Sub Vision: Private High Education

It was recently in the news that our new secretary of education, and the people surrounding her, think that it is a good idea to ease the accreditation process on private high education institutes… 

It was around the same time that one of my friends told me how her grandson did not like his out of state public university and wanted to move back, but prefers a prestigious private school that is willing to accept him, rather than risking not being accepted to a state university.

 

So here is my dilemma... our state has a large variety of public universities, and every student who wants to learn can find the right place... Some of the schools are better, best in the country, some are just ok, but there is plenty of choice. If a student is not doing great at the present time then he should work his way up through the community colleges. A reasonable performance there will guarantee his accepted to at least some of the state universities. Why go to a private school? And if a private university is the choice for the not so great students, then the last thing we want is easing its accreditation process. We want to make sure that a student who is willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a degree gets the very best education, the sort that is above and beyond of what state universities offer.

People are putting too much weight in to which university they, or their loved ones, go. They feel that their path to opportunities in life all starts with the university from which they graduate. There might be some truth to that, I agree, but mainly only for their first job. On their next job, they will be judges by their experience and past performance. If a person wants to start a career with a debt of a quarter of million dollars then by all means, especially if they believe in their ability to pay it back in a relatively short time, but they have to make sure that the prospects the university is advertising are solid, and should research potential future earnings… It is a hefty price to pay if the returns are not as great…

Yet, one’s choice is his business… Our business, as a nation, is to see that private universities don’t bring false expectations as to future careers, and their ability to make up for their expense, to their graduates. And our responsibilities is to see that a university that charges so much is also that much better than one that does not. We are (still) a country that expects its graduates to earn their degree with hard honest work, and not by purchasing it for a heavy price…

Sub Vision: Get a Job… or better yet – a Career!

When a sales person calls and manages to bypass my answering machine to get to me, I get furious about a system that allows anybody to intrude my privacy at my special time. If a stranger breaks into someone’s home, he is a violator, and faces fierce consequences, so why invading someone’s space is not a violation?

The point that I want to make, however, is not about my frustration; it is about the people who are behind these calls. I want to tell them ‘young people, is this the best you can do with your life? Is calling people at home, trying to sell them something they don’t need, something you probably won’t buy - Is this the best way you can do to make a living? Aren’t you wasting your life?’

As I grow older, my attitude toward all young people is a mixture of parental and educational approach. I want to tell them not to waste time and energy on unimportant matters, to approach money as a mean, not as a goal, and a job as a career of the type that (as I heard once) they would do even if not paid to do it.

I am aware of a ready criticism toward someone who grew up, and raised kids, in a normal family situation, with values, education, and financial stability. And of course, any honest job is better than no job. We all had temporary situations when any honest job was OK; cleaning houses, babysitting or telemarketing. For a student with young family, or a person who supports an elderly parent, every job is respectable! But once situation is stabilizing, one must try to move to a better position, or at least try to find aspects of the job that he/she likes and expend on them…

Another reproof I may face might arise from the type of the job I do; it is not exactly a high profile career, one may claim. Unlike full time teachers, I am not that much of an educator… I don’t have their grueling responsibility of seeing 200 students under their care learning and maturing. Mine is more of a job than a career as it does not develop into a whole process with a start and with end results. I don’t take students on a long path that brings them from ignorance to enlightenment …

Yet, I am a teacher, and as such, I am true to my career indicator - I will do it even if I am not paid to do it…

True, as a substitute teacher I don’t have the satisfaction of seeing the whole progression, but never the less I am still a teacher and an educator. I don’t envision my job as just a warm body in a classroom. I am an instructor whenever I have the opportunity to discuss an academic subject - literature, historical event, or a math problem, and I am a mentor when the occasion arises to discussing social issues, relationships, values or current events, thus making them teachable moments…

There is nothing more gratifying for a teacher than seeing the result of a teachable moment… Not very often, but occasionally, students that I had before, at the same school or even another, would remind me that they learned something from me that affected them. Those are what Mr. Sima, my teaching credentials professor, would call ‘psychological dollars’, worth, infinitely, much more than green dollars…