DISCLAIMER: I am not running you down, or anyone reading this. I am more or less running our "system" Down. this is a general statement. do not take offense to my views on it. do not flame; I will not respond.
the college/University system is not what it used to be. The degresss are not what they used to be. the BA, BS seem more like what a high school diploma used to be - excpet they are way over priced. Why are they over priced? because colleges and universities are businesses. They are geared towards making money, and they are geared towards looking good. They do not want you to fail.
We all know that is doesn't exactly always take hard work to attain such degrees, and some people don't put forth the effort to attain these degrees, yet the degrees are greanted anyhow. I know M.D.'s that wouldn't have gone into pharmacology because that was "too hard" and the hardest part about becomming an M.D. was passing the MCATS. I know social workers who were higher than the mars rover could get from earth through their whole college/ university exp. .
It's sad when you have undergrads teaching in place of a professor. Most I have experienced undergrads tend to curve grades so they look good to the professor.
Then you have to think of all these parenting classes, and psychological professionals in this field telling us how our parents and grandparents grandparents raised children wrong. Now these are trained people, yet they for the most part have ended up screwing up the generation of kids they were supposed to help. I'm not advocating hitting children all the time, nor beating them... just saying that a good 90% of the accepted methods do not work, and children control the parents. Something needs to be done. I also find it funny when people who do not have children tell me how to raise my own; sometimes they do make valid points, most times, they have no clue because they do not know how kids behave and respond. Kids aren't dogs. Dogs are easier to train.
I am also starting to think that over education is what causes loss of common sense. I know some level minded people. They went off for their advanced degree's, and now... well everything is over thought, based on theory that doesn't work, and they make a really stupid decision that they spent too much time thinking on.
I am really starting to think that college isn't a good thing for everyone anymore. College / universities are businesses. They want money. You pay, you get a degree by any means necessary, and then you can have a job.
Professors do not want to look bad, and bad grades reflect on them. Most of them in earnest will allow extra credit and things of that nature to boost your grade. Let alone the fact you can drop a course, and resume it later for a better grade. At least in high school, if you failed, you failed. A teacher job wasn't based on how well grade preformance is. Tenure at colleges is a very different matter, especially when it is an undergrad teaching, wanting to look good for a professor who teaches less than half of his assigned work load. I also hate professors who just read from a book. If I wanted that, I wouldn't pay for his knowledge to teach me.
Please do not defend people with degrees. Most of us know that it just took a lot of bored hours, and "putting in time" to get a degree. I had fun in college. I enjoyed most of what I learned. I applied myself. I studied. I could have not studied and still done well. I do not in any way feel my education there was superior, nor do I feel I learned something that I could not have learned on my own if I wanted to. A degree isn't what it used to be any more.
Now a days, a degree is just a formality. I have even seen car dealerships asking for salesmen. The requirement is a BA or BS. Now how does that really enable you to sell cars better?
Edit: We all know that teachers are "The people who make these decisions are trained professionals. Social Workers, Psychiatrists, Doctors, etc. all spend a long time training at university attaining a degree before entering their relative fields."
The same type talked about in the quote above yet, they are drug users, child molesters, etc. All of this coming in at an alarming rate in today's society. example:
Who's that teaching in the classroom?
http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20070226/1057096.asp