But you take a lot of these people who graduated from these sort of schools and shove them into colleges, and guys who are actually there because they want to learn stuff like physics and biology and art history and history and archeology, they begin to suffer because their program starts getting diluted too – and to add to this, the colleges start adding programs like the General BA, which exists solely for the purpose of having people completely unable of finishing a real curriculum 'graduate' from 'college'. Which is of course nonsense.
I have personal experience with the very thing Micro talks to above.
I knocked out 90 hours at Texas A&M back in the early 70's with a major in Economics. Quit due to boredom and joined the military.
Went back to college at the University of Oklahome in the mid 90's after getting laid off.
Had to retake statistics. OU for some reason couldn't wrap it's head around the fact that my 4hrs of Stat for Engineers at A&M was equivalent (actually superior) to Business Stat at OU. What the hell - easy A (it was).
It became rapidly apparent to me while taking the class that the kids in it were being short changed. They were being handed some software and a tool box and told in this situation use this tool, in that situation use that tool. They were not being taught any fundamentals, no foundation, no why this tool works and this will not. Hell - at A&M we had to derive the formula for the normal curve - had to know calculus or you just couldn't understand let alone complete the class for a grade.
I asked the Prof about this. Explained how the stat class at A&M 20 years prior had run and didn't understand why the class didn't teach statistics. His explanation boiled down to the kids didn't have the math background necessary to understand the basic math from whence statistics derived. They should have learned it in HS but didn't. They should have learned it in their college level calculus classes but didn't (watered down for business students). If they taught statistics like I'd been taught it 20 years prior 90% of the students would fail and that just wasn't an option.
I am currently a Financial Analyst. My boss is a college graduate, his boss is an MBA. I don't even bother to explain what I do or how anymore because they don't understand and told me they don't want to or need to. Just present the data, draw conclusions and present same. They are both business school graduates from the mid 90's.
Sad story, really. I imagine its even worse now.