University Is Unnecessary For The Majority

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – What is the purpose of university?  I’m all for higher education that is directed towards occupation.  Does that necessarily mean you have to go to a place and get a piece of paper, or do you go to a place where you can actually start learning and working in the craft and in the business? Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Of course, if universities today were doing what universities were created to do and did for almost a millennia and a quarter, 1,100, 1,200 years if I have the dates right, you wouldn’t need student loans.  Only the elite, only those that would actually benefit from the highest form of mental and intellectual training and then would return the benefits to society, they would be the only ones going to these universities.

There used to be, back in the day you would say that someone was a Harvard man.  Maybe they were just a Harvard man because they were born into the right family, or maybe they were a Harvard man because they were the best, smartest, and brightest amongst them and Harvard actually went out there and recruited them.  We want you, you little brainiac, you little Doogie Howser.  We want you to come here.  You should be partaking of this most august, this most exalted of all learning institutions on the face of the planet.  When you’re admitting tens of thousands per year, what does the Harvard diploma hold that you can’t get from some other Ivy League school?  They’ve taken care of that.  They have the internecine organization, the ones that are the fraternities, the old institutions and what have you that you can join.

What is the purpose of university?  I’m all for higher education that is directed towards occupation.  Does that necessarily mean you have to go to a place and get a piece of paper, or do you go to a place where you can actually start learning and working in the craft and in the business?  One of the things that we don’t do enough of here on this show or on other shows, one of the things that warms the cockles of my heart more than anything else in doing any business, transacting any business with anyone whatsoever, is finding a man or a woman that actually knows their business.  I don’t mean has memorized the one sheet to try to sell you something.

I mean know that business, knows where that part came from, knows where the replacement part came from, knows the history of that part, knows similar parts, knows similar processes, can recommend other processes, can give you the history of the process, can actually diagnose and tell you why something is happening or why you’re experiencing it and how you may fix it or repair it, why you would want to purchase this over that.  Someone that knows their business also knows their competition and they know it well.  That is such a rare commodity today and you go somewhere and ask somebody: Hey, what do you think about this?  They just stare at you with that blank stare: I don’t know.  Let me get somebody that can help you.  You go to some places and they say: Sure, let me tell you all about that.  Here’s why this model is better than that one.  Here’s why this company is superior to that company.  Here’s why this process is superior to that process.  That’s a skill.  That is something that is worth paying for.

Is that learned in a book?  Is that learned by going to a university?  In most instances, is that learned by experience, actually doing?  Maybe you’ve actually taken that device apart.  Maybe you can deduce it’s the discombobulator manufactilator.  This is knowledge.  This is skilled knowledge that is only acquired through operation, only acquired through experience.  It takes, sometimes, a long time to learn these things.  That’s worth paying for, isn’t it?  It most certainly is.  In almost every instance people are willing to pay for that.  That’s what actually having a trade is.  That’s what actually being a tradesman is in knowing those things about what it is you make, about that widget you manufacture or that widget that you sell.  That knowledge is acquired in a manner that does not comport with the four-year university.

What if you could acquire that knowledge after you go to university?  What then did you need the one-year course study in Asian anthropology for?  What then did you need the one-year course study in feminist studies for?  What then did you need all the other silliness that these kids are studying at university when they could have been learning, let’s just say hotel/restaurant management?  Is there anything that you cannot learn by starting as a busboy in a restaurant, say for the actual accounting, that you couldn’t learn by actually working in the restaurant and doing or being taught and apprenticed, being tutored?

There are these institutions out there scattered across the land.  They’re called the CIA, Culinary Institute of America.  I’d ask Andrew if he’d ever been to one but he’s busy answering the phones.  If you ever get a chance and you’re near one, go.  You’re going to find a bunch of world-class chefs that travel through and are training the future chefs.  This is either a two- or three-year course, there might even be a one.  You actually learn by cooking, and not just learning cooking in a laboratory.  They actually have restaurants at the CIAs.  They have patrons that go in there and look forward to sampling the dishes of future chefs.  Those chefs are actually learning by doing.  You could learn those same things if you didn’t want to go to the CIA.  You could learn that in another restaurant, just as an example.

There’s not enough of that.  We used to call this apprenticeship.  There used to be journeymen that were skilled in these things.  You’d say: You want to try to get a job with that guy right there as his helper.  If you get a job with Mr. Jones down the street, you can learn how to fix all that stuff there.  You might even be paid.  Even if it’s just a stipend while you’re learning, you’re not going in the hole, are you?

End Mike Church Show Transcript