Raising Standards, Wrecking Fields

Timothy Birdnow

Here's one of those stories that flies under the radar. New York is looking to make RN's hold Bachelor's degrees.
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-12-ny-bill-require-bachelor-degrees.html

Why is this important, you may ask? First, there is no crying need demanding that nurses have Bachelor's degrees. This is part of the modern myth of higher education, that having more formal education is somehow necessary in the modern world, despite the fact that much of what is taught in colleges and universities is crap of absolutely no use in the actual practice of one's chosen field. Why does an RN need to pass College Algebra? What use is an asymptote to the dispensing of medicine, the checking of heart-rates, the administration of injections? It has no use, and forcing a nurse to get a degree will simply take time away from actually learning the task at hand. And don't forget that there will be many politically correct courses required, which are worse than useless.

No, this only serves to shrink the labor pool, which in turn limits access to health care and drives cost even higher. Who is going to pay for these RN's to get a Bachelor's?

It empowers government control even further. These nurses will have to turn to government for student loans (and remember Obama nationalized all student loan programs) or face disbarment and have to switch careers to working in bars or as janitors. They will be more dependent on the State, meaning they will be more likely to support the Democrats.

And it will give millions of dollars to higher education, the source of many of the problems here in America and one of the worst special interest groups around. Colleges gouge their students, charging outlandish rates and providing sub-par educations to boot. They are cesspools of political activism masquerading as education and scholarship. They take large amounts of taxpayer money and yet many students graduating from college can barely read and write. They purposely attempt to convert their young charges, handed over by parents who hope to instill a more inquisitive and active mind, and pollute them, teaching all manner of stupidity as fact and indoctrinating the kids into views that are shocking and offensive to the people paying the tuition. They are arrogant and contemptuous places. Yet nobody ever challenges Big University.

There is such a thing as being over-educated. Formal education can detract from common sense in catastrophic ways. A glance at world history should teach us this; the worst presidents, for instance, were the most highly educated. Take Woodrow Wilson; a college professor, Wilson was also largely a fascist, instituting all manner of governmental spy programs. Take the Espionage Act of 1917 http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Espionage+Act+of+1917, which made it unlawful for any person to publish any information the President judged of such character that it is or might be useful to the enemy."

Wilson believed his gigantic brain was superior to those of the Founding Fathers, and he believed that he and his cadre of the "best and brightest" could plan and run everyone's lives. If anyone was single-handedly responsible for the horrors and atrocities of the 20th century, it was Wilson, who blundered at every turn.

Had Wilson been less smug, less intellectually arrogant, he would have known better. Education often eradicated common sense.

Yet that is precisely what we have been moving toward for a long time. A BA or BS is as necessary in the modern world as a high school diploma was in the 1950's (and probably of less educational value) simply because we have made it so. College does some educating, but mostly it acts as a tool to indoctrinate new liberals.

Now I'm not saying there is not a role for higher education; after all, I have a college degree and my brother holds a Ph.D. and actually teaches at the University level. But it's not for everyone; better for many to attend trade schools, or to learn on the job. But both of these options require starting at the bottom, and kids are being told they shouldn't have to do that these days. So you get the fools who wind up at Occupy-Fill-in-the-blank protesting because they came out of college up to their eyeballs in debt and can't find a job paying the^0 grand to start. They were lied to by Big University. They were told they were the best and brightest, the shining intellectual luminaries, and then they learned the real value of an education in Women's Studies or Racial Existentialism. But instead of blaming the Universities and the government they blame, drumroll please! Wall Street! How do they make this leap in logic? They make it because that is what they were learning in college. It's the first reaction to any stimulus.

And so now New York wants to turn the nursing profession into Occupy Barnes Hospital. Doubtless the overarching plan is to develop a system like that in education itself, a powerful nurses union that acts as one of the pillars to the Democratic Party.

It's time we stop this stupidity. Education is failing in America, failing at all levels, and the answer always seems to be more of the same. Do we really want more educational requirements when we can't teach basic reading and writing?

But then, this was not and never has been about standards, but about power.

This will do absolutely nothing to improve health care in America. It's purpose is purely political. We will lose many excellent nurses because of this.