{"id":14526,"date":"2026-10-09T16:14:32","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T23:14:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/?p=14526"},"modified":"2026-10-09T16:44:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T23:44:11","slug":"the-overeducated-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2026\/10\/09\/the-overeducated-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Overeducated"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Stack <a href=\"https:\/\/williamfvallicella.substack.com\/p\/the-overeducated?r=f3tzc&amp;utm_campaign=post&amp;utm_medium=web&amp;showWelcomeOnShare=true\">topper<\/a>. On the misuse of &#8216;higher education.&#8217; It begins like this:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">I once had a graduate student with whom I became friends. Ned Flynn, to give him a name, one day told me that after he finished high school he wanted to follow in his father\u2019s footsteps and get a job with the railroad. His mother, however, wanted something \u2018better\u2019 for her son. She wanted him to go to college, which he did, in the desultory fashion of many. He ended up declaring a major in psychology and graduating. After spending some time in a monastery, perhaps also at the instigation of his Irish Catholic mother, and still not knowing quite what to do with himself, he was accepted into an M.A. program in philosophy, which is where I met him. After goofing around for several more years, he took a job as a social worker, a job which did not suit him. Last I saw him he was in his mid-thirties and pounding nails.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stack topper. On the misuse of &#8216;higher education.&#8217; It begins like this: I once had a graduate student with whom I became friends. Ned Flynn, to give him a name, one day told me that after he finished high school he wanted to follow in his father\u2019s footsteps and get a job with the railroad. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2026\/10\/09\/the-overeducated-2\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Overeducated&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,92,290,150],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-autobiographical","category-life-of-the-mind","category-teaching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14526"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14527,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14526\/revisions\/14527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}