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Did a teacher piss you off today? :D

Haha, you'd think so.

But nahhh. Been outta the education system for years now :).

Yeah, way too many people get college degrees, and end up asking if you'd like fries with that. It's just another way for you to be trapped in debt.

I believe it's primarily the result of too many people being dependent upon corporations for their employment, rather than working for themselves as contractors or starting their own business. Working for yourself seems like a pipe dream, and if you want to impress the big companies, everyone feels like they need a PhD in theoretical physics. Plus it's become the "norm" to get a degree. First question out of most people's mouths when I meet them is, "so what are you studying for?" So now the only way to set yourself apart is to become a rocket scientist or a doctor. Or a rocket doctor. Because rockets need doctors too.

This is your experience?  (cough, cough, laugh)

It might be a bubble, with too many people getting college degrees, and yet, USA is losing a lot of its business to overseas countries that have way more college degrees than we do. I wouldn't say it's a bubble, as much as it's people studying what no one needs. USA is in dire need of degrees in science, engineering, and mathematics.

I don't think it's in dire need of more degrees Rassah, western countries in general have that many degrees and courses that they don't know what to do with them all, I've been thinking back to the classes I sat in with schools and it amazes me how they managed to make the subjects so fucking boring. I look at stuff they taught back then that I've decided to partly look at again when I don't have anything else to do and what they taught was absolute garbage.

Seriously, how do you make digging for shiny and expensive gemstones and finding out where they live boring? How? In geography etc. all I got was a stupid textbook that ranted on about sand and climate change etc.

I think the internet will revolutionize not only college level education, but all education. It's going to make the term "market place for ideas" a whole lot more literal. It would help A LOT if the government would get the hell out of the way though.

+1

You mean this:  https://www.khanacademy.org/

You mean this:  https://www.khanacademy.org/

[/quote]

Love it :)

this entire civilisation is a bubble

The sun's energy output is a bubble.

That's one example, but we can go so much further. The fun has only yet begun. The net as we know it is only in its infancy.

I like to blow giant bubbles with wands. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=9y5T2Xdfytg#t=4s

I saw/heard/remember a recent statistic that current college graduates are doing 1/2 the work of a college graduate in 1970, and earning twice the grade for it.  Regardless of how accurate these numbers are, its clear that the price of a college education is going up, and the educational quality of graduates is going down.

I work for a company that requires a degree (I do not have one).  I am an operations manager, and I am daily appalled at the lack of knowledge that these 'best and brightest' of our society possess.

When everyone has a college degree, they become practically worthless.  The effect is that it requires the equivalent of a home mortgage to get a job.

To be fair, 100 years ago many had to get up at 6 in the morning and go out to work the land of build things by hand until 8 in the evening. Technological progress has a whole hell of a lot to do with work being much less labor intensive than it used to be. Machines made farming and manufacturing easier, and since 1970s, computers made office work easier. There's no need to spend hours or days keeping track of accounts in thick 3-ring binders, adding numbers on a calculator or by hand, and drawing up detailed financial reports, when software can do it for you in minutes.

On the plus side, all those workers who have a lot less work to do, now have a lot more time to be creative and use their minds to create and improve things, instead of just doing repetitive tedious labor.

The similarity between a USD and a college diploma is the fact that both are backed by debt, and the belief they have any value at all.

That belongs on a T-shirt!

Libertarians say it best? :D?

Shh! You're not supposed to say the L word. They are watching, and we all know it's extremely illegal to be... Concerned about natural rights and the proper treatment of our fellow human beings.

Absolutely love it!

And thanks everyone for your opinions, enjoyed reading them :) Expected mainly negative feedback to be honest, but I'm glad to see other people share my disagreement!

A private education which must contort to the state's definition of what an education is, is not a private education.  Granted, colleges generally give a much better experience over high school, but, I'm still stuck on rails for 2 years before I can have an art teacher tell me to go paint so I can learn how to paint exactly as well as I have been without an art teacher :-\

Give me a completely private college whose intention is not to "prepare you for the work force" (god fucking damn it), but to provide a haven for people to go to learn and become educated for the sake of education, so they may better their lives and be happier as individuals (in other words, the whole point of philosophy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy)), and I'll be the happiest man alive.


Psssst.  The super-duper-secret information resulting in this apocalypse, which will finally end the biblical time period we've been suffering through, is that a philosophical approach to life will make you happy, and thus make others happy.  Now all we gotta do is disclose this information to the rest of the world and we'll all be dandy.

Y didn't I start this thread.

Probably in some cases like Engineering it can provide wide base of knowledge.

Though I agree that some of it seem to be bullshit.

Still, you need some institutions providing the training for basic research. Things are just damm complex nowdays.

It's just to way to streamline citizens into a cycle of debt and dependency. Back in high school all my teachers would say was "we're here to help you pass government tests and get into college", and that's pretty much all they did. You are given data to memorize, the state hands you a test, you regurgitate the data, and then forget it all a week later. You're expected to go to college if you want to make anything above minimum wage, then 4+ years and a mountain of debt later most people are entering into shitty jobs they shouldn't have needed a degree for in the first place.

Debt is like quicksand, and the sooner you get the kids into it the better.

Sounds like something a person without a college degree would say  ;D

Thanks for this

If you haven't watched it already, you should watch the documentary "Happy" from 2011

I can vouch for this.  It's no exaggeration to say that philosophy quite literally saved me from the abyss and changed my life.

Haven't heard of this one; I'll definitely check it out!


+1  Same here!  I can officially say I ain't stupid no mores  8)

I'd be careful with that one. There are a lot of philosophical beliefs that are kinda of.................

Ehh two different concepts; philosophy is the pursuit of knowledge, whereas philosophical beliefs are the fruit of philosophers--the after product.  A philosopher doesn't necessarily have to subscribe to any or even most philosophical beliefs; I'm not sure if this is possible without contradicting oneself.  With that said, someone who earned a degree in philosophy is only guaranteed to understand a variety of philosophical beliefs.  A real philosopher is not one who pursues such a degree, but one who asks questions and follows answers to the end.  On the other side of this concept, a philosopher may have knowledge of common philosophical beliefs, but is guaranteed to be equipped with their own interpretations of life, which will happen to coincide with others, as opposed to someone who is largely aware of philosophical concepts but spends more time learning that than asking their own questions.

This post is full of so much win.

i'm actually in my 3rd year of college right now, doing pretty well.

it doesn't take a genius to see that our education system as a whole runs counter to most of the principles we claim to instill in kids.

Yay! What are you learnin'?

comp sci, interactive simulation

physics engines, collision detection, graphics and whatnot

hoping to go indie eventually, but who knows

I'm considering dropping out of college, myself.  Not that I don't love to learn, but I have a theory on the proper way to educate people, and it isn't by keeping track of every class they take, when they show up to that class, and telling them whether or not their understanding of a particular subject is good enough, or if that one point means they don't actually understand anything.

Needless to say, I'm probably going to fail my US History class :P  I picked up a lot of stuff from it, but I'm not doing so hot, on account of me not being able to remember who did what and when.  The "why", I get.  It's the rest that I neither care about, nor feel I should care about.  I aced my federal government class, anyway.

What I don't get is why I couldn't learn this stuff on my own; if I have to read the textbook before I show up to class each day, why shouldn't I just stay at home and simply read the textbook?  Why am I paying a professor to tell me to study, when I can study on my own, tell myself to study (or get a friend to do it,) and get the same experience?  Why this dependency on an outside force (which just happens to be under the thumb of a higher power) when every resource is there?  If I were taught how to teach myself in my first 13 years of mandatory education, I'd be in a much better spot right now.  Seems modern day college is nothing more than a debt trap.

If they were to do that, they wouldn't need 13 years of indoctrination.

Because then they give you a piece of paper that will nearly fully define your worth at most job interviews.


That's because it is. I've learned more from self-education than I ever have from public schooling or my current college.

Aside from college, k-12 is more for indoctrination and mental reliance than actual education.

Good point; if anything, a few years of basics (reading, writing, arithmetic) is all a child really needs as a foundation for everything else they can learn, and that can be taught by any functional adult.  I got into an argument the other day with a friend of mine who decided to go for a business degree in fashion.  She's currently in a load of debt, despite having government assistance from FAFSA.  Anyway, the argument was that people could learn just as well without a formal education, and often times become even more intelligent than usual.  Her main retort was that nobody can get a job without a college degree and that's the main reason why anyone should go, which I couldn't fault her for, as she was right; that's the only reason people go to college anymore.  It has nothing to do with wanting to learn, but those 13 years of mental beat-down teach people that they have to learn, or else they'll "never amount to anything."  I should note, my friend is Asian, and happens to have the typical Asian parents who push their kids so far, some commit suicide.  She still doesn't know why the hell she's in college or what good a business fashion degree will do her :P  She noted, however, that she doesn't like to argue, which leads me to believe she mostly just wants to do the "minimum" so she can live a good life, while also believing there's no hope she'll get a job doing fashion, which she admits she now hates and hoped for another major, but she's already graduating so it's too late.  It's kinda strange to watch someone be on two sides like that, but she's not the first.  My best friend also follows the "do what you hate so you can get money and then you can do what you love" ideology.  He wants to be a male nurse.  I've already explained the field is oversaturated, and the fact that he doesn't like bodily fluids will probably stop his career early, but it doesn't seem to stop him.


I know what you mean.  I've learned far more from YouTube and Wikipedia, of all things, than I've learned from mandatory education, and even more educational sites are cropping up; I've been using a website to learn how to code in python, at that.  Yet because I don't get a slip of paper to show for it, I suppose I'm always runner up to the guy who hocked however many thousands it took to get an "official" education.

I can understand the certificate/degree thing on one level.  Employers need a way to filter out people.  OTOH, too many times I've seen someone with a certificate get a job and turn out to be pretty much incompetent.  It's not the be all and end all.   

In my profession, IT, I only got a basic education in university really.  The real crash course came when I actually started work in the field.  And I wondered if a couple of those uni years had just been wasted.  Not to mention there's nothing entrepreneurial about, well, pretty much most of the education that is taught.  It mostly seems to be geared towards creating worker bees.  Which I think is probably a relic of how the whole system started out around the 19th century which was basically designed to churn out factory workers and soldiers.  Being a government monopoly, in my country at least, there has been virtually no incentive to innovate and so education has not moved with the times and it's largely stuck in the 19th century with all the regimentation, bells, etc...

Why are you even taking History if it's something you have not much interest in? For my "social studies" requirement I just took government and politics. Figured they would be good to know for business.

As for what the higher education is supposed to be about, you and your friend are kinda wrong on it, or at least are taking the wrong things out of it. It's not to force you to memorize stuff and indoctrinate you. It's not to give you a degree to let you get a higher paying job. A university can do something that no amount of self-learning can provide, which is that it can teach you WHAT is actually out there that you can learn about. Sure, you can Google and find information about anything out there, but you can't begin to Google if you don't know the keywords or the concepts to begin searching for. That was pretty much my experience while getting my degrees: some of it was reviews and easy A's, some of it was tedious stuff I wasn't sure that I'd need, but figured it's good to know about, and A LOT of it was stuff that I hadn't even considered or didn't know existed, that I learned more about after researching on my own, but wouldn't have even bothered if no one told me about.

Also, regarding your friend, there are plenty of "other ways" to earn money as a male nurse than in the medical/caretaker field ;)

(Honestly, though, as long as he can handle old people shit and piss, he's going into a field that will be in huge demand, now with baby boomers retiring)

I'm assuming it's because the state of Texas mandates specific classes to be taken, one of them being US History, while other states do it differently.  I don't know how it is in other states, but in mine, I'm required to take this course before I can even grab my associates degree.  But I'm with you, I shouldn't be taking a class I have no interest in, and yet, I'm between a rock and a hard place, because unless I'm taking these classes I have no interest in, I have no hopes of attaining a degree in anything.  Which is why I'm contemplating dropping out, or in the very least, ignoring my "core" classes to pursue classes I actually do have interest in, despite not getting a little piece of paper once I'm finished.  I'm not really interested in the job market either way; I can't imagine the suck involved in ass-kissing an employer, but I've only had to do that for jobs paying minimum wage thus far, so I wouldn't know how it is being in a position requiring a college degree.  I'd rather be an indie-something than be a cog in a machine.


I still disagree about the point of college.  As I've mentioned elsewhere (I think...), a university was originally meant to be a safe-haven for people to go and be educated, for no reason outside of a general want for knowledge.  Nobody goes to college anymore for knowledge; they only go because most every college nowadays has some logo saying "Get a better job today!  Apply now!", and there aren't a whole lot of Americans who feel they're perfectly happy with where they are in life--so I assume, from my time working in low-paying part-time jobs.  Once, I took a sociology class, and the professor asked everyone why they went to college; most said they wanted to get a better job.  I told him I was going because I was bored of working all the time, so I guess that fits the bill, too--although, my reason now is much different than back then, but I also haven't been working 50 hours a week lately, so I figure that has something to do with it.  Anyway, there's nothing I'm going to learn in college that's going to teach me how to swing a golf club perfectly on my first try so I'll get a hole in one.  Certainly, self-learning can never provide me everything I need to know for "what's out there", but that isn't solely solved by college; I can also go out there, and learn for myself what's out there (which I doubt wouldn't be lurking somewhere on the Internet anyway.)  Though you're right; you can't learn what you don't know about, I'm generally content with what I currently do know; I'm not a complex man, I don't believe, and I'm certainly not very compelled to learn too deep on other cultures, and I have no real penchant for science, though I do enjoy reading about it (not sci-fi, the real stuff :D)  Knowledge begets knowledge, and I don't believe it's accurate to say only a college can supply that hidden knowledge that apparently no other entity knows about, but for a good 4k a semester, they'll let you in on the secret.  If anything, the only thing I'd miss is the social interaction, which, as I've come to understand, is the key to getting that job you want, so I suppose I'll have to find that elsewhere if I do leave.

Besides, Ivy League colleges keep pumping out Presidents with a complete and utter disconnect from reality.  This is not normal.  I once met an Ivy Leaguer; he was a dick.  Felt he was above everyone else.  He couldn't be wrong about any subject, because if he was losing, he'd remind you that he was an Ivy Leaguer and you were welcome to suck his hoo-haw.  But I can't really speak for all of them, based on my shallow experiences.  Anyway, I don't believe the point is why is people go to college, but how colleges are trying to adapt to student desires, and the student desire generally revolves around the prospect of money, and thus, a higher social status.  But maybe I'm wrong; I base this all on the only colleges I could hope to afford, which appeal to the lower class, from where I stand.  So I'm not entirely sure why rich folks go to college.  I'll have to ask one some day.

About my friend: he still hates nursing.  I believe this is a valid point; he's planning on dropping the debt-bomb to learn to do something he doesn't like for the prospect of money.  I don't believe it's a good idea for him to pursue a career like that, especially considering there are plenty of people in the world with a genuine interest in helping other people.  He just wants to live "comfortably", as he puts it.

You are undoubtedly right about why a lot of people go to college. Personally, I wasn't thinking about that much when I went, and only focused on what I wanted to get out of it. Admittedly, I was also lucky in that most of my professors in my master's program were professors part-time, and experts in their field working full-time. So not only did I learn about what there is to learn out there, and actually learned a lot of it, I also got some mentoring from pretty good mentors.
As got why rich kids go, typically it's because they need to start at high level management jobs in their family owned businesses, and it would take too long to start at the bottom.

By the way, I know there are a lot of examples of college dropouts who became very successful, but first, they typically dropped out after getting into a very prestigious university, and taking a few years there, and second, for every successful college dropout, there are probably 40 successful managers and CEOs. So, as long as you're going for a degree that's not stupid (not some liberal arts or humanities crap), I would stick to it.

Edison dropped out of school after just 2 months of it, B. Franklin dropped out after 2 years, and Einstein was gone by the time he was 15 :P  As it goes for college, I know Bill Gates and that one guy who used to run Apple dropped out of college early, but they knew what they were doing, and I probably would've done the same thing.  Anyway, I just find it sad that, even as adults, schools feel it necessary to discipline their students.  If I had such an interest in the courses I was taking, why should they feel the need to grade me on it?  If I had a real understanding of the subject matter I sought to understand, I should know, myself, what it is I know and what it is I still need help on.  The modern college has no time for this; they must keep the order, and they must record grades, for the student is not there to learn, but to listen, and memorize, and return to the lecturer what they have been lectured, and so there must be a system with which we can monitor whether the student can play Simon Sez as well as the next guy.  We can describe the average student by their GPA; I don't like this fact, but it's become a standard; if Sally has a 4.0 GPA, she's likely going to live a very good life, and if Joe has a 2.5 GPA, he's average.  But we know this isn't true all the time, it's a mere generalization, and a very serious generalization when it comes to the even higher education and then, the work force.  So we must submit to this generalization and realize that we are but numbers.  Most of us have a number pegged to our names; I know I do, but I can never remember it.  But the point I'd like to make, is that we're missing the point of education.  If a college, as a business, only has the intention to educate, why such intricate systems which have nothing to do with any given subject matter?  Who created these mandatory systems to peg the student at this level or that level?  Why do we subject ourselves to judgment?  It feels like all we're doing is trying to look good under someone else's eyes.  I wouldn't mind paying a guy to teach me about History if he'd just stop trying to test my understanding; I know what I know and what I don't know (though I do see how this can be a problem for people who can't figure out they don't know squat.)  I didn't take the History course for someone else (technically, in this case, sadly, I did, but for sake of example,) I took it so I could have a better understanding of American history.  That's the point: this education is for me.  That's why I bought it, right?  Nobody buys a TV for someone else, unless they plan on giving it away.  I bought lunch for me to eat, and I'm the only person that should care about that--well, maybe my partner would care.  Why, then, is my education treated as a public matter, even in a (state-adhering) private institution?  I suppose that's simply society today; we developed our American society, and so we bear the fruit.  We developed a working society, where math and science aren't quite as important as profitable skills, and now we're stuck with what we've sought: that being, employers expecting degrees from this school or not from that school, to weed out the riff-raff.  I can't say colleges are helping this matter along, merely sticking to the business plan, even when the quality of education goes downhill (cough UTA.)  When will McDonalds serve food that's good for me?  Not until enough people stop buying the food they're already putting out.

Good news is, I'm pretty sure I passed my History final.  I spent a few good hours reading the sparknotes version and developed an understanding I didn't get from my lecturer; mostly because I could pace myself, I suppose.  I now know more about the Civil War than I ever really wanted to know.  Lincoln was a dick.  I'm still trying to figure out whether or not I needed a professor to help me understand why Lincoln was a dick, but I won't know that until I attempt to take on a subject offered by college by myself.  It would be an interesting test, I think.

Also, sorry for the long posts.  They're not necessarily aimed at you, Rassah, mostly just me thinking out loud :D

We need someone to come up with a new, cheap (Or close to cheap) way to offer the education needed in specific degree's online. This information is already all over the internet so that's not an issue; websites already offer similar things. What we need however is for this "online degree" (Lack of a better word) to be recognized by employee's as legitimate. All it'd need is a decent reputation to be seen as sufficient, and after all, the people who have taken this course will have had an identical education in terms of information learnt.

Obviously there are currently issues such as failing/passing students, which would require marking which would require a high cost. But surely the future will behold a way around that some way or another.

Edit: Yes I completely understand there's degree's like this already. But they are considered more or less a complete joke. That's what needs to change.

I'd simply use statistics, to make that point.


Statistically, university graduates world wide earn $186.000 more in their entire lives in comparison, in the western world, this increases to over 300.000 in the western world.
At current time, more than 80% of all billionaires on the Forbes list hold college degrees. 80% of millionaires are correspondingly college graduates.
Around 80% of millionaires in America today are first generation millionaires whose kids will loose their money, so no "rich kid went to college because he should" excuse there.


But, I have another contention: Discussing science with a non graduate is absolutely annoying. Basically, being taught basic science (Okay most colleges fail at this also, or the graduates, im not sure which) should be done even earlier. Discussing science with people that claim their individual inductive experience is relevant for deductive nomological reasoning because "BUT FOR ME IT IS DIFFERENT" and therefore demonstrate statistics very well, are a pain in the ass. An 80% chance still means 20 in hundred will loose, damnit...


Is university or college NECESSARY? No. Absolutely not. My university time is spent learning by myself the stuff that colleges have as topics. I don't need the infrastructure, I need the pressure to learn and ask for things. But it depends. I will guarantee you, that in many countries, not having a degree will haunt you. It haunts you at the latest when you try to fund a startup with more money. It will haunt you when you deal with insurances (No degree, higher risk, pay more). It will haunt many people in social life.



What are the risks? In my country, Germany, the risks are minimal. The degree costs you next to nothing and even people like me, who studied in the UK, have only accrued somewhere around the debt of a small car. Going to a US institution is a different thing.
If the advantage is at 300.000 over your life, would you pay 400.000 for it? Only if this is your true calling.

Funny enough, in the US; community colleges tend to create slightly more wealthy graduates than university bachelor degree holders.
Here in Germany, there is a starting gap of 5-10k a year, leading to statistical mean accumulated increase in earnings of somewhere around 30% across ALL fields. Laywers, Consultants and so son are thrown in the same pot as social scientists and language majors here, so you might get the deal on lifetime earnings...

Keep in mind, that's a fairly unfair average since people who don't give two fucks about being rich/successful don't go to college. If you looked at motivated people who went to college vs. motivated people who didn't go to college then maybe you could get a more accurate statistic when comparing the two.

After being tormented with motivation psychology for years: Ignore the idea of "motivation" in general.

Money does not do anything for motivation actually. It is a small hygiene factor, where when you do not have enough, you feel annoyed, but for the overall motivation for work, it doesn't do much.

The keys to work motivation and satisfaction with work are different from money. We can't say absoultely sure what makes people motivated for work, but we have a pretty good idea that money is really only a small part of it.

I suggest this as a good read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_satisfaction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_satisfaction)

Most of it covers textbook motivation psychology quite adequately. Other than that, Lathams textbook is probably the best thing out there on motivation in general.

Point taken. Good read as well, pretty interesting stuff not going to lie.

But when people go to university/college, they're looking to be some what successful in life (Yes, very broad statement). People who get a tertiary education aren't going to settle for a job at McDonald's, they're obviously expecting more. However people who don't gain a tertiary education, that's a different story. Plenty of them are more than content with that.

This is all on averages of course, but I hope you get where I'm coming from.

Of course. We cannot factor social matters out here. That is why these statistics are BROAD.

I have stueid and would argue that 70-80% are only motivated to study because "they dont want to server burgers" rather than "I want to achieve something." A lot of my former classmates only went to study because "When you do the German Abitur, you are kind of supposed to study something, right?"


My main point with the whole statistics is working against the advice that "College is a waste of time."
It can be a waste of time, depending on the costs. Also, I want to work against the diea that "University graduates dont become billionaires, they will work for the supersmart guys that skipped college." No, just no.

These are pretty persistent. The problem, and I think this is a real one, is that there is a considerable gap between what some colleges and universities do in terms of theory and how they teach application in practice. Oftne, they really don't at all. Some people go to a business school class, learn accounting, learn math and learn some basic in and out concepts and are then thrown into the wild and supposed to function.

Well, of COURSE there will be learning, since most of the learning was concepts, not processes and procedures of how to get them working. The flip side is, that many people in "the real world" do not like academics anymore. And say "their stuff is useless" while academics don't give a shit anymore about people in business. We call this the researcher pracitioner gap. You find it in a lot of places.

The problem is that in many cases, research has the better answers. But since the answers cannot be applied quickly, the question is "how do we implement change to implement the better answers?" And this is where resistance happens and you will see big falling outs. I am also one of the types that is rather pissing of a CEO by telling him he does not know what he is talking about. I have had lots of training to not do that and only in private. And in a way where he thinks my idea was his idea.

People who learnt by "streetsmarts" usually pride them on these, but represent a special case in a special environment, whose learnings might become irrelevant pretty fast. Some dinosaurs in business have gone out after the internet came and failed horribly. Changes like these are typical when people get stuck in their ways and their learnings from the environment.

These are all things that ask for self awareness and a kind of scientific way of doing things. Not overly anal science, but a testing, always in the air kind of way of doing business, always testing if their is something better. Big companies even source that out...


So if we ask if education is useful, we have to ask the question, what for? In what situation? For what motivation? In what area? Because overall, graduates are still winners (And even in the "liberal arts" majors, you will find statistically more money earned versus. non graduates.)

Please stop it with the bs claims that Einstein or some other brilliant person didn't go to college and they did OK. Einstein went to a university, graduated with a degree, and even taught there. And those brilliant people who dropped out aren't an example of "you can succeed even if you don't go to college," they are an example of "you can succeed if you are brilliant. Especially if you are so brilliant that you have surpassed college and don't need it any more." If you can legitimately claim that you are brilliant, and can see how college will be holding you back from an idea you already have right now, then by all means, drop out and pursue your idea. Otherwise...

There IS one very important skill that schools and universities teach that is hard to learn on your own, and which may even involve having to memorize useless facts: they teach you how to learn. Specifically, they force you to learn how to learn. As for the rest of the education, the "go to class to learn from professionals V.S. use a website to learn it all for free" is also really subject to the near-universal rule of "you get what you pay for." I agree, there are a ton of overprice and extremely low quality universities out there (Phoenix and Streyer come to mind), but if you research the "product" and pick something with the best value, you can get a log more bang for your buck by learning what you want/need from an experienced mentor than on your own (your time that you take to learn something is valuable, too, and it's worth it to have someone who can just answer your question and allow you to move on, than to spend hours researching that answer on your own).

As for degrees, GPAs, and jobs, employers simply want to have their candidates vetted by knowledgeable people and institutions they trust. That will never go away. And it's why a good state or ivy league resume gets looked at, while Phoenix and Streyer ones typically go right in the trash.

Our education system is a problem, no doubt, but I think it has way more to do with people not researching the market or thing they want to do, and the university they go in, before they go and pay for their degree. So we end up with a bunch of people with degrees in things no one wants, or degrees from institutions no one trusts. If universities were truly mentorship and apprentice programs (like many good ones are), and kids actually looked ahead to plan how they would survive with their chosen interest, we wouldn't have these problems.

This gap is also due to society and employers current way of viewing potential employees. Currently if you don't have a degree, you're heavily discriminated against. People who have learnt information which is close to irrelevant and of which they've probably forgotten 90% of, are given the better jobs. It's just one big circular reference leading to a lot of people paying overly expensive education systems for useless knowledge.

With that being said, there are many exception I'm sure. There are many jobs where a college education in that specific area is vital, and that's fine. But what about all those degree's which are so extremely broad (Business degrees come to mind) and the bulk of the graduates end up getting into a career where what they learnt isn't even used due to the fact they've either completely forgotten it or are in a career that doesn't involve it what so ever? Those people would still have been prioritized over non-graduates. It's a some what unfair system whereby people with "useless" knowledge get better treatment, even if someone else was far more capable.

As always there's inconsistencies in all arguments like that. I'm more or less referring to how some courses offered are ONLY offering you a degree. The knowledge you take away is just a small "bonus" in that sense.

I agree with what your saying to some extent though, and I completely understand where your coming from. I'm just thinking out loud though. More or less just arguing how hard it is to accurately measure how useful a college degree truly is, there's so many social factors that completely basely affect all these 'statistics' which attempt to prove how amazing college is.

I believe this is our disconnect.  You're under the impression that most knowledge can only be attained through school; there seems to be no in-between for you.  You believe that, unless someone tells you, you can never know.  The man who discovered electricity had to have been told by God, I guess, before he could ever know about electricity, and how it could power certain things.  He wasn't born brilliant; he was born exactly like you, a drooling baby who had to learn literally everything from the ground up, per usual for all human beings.  Why, then, did he become such a "brilliant" inventor, and Joe Schmoe was just a farmer?  It's very easy to fall into the trap of, "He must've been born a genius!"  In reality, people are not.  All people are born with very like minds (excluding actual edit: mental disabilities,) and it is through their experiences that they reach a level no other people have ever reached before.  There is no such thing as a genius; this is a subjective impression.  The smart man can only be smart when everyone else isn't.

Now the question becomes: How does someone become brilliant?  And the answer is simple: they stop assuming everything Ms. Smith says is God-given fact, and pursue an unbiased, objective understanding of the world around them, which is achieved first through observation, otherwise known as an intake of information, then interpretation, which can be related to processing that information--then repeat.  You take info in, you put info out, until you form an understanding; I believe we can call this the thought process.  Put food in, chew, swallow.  Of course, there are many advanced subjects which this process does not work, where you'd either have to be the guy to discover said subject, or read about the findings of others (again, take info in, put info out.)  Unless you're making the point that only a school can supply the flow of quality information into a person, I believe it's clear that calling someone brilliant is just another way of calling someone an autodidact; they understand that schools aren't the only method to acquire information, and seek to educate themselves, even, in the case of Einstein, when schools have nothing more to teach.  Why, then, do you insist that only "normal" people can become educated through college?  I promise you, I've come a long way since the dark ages (a.k.a high school), but I owe very little of my general competence to my brief adventure as a now sophomore in college.  I can't legitimately claim myself to be brilliant, for I don't believe any "official" can define what makes someone brilliant or not, but I promise, college is in no way the sole method to achieve an education; rather, it can help, but in the end, you, the individual, are doing the heavy lifting, with or without college.

And lets not forget the dangers of trusting an institution with every bit of information you receive.  I've repeatedly caught my professors making blatantly opinionated statements passed along as fact, and sometimes unintentional lies on matters I happen to know more about, but I digress.  I wonder how many other people notice these things...  They're not exactly bad, but, a student is more easily shaped when he believes everything his professor says, even taking the biases into account for his own method of thinking.


I will admit, colleges do a good job at teaching people how to learn, but they shouldn't have to.  When a legal adult still does not know how to think on their own, following 13-14 years of supposed education, can we agree that we're facing an epidemic of stupidity?  On one end, I want to blame the individual, but when I consider the fact that all individuals in this country are forced into attending a school which refuses to teach people how to think for themselves, it's hard to set the blame on society, unless we can assume that society is in true control of their government, which I tend to believe they aren't.

I would argue that forced schooling contributes to a nationally lower average IQ, simply because people who do not want to go to school have to go, and make life a living hell for anyone who does want to go to school.  This sets a blanket over all students in public school systems who generally hate their experience (either because they didn't want to go or because they had to put up with the people who didn't want to go), which gets mistaken as a hatred for learning in general.  I recall clearly, in my high school days, that, if college was any experience like I had in high school, I did not want to go.  So I didn't, for a year or two, but got pressured into it by an ex-girlfriend who didn't want to date a dumb guy without an education :P  I generally liked my experience, but after a while, I felt I really was back in high school, learning the same subjects I didn't learn back then, the same subjects I didn't care about but was required of me.  I think most people have, by this point, given up on their individuality and simply go for the associates like good students, because, as they've been taught for 13-14 years, thinking for themselves couldn't fit into the public school's agenda of being thought for by their grade school teachers so they can pass state-defined scores, else the school faces a risk of being shut down.

So now we have a nation full of people ready to go to college who are failing accuplacers on material they freshly "learned", staring with blank faces at their professors, writing down anything said to study it later, afraid to answer when any professor asks a question, lest they get called on, where they'll refer to their notes, but very willing to talk to their neighbor about what was on TV last night, or that girl, remember her?  You remember that girl who used to always...  The problem cannot be colleges, then, who only operate as businesses (except for Phoenix and all the other highway colleges, whose owners are welcome to rot for their crimes against the American populace); the real problem of education is primary.  It's the difference between voluntary education and involuntary education, and I believe our American experiment has shown the results of one side of it: we cannot force someone to learn and expect the outcome to be a thinking individual.  Once this is changed, I believe we'll see colleges following suit, once, finally, people are no longer satisfied with being treated as children, and will, in turn, themselves, no longer act like adults, but be adults, thinking adults, the kinds that go to college because they really wanna know more, because they wanna create and work to supplement their desire for creation, and then we'll see a real shift in the world.

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

It's late, so I'll answer tomorrow. For now, I'll just say that you must be very young and inexperienced to claim that everyone is born like-minded, and there's no such thing as someone being born a genius. With experience, you'll learn that there are A LOT of REALLY REALLY REALLY dumb people out there, and it has nothing to do with whether they started thinking on their own or not. Some people are just slow, and some are complete morons. And that's not a subjective statement, when there are other people to compare them to.

I'll just add this: some people are born dumb, some people are made dumb.

I wager most people are made dumb; the rest are merely unfortunate.  I may be an optimist (I doubt it), but I believe most everyone is born relatively equal (give or take a few potential IQ points), and they are designed, from then on, to fail.

Stop you're making me blush ;D

I tend to think that brains have a certain amount of processing power.  They may be oriented in slightly different directions but unless you are born with a brain defect then you have the potential to be reasonably intelligent.  Maybe not everyone can be a genius but the potential is there for most to be quite capable.

Unfortunately, a lot happens to a lot of people between birth and adulthood.   Abuse, a bad public education system, lack of resources, etc, etc and thus many people's brains are not allowed to naturally develop.  And that's where most dumb people come from imo.  They have some kind of mixture of that in their past.

EDIT: Sorry for the long post.


Not at all. I just believe that education you paid for can be of higher quality, and can teach you what you want to learn, way faster than trying to learn something on your own. This really applies to anything out there: hiring skilled experts to do something is usually better than doing something yourself (You ever read "Rich Dad, Poor Dad"?)



That man has very likely spent years learning about all the things leading up to his discovery of electricity. Very likely at a place of higher learning along with other students as well. Science very rarely happens by self-educated types in their own garages (For a good example of that kind of science, search for over-unity or perpetual motion on YouTube). As for why he became brilliant? In part interest and motivation (maybe the farmer just didn't want anything more), and in part just because his brain was more suited to it. Some people process math and physics concepts better. Some visualize things and have a better grasp of art, music, and language. It has little to do with upbringing though. I would guess it has more do to with genes.


The bolded part is a redundant statement that can be applied to everything, and is quite objective. E.g. A tall building is tall because the buildings around it are shorter. It's not just my opinion that this building is tall, nor my opinion that that person is smart. I don't think relativity is subjective. As for the rest, maybe I'm biased in all this. I come from a family of some pretty smart people (Google Tsiolkovsky and Tozoni). Both of my parents went to a Soviet Union public school, yet both were always at the top of their class (my mom is one of those who has gotten a B maybe once in her lifetime). All the other kids were going to the same schools, yet why is she the one who simply "got it" and was able to get to the top while putting in the same amount of work as everyone else? It can't be her upbringing, since her parents rather neglected her. I didn't have good grades in high school, mainly because I almost never did any homework and was often late turning in projects, but that was mostly due to depression issues at the time (the whole in-the-closet gay thing, plus feeling like an adult surrounded by a bunch of immature children). However, I've typically gotten A's and B's on exams despite never studying for them. Most of the time I passed them by just deducing what the answer to a given question was right on the spot, even if I didn't know how to solve the problem before. This while other students around me struggled, and most got B's or C's. (Craziest thing I've done was learn the entire 107 character Japanese Hiragana alphabet, from scratch, 2 hours before the exam, because I kept putting it off, and still got 100% on it.) I don't know why exactly I can do the things I can and why others have trouble with them. I know I have a very high IQ, and psychologists say that that's something that can't really be learned or changed, so I believe them that this is the reason. And, as I've said, I have dealt with a lot of different people out there. Sometimes it's just frustrating how they seem to have such difficulty grasping a concept I'm trying to explain to them, which to me seems so simple. It's not laziness, they just can't process or understand it easily. I.e. some people are just dumb, and not even because they are too lazy to learn to understand something; they just can't do it.



You do need a foundation of facts, or at least "facts," before you can start doing that. As I said, you can't answer the questions if you don't know what the questions are. And that's what schools and universities are SUPPOSED to teach and encourage.


Actually, my grandfather Oleg Tozoni, though not Einstein, is an excellent example for this. He finished public high school in USSR. He and his whole family was on a Soviet blacklist because of the whole "royal family" thing, and thus he was in hiding when he was about the age to be in a university. So, he learned how to forge university certificates, and would "transfer" to a new university from the old one for a semester or two. There he would take a few classes, and once he saw that the KGB were catching up to him, he would run, leaving at night or as soon as possible, forge a new university certificate claiming to be from his old one, and transfer to a new university at the new place he picked to hide. This way he continued to take classes, despite it being a very difficult thing to fight for. Eventually he graduated with a bachelors, then a masters. By the time USSR caught up to him, he was already working somewhere, and they realized he would be much more valuable working for them than dead. So they hired (forced) him to work at their research labs. He continued to take classes, earning a few PhD's and a post-doctorate (I don't think we have that degree level in USA), and helped teach physics at various universities. Eventually he went from learning from school and others to learning on his own (a Doctorate degree actually requires that you discover and add something to the body of knowledge that no one else knew before. You can't just get it by passing tests). Then he made more discoveries, deduced more physics formulas, published books, became the head of the Kiev Polytechnical Institute (think chief engineer at DARPA) and once moving to USA, spent 15 years inventing a magnetic levitation system the concept of which was long abandoned as being "impossible." He was a genius, and note, he did all these inventions and discoveries after a lifetime of study, not by tinkering in a garage after reading some books. If you look through the biographies of other scientists we call "genius," you'll likely find that they had a similar path of vast amounts of study at university to get to where they are. If he didn't go to a university, I imagine he would have done self-study, and would have been either a really smart employee somewhere, or a low-level inventor whom no one relly knows of or takes seriously (maybe only post-mortem, like Tsiolkovsky). He wouldn't have been the top scientist in all of USSR, that's for sure.
As for why other people aren't brilliant? They had the exact same opportunities to learn as my grandfather. Better even. But they just couldn't cut it. The material was too difficult, they couldn't wrap their minds around it, and they abandoned the field. In my business finance undergrad degree, we started with 3 class-fulls of people pursuing the degree, and the final exam of the final class only had about 12 of us left.



I don't know what you mean by that


You do seem to be the intelligent type (Not just based on your writings, but your personality as well), so who knows. Maybe like other smart people, college just seems inadequate to you. To which I would say, try to get to a better college. Once you're done, though, try talking to some people who never even bothered to go. You'll eventually start to see that people are on different levels out there.


That's what high school is for. You are SUPPOSED to think critically about information in college. At least later on after the sudents have gotten over the "it's like more high school" phase. Sounds like you have a crappy college, too.


I didn't say think, I said learn. The skill of being able to force yourself to sit down for a few hours, completely engross yourself in your study material, and actually learn to retain what you have studied. Especially when it comes to tedious and boring material you may have no interest in, but which you may need. That's not a skill people just practice on their own  ;D


I agree that schools have issues that need to be fixed (In USSR, for example, classes weren't adjusted down to compensate those who did bad. You were expected to keep up, period. And other students were expected to help the laggards keep up). But it really sounds like you ended up in a shitty college. Maybe you should research if there is anything better out there, and move there? By the way, I can tell you right now that an Associate's is completely worthless. If jobs are looking for degrees, they will be looking for a BS at least. If they are not, they'll be fine with high school. Your best options are to either go for a BS, or, depending on your skills, go to a specialty school. My friend got an associates in network engineering. It was worthless, and not something he wanted (his parents pushed him into it). Then he spent a year going to a specialist school that only taught truck engine repair, which is what he was interested in. No history, english, or other crap. Now he's happy doing what he likes, and earns a good living.


You may be right, I don't know. I still believe that people should get a foundation to start with, even if all they want to do is play video games all day. You won't know if you are into art, history, languages, math, computers, biology, chemistry, or whatever if you've never been exposed to it. Finance was not a subject in my school (or if it was, it wasn't a requirement), so I was never exposed to it, and didn't get to realize it was something I was interested in until I was 24, at which point I had to start pursuing that education from scratch. This does remind me that there's a fundamental difference in how kids are taught in USSR versus USA though (I don't know if Japan is similar)...

If you compare a 10th grade student from USSR (now Russia, Ukraine, and other old Soviet Block countries) to a 10th grade student from USA, you'll clearly see that the USA one is extremely undereducated. The reason is that they teach a lot more things much earlier in USSR than USA. I left after finishing 3rd grade, but we had already started foreign language classes, introductory biology (including speciation and evolution), and just finished introduction to algebra and exponents (Italy is even crazier, since beginning of 4th grade we had math problems like  y = √(5x^2 + y - 10)/(2x + 4y)   y = 5x^2 + 7xy - 2y^2, simplify and solve for y, which I needed mom's help to tutor me). By the time you are in 10th grade, you already had advanced math, calculus, and physics. By the time you graduate from high school, you are pretty much already college educated for all the basic stuff. So when kids in USSR go to a university, they go to specialized schools. We have universities that specialize in chemistry, or physics, or engineering, or computers, or even farming. And when there, that's all you learn about. Here in USA, by the time you graduate high school, you only know comparatively very basic levels of all those subjects, so when you go to a university, you pick a concentration/degree, but still have to take all the other requirement classes, which in USSR you would have learned in school. At the end, by the time you graduate with a bachelor's degree, your education level has caught up to those in USSR, and both people should be about even. So the main difference is that in USA we, I guess, try to spare our kids from having too brutal of school (I was pulling all nighters studying for exams since 3rd grade), but conversely, in USSR, after they are done with school, students can pick something (since they know all the fields) and actually pursue only what they want. At the same time they can sound like NOT idiots when participating in discussions and conversations, having been exposed to a lot of knowledge.    
The other big difference between USA and practically every other country's school I've looked at is that the students you start with in 1st grade are the same ones you stick with at least until 10th. We didn't move classes, the teachers came to us (unless we went to a laboratory). As a result, everyone knew each other well, and were all a part of a team that would compete against other classes, including forcing the stragglers to keep up. Here I barely knew any of my classmates, thanks to the constant moving around every year, and every class period. I don't know what kind of effect this team/comradery building has, but it's definitely significant.

English speaking countries, at least England and Australia which I have personal knowledge of, are very much like the US.   I would say half of my primary/high school experience was a complete waste of time.  I picked up the easy stuff fast but was always held back waiting for the rest to catch up.  It's a silly system.   Very much geared towards socialist ideals.  Equality.  Everybody gets an equally bad education.  Universities are better but many people have had their brains fried before they get there and there is a lot to overcome.

Real education:
http://youtu.be/xmpYnxlEh0c

I'm going to play devil's advocate for a minute here: What if, rather than attempt to reform the whole rotten education system (which will take an enormous amount of time, money, and effort), we educate students on how to pick a cost-effective school and field of study?


Example. John Doe goes to private university A and pays $60k for annual tuition. John majors in Philosophy or Art History or one of the countless other degrees with unemployment rates hovering around 10% (http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2012/10/11/the-10-worst-college-majors/). Perhaps one of his friends convinced him it would be an "easy way to meet girls" or he changed after he decided a different major was "too hard" or who knows what? The point is: John is coughing up $60,000 per year to screw himself over. Which is one hell of an opportunity cost. In this case, college does more harm than good, since John's best-case scenario is to try and graduate in as little time as possible (unlikely if he's too busy chasing women and partying at frats) and hopefully snag whatever position he can. Even if it's waiting tables.


Consider another example though. Jane Doe goes to state university B and pays $10k for annual tuition. Jane majors in some kind of STEM major in high demand - maybe Computer Science since  there are an enormous number of unfulfilled computing jobs in the US alone (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323744604578470900844821388.html) and she genuinely enjoys it. Sure, the coursework is challenging, but she knows she'll easily be making at least $60k plus benefits once she graduates. And that a college degree in CS gives you a huge leg up over those without a degree (http://www.thomasnet.com/journals/career/what-is-a-stem-education-worth-2/) (in general). In this case, Jane stands to benefit greatly from her college education; rather than being saddled with over $200k in debt like the hapless John, Jane could pay off any student loans in a few years at maximum.



I'm hardly trying to argue that the higher education system is flawless; it's a massive mess that's screwing record numbers of honest people over and the whole system needs to be re-worked. But that will take time. We can instead immediately see results by helping high school students (and early college students) decide on a major that will help them in life, rather than leave them stuck with a massive loan and no career prospects at graduation. What if someone told John to start at a community college before the private university in order to find a major he actually liked first? Or if he bothered to check his potential salary after graduation for his current major? He just might change his mind and put his nose to the grindstone after such talks.






TL;DR: School is insanely expensive, but taking out $200k+ in loans to get a major that leaves you 0 career options is frankly stupid. The university did not "make" you take out loans...you decided to do that on your own. We should focus on helping high school students pick majors that are actually worth half a damn in addition to reforming the higher education system.

Barnacle_Ed, one problem with that: University A will be making much higher profits, and thus will have a much bigger marketing fund, which it will use to convince Joe and Jane that they need to go to their university and buy their degrees. Current example of such travesty are Phoenix and Streyer universities.

That's a good point about this unfortunate trend. Perhaps it will be tougher to convince people otherwise than I first anticipated, but I still believe it will be a shorter-term resolution than full blown education reform. While there is a dire need for reform, it will definitely take some time and there will need to be an interim solution IMO.

How about a community centered around a specific business (like a guild) that members subscribe to, which provides education to the member's children in hopes that those kids will grow up and work for that business. The quality of education this guild provides will directly affect how well it can compete against other guilds.

One thing I've learned in life, business, and politics, is it's all about incentives. You get your incentives aligned right, and everything will be OK. If you don't, or depend on the wrong ones (like altruism), things will go bad, eventually, guaranteed.

Bump, absolutely love hearing peoples opinion on this matter :)

The real crux is employers looking for or accepting something that isn't a degree from an accredited school.  I think that's the biggest barrier to higher educational choice.

This is one of the best threads I've seen. So many decent intellectual conversations going on ^^

I'm a second year IT student in Australia. The only problem with this is that the university I'm attending doesn't offer the courses that I'm interested in (information security). In my city, there isn't a great need for IT folk in general, let alone people that specialise in security. If I didn't enjoy my classes so much, I'd think it was an incredible waste of time. So I'm just waiting it out and studying the security side of things in my spare time.

Seconded.


It is perpetually shocking to me that people will spend $40,000 and 4 years of their life in order to put a single line on their resume that many employers won't care about or won't even verify.

I've heard stories of someone bullshitting on their resume/interview that they had a Masters degree. It was never verified, they were hired, and they learned everything they needed to know in less than 6 months on the job.

I had to withdraw from my Spanish I class because of the lab; they required 250$ for the spanish books, which came with a code, which was a one-time use thing so I could use the online course materials, which were required to even get a passing grade in the class.  Usually, I skip out on the book because my classes never use them but once or twice, and I'd bet this class would be no different.  But, for some odd money-influenced reason, I couldn't get by without participating in the lab.

This was the same rap for my algebra/trig classes, too; they all require an expensive online lab thing which, if you do not participate, cannot hope to get a passing grade in the class.  In other words, student extortion.  The books were one thing; I do just fine without the books and still make good grades, even though they all tell you to get the book.  This is beyond that; it's turned into force.  Pay the extra fee or no chance to pass.  The only reason I had to stop this time, as opposed to my Math courses, is that this is really more of an elective for me; I just have a genuine interest in Spanish and figured 5 weeks of it would get me started off.  However, I don't actually have the money to pay for the lab (3/4ths of this class was paid for by scholarship money I'd won in an art contest), and so dropped both this and the 2nd Spanish course I would take in July.

Anyway, I'm gonna learn Spanish on my own.  Seeing as how learning a language is like learning how to do anything, I may as well study on my own, as that's what I would've been doing most of the time even with a class.  So now I must devise a strategy to learning Spanish, which I believe will revolve around grabbing Spanish literature and reading it, alongside a Spanish/English dict of some sort (probably got one in the App Store)  As my parents speak conversational Spanish (I don't think they can write academic essays in Spanish, but probably couldn't in English either,) I should be all right.

Any Spanish speakers recommend good books?  I'm probably going to pick up El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha.  I should also probably expose myself to more Spanish; there's plenty of Wikipedia articles in Spanish, and so I'd limit myself to those as opposed to their English counterparts, and keep trying until I understand what it means.  I've taken a look at Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone, and I hear the former is better, so I might also try that.

Don't worry about Spanish books. Just torrent Rosetta Stone with a Spanish language add-on, and you'll get way more than you would get from Spanish I, in way less time.