WTF is wrong with America?

[PrintMule]

If you want to learn something, don't get an "education". Get a skill. Learn something you can actually improve the world with. You don't need a balding leftist troll in an ancient building telling you bullshit and charging you an arm and a leg to do that.

I agree that education system worldwide is rotten to the core: bribery, favorism, elitism, people paying for their degrees, horrendous pricing, crazy rules, bias all around, using students in any possible way imaginable. I have avoided going to any university because of that, and I am somewhat self-taught in the result of it.

BUT - you will never become a good (let's say)doctor without a balding leftist troll's help for example. Not all skills can be acquired that easy. There are good teachers and professors, whose job is to increase your learning process to the max.

I only wish there was a process like this: you learn (let's say) japanese on your own, at home. You go to the nearest university - pass a very complicated series of tests, pay ~200$, and if score is good enough - you get a diploma.

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[J603]

If you want to learn something, don't get an "education". Get a skill. Learn something you can actually improve the world with. You don't need a balding leftist troll in an ancient building telling you bullshit and charging you an arm and a leg to do that.

Like what? What skill does not require education? Even hookers have to know how to count their money.

And by the way, there are specialized schools for almost any kind of job.

[DumbFruit]

Ya, but when people make those lists, they're doing it based off of "years in school", or do you know xyz (which could be totally irrelevant to their work.) which is why I don't care if we're #1 or #4,384.

Real jobs in the real world don't fit into a neat educational hierarchy.

You go to the nearest university - pass a very complicated series of tests, pay ~200$, and if score is good enough - you get a diploma.

Tests that actually show that somebody knows some skill in particular are fantastic. We don't have enough of that.

[xanto]

Isn't that illegal?

Only when I do it at the TV store.

But maybe you should care, since I didn't have to make up that number or look it up.

Wow!
I bet when you put that on your resumé, your employer was very impressed.

Hmm... But what about the NSA? Will they allow it, I don't want to go to prison.

[J603]

I only wish there was a process like this: you learn (let's say) japanese on your own, at home. You go to the nearest university - pass a very complicated series of tests, pay ~200$, and if score is good enough - you get a diploma.

How would this process work with doctors? You can't learn medicine at home.

[PrintMule]

I only wish there was a process like this: you learn (let's say) japanese on your own, at home. You go to the nearest university - pass a very complicated series of tests, pay ~200$, and if score is good enough - you get a diploma.

How would this process work with doctors? You can't learn medicine at home.

It would not. There are certain skills that can and cannot be self taught at home.

[Rassah]

You can't learn a lot of things at home. One thing I learned from getting my "education" is that there are a whole lot of things that we simply don't know about without someone actually telling us that they exist and are relevant in the first place. You can't Google something if you don't even know what it's called. (Example, "markowitz efficient frontier." I wouldn't have even been able to begin to search for such a thing, let alone learn what goes into it, before a professor told us about it and why it was relevant to investments)

Uneducated people trying to convince themselves they don't need what they don't have?

[J603]

I only wish there was a process like this: you learn (let's say) japanese on your own, at home. You go to the nearest university - pass a very complicated series of tests, pay ~200$, and if score is good enough - you get a diploma.

How would this process work with doctors? You can't learn medicine at home.

It would not. There are certain skills that can and cannot be self taught at home.

So then isn't a formal education necessary? Even your Japanese example can't be learned solely from home. You can fire up the Rosetta Stone and "learn" the language but until you've actually been there you are not truly qualified to have a diploma based on the language.

[DumbFruit]

Hmm... But what about the NSA? Will they allow it, I don't want to go to prison.

Ask 'em.
Last time my conversation went like this;
-Call random middle east guy.
-"Hey Mr.NSA guy, may I draw boobies on my TV here?"
-"Haha, ya."
- I whip out my whiteout. (Not my penis, you're so immature.)
-"Ahright... And nipple there... Round that like so. Awesome."
(It was so good that every man, and some women, instantly got an erection. The headline in the paper the next week said, "Men get boners." to which Miley Cyrus remarked, "I already knew that.")
Anyway...
-*snickering on the other line* "Did  you do it?"
-"Ya."
-"Take a picture."
- I send the picture to Mr. Random Middle East guy.
- Mr.NSA Guy is laughing, says,"Hey Steve come see this.". Middle eastern guy is yelling some weird stuff on the other end. (They don't speak English in the Middle East right? If they do, their accent is HORRIBLE.)

Anywho, that's how that works here in 'Merica.


As for the whole education thing, maybe I can do a thought experiment. (SCIENCE!)

So we have two societies, in the one society no one is allowed to teach anyone anything. No instruction manuals, anywhere. People might get jobs based on their aptitude for learning, but that's it.

In the other society, everyone has to get a PHD in every job they do regardless of what it is. PHD's in burger flipping, PHD's in hotel room cleaning, etc.

In the first society, we have problems. Whenever someone dies or is replaced either someone that's already worked at that job (or a similar job) needs to be found, or else a total noobie needs to be hired.
Needless to say expanding a business is very difficult, and alot of the same mistakes tend to happen over and over again unless the process is made "stupid proof". (Idiot lights, red tape, auto-shutoff etc.)

In the second society everyone that wants to get into any job needs to have about 16 years of education. By the time a person is hired at the local Hotel, the employee has done an Electron spectroscopy on 20 different types of soap, knows several different ways to wipe off a table (and their scientific name), and at least several dozen ways to fold a towel.
Obviously, this society also has problems that they would have to overcome. The sheer amount of teachers and schools needed would be staggering. Every person from fetus to 24 would be removed from the workforce, and at least 1 more person per 20 would have to be allocated for their upraising and education. Much of the debt on many of these students would never be able to be paid off because the education they got does not translate into an equivalent increase to their productivity. (Lawn mowing, dishwashing, etc.)
There is also a huge lack of flexibility in the workforce. If a business wants to restructure it's virtually impossible.
Everything has to be planned essentially 6 years or so from completion to actually get workers for the relevant job.


While this thought experiment is gloriously silly it demonstrates one very important thing;
Somewhere between that first society and that second society is a line you cross, where more education translates into worse living conditions for the society as a whole.

Notice that in the second society everyone with a PHD gets a higher salary than those that don't have a PHD (Since people without a PHD can't get hired at all.) And that even when the educational system in this society is crushing it, teachers could still tell their students that getting a PHD benefits them.

So we can't just dumbly stand around chanting, "More education. More education. More education." because we always have to be cognizant of that line I demonstrated to you.

How do you "fix this"? You don't. The first society clearly demonstrates that there's a place for educational sources, but the free market can handle it. Cut out all the stupid subsidies, and let people decide what's best for them given the career choice they make. Not be suckered into thinking that everyone needs to get a Bachelors degree in some field or they're not hireable.

And when you look at the "rankings" of educations by country, it's not necessarily the case that the more educated society is better off. They very well could have crossed that line into "too educated".

EDIT:
TLDR:
Knock knock
Who's there
Door says, "NSA"

No education stops technological progress, too much education stops capital accumulation. Somewhere there is a line YOU SHALL NOT PASS.
Free people acting in a free market can decide where that line is.
Don't worry about the stupid "education rankings".

Edit 2: Also, boners were mentioned.

[Damnsammit]

How would this process work with doctors? You can't learn medicine at home.

You can learn biology, A&P, and medical skills (IE: how to draw blood, insert a catheter, indicators, contraindicators, dx, rx, etc) at home.

You don't get the actual hands-on until medical school.  Good luck getting into one of those without a fancy degree from a University.

I learned more at my job than I ever did at the University where I got my degree... but my work said they wanted to pay me more if I got one of those pieces of papers that says I am smarter than the average bear.

[J603]

How would this process work with doctors? You can't learn medicine at home.

You can learn biology, A&P, and medical skills (IE: how to draw blood, insert a catheter, indicators, contraindicators, dx, rx, etc) at home.

You don't get the actual hands-on until medical school.  Good luck getting into one of those fancy degrees from a University.

I learned more in my job than I ever did at the University where I got my degree... but my work said they wanted to pay me more if I got one of those pieces of papers that says I am smarter than the average bear.

I would not allow a doctor who learned from home to operate on me. I work for a medical credentialing company, so I can say that formal education is actually very important. You'd never visit a doctor again if you knew how many have made up educations, or haven't even got their license. There have been people that have applied who are about as good a doctor as you or I.

[Mike Christ]

You can't learn a lot of things at home. One thing I learned from getting my "education" is that there are a whole lot of things that we simply don't know about without someone actually telling us that they exist and are relevant in the first place. You can't Google something if you don't even know what it's called. (Example, "markowitz efficient frontier." I wouldn't have even been able to begin to search for such a thing, let alone learn what goes into it, before a professor told us about it and why it was relevant to investments)

Uneducated people trying to convince themselves they don't need what they don't have?

But this is one example of how people learn about things they previously did not know about; I don't know, nor have I ever heard of, a markowitz efficient frontier, but through a method outside of education, this time through discourse, I have learned what it is so that I may then research it (and I don't understand it, since I don't have any knowledge of finance )  Another example of learning without formal education; I know what a function is, though I'd never heard of it used this way outside of School House Rock, because I first decided I wanted to know how to program (and consequently found a book on C++ at my city library); I learned what programming was by reading on Wikipedia how software was created; I knew what software was through general knowledge of computers.  I never needed a school to tell me what a function was before I could know it existed (and I wouldn't have cared before I even understood what an IDE or a variable was, at that); likewise, if people are interested in finance, they'll stumble upon such concepts as you mentioned the more they learn about them.  If someone invented it, they likely, or someone else, wrote about it, for the professors themselves to ever know to teach it; school is not absolutely necessary to learn such things.  All people really need is a start, and there is never a short supply of knowledge from there, otherwise nobody would know of the concepts which did not exist in books or on the Internet, anywhere.  As proof this is not the case, I found this thing, showing us that the knowledge is freely available to anyone who cares to know about it.  To begin the road to this, I suppose someone would want to begin with an introduction to financing, else they'll stumble upon such a thing and not have any idea what it means, as was my case

[Damnsammit]

I would not allow a doctor who learned from home to operate on me. I work for a medical credentialing company, so I can say that formal education is actually very important. You'd never visit a doctor again if you knew how many have made up educations, or haven't even got their license. There have been people that have applied who are about as good a doctor as you or I.

Who cares where they learned?  All doctors start somewhere.  There are either doctors with experience (let's call them "residents") and doctors with zero experience (let's call them "interns").   

I doubt most people would want an intern to operate on them.  However, if the doctor has experience and earned his residency, why would you care if he was a graduate from Harvard, University of Phoenix, or Basement Community College?  The experience earned during the actual internship is going to be much more important than which school they paid to read books at...

[DumbFruit]

My grandpa is a doctor. He owned his own clinic and practiced medicine for 30 years or something before going into psychiatry. He saved countless lives and did everything from consultation to surgery. (There wasn't alot of specialization when he was in the business.)
Anyway, the point I wanted to make is he told me when he first got into medicine he had no idea what he was doing. He went to medical school and was the top of his class, but he said that when he first started practicing he relied on the older nurses there for almost everything.
So experience is definitely irreplaceable.

But the other point is, doctors don't need to be perfect, and they don't even need to be the top of their class. Imagine if the government outlawed everything but Porsches. Sure, more people would get a Porsche, but most people just wouldn't have a car.
It's the same with doctors.

[Rassah]

if people are interested in finance, they'll stumble upon such concepts as you mentioned the more they learn about them.

I guess in essence, you can either stumble for years to learn on your own, or get a professional education and learn it all in two or four. Which reminds me of one of the most important lessons from Robert Kiosaki's "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" - you will always save money and time by hiring a professional than by doing it yourself.

[fritzthecat]

You guys strayed wide off topic again, the question remains: Why is the US raping the rest of the world and how long are they gonna take it.

[tvbcof]

My grandpa is a doctor. He owned his own clinic and practiced medicine for 30 years or something before going into psychiatry. He saved countless lives and did everything from consultation to surgery. (There wasn't alot of specialization when he was in the business.)
Anyway, the point I wanted to make is he told me when he first got into medicine he had no idea what he was doing. He went to medical school and was the top of his class, but he said that when he first started practicing he relied on the older nurses there for almost everything.
So experience is definitely irreplaceable.

But the other point is, doctors don't need to be perfect, and they don't even need to be the top of their class. Imagine if the government outlawed everything but Porsches. Sure, more people would get a Porsche, but most people just wouldn't have a car.
It's the same with doctors.

I was dog sick for weeks one time (in the military) and saw several doctors who prescribed some IVs to re-hydrate.  Eventually no doctor was around, but an LPN (or some such) was seeing patients.  They guy touched the back of my head and said "Mono.  Test him."  It took him less than 5 seconds to correctly diagnose the condition.  By that time I was just about over it so on my month of sick leave I was fine and had a great time.  I also lost 20 lbs and was able to max out the next PT test on the 2-mile run for that reason.

All else equal, I'd prefer an MD to someone without the formal education, and would prefer an engineer with a PhD to one without for software development, but experience is highly important which would weigh heavily.  Almost everyone I've ever worked with and undergrad from MIT or IIT have been outstanding engineers.  I would favor people from top rated institutions over probably any other factor for work that the institution specialized in.

Some of the best engineers I've worked with have had no degree at all or one in Anthropology or some such.  These people are often more creative and effective, but also often lack commitment and have short attention spans.  I think that possibly the biggest positive in having a degree is that it demonstrates that an individual has commitment and can be a reliable work-horse for the long haul.

[DumbFruit]

All else equal, I'd prefer an MD to someone without the formal education,

Me too! My point about education is that despite popular belief there can be "too much". People treat education like houses during the bubble, "Shovel as much money in as you want into this thing and you'll always get more out than you put in." Which is a fallacy. You may call it the "DumbFruit Fallacy" if you like.

A problem with enforcing some standard onto doctors is that we end up with a system where people can't get a doctor at all. So certify the heck out of them, and be judgemental and prudent, as long as it's in private hands I'm all for it.

I definitely agree that formal education can show serious persistence and dedication, but I'm critical of the... Wait a minute... That awkward moment when...

You guys strayed wide off topic again, the question remains: Why is the US raping the rest of the world and how long are they gonna take it.

The US is the biggest bully out here. As long as they're the biggest bully, they will bully the rest. As soon as they're not the biggest bully, the next biggest bully will be annoying.

People will put up with it as long as they're not hungry.

[Mike Christ]

if people are interested in finance, they'll stumble upon such concepts as you mentioned the more they learn about them.

I guess in essence, you can either stumble for years to learn on your own, or get a professional education and learn it all in two or four. Which reminds me of one of the most important lessons from Robert Kiosaki's "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" - you will always save money and time by hiring a professional than by doing it yourself.

Yes, this is true; a paid education will typically trump a non-paid education; the payment is mostly for having someone spend the time to ensure you're learning your skill properly, and it's much more likely you'll be successful in your studies than without.  Lets say, if you're going through 20 years of education, you would spend quite a lot of money hiring professionals to ensure you're learning properly.  However, if you spend one year learning how to teach yourself (perhaps with the help of a professional), you could then be a professional self-learner and would no longer have to spend money on educators.  In the case of the plumber, you may save money by hiring him than trying to solve the problem yourself; however, if you are consistently facing the problem of plumbing, more so than the average person, it would be wiser to spend the time to become the plumber, even an amateur, and solve the problem yourself; I believe this is a case of, selling a man a fish vs. teaching a man to fish, for educators would be out of business if this was taught.  We know we'll spend most of our lives learning; should we not, instead of paying for the fish over the course of twenty years, simply learn how to fish in the first place and pocket the cash?  In the case of plumbing, I would much rather hire a professional, because I never have this problem often enough to bother trying to understand plumbing myself.  On the other hand, we spend nearly every day (some of us, anyway) learning new things; it seems, learning how to self-educate is the single skill that would be worth learning before all others, as it is the precursor of any skill we would like to learn.

You guys strayed wide off topic again, the question remains: Why is the US raping the rest of the world and how long are they gonna take it.

Why?  Because they have the power to, and they didn't accrue that power by being ethical and genuine; in the case of government, the end always justifies the means.  How long?  For as long as we, the people, allow it, or until other governments get tired of it.

[PrintMule]

US has too much troops and war machines too simply sit idle. Where would you put all those guys? And even if US would reduce army size by 50%, those troops will turn mercenaries/contractors and wage their own wars with the help of government lobbying. You do not simply say "ok guys, go home and be unemployed, cause only thing you can - is to run around with full equipment and shoot people, we do not need you anymore, ktnxbye".