Why do liberals think what you do in only in the confines a Unversity makes one "educated"? (lawyers, parties)
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Someday, when you are older and, hopefully, wiser you will realize that the bolded portion of your above post is what higher education is all about. It doesn't make you smarter than other people, it makes you smarter than you were before you started learning.
Based on your posts in this thread, it is clear that you are still a work in progress.
Considering that I am 37 and could comfortably retire tomorrow and not have to work again a day in my life I am pretty happy with my achievements. You are right though, I am a work in progress and constantly try to better myself. Again you overstate the value of college. One can go to the library, go to the Kahn Academy's website and learn just as much , if not more than in a college environment. While college has its place if going for a specialized field such as engineering, architecture, etc., most college degrees are worthless. And as for your statement "It makes you smarter than you were before you started learning", does one really need to spend 150K to accomplish that? As Matt Damon said in Good Will Hunting " You dropped 150k on an education that you could have gotten for a buck fifty and late charges at the local library ". Good luck to you!
Considering that I am 37 and could comfortably retire tomorrow and not have to work again a day in my life I am pretty happy with my achievements. You are right though, I am a work in progress and constantly try to better myself. Again you overstate the value of college. One can go to the library, go to the Kahn Academy's website and learn just as much , if not more than in a college environment. While college has its place if going for a specialized field such as engineering, architecture, etc., most college degrees are worthless. And as for your statement "It makes you smarter than you were before you started learning", does one really need to spend 150K to accomplish that? As Matt Damon said in Good Will Hunting " You dropped 150k on an education that you could have gotten for a buck fifty and late charges at the local library ". Good luck to you!
You see that thing sailing right over your head?? That was the point of my post.
Yes it is. Common sense is nothing but logic. Most of many subjects taught in college depend on logical thinking. Logic is also taught as a subject.
The first purpose of a college degree is to learn how to think and reason carefully. Everything else is a study and development of a particular skill. Some of those skills require a person to get their hands dirty, and some don't.
College at it's core is nothing more than concentrated, disciplined development of coherent thinking skills.
You are talking about what it was supposed to be -- not what it's become. Today college is a glorified trade school where everyone assumes if they get $100,000 in loans to get a degree, they are automatically entitled to a 6 figure career.
My grandfather only got through third grade but he could explain vector forces better than any college professor and he learned them through playing pool. And he knew how to apply vector forces amazingly well.
Not just the internet universities. A significant number of universities no longer have admission standards of any kind. And if some student repeats classes often enough and just sticks with it -- maybe taking 8 years instead of 4, eventually that student will be handed a degree.
Times are changing. 20 years ago you had to be a little bit intelligent to make it through college - although not especially smart. Now with everyone able to go to college, no matter what their gpa, or ability, a college degree doesn't mean all that much. And it definitely doesn't mean someone has a work ethic or any ambition. It doesn't mean someone can read and follow written procedures - or write them, it doesn't mean one can analyze a situation or perform complex math.
Now with the tuition going sky high, many of your smarter kids who can do a little math might just decide on some field that gets them earning money right away and that doesn't require a loan that will take at least 30 years to pay off. Those who realize that half of college graduates are not finding jobs -- and that employers can just easily bring in H1B visa immigrants who will work for much less than the American student would have wanted -- what's the point in taking on $100,000 in debt when the employers can easily find employees eager to take $40,000 a year?
Please provide proof the bolded statements. The only colleges that I'm aware of that have open admissions are the CCs. Earlier today I posted the UE rates for people of all educational levels. Amazingly, despite what you read on CD, college educated people have lower UE rates.
Not just the internet universities. A significant number of universities no longer have admission standards of any kind. And if some student repeats classes often enough and just sticks with it -- maybe taking 8 years instead of 4, eventually that student will be handed a degree.
Times are changing. 20 years ago you had to be a little bit intelligent to make it through college - although not especially smart. Now with everyone able to go to college, no matter what their gpa, or ability, a college degree doesn't mean all that much. And it definitely doesn't mean someone has a work ethic or any ambition. It doesn't mean someone can read and follow written procedures - or write them, it doesn't mean one can analyze a situation or perform complex math.
Now with the tuition going sky high, many of your smarter kids who can do a little math might just decide on some field that gets them earning money right away and that doesn't require a loan that will take at least 30 years to pay off. Those who realize that half of college graduates are not finding jobs -- and that employers can just easily bring in H1B visa immigrants who will work for much less than the American student would have wanted -- what's the point in taking on $100,000 in debt when the employers can easily find employees eager to take $40,000 a year?
The universities I applied too had requirements of GPA and ACT or SAT scores and they also looked at letters of recommendations and extracurricular activities. If you missed one of these by a little some would accept you in a summer program in which you had to at least get 2.75 GPA to officially enter in the fall. However, that isn't all they also look at your first semester or quarter grade which should also be 2.75 (B-) or risk getting expelled. As someone else mentioned you must be thinking of CC when it comes to no requirements?
As for value of degree, they are still have value but more and more jobs are asking for experience + degree. Graduates are having trouble finding jobs because of lack of experience which they should have gotten through volunteer work or internships in the first place (I messed up in this regard myself).
There are many people who know how to do things but do not know how to teach. That body of knowledge is gone when they die. They may have taken on an apprentice, but some knowledge is too complex or important to be learned one person at a time.
People who knock the college environment don’t understand it. If you are sitting in a room of thirty people who all either interested in building houses or have built houses. You can learn more about building houses in a few months than a life time of building houses will teach you.
Colleges serve a dual purpose. They are for learning but they are also repositories if you will for many different bodies of knowledge. Today a major discovery in the field of atomic particles is in the news. Years of teaching and a steady stream of students for generations multiplied by all academic institutions is how this day came.
You can’t really sit alone under an apple tree an solve the world’s biggest problems. It was said that the map that William and Clark drew of the Louisiana Purchase from their journey was accurate within about forty feet (or yards?). They also took crash courses in, astronomy, medicine, botany, and a host of other disciplines to prepare for the Journey. They didn't just leave and try to wing it. They were privately tutored by the best minds in each field they had to master.
IMO some people don't like academics because being educated can give a person a higher social class or status with out the money. It just illustrates that in our culture we try to value education and learning above wealth.
Being educated is a byproduct of a number of factors including work and life experiences, social interactions, and emotional intelligence..basically none of which college can teach you. Some of my most successful friends worth millions now didn't even go to college, and some that did dropped out after a couple years to start their own gigs. Know some folks with PHds now working the barista at Starbucks, probably even a few on here complaining about how life isn't fair blaming someone else
Your work ethic , your ability to self teach, and how you manage your time and interact with others are all far more critical to ones success in life than getting a diploma, contrived from professors ..many of whom have probably never gotten their hands dirty in the real world.
Meh. I am not denying the value of of experience outside academia, but... Human beings have been serious thinkers for thousands of years and managed to commit their knowledge to writing for perhaps two thousand. A well-rounded individual needs to know more than just how to make a living.
For one thing, in the Western world at least, we are charged with taking part in running our community's and country's affairs. Without a bit of historic knowledge and perhaps even a bit of hard thinking about the ethos that's supposed to guide Western civilization, we are more apt to fall victim to slogans and slick marketing campaigns. Academia is a good spot for imbuing that sort of knowledge.
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So I regretted making a smart-ass reply...
