4 ms·

"It's also not able to force you to study topics you don't want to, or take an entire class worth of material instead of a single Wikipedia article" - It's enti

"It's also not able to force you to study topics you don't want to, or take an entire class worth of material instead of a single Wikipedia article" - It's entirely possible to cover a class worth of material & study topics you don't want to without paying for someone to help you do that. I think the point is that given two people that learned a course (say computer science), with one learning formally at a university and the other learning through a combination of sources on the internet, and they both end up with roughly the same knowledge and competence - the one who went to university is likely to have more options open to them. A system that requires that kind of money to "certify" people of their skills is unfair as it blocks off the chance of certification for a large population of citizens. (-Certification here is one that is accepted by other members of society such as employers).

abruzzi 11y ago
"It's entirely possible to cover a class worth of material & study topics you don't want to without paying for someone to help you do that." True, but that misses the point. If you expecting to gain a well rounded education, where you learn about many things that you otherwise wouldn't have, then relying only on you're intellectual curiosity will not work for most people I've met. Yes, for the rare auto-didact, they will dive deep on their own time into many different subjects, but in my experience most people I've known (even liberal arts majors) would never look beyond the confines of their chosen area of study. I can't remember how many times in high school and college I heard classmates grumble about "after I graduate, when will I ever need this". In high school (for me) it was mostly aimed at math classes (I grew up in a very blue collar area where the high school had something like 10% of their students going on the college). They were happier learning history or having to read cliff notes on some novel. But in college it was usually people in one major complaining that they had to take the "wider world" requirements. Though actually I heard it the absolute most from fellow music majors that had to take a physics class on acoustics. The reality is so many people see college solely as job prep, and that is a very strong part of what it can do, but (and this is kind of the point of the article) it can function in many other ways. I'm a counter example. I've spent something like 15 years in college. I have two bachelors (philosophy and english), an MFA (creative writing) and and working towards a PhD (math). But I work in computers, and not only do I not have a CS or related degree, the only computer class I ever took was a "wider world" class I had to take (and ironically I groused about it, because I'm already a programmer and manage a staff of programmers and DBAs)
- Retra 11y ago
  Most people entering university have no real-world experience, and thus don't get to see the kind of decision-making that results from the general malaise of careless incompetence caused by over-specialization.

abruzzi 11y ago

"It's entirely possible to cover a class worth of material & study topics you don't want to without paying for someone to help you do that." True, but that misses the point. If you expecting to gain a well rounded education, where you learn about many things that you otherwise wouldn't have, then relying only on you're intellectual curiosity will not work for most people I've met. Yes, for the rare auto-didact, they will dive deep on their own time into many different subjects, but in my experience most people I've known (even liberal arts majors) would never look beyond the confines of their chosen area of study. I can't remember how many times in high school and college I heard classmates grumble about "after I graduate, when will I ever need this". In high school (for me) it was mostly aimed at math classes (I grew up in a very blue collar area where the high school had something like 10% of their students going on the college). They were happier learning history or having to read cliff notes on some novel. But in college it was usually people in one major complaining that they had to take the "wider world" requirements. Though actually I heard it the absolute most from fellow music majors that had to take a physics class on acoustics. The reality is so many people see college solely as job prep, and that is a very strong part of what it can do, but (and this is kind of the point of the article) it can function in many other ways. I'm a counter example. I've spent something like 15 years in college. I have two bachelors (philosophy and english), an MFA (creative writing) and and working towards a PhD (math). But I work in computers, and not only do I not have a CS or related degree, the only computer class I ever took was a "wider world" class I had to take (and ironically I groused about it, because I'm already a programmer and manage a staff of programmers and DBAs)

Retra 11y ago
Most people entering university have no real-world experience, and thus don't get to see the kind of decision-making that results from the general malaise of careless incompetence caused by over-specialization.