4 ms·

Though in large part what you are saying is accurate and studies likely confirm it, the comment above makes the distinction of select courses of study. Engineer

Though in large part what you are saying is accurate and studies likely confirm it, the comment above makes the distinction of select courses of study. Engineers, lawyers and doctors aren't average, even within the university context. >...many people have very successful careers in one field despite having a degree in a completely different field... This sounds a great deal like transfer learning. Applying format, structures, and approaches to unrelated fields. Much of an engineering degree is designed around learning to learn well. That's the only degree I can speak of, but it has been my understanding that other programs have similar intent.

xyzzyz 7y ago
Engineers, lawyers and doctors aren't average, even within the university context. You need to talk to lawyers and doctors too. Lawyers typically know jack shit about the law outside the fields they practice in. Doctor education varies greatly between countries. For example, in Poland medical school is whole 2 years longer than in the US, and the students have to learn all Latin names of all possible bones and muscles in the whole body. Every doctor will tell you that it’s absolutely useless in their actual practice. Do the two missing years make US doctors 25% worse? Clearly not, doctors forget most of what they learn anyway. It’s not like your rheumatologist remembers symptoms of all those rare internal diseases they had to memorize for the test. Applying format, structures, and approaches to unrelated fields. Much of an engineering degree is designed around learning to learn well. That's the only degree I can speak of, but it has been my understanding that other programs have similar intent. And engineering students, especially from top programs, typically are great at that, but not because they learned it at university, but rather because you need to be really smart to get into and successfully graduate with science or engineering degree. Many people in western countries these days, especially the smartest and best educated, have extreme hard time accepting that innate differences in cognitive ability is a real, observable thing, and consequently their models of reality are deficient, because they put the causation on wrong factors.
- philwelch 7y ago
  In some countries you can even go straight to medical school without a college degree.
  - xyzzyz 7y ago
    In most countries, in fact. The pre-med thing that US and some other countries have is bizarre.

xyzzyz 7y ago

Engineers, lawyers and doctors aren't average, even within the university context. You need to talk to lawyers and doctors too. Lawyers typically know jack shit about the law outside the fields they practice in. Doctor education varies greatly between countries. For example, in Poland medical school is whole 2 years longer than in the US, and the students have to learn all Latin names of all possible bones and muscles in the whole body. Every doctor will tell you that it’s absolutely useless in their actual practice. Do the two missing years make US doctors 25% worse? Clearly not, doctors forget most of what they learn anyway. It’s not like your rheumatologist remembers symptoms of all those rare internal diseases they had to memorize for the test. Applying format, structures, and approaches to unrelated fields. Much of an engineering degree is designed around learning to learn well. That's the only degree I can speak of, but it has been my understanding that other programs have similar intent. And engineering students, especially from top programs, typically are great at that, but not because they learned it at university, but rather because you need to be really smart to get into and successfully graduate with science or engineering degree. Many people in western countries these days, especially the smartest and best educated, have extreme hard time accepting that innate differences in cognitive ability is a real, observable thing, and consequently their models of reality are deficient, because they put the causation on wrong factors.

philwelch 7y ago
In some countries you can even go straight to medical school without a college degree.
- xyzzyz 7y ago
  In most countries, in fact. The pre-med thing that US and some other countries have is bizarre.