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College is only partially about getting educated directly - it's also about proving you can adult on some level. Can you get to classes on time and manage a sch

College is only partially about getting educated directly - it's also about proving you can adult on some level. Can you get to classes on time and manage a schedule that's more complex than "be at this building for 6 hours a day"? Of course that's a very poor proxy (some people live at home while getting 4 year degrees, etc), and often times college becomes more about signaling you're part of a certain socioeconomic background (with all the subtle discrimination that entails). Either way, even if the things you learned are entirely irrelevant to the actual job, a lot of employers look to it as a very rough signal for "had things together", and have a set of beliefs about people who have them.

TrackerFF 7y ago
Tbh, there's so much variance between colleges / unis - hell, even between classes at those school - to use it as any meaningful predictor for such things. At my Uni (my major, that is), there were exactly zero classes with compulsory attendance. What would happen was this: First 2-3 weeks were packed with students, then it would thin out, and two thirds into the semester you'd sometimes have only a dozen of students. Come last lectures and class review, lectures would be packed. That is even more relevant today, with video / streamed lectures.
- tedajax 7y ago
  To echo this sentiment, I probably only attended ~45% of my classes throughout all of college. With some notable exceptions the classroom experience was pretty poor and all of the information and resources were readily available on the internet. And if you're not the best autodidact there were plenty of study groups were students got together and figured things out just fine. That said, I still think self-directing yourself through that kind of environment takes a lot of agency and skill, agency and skill that companies require for jobs where neither ageny or skill of that magnitude will be required.
  - BlueTemplar 7y ago
    Thing is, a single of those "notable exceptions" might completely change your life...
- 52-6F-62 7y ago
  I met a fellow at a Google I/O event who was working for a very large, well-known company here in Canada who was living in Ontario working for the company full time while he completed his CS degree at UBC. He would just fetch the coursework, complete it, and never attend a class until there were finals then he would fly out and complete them before returning to work. Attendance can even be an inhibitor as his employer hired him knowing his situation and because he was going to graduate with a degree. Granted this guy was clearly very smart so I can imagine why they accepted those conditions.
toraobo 7y ago
> Can you get to classes on time and manage a schedule that's more complex than "be at this building for 6 hours a day"? Most jobs don't require time management skills beyond "be at this building for 9 hours a day".
redisman 7y ago
> College is only partially about getting educated directly - it's also about proving you can adult on some level. Can you get to classes on time and manage a schedule that's more complex than "be at this building for 6 hours a day"? If that was the real requirement companies are interested in then wouldn't someone working variable shift at a fast food restaurant proving that they can "adult" just fine? Those jobs have very real repercussions for not showing up even once unlike college.

TrackerFF 7y ago

Tbh, there's so much variance between colleges / unis - hell, even between classes at those school - to use it as any meaningful predictor for such things. At my Uni (my major, that is), there were exactly zero classes with compulsory attendance. What would happen was this: First 2-3 weeks were packed with students, then it would thin out, and two thirds into the semester you'd sometimes have only a dozen of students. Come last lectures and class review, lectures would be packed. That is even more relevant today, with video / streamed lectures.

tedajax 7y ago
To echo this sentiment, I probably only attended ~45% of my classes throughout all of college. With some notable exceptions the classroom experience was pretty poor and all of the information and resources were readily available on the internet. And if you're not the best autodidact there were plenty of study groups were students got together and figured things out just fine. That said, I still think self-directing yourself through that kind of environment takes a lot of agency and skill, agency and skill that companies require for jobs where neither ageny or skill of that magnitude will be required.
- BlueTemplar 7y ago
  Thing is, a single of those "notable exceptions" might completely change your life...
52-6F-62 7y ago
I met a fellow at a Google I/O event who was working for a very large, well-known company here in Canada who was living in Ontario working for the company full time while he completed his CS degree at UBC. He would just fetch the coursework, complete it, and never attend a class until there were finals then he would fly out and complete them before returning to work. Attendance can even be an inhibitor as his employer hired him knowing his situation and because he was going to graduate with a degree. Granted this guy was clearly very smart so I can imagine why they accepted those conditions.

toraobo 7y ago

> Can you get to classes on time and manage a schedule that's more complex than "be at this building for 6 hours a day"? Most jobs don't require time management skills beyond "be at this building for 9 hours a day".

redisman 7y ago

> College is only partially about getting educated directly - it's also about proving you can adult on some level. Can you get to classes on time and manage a schedule that's more complex than "be at this building for 6 hours a day"? If that was the real requirement companies are interested in then wouldn't someone working variable shift at a fast food restaurant proving that they can "adult" just fine? Those jobs have very real repercussions for not showing up even once unlike college.