7 ms·

College isn't two years (some vocational courses are two years, that isn't college though). Not all MSc are 1 year. And you will still need 4/5 years for a PHd

College isn't two years (some vocational courses are two years, that isn't college though). Not all MSc are 1 year. And you will still need 4/5 years for a PHd if you do a MSc (in almost no cases is one year of a MSc a substitute for one year of a PHd). Also, England's university system (three years, not two) is notorious for turning out unrounded graduates who are unable to think for themselves and know little outside of their subject area. The reason for a four-year degree is that you spend two years doing courses from other areas (inc. your own) and actually develop all the soft skills that are usually of vital importance in the work place. In particular, the ability to turn your hand to something new and manage is going to be very important going forwards. College is about precisely the opposite of learning as fast as you can. That isn't knowledge that is useful in the real world. You need experience, and understanding.

dragonwriter 7y ago
> College isn't two years (some vocational courses are two years, that isn't college though). An Associates degrees is college, and is normed at two years. > The reason for a four-year degree is that you spend two years doing courses from other areas (inc. your own) While some, especially liberal arts, four year degrees work that way, that's not really generally true except at the level of looseness in the meaning of “other areas (inc. your own)” where it is essentially tautologically true of any course of study. Many engineering programs, for instance, are intensely focussed on the central focus from day one.
- learc83 7y ago
  >An Associates degrees is college, and is normed at two years It's not what people mean when they ask if you went to college though. >Many engineering programs, for instance, are intensely focussed on the central focus from day one. If they are accredited, they still have a substantial liberal arts component.
- hogFeast 7y ago
  Read the post I replied to. It was about the UK. Three years in England. Four years in Scotland.
walshemj 7y ago
Back when I went into the vocational track in the UK at 18/19 it was 4 years doing day release to get to HNC level - that was specialist thermo fluids for the turbine/ aerospace industry - ironically all but one of us on the course was working for world leading RnD. Now the same grade the equivalent of ASO (assistant scientific officer) is a degree entry Maggie Aderin-Pocock (one of the sky at night presenters) started out as a ASO at RAE post degree, and ASO is what Bob Howard was recruited as (Bob got screwed on that btw) I have also heard it said the US has 4 year degrees as high school isn't hard enough.
jfengel 7y ago
Absolutely, though a lot of colleges do a terrible job of explaining that. Employers often demand a four-year degree, but they don't really know why. They'll test you on your technical skills, but not on those "soft" skills -- writing, understanding requirements, negotiating, collaborating -- and then complain when you don't have them. Such things are hard to define and hard to test for. STEM majors regularly complain, loudly, about the fuzziness of the classes that teach those skills. I believe that we could all do a better job of explaining why many of the most important things are hard to measure, and some of that starts with (for example) teaching programmers that their job is to understand what the client really wants. Which is practically never being able to sort a list in .02 milliseconds rather than .03 milliseconds. I don't know if American liberal arts educations are any better than English universities at cranking out students who can think for themselves. While they do get an extra year, full of courses that should be able to help them think about and communicate about what people think and feel, they often treat those as blow-off requirements. The classes are often uninspiring. They are hard to teach, but I think we could do better at trying to show why the notion is important.
- hogFeast 7y ago
  > STEM majors regularly complain, loudly, about the fuzziness of the classes that teach those skills. It is easier, for some people, to be precisely wrong rather than roughly correct. I agree generally that most universities are bad at producing students who can think for themselves (to be clear, my reference was to Scottish universities that do a four-year degree versus three-year in England). You don't need any extra classes though. Just create classes that test for this and doing classes from other areas will probably help to. Also, clearly, universities try to create courses in a way that limits complaining from students and makes it all about grades...which isn't helpful.

dragonwriter 7y ago

> College isn't two years (some vocational courses are two years, that isn't college though). An Associates degrees is college, and is normed at two years. > The reason for a four-year degree is that you spend two years doing courses from other areas (inc. your own) While some, especially liberal arts, four year degrees work that way, that's not really generally true except at the level of looseness in the meaning of “other areas (inc. your own)” where it is essentially tautologically true of any course of study. Many engineering programs, for instance, are intensely focussed on the central focus from day one.

learc83 7y ago
>An Associates degrees is college, and is normed at two years It's not what people mean when they ask if you went to college though. >Many engineering programs, for instance, are intensely focussed on the central focus from day one. If they are accredited, they still have a substantial liberal arts component.
hogFeast 7y ago
Read the post I replied to. It was about the UK. Three years in England. Four years in Scotland.

walshemj 7y ago

Back when I went into the vocational track in the UK at 18/19 it was 4 years doing day release to get to HNC level - that was specialist thermo fluids for the turbine/ aerospace industry - ironically all but one of us on the course was working for world leading RnD. Now the same grade the equivalent of ASO (assistant scientific officer) is a degree entry Maggie Aderin-Pocock (one of the sky at night presenters) started out as a ASO at RAE post degree, and ASO is what Bob Howard was recruited as (Bob got screwed on that btw) I have also heard it said the US has 4 year degrees as high school isn't hard enough.

jfengel 7y ago

Absolutely, though a lot of colleges do a terrible job of explaining that. Employers often demand a four-year degree, but they don't really know why. They'll test you on your technical skills, but not on those "soft" skills -- writing, understanding requirements, negotiating, collaborating -- and then complain when you don't have them. Such things are hard to define and hard to test for. STEM majors regularly complain, loudly, about the fuzziness of the classes that teach those skills. I believe that we could all do a better job of explaining why many of the most important things are hard to measure, and some of that starts with (for example) teaching programmers that their job is to understand what the client really wants. Which is practically never being able to sort a list in .02 milliseconds rather than .03 milliseconds. I don't know if American liberal arts educations are any better than English universities at cranking out students who can think for themselves. While they do get an extra year, full of courses that should be able to help them think about and communicate about what people think and feel, they often treat those as blow-off requirements. The classes are often uninspiring. They are hard to teach, but I think we could do better at trying to show why the notion is important.

hogFeast 7y ago
> STEM majors regularly complain, loudly, about the fuzziness of the classes that teach those skills. It is easier, for some people, to be precisely wrong rather than roughly correct. I agree generally that most universities are bad at producing students who can think for themselves (to be clear, my reference was to Scottish universities that do a four-year degree versus three-year in England). You don't need any extra classes though. Just create classes that test for this and doing classes from other areas will probably help to. Also, clearly, universities try to create courses in a way that limits complaining from students and makes it all about grades...which isn't helpful.