7 ms·

I totally agree with the article, but to me the saddest part of all of this is I'm unconvinced that a college education is actually even that useful. (I say tha

I totally agree with the article, but to me the saddest part of all of this is I'm unconvinced that a college education is actually even that useful. (I say that with a four year CS degree). Most majors, to be blunt, are pretty useless in terms of real world skills. The argument is "they teach you how to think". I don't know how you would even measure that, but it doesn't seem that true, especially since colleges are hotbeds of intellectual fads that are easily disproved by reality. The only prerequisite to learning to think is making an effort at it. College used to be a good signal for that, but now its not. So we essentially created a "virtuous" class of "educated" people that aren't as smart as they think they are, talking down to people that are struggling economically by telling them that they need to spend 100k to "learn to think". It's amazing things have stayed relatively peaceful. It's funny to me because arguably I am part of this liberal elite, and even I feel a lot of contempt and irritation towards my increasingly smug compatriots. People really need to tone down the "flyover state" and "redneck" rhetoric. I definitely didn't vote for Trump, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't get why people did.

tjr225 7y ago
I agree. I say all of this as someone making over six figures working from home in a situation I could have never imagined myself in ten years ago. I needed my degree; but just to get my foot in the door. I didn't learn much during the process itself other than to recognize the meta fact that I had to do it to get out of my current situation. This would have been a real problem for me financially if it didn't work out the way it did because I wouldn't have been able to get out from under my(and more so my wife's) student loan debt. It should be useful and I think it can be, but that was not the experience that I had.
- titanomachy 7y ago
  It seems that a lot of people feel their degree was not useful. My studies were definitely far removed from what I now do for a living. However, I have not met (except on HN) any successful "knowledge workers" without a degree. I'm sure there are many factors contributing to that: smarter people are more likely to pursue degrees in the first place, companies may ignore otherwise good candidates since they lack a degree. But another possibility is that many of us underestimate the skills we learned in pursuing our degrees. Certainly many people obtain those skills in other ways, but it's impossible to know if I personally would have.
  - drunkpotato 7y ago
    I did not have a degree in the sciences but I did minor in computer science. I think my degrees are very valuable. It could just be response bias: people happy with their educational experience are quietly satisfied, those unhappy are loudly unsatisfied. Would be my guess. Online responses are not a great sample of the real world.
    - organsnyder 7y ago
      I'm very happy with my degree (a double-major in CS and music). But even though I make my living working as a software developer, I appreciate my music education more.
  - tjr225 7y ago
    I feel that I have a lucid understanding of the lack of skills that I learned during my undergraduate program- that is exactly why I am frustrated with my experience.
  - randomdata 7y ago
    > However, I have not met (except on HN) any successful "knowledge workers" without a degree. Aside from hearing the odd person tell a funny story from their college days (which, I might add, does not guarantee that they successfully attained a degree), I don't think I've met anyone (except on HN) in the last decade or so where scholastic background has even come up in conversation. It was something to talk about when we were young and being fresh out of school was news, sure, but as I get older the conversations have moved on to more pertinent topics like homeownership and children. Nobody really cares to talk about something that happened so long ago that people born back then are now in college themselves. So, I am rather curious as to how you would ever know? I cannot even begin to see if your assertion holds true within my professional peer group as I have absolutely no idea if any of them have degrees or not.
    - watwut 7y ago
      People around me talk about not just current issues. They talk about own childhood, elementary school teachers, sports club they have been to, what they did with friends, previous jobs. So college comes up too. Plus if you are hiring it is in cv. Moreover, the older we are the less interesting new things we have to tall about. We work and then go home to children. And there is often not much else engaging to talk about. So people talk about past.
acbart 7y ago
I'm a university professor in CS. I don't teach people how to problem-solve, and I have never known what other people are talking about when they claim they teach that in their courses. I teach fundamental skills, and then I put my students in front of lots of problems. In an ideal world, they transfer that experience to new problems. My most important role is providing the motivation and structure to go tackle assignments that might be similar to the ones they tackle later on in their careers. I really like Amy Ko's take on the process: https://medium.com/bits-and-behavior/the-transfer-problem-in-computing-education-501d4f129897 https://medium.com/bits-and-behavior/the-transfer-problem-in... All of that pales to the real process going on: good students were matriculated into my program, and I credential them via a bunch of assessments that I wrote despite never having any classes on formal assessment design. If you gave us a random sample of the population, I doubt we'd be that great at turning them into Computer Scientists.
- titanomachy 7y ago
  > assessments I wrote despite never having any classes on formal assessment design. PG had a post here recently on (approximately) that subject. http://www.paulgraham.com/lesson.html http://www.paulgraham.com/lesson.html Very few assessments are well-designed.
- sangnoir 7y ago
  > My most important role is providing the motivation and structure to go tackle assignments that might be similar to the ones they tackle later on in their careers. Thank you for distilling the essence of what I feel when I hear people say college education is not necessary. I suspect those individuals are no longer college-aged and have matured. Sure, a 19 year old could self-study online instead of going to college - but what 19 year-old has the discipline and motivation to do so consistently for 3-4 years? Granted - I don't believe that college it should cost six figures, but the structure provided is very helpful.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
voxl 7y ago
This type of concern trolling makes me want to ramp up the "redneck" and "flyover state" rhetoric. If the group of people that idolize Steven Crowder and other PC anti-police can't handle the rhetoric they dish out then let Trump destroy there lives. Because that's the cruel irony, the educated and wealthy are not hurt by Trump nearly as much as the poor white trash are. If you went to University and all you can muster in it's favor is "you learn how to think" argument then you are a fool.
- allovernow 7y ago
  >If the group of people that idolize Steven Crowder and other PC anti-police can't handle the rhetoric they dish out You realize you're basically just stereotyping half the country, right? These are people with families and friends and communities and jobs. "White trash" is an exceedingly small minority of people who voted for Trump - if they voted at all. People didn't elect Trump because they're secret closet nazis...but this style of black and white thinking, increasingly common online, was a major contributor.
- tengbretson 7y ago
  If you have this kind of disdain for these people why not let them split off and govern themselves in their own country? What good can possibly come from letting two groups that hate each other take turns ruling over one another?
  - titanomachy 7y ago
    So create two new neighbouring countries with opposing ideologies and wildly inequal economies, each with 15% of the world's military power and 25% of the world's nuclear weapons? What could go wrong?
- nzmsv 7y ago
  That's an awful lot of vitriol from someone who can't spell "their" ;)
- almost_usual 7y ago
  The funny thing is people say “flyover state” and think California is some liberal paradise where they’re safe from crazies and rednecks. It’s not a flyover issue. It’s in your backyard. I’ve seen confederate flags outside of South Lake Tahoe which makes no sense. People will get fed up and they’re closer than you think.
jayd16 7y ago
>I'm unconvinced that a college education is actually even that useful. How is this a question? How many high school grads have you interviewed and thought you could spin them up to the usefulness of a graduate from nothing in a reasonable amount of time/effort? Education is expensive, sure. We can talk about that... but useful? It seems obviously useful to me.
- recuter 7y ago
  Wow.
- slowdog 7y ago
  Not sure if you're missing the point of the poster above. Poster is more likely asking whether the education gained in college is actually useful vs the doors opened by having that diploma. If one dropped out of college right before graduation with 99% of the education, likely that person would end up with worse off job prospects compared to the person who completed their program
  - InitialLastName 7y ago
    One of the most important signals sent by finishing a college degree is "I can finish the things I start". That also happens to be one with great transferability into a workplace driven increasingly by independent work.
  - jayd16 7y ago
    The diploma is useful in certain fields I'm sure. Although I doubt most CS employers would really hold you to it if you explained you never completed your final quarter but aced the interview. However, they said college education not college diploma. They're clearly talking about the skills learned.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- overgard 7y ago
xvilka 7y ago
It's not a problem solving education, otherwise it would have looked something like TRIZ[1] but with a broader application spectrum. While it certainly gives some fundamental reasoning skills it lacks more sceptical, inquisitive approach. So many subjects are still represented in a dogmatic fashion. Adding aforementioned TRIZ, more skepticism and empiricism, teaching about cognitive[2] and statistical[3] biases would produce a better impact for the whole life. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_(statistics) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_(statistics)
epicgiga 7y ago
I'd go further, and say that at this point, college is a self serving regime that needs to be overthrown. I've no problem with dedicated medical schools and law schools etc, but there's something about the university system that is deeply corrupt and self absorbed. We should break them up, have the schools be separate schools, and have separate certification centers and competition in certificates (which would plug it all back into the real world). The fact they set their own exams is a big part of the rot. It's not different to one of us setting our own driving test.
- dougmwne 7y ago
  I'm not sure if it's possible. We all have plenty of incentive to keep on pretending that the emperor has clothes. The educated elite run the world. Why would we overthrow ourselves? The degree is the first fence protecting the gated community of the new urban aristocracy.
  - goatinaboat 7y ago
    The degree is the first fence protecting the gated community of the new urban aristocracy But it isn’t a gate anymore really; in the UK at least basically everyone below a certain age has a degree, since they converted the polys. Having a degree isn’t in any way “elite” now, although of course there are still elite universities.
    - dougmwne 7y ago
      Apologies. I should have offered the disclaimer than I was talking about the US. The article is describing US politics and I was responding to it. European countries have different systems, different social classes, and different barriers to entry than we do. We also do not have your safety nets. Many here are one missed paycheck away from living on the street. As the article states, in the US, 70% of people over 25 do not have a 4-year university degree. And contrary to the UK and the rest of Europe, American University is staggeringly expensive. And despite what you might read on HN, without a 4 year degree, nearly all professional jobs would be off limits. And if you did manage to sneak past the first gate, as some talented coders on HN have done, you can look forward to a lifetime inferiority complex, knowing that your co-workers have a safety and desirability you lack. In the US, the 4-year degree really is a significantly high barrier to entry to the professional class. You also need to be living in one of a dozen elite cities, be the right race, have the right politics, the right friends and family, and the right set of previous employers. Only then have you gained that special status that lets you own a home you're not afraid to lose, go to a doctor you can afford, and enjoy a job that affords you comfort, stability, respect, and some measure of control over your destiny. The overall point of this article is that in the US economy, there's not enough spots at the top for everyone. And everyone not at the top will live economically precarious lives. One political party likes to pretend that there is endless opertunity for all with promises of more university, and the other party has realized the lie and is decending into anti-intellectual madness, rejecting acedemia, experts and science. Your country has some uncertain times ahead and there will be plenty of call to more closely emulate the free-market American system now that you've distanced yourselves from the more regulated and socialist European system. Do be careful.
yters 7y ago
I do say the same thing frequently, but I also fear I am giving into another sort of smugness: someone who has had a special leg up and is denying it. Trying to look like I have less from the degrees than I actually do is maybe also not so great, could possibly be even worse (disincentives people who could really benefit from an appropriate degree). While CS related knowledge comes up almost never in day to day work and conversation, it is a common background I share with most people at work. We all have the same frame of reference, and can pick up what each other are talking about more easily that way. And perhaps the most useful aspects of our degree have become so second nature to our thinking we do not notice them anymore. Also, the experience during the degree of working with rarified problems does train my mind to find the underlying concept behind it all, instead of hacking barely working pieces of code together. Or at least helps me feel more shame when I do the latter, and give me some instinct to push for something better.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tw04 7y ago
I think you’re missing the forest for the trees. Having grown up in a small town, I can tell you the difference between my classmates who went to college and those who didn’t is night and day. I’m not talking “intelligence” I’m talking world view. The folks who never left home just don’t seem to care what’s happening outside of their bubble. Massacre in Uganda? Meh, I’ve got bowling tonight. Assassination in Iran? We need to get the kids to basketball. Global warming? I still have snow to take the sled out. I’m not sure you can quantify that the way you want to. People voted for trump because he said what they wanted to hear and they didn’t care About the details because they’ve never had to apply critical thinking at that level. That’s not a good thing...
- SSSDFRO 7y ago
  In other words, small town people are generally pragmatic while college educated individuals are opinionated.
brnt 7y ago
A university education never pretended to prepare you for real life. Its not some sort of advanced vocational training. There you are trained to think, produce new knowledge. So while you may expect to struggle economically after a university degree, it behooves the rest of us to listen to what they have to say, because those of us who did get vocational training, or no training at all, in all likelihood never had time or reason to stretch the ratio as far as they. I would be very disappointed if they did not develop a sense of smugness, it would mean they didn't see any problems with how society at large currently thinks or operates. A university graduate without an opinion would be time and money wasted.
yodsanklai 7y ago
> I'm unconvinced that a college education is actually even that useful. I can't talk for every majors but at least for STEM, you need to study hard for years to acquire solid foundations. I don't see how you can gather all the required knowledge by yourself.
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  You could and should, but probably won’t.
  - yodsanklai 7y ago
    I don't know in the US, but during the 5 years it took me to graduate, I usually had about 30-40 hours of classes a week, plus a lot of personal work (especially in maths), and that for 5 years. If you want to do that by yourself, you need to: - decide what you need to learn, and find what are the best resources to learn it - keep motivated for many years, without feedback that you're on the right track - convince your future employer that you have skills We should keep learning all life long, but I don't think anything can replace a formal education. It's one thing to learn things on the side when you need them. But it's much harder to tackle heavy foundational topics without supervision.
    - mixmastamyk 7y ago
      They have these devices called books, and work experience. I think the main benefit is the discipline of others having expectations, especially when young.
    - astura 7y ago
      I went to school in the US and my experience is identical to yours. During the school year I'd spend much more than 40 hours a week on schoolwork, I recall taking a software engineering course where my team and I would meet on both Saturday and Sunday for 10ish hours each day for a couple months to get our project done. I also couldn't have done that myself because I was only able to do it with access to student loans, as I had to (at the minimum) eat and have somewhere warm to sleep, which I certainly had no money for, so I had to take out loans for food and rent.

tjr225 7y ago

I agree. I say all of this as someone making over six figures working from home in a situation I could have never imagined myself in ten years ago. I needed my degree; but just to get my foot in the door. I didn't learn much during the process itself other than to recognize the meta fact that I had to do it to get out of my current situation. This would have been a real problem for me financially if it didn't work out the way it did because I wouldn't have been able to get out from under my(and more so my wife's) student loan debt. It should be useful and I think it can be, but that was not the experience that I had.

titanomachy 7y ago
It seems that a lot of people feel their degree was not useful. My studies were definitely far removed from what I now do for a living. However, I have not met (except on HN) any successful "knowledge workers" without a degree. I'm sure there are many factors contributing to that: smarter people are more likely to pursue degrees in the first place, companies may ignore otherwise good candidates since they lack a degree. But another possibility is that many of us underestimate the skills we learned in pursuing our degrees. Certainly many people obtain those skills in other ways, but it's impossible to know if I personally would have.
- drunkpotato 7y ago
  I did not have a degree in the sciences but I did minor in computer science. I think my degrees are very valuable. It could just be response bias: people happy with their educational experience are quietly satisfied, those unhappy are loudly unsatisfied. Would be my guess. Online responses are not a great sample of the real world.
  - organsnyder 7y ago
    I'm very happy with my degree (a double-major in CS and music). But even though I make my living working as a software developer, I appreciate my music education more.
- tjr225 7y ago
  I feel that I have a lucid understanding of the lack of skills that I learned during my undergraduate program- that is exactly why I am frustrated with my experience.
- randomdata 7y ago
  > However, I have not met (except on HN) any successful "knowledge workers" without a degree. Aside from hearing the odd person tell a funny story from their college days (which, I might add, does not guarantee that they successfully attained a degree), I don't think I've met anyone (except on HN) in the last decade or so where scholastic background has even come up in conversation. It was something to talk about when we were young and being fresh out of school was news, sure, but as I get older the conversations have moved on to more pertinent topics like homeownership and children. Nobody really cares to talk about something that happened so long ago that people born back then are now in college themselves. So, I am rather curious as to how you would ever know? I cannot even begin to see if your assertion holds true within my professional peer group as I have absolutely no idea if any of them have degrees or not.
  - watwut 7y ago
    People around me talk about not just current issues. They talk about own childhood, elementary school teachers, sports club they have been to, what they did with friends, previous jobs. So college comes up too. Plus if you are hiring it is in cv. Moreover, the older we are the less interesting new things we have to tall about. We work and then go home to children. And there is often not much else engaging to talk about. So people talk about past.

acbart 7y ago

I'm a university professor in CS. I don't teach people how to problem-solve, and I have never known what other people are talking about when they claim they teach that in their courses. I teach fundamental skills, and then I put my students in front of lots of problems. In an ideal world, they transfer that experience to new problems. My most important role is providing the motivation and structure to go tackle assignments that might be similar to the ones they tackle later on in their careers. I really like Amy Ko's take on the process: https://medium.com/bits-and-behavior/the-transfer-problem-in-computing-education-501d4f129897 https://medium.com/bits-and-behavior/the-transfer-problem-in... All of that pales to the real process going on: good students were matriculated into my program, and I credential them via a bunch of assessments that I wrote despite never having any classes on formal assessment design. If you gave us a random sample of the population, I doubt we'd be that great at turning them into Computer Scientists.

titanomachy 7y ago
> assessments I wrote despite never having any classes on formal assessment design. PG had a post here recently on (approximately) that subject. http://www.paulgraham.com/lesson.html http://www.paulgraham.com/lesson.html Very few assessments are well-designed.
sangnoir 7y ago
> My most important role is providing the motivation and structure to go tackle assignments that might be similar to the ones they tackle later on in their careers. Thank you for distilling the essence of what I feel when I hear people say college education is not necessary. I suspect those individuals are no longer college-aged and have matured. Sure, a 19 year old could self-study online instead of going to college - but what 19 year-old has the discipline and motivation to do so consistently for 3-4 years? Granted - I don't believe that college it should cost six figures, but the structure provided is very helpful.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

voxl 7y ago

This type of concern trolling makes me want to ramp up the "redneck" and "flyover state" rhetoric. If the group of people that idolize Steven Crowder and other PC anti-police can't handle the rhetoric they dish out then let Trump destroy there lives. Because that's the cruel irony, the educated and wealthy are not hurt by Trump nearly as much as the poor white trash are. If you went to University and all you can muster in it's favor is "you learn how to think" argument then you are a fool.

allovernow 7y ago
>If the group of people that idolize Steven Crowder and other PC anti-police can't handle the rhetoric they dish out You realize you're basically just stereotyping half the country, right? These are people with families and friends and communities and jobs. "White trash" is an exceedingly small minority of people who voted for Trump - if they voted at all. People didn't elect Trump because they're secret closet nazis...but this style of black and white thinking, increasingly common online, was a major contributor.
tengbretson 7y ago
If you have this kind of disdain for these people why not let them split off and govern themselves in their own country? What good can possibly come from letting two groups that hate each other take turns ruling over one another?
- titanomachy 7y ago
  So create two new neighbouring countries with opposing ideologies and wildly inequal economies, each with 15% of the world's military power and 25% of the world's nuclear weapons? What could go wrong?
nzmsv 7y ago
That's an awful lot of vitriol from someone who can't spell "their" ;)
almost_usual 7y ago
The funny thing is people say “flyover state” and think California is some liberal paradise where they’re safe from crazies and rednecks. It’s not a flyover issue. It’s in your backyard. I’ve seen confederate flags outside of South Lake Tahoe which makes no sense. People will get fed up and they’re closer than you think.

jayd16 7y ago

>I'm unconvinced that a college education is actually even that useful. How is this a question? How many high school grads have you interviewed and thought you could spin them up to the usefulness of a graduate from nothing in a reasonable amount of time/effort? Education is expensive, sure. We can talk about that... but useful? It seems obviously useful to me.

recuter 7y ago
Wow.
slowdog 7y ago
Not sure if you're missing the point of the poster above. Poster is more likely asking whether the education gained in college is actually useful vs the doors opened by having that diploma. If one dropped out of college right before graduation with 99% of the education, likely that person would end up with worse off job prospects compared to the person who completed their program
- InitialLastName 7y ago
  One of the most important signals sent by finishing a college degree is "I can finish the things I start". That also happens to be one with great transferability into a workplace driven increasingly by independent work.
- jayd16 7y ago
  The diploma is useful in certain fields I'm sure. Although I doubt most CS employers would really hold you to it if you explained you never completed your final quarter but aced the interview. However, they said college education not college diploma. They're clearly talking about the skills learned.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
overgard 7y ago

xvilka 7y ago

It's not a problem solving education, otherwise it would have looked something like TRIZ[1] but with a broader application spectrum. While it certainly gives some fundamental reasoning skills it lacks more sceptical, inquisitive approach. So many subjects are still represented in a dogmatic fashion. Adding aforementioned TRIZ, more skepticism and empiricism, teaching about cognitive[2] and statistical[3] biases would produce a better impact for the whole life. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_(statistics) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_(statistics)

epicgiga 7y ago

I'd go further, and say that at this point, college is a self serving regime that needs to be overthrown. I've no problem with dedicated medical schools and law schools etc, but there's something about the university system that is deeply corrupt and self absorbed. We should break them up, have the schools be separate schools, and have separate certification centers and competition in certificates (which would plug it all back into the real world). The fact they set their own exams is a big part of the rot. It's not different to one of us setting our own driving test.

dougmwne 7y ago
I'm not sure if it's possible. We all have plenty of incentive to keep on pretending that the emperor has clothes. The educated elite run the world. Why would we overthrow ourselves? The degree is the first fence protecting the gated community of the new urban aristocracy.
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  The degree is the first fence protecting the gated community of the new urban aristocracy But it isn’t a gate anymore really; in the UK at least basically everyone below a certain age has a degree, since they converted the polys. Having a degree isn’t in any way “elite” now, although of course there are still elite universities.
  - dougmwne 7y ago
    Apologies. I should have offered the disclaimer than I was talking about the US. The article is describing US politics and I was responding to it. European countries have different systems, different social classes, and different barriers to entry than we do. We also do not have your safety nets. Many here are one missed paycheck away from living on the street. As the article states, in the US, 70% of people over 25 do not have a 4-year university degree. And contrary to the UK and the rest of Europe, American University is staggeringly expensive. And despite what you might read on HN, without a 4 year degree, nearly all professional jobs would be off limits. And if you did manage to sneak past the first gate, as some talented coders on HN have done, you can look forward to a lifetime inferiority complex, knowing that your co-workers have a safety and desirability you lack. In the US, the 4-year degree really is a significantly high barrier to entry to the professional class. You also need to be living in one of a dozen elite cities, be the right race, have the right politics, the right friends and family, and the right set of previous employers. Only then have you gained that special status that lets you own a home you're not afraid to lose, go to a doctor you can afford, and enjoy a job that affords you comfort, stability, respect, and some measure of control over your destiny. The overall point of this article is that in the US economy, there's not enough spots at the top for everyone. And everyone not at the top will live economically precarious lives. One political party likes to pretend that there is endless opertunity for all with promises of more university, and the other party has realized the lie and is decending into anti-intellectual madness, rejecting acedemia, experts and science. Your country has some uncertain times ahead and there will be plenty of call to more closely emulate the free-market American system now that you've distanced yourselves from the more regulated and socialist European system. Do be careful.

yters 7y ago

I do say the same thing frequently, but I also fear I am giving into another sort of smugness: someone who has had a special leg up and is denying it. Trying to look like I have less from the degrees than I actually do is maybe also not so great, could possibly be even worse (disincentives people who could really benefit from an appropriate degree). While CS related knowledge comes up almost never in day to day work and conversation, it is a common background I share with most people at work. We all have the same frame of reference, and can pick up what each other are talking about more easily that way. And perhaps the most useful aspects of our degree have become so second nature to our thinking we do not notice them anymore. Also, the experience during the degree of working with rarified problems does train my mind to find the underlying concept behind it all, instead of hacking barely working pieces of code together. Or at least helps me feel more shame when I do the latter, and give me some instinct to push for something better.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

tw04 7y ago

I think you’re missing the forest for the trees. Having grown up in a small town, I can tell you the difference between my classmates who went to college and those who didn’t is night and day. I’m not talking “intelligence” I’m talking world view. The folks who never left home just don’t seem to care what’s happening outside of their bubble. Massacre in Uganda? Meh, I’ve got bowling tonight. Assassination in Iran? We need to get the kids to basketball. Global warming? I still have snow to take the sled out. I’m not sure you can quantify that the way you want to. People voted for trump because he said what they wanted to hear and they didn’t care About the details because they’ve never had to apply critical thinking at that level. That’s not a good thing...

SSSDFRO 7y ago
In other words, small town people are generally pragmatic while college educated individuals are opinionated.

brnt 7y ago

A university education never pretended to prepare you for real life. Its not some sort of advanced vocational training. There you are trained to think, produce new knowledge. So while you may expect to struggle economically after a university degree, it behooves the rest of us to listen to what they have to say, because those of us who did get vocational training, or no training at all, in all likelihood never had time or reason to stretch the ratio as far as they. I would be very disappointed if they did not develop a sense of smugness, it would mean they didn't see any problems with how society at large currently thinks or operates. A university graduate without an opinion would be time and money wasted.

yodsanklai 7y ago

> I'm unconvinced that a college education is actually even that useful. I can't talk for every majors but at least for STEM, you need to study hard for years to acquire solid foundations. I don't see how you can gather all the required knowledge by yourself.

mixmastamyk 7y ago
You could and should, but probably won’t.
- yodsanklai 7y ago
  I don't know in the US, but during the 5 years it took me to graduate, I usually had about 30-40 hours of classes a week, plus a lot of personal work (especially in maths), and that for 5 years. If you want to do that by yourself, you need to: - decide what you need to learn, and find what are the best resources to learn it - keep motivated for many years, without feedback that you're on the right track - convince your future employer that you have skills We should keep learning all life long, but I don't think anything can replace a formal education. It's one thing to learn things on the side when you need them. But it's much harder to tackle heavy foundational topics without supervision.
  - mixmastamyk 7y ago
    They have these devices called books, and work experience. I think the main benefit is the discipline of others having expectations, especially when young.
  - astura 7y ago
    I went to school in the US and my experience is identical to yours. During the school year I'd spend much more than 40 hours a week on schoolwork, I recall taking a software engineering course where my team and I would meet on both Saturday and Sunday for 10ish hours each day for a couple months to get our project done. I also couldn't have done that myself because I was only able to do it with access to student loans, as I had to (at the minimum) eat and have somewhere warm to sleep, which I certainly had no money for, so I had to take out loans for food and rent.