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I think the issue is so many jobs require a college degree for no other purpose than further general education skills. I am of the opinion that public schooling

I think the issue is so many jobs require a college degree for no other purpose than further general education skills. I am of the opinion that public schooling needs to be extended to include these skills and then we still need higher education where the exact experiences you described are the main point. Far too many people go through college for no other reason than to get some degree, doesn’t even matter what degree. And it’s no surprise, as it’s much harder to find a decent job without any old college degree.

throwawaygh 6y ago
There's an extremely old joke (like 100+ years old; I can't find the source atm) that goes something like: "US universities are the best high schools in the world". And it's true. It's not safe to assume that someone with only a high school education will be able to write well, do basic mathematics, etc. The high school grads who go on to teach themselves how to program are an extreme outlier. The entire US education system needs an overhaul. You can't really fix our university system without making corresponding reforms in K-12. A lot of it grounds out in trying to be overly egalitarian, realizing that doesn't work, and then hacking the system by introducing an honors/AP track. As a result, things are no longer egalitarian (the split between honors/AP and not-honors/AP happens freshman year or before). However, instead of having a gymnasium-like true high school liberal arts curriculum, we instead just moved some fairly boring college 101 courses into the last year or two high school. Which really isn't the right thing to do. We should now make the split explicit. And then, instead of teaching mediocre university 101 courses to the honors ("gymnasium"-like) students, simply study the high school material but at a much deeper level in the "honors" track. Then, the university system should split in a corresponding way, with non-honors students going to applied universities designed for them and honors students going to universities designed for them. NB: this split already de facto exists; there's a whole class of universities you can't get into without doing the honors/ap track in high school.
- Melting_Harps 6y ago
  > The entire US education system needs an overhaul. You can't really fix our university system without making corresponding reforms in K-12. Sure you can, have an opt-out model for students like they have in Germanic countries by the time you're in your mid-teens and apprenticeships in a various crafts and professions to help them into working Life. It works really well, and prepares them for a life in a ROBUST manufacturing Industry, especially now as the West is finally trying to decouple form the CCP's horrible Human Right's violating dependence and corruption. I'd say outside of STEM there really isn't a need for most to go to a University campus, there really isn't. I often philosphized with grad students despite declining my honorary position in the department as I couldn't afford to deviate from my studies and debate moral ethics for fun, despite being promised a 'fast track' career in Law. I could enjoy music, without the theory or the knowledge behind it, and began to bedroom DJ, eventually I even got to meet and know what would later become really famous EDM composers from the UK by going to clubs and just talking to them on the forums and eventually going on the decks myself in a club. Many of them super eager to share their knowledge, some were classically trained, and did Master Class series for free on Youtube! I could go on, but I think most non-STEM degrees, and even the ones that don't require physical labs like Math or CS, can be moved to an Online model saving the resources for those that do require Laboratories and guided lectures and office hours for experimental designs and Scientific Journal publications. I'm sorry to say but if you go to University to study Classics, Theology or Music Theory (or any of the Arts really) you really are doing yourself a great disservice if Knowledge is your real aim as so many more opportunities exists outside of academia. And you aren't stifled by a curriculum that forces you to limit your breadth or understanding of a subject in order to fit a paradigm of what pretty amounts to a churn system trying to maximize its profit model to the detriment of what an Education should be.
  - com2kid 6y ago
    > I could enjoy music, without the theory or the knowledge behind it, One of the most enriching classes I took was The Art of Listening to Music. It was a grand tour through music history and practice up until the early 20th century. I learned how to understand the compositional elements that go into making music, and while the class was biased towards western classical music, by the time the quarter was over I found I had an appreciation for an incredibly wide variety of music, whereas prior I listened to only a few genres. > I'd say outside of STEM there really isn't a need for most to go to a University campus, Have you ever met someone who can do 0(ish) delay translation between languages? With no accent? A non-university program to teach that would end up looking like a university. To do it properly the translator needs deep cultural understanding of the target language, professional training in pronunciation, and a lot of practice. And why are arts programs useless? Sure art collectives can form and group buy resources, hire models, pay for trips to destinations, and bring in more experienced artists to help teach technique, but at some point again you've recreated a university. None of this even goes into the value of the core classes. Having people educated about their own country's history, and about world history, having an understanding of economic systems, geopolitics, and mathematics, these are all worthwhile endeavors. A University offers are curated selection of courses and subjects, with pedological methods that have, presumably, been tested over time (some over centuries!) to be effective. Is the system perfect? Heck no, spiraling costs are evidence of that, but throwing away a system that has, at minimum, allowed for the past 2 centuries of dramatic growth of civilization, seems a bit hasty.
- 0xffff2 6y ago
  > there's a whole class of universities you can't get into without doing the honors/ap track in high school. Which would those be? I don't have much insight into the "traditional" admissions system since I took quite a few years off from school between high school and college, but I didn't have any trouble at all getting into a well-regarded UC without any honors/AP classes. I did go to community college first, but I'd advise that for virtually everyone who's not funded by wealthy parents and interested in the social experience as much or more than the academic. No one needs to pay for the privilege of going to $TOP_SCHOOL just to do freshman level coursework.
  - throwawaygh 6y ago
    > Which would those be? Most of the top-tier R1 universities; i.e., ivies and similarly competitive institutions. Also, similarly competitive departments at otherwise less selective universities (e.g., UW's or CMU's CS programs. Getting into either university is considerably easier than getting into the CS program). NB: I guess the sentence you quoted is slightly too strong. You can first go to community college and then transfer. But it's not the default path, and request some special effort. That's also true in Germany, by the way. You can go to University without going to a gymnasium.
brighton36 6y ago
Colleges sell prestige. That's why a harvard education is free, but their license to discriminate is coveted and charged for.
- usr112 6y ago
  Nobody is perfect

throwawaygh 6y ago

There's an extremely old joke (like 100+ years old; I can't find the source atm) that goes something like: "US universities are the best high schools in the world". And it's true. It's not safe to assume that someone with only a high school education will be able to write well, do basic mathematics, etc. The high school grads who go on to teach themselves how to program are an extreme outlier. The entire US education system needs an overhaul. You can't really fix our university system without making corresponding reforms in K-12. A lot of it grounds out in trying to be overly egalitarian, realizing that doesn't work, and then hacking the system by introducing an honors/AP track. As a result, things are no longer egalitarian (the split between honors/AP and not-honors/AP happens freshman year or before). However, instead of having a gymnasium-like true high school liberal arts curriculum, we instead just moved some fairly boring college 101 courses into the last year or two high school. Which really isn't the right thing to do. We should now make the split explicit. And then, instead of teaching mediocre university 101 courses to the honors ("gymnasium"-like) students, simply study the high school material but at a much deeper level in the "honors" track. Then, the university system should split in a corresponding way, with non-honors students going to applied universities designed for them and honors students going to universities designed for them. NB: this split already de facto exists; there's a whole class of universities you can't get into without doing the honors/ap track in high school.

Melting_Harps 6y ago
> The entire US education system needs an overhaul. You can't really fix our university system without making corresponding reforms in K-12. Sure you can, have an opt-out model for students like they have in Germanic countries by the time you're in your mid-teens and apprenticeships in a various crafts and professions to help them into working Life. It works really well, and prepares them for a life in a ROBUST manufacturing Industry, especially now as the West is finally trying to decouple form the CCP's horrible Human Right's violating dependence and corruption. I'd say outside of STEM there really isn't a need for most to go to a University campus, there really isn't. I often philosphized with grad students despite declining my honorary position in the department as I couldn't afford to deviate from my studies and debate moral ethics for fun, despite being promised a 'fast track' career in Law. I could enjoy music, without the theory or the knowledge behind it, and began to bedroom DJ, eventually I even got to meet and know what would later become really famous EDM composers from the UK by going to clubs and just talking to them on the forums and eventually going on the decks myself in a club. Many of them super eager to share their knowledge, some were classically trained, and did Master Class series for free on Youtube! I could go on, but I think most non-STEM degrees, and even the ones that don't require physical labs like Math or CS, can be moved to an Online model saving the resources for those that do require Laboratories and guided lectures and office hours for experimental designs and Scientific Journal publications. I'm sorry to say but if you go to University to study Classics, Theology or Music Theory (or any of the Arts really) you really are doing yourself a great disservice if Knowledge is your real aim as so many more opportunities exists outside of academia. And you aren't stifled by a curriculum that forces you to limit your breadth or understanding of a subject in order to fit a paradigm of what pretty amounts to a churn system trying to maximize its profit model to the detriment of what an Education should be.
- com2kid 6y ago
  > I could enjoy music, without the theory or the knowledge behind it, One of the most enriching classes I took was The Art of Listening to Music. It was a grand tour through music history and practice up until the early 20th century. I learned how to understand the compositional elements that go into making music, and while the class was biased towards western classical music, by the time the quarter was over I found I had an appreciation for an incredibly wide variety of music, whereas prior I listened to only a few genres. > I'd say outside of STEM there really isn't a need for most to go to a University campus, Have you ever met someone who can do 0(ish) delay translation between languages? With no accent? A non-university program to teach that would end up looking like a university. To do it properly the translator needs deep cultural understanding of the target language, professional training in pronunciation, and a lot of practice. And why are arts programs useless? Sure art collectives can form and group buy resources, hire models, pay for trips to destinations, and bring in more experienced artists to help teach technique, but at some point again you've recreated a university. None of this even goes into the value of the core classes. Having people educated about their own country's history, and about world history, having an understanding of economic systems, geopolitics, and mathematics, these are all worthwhile endeavors. A University offers are curated selection of courses and subjects, with pedological methods that have, presumably, been tested over time (some over centuries!) to be effective. Is the system perfect? Heck no, spiraling costs are evidence of that, but throwing away a system that has, at minimum, allowed for the past 2 centuries of dramatic growth of civilization, seems a bit hasty.
0xffff2 6y ago
> there's a whole class of universities you can't get into without doing the honors/ap track in high school. Which would those be? I don't have much insight into the "traditional" admissions system since I took quite a few years off from school between high school and college, but I didn't have any trouble at all getting into a well-regarded UC without any honors/AP classes. I did go to community college first, but I'd advise that for virtually everyone who's not funded by wealthy parents and interested in the social experience as much or more than the academic. No one needs to pay for the privilege of going to $TOP_SCHOOL just to do freshman level coursework.
- throwawaygh 6y ago
  > Which would those be? Most of the top-tier R1 universities; i.e., ivies and similarly competitive institutions. Also, similarly competitive departments at otherwise less selective universities (e.g., UW's or CMU's CS programs. Getting into either university is considerably easier than getting into the CS program). NB: I guess the sentence you quoted is slightly too strong. You can first go to community college and then transfer. But it's not the default path, and request some special effort. That's also true in Germany, by the way. You can go to University without going to a gymnasium.

brighton36 6y ago

Colleges sell prestige. That's why a harvard education is free, but their license to discriminate is coveted and charged for.

usr112 6y ago
Nobody is perfect