3 ms·
Round and round the college and anti-college hordes go once again. It'd be nice if people used more common sense. ROI is the proper consideration here. Two que
by pnathan 15y ago
Round and round the college and anti-college hordes go once again. It'd be nice if people used more common sense.
ROI is the proper consideration here. Two questions govern degrees:
1. What's the expected ROI of your degree?
2. Can you financially afford that?
A degree is an investment into your future. It pays off in various ways: financial, social, networking, mental, etc. It financially costs a lot at some schools, less at others. Some degrees pay more money than others. What can you afford? What are you going to college for?
It is indisputable that execution of the degree program is a big deal. Some students are in it for the party, others are in it for the knowledge, etc.
Cost of US college has risen faster than health care costs in the last thirty years. This is becoming an acute problem. I have no idea how I will support my children in college in any significant fashion at that rate of increase. I suspect the whole business will undergo a systemic collapse and reset by then.
Many engineering types are not in college for an education, they are in it for training. They have no desire or interest in underlying principles governing their work, or any other knowledge besides their degree. They want to get out and make money ASAP. I do not like that attitude, it's very short-term and narrow of thought.
Liberal arts types usually are in college for a broad education, having a wide understanding of things. That doesn't work out so good financially quite often. There's little call for a philosopher in the bottom-line lean style world of business. (editorial: That might be a reason why we have ethics problems in business too...) I think it's very important that liberal arts degrees exist. The ideal government policymaker, among their other skills, has a broad knowledge of the world and its cultures.
It is notable that the liberal arts (grammar, logic, rhetoric) were considered in antiquity the proper study of a free person, and slaves were the technicians/manual laborers.
- Mz 15y agoIt is indisputable that execution of the degree program is a big deal. Some students are in it for the party, others are in it for the knowledge, etc. A lot seem to be in it for the sheepskin more than the knowledge per se. I took a college class where classmates explicitly advocated for the teacher to go easy on us and skip some stuff, it wouldn't matter, they just wanted their credits, did not want to have to work too hard for them (ie they wanted that class checked off their schedule, whether they learned anything or not). My reaction: What if you need to actually know that stuff (for a later class or your, oh, job)? This did not make me popular. It just made me more of a nerdy social outcast.
- pnathan 15y agoHa! Yes! 'Cs get degrees' is also another execution of the college strategy. Another one is to take easy courses (cough humanities) to inflate the GPA for the GPA-as-only-signal employers. Like you, I wound up being more ultimately interested in the knowledge.