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Viewing college through this lens is part of the problem. It's college as job training, not education. Real education covers more than "skills and credentials

Viewing college through this lens is part of the problem. It's college as job training, not education. Real education covers more than "skills and credentials I need to get a well-paid job."

WalterBright 2y ago
> Real education covers more than "skills and credentials I need to get a well-paid job." I'm curious what real education would be that does not impart a skill that others are willing to pay for? I speak as someone who selected classes based on maximizing skills that would be useful in the career I wanted.
- itronitron 2y ago
  philosophy, fine arts, comparative literature, history, etc. Those are all quite valuable to have in the workplace, but anyone with a bachelors in one of those topics will likely need to get a masters degree in the same field or something else before they can find a decent career.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    Why does that make comparative literature, for example, a "real" education and, say, math not? BTW, there's no need to go to university to learn history. All that's necessary is to read a history book. I read lots of them. Paying someone to lecture you about history seems a waste of time and money. Just read it. Much more time efficient.
    - itronitron 2y ago
      I'd consider math a real education as well. Going back to the initial comment you were responding to, I'd add that most degrees will cover things that aren't skills and credentials that will help someone get a job. That may explain why people with CS degrees still have to answer fizzbuzz questions in job interviews. Whether reading history is more time efficient than taking a class depends a lot on the topic, the writing about it, and the knowledge and abilities of the professor. It's been my experience that a knowledgeable professor can add important context to a topic that will save the student a lot of time and energy.
    - saagarjha 2y ago
      You could do the same for math. Or any subject, really. There's a reason people go to college for that, and it's not because they want to sit with a book to learn the subject.
      - WalterBright 2y ago
        > Or any subject, really It isn't equivalent. Very, very few people manage to self-educate advanced math. But it's a lot easier with liberal arts. Allow me to pose this question - does a literature degree enable one to write best selling books? Does JK Rowling have a degree in literature? In contrast, learning math and engineering enables one to use that knowledge to create great things. One has zero chance of building a successful liquid fuel rocket engine without that training. I recall reading a lament by a literature professor who said he knew everything there was to know about Romeo and Juliet. He said he'd throw all that knowledge away for the joy of reading it for the first time.
        saagarjha 2y ago
        You're not being consistent. People don't typically self-educate themselves for advanced math, but they don't do that for liberal arts either. J. K. Rowling doesn't have a degree in literature, but she doesn't do "advanced" literature: she writes books people like. She's good at what she does, but the "skill" needed is, like, grade school level. That's not comparative literature. To put it another way: a lot of people actually do recreational math, which is largely self-taught. Maybe less than those who fancy themselves authors but it's still a lot of people. The aren't many people who study to make rockets, but there also aren't many people who end up as journalists or literary critics or copywriters but those people do actually get a degree in liberal arts to do that. Writing best-selling books is akin to being Martin Gardner.
        WalterBright 2y ago
        end up as journalists or literary critics or copywriters but those people do actually get a degree in liberal arts to do that. Given what the major newspapers write and the major news networks broadcast, it's quite an indictment of their liberal arts educations.
    - sevensor 2y ago
      A lot of people (present company excluded I’m sure) don’t know how to read critically. They may read history but not understand historiography. They may not be able to tell the difference between Livy and Tacitus. Being educated by a professional can save you a lot of time, for instance if you mistake Victor Davis Hanson for a historian.
      - WalterBright 2y ago
        I can vouch for reading a few history books makes it easy to distinguish them from a pseudo-history book written by an activist pushing an agenda. Reading reviews of the books helps a lot in finding one worth the time reading, as well as looking at lists and reviews of what other books they've written. Reading multiple books of the same event gives one a lot of perspective, too. I'm currently reading my 4th history book on the D-Day invasion - all quite different.
- DoreenMichele 2y ago
  The best examples I can give: 1. College educated people smoke less on average. This is true regardless of income even though typically less income correlates to more smoking. 2. In poor neighborhoods, when the number of residents without college drops below a certain threshold (like 4 percent maybe), crime skyrockets. The neighborhood stops being merely poor and becomes a dangerous slum. A liberal arts education is widely scoffed at. There's some joke about what kind of careers different majors lead to and the punchline is that liberal arts major say "Would you like fries with that?" which is shorthand in this day and age for "You will probably be drowning in college debt and a wage slave working to pay off your student loans while living in Mom's basement if you are lucky enough to have supportive parents." But they are called liberal arts because they are supposed to be liberating. They are supposed to free and empower you to live well and know how to cope effectively with crap life throws at you. The Clemente Course is intended to be a free liberal arts college education for people living with terrible circumstances like generational poverty or in prison and has been taught in prison. It was founded on the theory that the right kind of education is the antidote to these kinds of intractable problems that routinely fail to be resolved by throwing money at them. https://www.clementecourse.org/ https://www.clementecourse.org/ I homeschooled my twice exceptional sons and a primary goal of mine was making sure my extremely bright but socially challenged children didn't wind up in jail. I provided them a humanities education defined as "learning how to live effectively with the inconvenient, inescapable fact of their own humanity and that of other people." I'm a huge fan of liberal arts education and my AA is in Humanities. Yes, I'm very well aware it doesn't give you a lot of marketable skills to make bank promptly upon graduation. I also have a Certificate in GIS from probably the most prestigious GIS program in the world and it promised everyone good salaries in short order which never materialized for me. I don't regret it and it wasn't a waste of time or money but the historic tendency for college to correlate to good salaries is probably rooted in the fact that until they decided to milk poor people for student loans interest and turn a generation of college graduates into over educated wage slaves, a college degree was a proxy for "Someone with adequate resources and mojo and drive who knows what they want to do." It wasn't the degree per se that made them successful. They had what it took to get the degree and that correlated strongly to having what it took to establish a serious career that paid well. A sheepskin is a necessary but insufficient prerequisite for some careers. It's not a guarantee you will succeed though and someone somewhere along the way imagined it was and many people are suffering horribly because of it.

Viewing college through this lens is part of the problem. It's college as job training, not education. Real education covers more than "skills and credentials I need to get a well-paid job."

WalterBright 2y ago

> Real education covers more than "skills and credentials I need to get a well-paid job." I'm curious what real education would be that does not impart a skill that others are willing to pay for? I speak as someone who selected classes based on maximizing skills that would be useful in the career I wanted.

itronitron 2y ago
philosophy, fine arts, comparative literature, history, etc. Those are all quite valuable to have in the workplace, but anyone with a bachelors in one of those topics will likely need to get a masters degree in the same field or something else before they can find a decent career.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  Why does that make comparative literature, for example, a "real" education and, say, math not? BTW, there's no need to go to university to learn history. All that's necessary is to read a history book. I read lots of them. Paying someone to lecture you about history seems a waste of time and money. Just read it. Much more time efficient.
  - itronitron 2y ago
    I'd consider math a real education as well. Going back to the initial comment you were responding to, I'd add that most degrees will cover things that aren't skills and credentials that will help someone get a job. That may explain why people with CS degrees still have to answer fizzbuzz questions in job interviews. Whether reading history is more time efficient than taking a class depends a lot on the topic, the writing about it, and the knowledge and abilities of the professor. It's been my experience that a knowledgeable professor can add important context to a topic that will save the student a lot of time and energy.
  - saagarjha 2y ago
    You could do the same for math. Or any subject, really. There's a reason people go to college for that, and it's not because they want to sit with a book to learn the subject.
    - WalterBright 2y ago
      > Or any subject, really It isn't equivalent. Very, very few people manage to self-educate advanced math. But it's a lot easier with liberal arts. Allow me to pose this question - does a literature degree enable one to write best selling books? Does JK Rowling have a degree in literature? In contrast, learning math and engineering enables one to use that knowledge to create great things. One has zero chance of building a successful liquid fuel rocket engine without that training. I recall reading a lament by a literature professor who said he knew everything there was to know about Romeo and Juliet. He said he'd throw all that knowledge away for the joy of reading it for the first time.
      - saagarjha 2y ago
        You're not being consistent. People don't typically self-educate themselves for advanced math, but they don't do that for liberal arts either. J. K. Rowling doesn't have a degree in literature, but she doesn't do "advanced" literature: she writes books people like. She's good at what she does, but the "skill" needed is, like, grade school level. That's not comparative literature. To put it another way: a lot of people actually do recreational math, which is largely self-taught. Maybe less than those who fancy themselves authors but it's still a lot of people. The aren't many people who study to make rockets, but there also aren't many people who end up as journalists or literary critics or copywriters but those people do actually get a degree in liberal arts to do that. Writing best-selling books is akin to being Martin Gardner.
        WalterBright 2y ago
        end up as journalists or literary critics or copywriters but those people do actually get a degree in liberal arts to do that. Given what the major newspapers write and the major news networks broadcast, it's quite an indictment of their liberal arts educations.
  - sevensor 2y ago
    A lot of people (present company excluded I’m sure) don’t know how to read critically. They may read history but not understand historiography. They may not be able to tell the difference between Livy and Tacitus. Being educated by a professional can save you a lot of time, for instance if you mistake Victor Davis Hanson for a historian.
    - WalterBright 2y ago
      I can vouch for reading a few history books makes it easy to distinguish them from a pseudo-history book written by an activist pushing an agenda. Reading reviews of the books helps a lot in finding one worth the time reading, as well as looking at lists and reviews of what other books they've written. Reading multiple books of the same event gives one a lot of perspective, too. I'm currently reading my 4th history book on the D-Day invasion - all quite different.
DoreenMichele 2y ago
The best examples I can give: 1. College educated people smoke less on average. This is true regardless of income even though typically less income correlates to more smoking. 2. In poor neighborhoods, when the number of residents without college drops below a certain threshold (like 4 percent maybe), crime skyrockets. The neighborhood stops being merely poor and becomes a dangerous slum. A liberal arts education is widely scoffed at. There's some joke about what kind of careers different majors lead to and the punchline is that liberal arts major say "Would you like fries with that?" which is shorthand in this day and age for "You will probably be drowning in college debt and a wage slave working to pay off your student loans while living in Mom's basement if you are lucky enough to have supportive parents." But they are called liberal arts because they are supposed to be liberating. They are supposed to free and empower you to live well and know how to cope effectively with crap life throws at you. The Clemente Course is intended to be a free liberal arts college education for people living with terrible circumstances like generational poverty or in prison and has been taught in prison. It was founded on the theory that the right kind of education is the antidote to these kinds of intractable problems that routinely fail to be resolved by throwing money at them. https://www.clementecourse.org/ https://www.clementecourse.org/ I homeschooled my twice exceptional sons and a primary goal of mine was making sure my extremely bright but socially challenged children didn't wind up in jail. I provided them a humanities education defined as "learning how to live effectively with the inconvenient, inescapable fact of their own humanity and that of other people." I'm a huge fan of liberal arts education and my AA is in Humanities. Yes, I'm very well aware it doesn't give you a lot of marketable skills to make bank promptly upon graduation. I also have a Certificate in GIS from probably the most prestigious GIS program in the world and it promised everyone good salaries in short order which never materialized for me. I don't regret it and it wasn't a waste of time or money but the historic tendency for college to correlate to good salaries is probably rooted in the fact that until they decided to milk poor people for student loans interest and turn a generation of college graduates into over educated wage slaves, a college degree was a proxy for "Someone with adequate resources and mojo and drive who knows what they want to do." It wasn't the degree per se that made them successful. They had what it took to get the degree and that correlated strongly to having what it took to establish a serious career that paid well. A sheepskin is a necessary but insufficient prerequisite for some careers. It's not a guarantee you will succeed though and someone somewhere along the way imagined it was and many people are suffering horribly because of it.