5 ms·

The thing is colleges haven't been about education in quite some time at this point (at least all the undergraduate stuff, in masters or higher you get to work

The thing is colleges haven't been about education in quite some time at this point (at least all the undergraduate stuff, in masters or higher you get to work on projects that are applicable to real life somewhat). Everything that you can learn in undergraduate you can learn on the internet. Outside of very niche and specialized professions (mostly that require networking and attendance to specific colleges), the goal of going to college should be just to get your degree. Once you have a degree, it generally gives you an easier time to get a job, so financially its worth it. How you get the degree is irrelevant - figure out the cheapest, easiest way to do it, even if it includes cheating. Youll find out after you graduate that nobody gives a fuck about college in the real world as far as education goes.

Aurornis 2y ago
> the goal of going to college should be just to get your degree > figure out the cheapest, easiest way to do it, even if it includes cheating. And this mindset is why cheating has proliferated. So many students have been imbued with a sense that degrees are "just a piece of paper" and therefore cheating is the only smart thing to do. > Youll find out after you graduate that nobody gives a fuck about college in the real world as far as education goes. I'm actually finding it's going the other way. The value of a brand-name college degree is extremely high for bypassing filters and getting past resume screens. Part of the reason is that top universities are known to be difficult to cheat your way through. Not impossible, but it's not easy either. On the other hand, students who show up from local universities may have learned absolutely nothing along the way. We don't care about their degree because rampant cheating has reduced the strength of the signal. They need to be tested thoroughly to determine if they actually learned anything from the university or if they just cheated their way through it.
- sashank_1509 2y ago
  College brand name may matter for your first job and in some prestige based industries (VC, consultancies etc). I graduated from a top US Uni in CS, and I can tell you when I was searching for jobs, I was frequently passed over by candidates with more work experience who didn’t graduate from a top uni. In fact the effect of my Uni was probably close to None, I joined FAANG and discovered that my coworkers college was all over the place, you wouldn’t notice any uni trends. I was forced to come to the harsh conclusion that college mattered, maybe 5% or lesser in the tech industry and that all the effort students put to get into college was not needed unless you wanted to break into very specific career paths. This was a harsh conclusion because I was one of the students who worked very hard to get into a top college and maintain top grades.
- ActorNightly 2y ago
  >I'm actually finding it's going the other way. Whats your data source? Across like 10 or so jobs I have applied including ones I took across engineering and computer science, he only time I had any questions about my academic record is when working for a government contract (which required me to request official record from university).
- BeFlatXIII 2y ago
  > Part of the reason is that top universities are known to be difficult to cheat your way through. Not impossible, but it's not easy either. I wonder if that will dethrone the Ivies. They're known for being difficult to earn entry to and even harder to flunk out from. However, a rigorous State U that doesn't care that Undergrad 32768 just dropped out should have an easier time maintaining standards.
wholinator2 2y ago
In case there's any young and impressionable people in here i want to add that easiest does not always mean cheating! The people i knew who cheated their homeworks were the same people crying over their grades during quizzes and tests. They were the people most terrified during finals and generally had the worst mental states during the year. It certainly did not seem to make their lives easier. Sure, you might get away with it but these things can come back to bite you! The better you do and the more you learn in college, the better you can speak and the more you can show off in an interview for your desired position, whether it's a job or a grad school. Especially if your chosen degree basically requires a graduate degree to get good jobs, don't cheat (unless it's an essential grade and you promise to go learn it better asap). Grad school doesn't mess around, it's hard enough for the studious ones. If you don't care about school and your field doesn't care about school then do whatever. But don't make a habit of living dishonestly. It wears at the soul
- DiscourseFan 2y ago
  I had a wonderful philosophy professor in a 100-level class I was taking to fulfill a gen ed req, he was some old retired guy and he had no mandatory attendance and only one assignment for the whole semester: a single, 15 page final paper. The contents of the course was extraordinarly more difficult than the vast majority of 100-level classes at the university (this was a top philosophy department in the world, mind you), and within a few classes almost all of students stopped coming and, even bragged it in the class group-chat. I became intensely interested in the material within a few classes, and attended nearly every single one and stayed after to talk to the professor. Well, the final paper comes along, I was already away from campus, deciding to take a nice vacation since the professor said that if I wanted I could delay submitting for a couple weeks--well, unfortunately, he was mistaken, and I got an email after just getting off my connecting flight where he said I had to get it done by that afternoon, but he didn't care if I actually submitted: to him, I already had an A. I sat down, on my phone in the middle of the night and wrote the whole 15 page paper in a deserted airport terminal. I got an A. Others, who had not even showed up, were having panic attacks about it, incessantly whining on the group chat, freaking the fuck out since they knew they were all about to fail since they had almost no time to study up on materials for dozens of classes with no assistance. This was all before the advent of ChatGPT. I have no idea if that 15-page paper would be such a killer today. Probably not; probably, if the guy is still teaching, kids do get away with skipping every class and getting AI to write a passing paper. But, the principle is still there: you just need a paper test now!
bonoboTP 2y ago
> Everything that you can learn in undergraduate you can learn on the internet. In principle yes. But it's extremely rare that 18-23 year olds will voluntarily grind through even the tough bits of that curriculum. Autodidacts often have gaping holes of knowledge in the non-fun stuff. Some hypermotivated people will chew their way through it through sheer self-motivation but the vast majority doesn't have the iron will to do that without external pressure. Even top athletes go to training camps and have trainers who push them. One can of course argue that the material is irrelevant to actual jobs, and it's an eternal debate whether universities should teach fundamental thinking tools and "theory" or just job skills and web frameworks and git commands. Getting a degree is about several things: - It shows you passed admissions (in case that's hard) - It shows you persisted in your studies and managed to pass exams with certain grades - It shows you have acquired certain foundational knowledge The first two show your ability to learn new things. Even if (and that's just an if) what you learned wasn't directly useful, you show that you can learn, i.e. have some personal qualities like intelligence, conscientiousness, agreeableness. That you're organized enough, don't give up too easily, can work under an authority etc. Many commenters here take these things for granted, but there are many job applicants who are not like you or your friends in these regards and having passed through those filters prepared by colleges is a very meaningful signal to employers. And the foundational knowledge of math and algorithms is in fact also very useful for any non-code-monkey stuff. You learn a terminology, a vocabulary to talk to colleagues. Yes, you'll learn most things on the job, but it still makes a difference. And then there's networking as well. Later in life, a recommendation can be very useful for getting a job. Lots of jobs never get publicly advertised because the signal-to-noise ratio is much better if people first search among acquaintances and contacts. So a college education gives: foundational knowledge, demonstrable evidence of personal qualities, external push and motivation for developing yourself, a personal network.
charlieyu1 2y ago
If people are cheating with timed exams, what could go wrong with homework? Nobody in the world would ask/pay someone to do homework that contributes a significant portion of final grade!

Aurornis 2y ago

> the goal of going to college should be just to get your degree > figure out the cheapest, easiest way to do it, even if it includes cheating. And this mindset is why cheating has proliferated. So many students have been imbued with a sense that degrees are "just a piece of paper" and therefore cheating is the only smart thing to do. > Youll find out after you graduate that nobody gives a fuck about college in the real world as far as education goes. I'm actually finding it's going the other way. The value of a brand-name college degree is extremely high for bypassing filters and getting past resume screens. Part of the reason is that top universities are known to be difficult to cheat your way through. Not impossible, but it's not easy either. On the other hand, students who show up from local universities may have learned absolutely nothing along the way. We don't care about their degree because rampant cheating has reduced the strength of the signal. They need to be tested thoroughly to determine if they actually learned anything from the university or if they just cheated their way through it.

sashank_1509 2y ago
College brand name may matter for your first job and in some prestige based industries (VC, consultancies etc). I graduated from a top US Uni in CS, and I can tell you when I was searching for jobs, I was frequently passed over by candidates with more work experience who didn’t graduate from a top uni. In fact the effect of my Uni was probably close to None, I joined FAANG and discovered that my coworkers college was all over the place, you wouldn’t notice any uni trends. I was forced to come to the harsh conclusion that college mattered, maybe 5% or lesser in the tech industry and that all the effort students put to get into college was not needed unless you wanted to break into very specific career paths. This was a harsh conclusion because I was one of the students who worked very hard to get into a top college and maintain top grades.
ActorNightly 2y ago
>I'm actually finding it's going the other way. Whats your data source? Across like 10 or so jobs I have applied including ones I took across engineering and computer science, he only time I had any questions about my academic record is when working for a government contract (which required me to request official record from university).
BeFlatXIII 2y ago
> Part of the reason is that top universities are known to be difficult to cheat your way through. Not impossible, but it's not easy either. I wonder if that will dethrone the Ivies. They're known for being difficult to earn entry to and even harder to flunk out from. However, a rigorous State U that doesn't care that Undergrad 32768 just dropped out should have an easier time maintaining standards.

wholinator2 2y ago

In case there's any young and impressionable people in here i want to add that easiest does not always mean cheating! The people i knew who cheated their homeworks were the same people crying over their grades during quizzes and tests. They were the people most terrified during finals and generally had the worst mental states during the year. It certainly did not seem to make their lives easier. Sure, you might get away with it but these things can come back to bite you! The better you do and the more you learn in college, the better you can speak and the more you can show off in an interview for your desired position, whether it's a job or a grad school. Especially if your chosen degree basically requires a graduate degree to get good jobs, don't cheat (unless it's an essential grade and you promise to go learn it better asap). Grad school doesn't mess around, it's hard enough for the studious ones. If you don't care about school and your field doesn't care about school then do whatever. But don't make a habit of living dishonestly. It wears at the soul

DiscourseFan 2y ago
I had a wonderful philosophy professor in a 100-level class I was taking to fulfill a gen ed req, he was some old retired guy and he had no mandatory attendance and only one assignment for the whole semester: a single, 15 page final paper. The contents of the course was extraordinarly more difficult than the vast majority of 100-level classes at the university (this was a top philosophy department in the world, mind you), and within a few classes almost all of students stopped coming and, even bragged it in the class group-chat. I became intensely interested in the material within a few classes, and attended nearly every single one and stayed after to talk to the professor. Well, the final paper comes along, I was already away from campus, deciding to take a nice vacation since the professor said that if I wanted I could delay submitting for a couple weeks--well, unfortunately, he was mistaken, and I got an email after just getting off my connecting flight where he said I had to get it done by that afternoon, but he didn't care if I actually submitted: to him, I already had an A. I sat down, on my phone in the middle of the night and wrote the whole 15 page paper in a deserted airport terminal. I got an A. Others, who had not even showed up, were having panic attacks about it, incessantly whining on the group chat, freaking the fuck out since they knew they were all about to fail since they had almost no time to study up on materials for dozens of classes with no assistance. This was all before the advent of ChatGPT. I have no idea if that 15-page paper would be such a killer today. Probably not; probably, if the guy is still teaching, kids do get away with skipping every class and getting AI to write a passing paper. But, the principle is still there: you just need a paper test now!

bonoboTP 2y ago

> Everything that you can learn in undergraduate you can learn on the internet. In principle yes. But it's extremely rare that 18-23 year olds will voluntarily grind through even the tough bits of that curriculum. Autodidacts often have gaping holes of knowledge in the non-fun stuff. Some hypermotivated people will chew their way through it through sheer self-motivation but the vast majority doesn't have the iron will to do that without external pressure. Even top athletes go to training camps and have trainers who push them. One can of course argue that the material is irrelevant to actual jobs, and it's an eternal debate whether universities should teach fundamental thinking tools and "theory" or just job skills and web frameworks and git commands. Getting a degree is about several things: - It shows you passed admissions (in case that's hard) - It shows you persisted in your studies and managed to pass exams with certain grades - It shows you have acquired certain foundational knowledge The first two show your ability to learn new things. Even if (and that's just an if) what you learned wasn't directly useful, you show that you can learn, i.e. have some personal qualities like intelligence, conscientiousness, agreeableness. That you're organized enough, don't give up too easily, can work under an authority etc. Many commenters here take these things for granted, but there are many job applicants who are not like you or your friends in these regards and having passed through those filters prepared by colleges is a very meaningful signal to employers. And the foundational knowledge of math and algorithms is in fact also very useful for any non-code-monkey stuff. You learn a terminology, a vocabulary to talk to colleagues. Yes, you'll learn most things on the job, but it still makes a difference. And then there's networking as well. Later in life, a recommendation can be very useful for getting a job. Lots of jobs never get publicly advertised because the signal-to-noise ratio is much better if people first search among acquaintances and contacts. So a college education gives: foundational knowledge, demonstrable evidence of personal qualities, external push and motivation for developing yourself, a personal network.

charlieyu1 2y ago

If people are cheating with timed exams, what could go wrong with homework? Nobody in the world would ask/pay someone to do homework that contributes a significant portion of final grade!