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It’s tangential to your point, which I agree with completely, but this is also exactly why I get so frustrated with the idea that higher education is about acqu

It’s tangential to your point, which I agree with completely, but this is also exactly why I get so frustrated with the idea that higher education is about acquiring job skills. Ideally, regardless of major, a university teaches you how to think, critically and deeply, and how to learn. If you have those things, job skills are easy to pick up, but instead we treat college like an RPG skill tree, where you’ve got to put points into your intended career path in order to unlock the skills you’ll need to do the job. Edit: although I do think university focus is important for subjects that are less about job skills and more about knowledge synthesis, such as most sciences, critical analysis, and so on, if you intend to not just do a job but contribute to the overall knowledge base of the field.

woodydesign 5mo ago
I also quite resonate with the structural dilemma of modern education system. Learning should be life-long experience. And learning cannot separate with practicing, it's two sides of ONE process. Two quotes I am keep revisit when I learn: “To LEARN, and to PRACTICE what you learned at the RIGHT time, and from time to time, isn't that JOY indeed?” - Confucius “Many have remarked the speed with which Muad'Dib learned the necessities of Arrakis. The Bene Gesserit, of course, know the basis of this speed. For the others, we can say that Muad'Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad'Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson.” ― Frank Herbert, Dune
9rx 5mo ago
> a university teaches you how to think, critically and deeply, and how to learn. You'd have to have lived a pretty sheltered life to not have picked up those things long before reaching the typical age of attending university. University's role is to give you a place to apply those qualities to subjects where you otherwise wouldn't have access to the necessary resources to fulfill your interest in the subject, like where you need equipment that costs many figures beyond what a personal budget could ever dream of. Which is also where the job skill conflation comes from as those same resources are often used to fulfil job training, like where one needs to learn how a certain costly machine works before messing with the real thing in industry.

woodydesign 5mo ago

I also quite resonate with the structural dilemma of modern education system. Learning should be life-long experience. And learning cannot separate with practicing, it's two sides of ONE process. Two quotes I am keep revisit when I learn: “To LEARN, and to PRACTICE what you learned at the RIGHT time, and from time to time, isn't that JOY indeed?” - Confucius “Many have remarked the speed with which Muad'Dib learned the necessities of Arrakis. The Bene Gesserit, of course, know the basis of this speed. For the others, we can say that Muad'Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad'Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson.” ― Frank Herbert, Dune

9rx 5mo ago

> a university teaches you how to think, critically and deeply, and how to learn. You'd have to have lived a pretty sheltered life to not have picked up those things long before reaching the typical age of attending university. University's role is to give you a place to apply those qualities to subjects where you otherwise wouldn't have access to the necessary resources to fulfill your interest in the subject, like where you need equipment that costs many figures beyond what a personal budget could ever dream of. Which is also where the job skill conflation comes from as those same resources are often used to fulfil job training, like where one needs to learn how a certain costly machine works before messing with the real thing in industry.