Damaein said: College is like the new high school. It's basically necessary for many jobs nowadays Do you have any proof of this? Or are you like so many in this thread just repeating shit your teachers say? |
| Of course it's needed if you want to obtain a comfortable life but you could always join the military or police academy if that's your thing. |
airidas20th said: Or you could you know, make you own buisness, or have a reasonable standard of living.Of course it's needed if you want to obtain a comfortable life but you could always join the military or police academy if that's your thing. See my problem with this is none of you have provided a shred of proof that it really overall helps. Speaking statistically across the world the number of college students has climbed. Yet globally GDP has fallen for the bulk of the population. Only the top 1% world wide is making more, globally the middle class is making less. Much less. Even with the degree when you look at the pay back rate, and the amounts your boss is turning, and who's chair you will never take, you just have a nicer car than the farmer. At the end you are still a under achieving slave...oh sorry economic dependant. The Rich get richer, and you will either be better off than your parents, or much worse depending on how the next 10 years go. |
RedArmyShogunOct 22, 2013 10:08 AM
| I guess it all depends on where you reside. If you live in a third world country, damn it, college is almost everyone's requirement for jobs. By the way, college no matter what the course you choose is I guess important personally. You'll learn a lot of stuffs specially discipline. Well, I can say it because my field of choice is medical, but my work is something like business or marketing. Too far, but I'd say it helps in terms of the general knowledge and general skills. |
| ScribeOrigins, MKD 「先生のことが」 |
RedArmyShogun said: Or you could you know, make you own buisness, or have a reasonable standard of living. Don't you need a loan to start things up? Pretty sure banks won't give you a loan with just a highschool degree. At least that is the general atmosphere where I live (Which may be completely incorrect given I haven't tried to get a loan). Which is also "only graduating from highschool makes you a failure in life". No one is really cheery in New England. |
| Want to talk? Club! "Would you like an anti-psychotic?" *Bonus points if you leave a comment about the meaning of my signature.* |
| It would be pretty difficult to get a business loan with no education, unless you had a lot of proven experience and an extremely good business plan. Then again, a university graduate would be unlikely to get one anyway, small business is all but dead here in the UK. |
 |
StopDropAndBowl said: It's very possible that it could. English is a major, you know. Yes, the focus is usually on essay writing rather than creative writing (assuming that you want to write fiction), but either way you're learning how to write better. Nah, I want to be a writer. Maybe college would help with that, but I doubt it Even if you are a technically sound writer (you're good at expressing your thoughts), you also need the ability to asses your own experiences in nontrivial ways (you need to have good thoughts, so to speak). Formal education can be useful in honing this ability (critical thinking, analytical thinking). Last, but certainly not least, you'll be exposed to what the academic community thinks about different things related to writing. Specific works, genres of works, styles of writing, etc. This could be very useful to you. In all honesty though, when all of my college graduate friends look at me with blank stares when I say something like: "A rose by any other name..." I begin to lose my trust in college being any kind of actual education. College is more specialized than high-school. Unless your friends took english, heck, even if they took english, they probably wouldn't have studied R&J (english profs don't usually like it, because the discussion of the content is "over saturated" and everyone's already read it). So, it's very likely the case that your friends were never familiar with the quote. Maybe high-school let them down, maybe #yolo let them down, but regardless, your criticism of college on that grounds is completely unfounded. Personally, I'd not only give you a blank state, but I'd follow it up with a, "please, never do that again." Its high-school with ashtrays, only they removed the ashtrays. Now it's just buying a piece of paper that says: "I am qualified for this job". Of course, most of these yahoos aren't really all that qualified for the job, but who cares. While little bits of truth can be salvaged from this pretentious mess, you're going to need to find them and state them explicitly. What you've written here is meaningless.I don't think it's particularly edgy to suggest going to college to get that piece of paper is a great idea for most people, which is what I'm suggesting. It is particularly edgy to say that the only benefit of college is a piece of paper. I'm just being realistic about the fact that college isn't really about education in any classical sense of the word. It's a filtering mechanism for applicants. Education can and does serve both of those purposes. You're not being realistic, you're being flat out wrong. |
LoneWolf said: @Josh makes me sad to call myself Canadian. |
| I live in Spain, so no. But still, it's better than not having anything. |
| Of course it is. As others have said, higher education is usually a pathway to somewhat ensuring that you have a financially comfortable life and such, in some manner. Unless you're unlucky one way or another. Not that it's entirely necessary, everyone has their own ambitions and choices to make. But yeah, in relation to the question at hand; I do believe college is still a good investment for the future. |
| College is more worth it than ever. A bachelors degree is basically th new highschool diploma. |
| yeah college is the new high school diploma in america obama said this i forget sometime 1 in 4 jobs in 1972 required a college diploma 3 in 4 jobs in 2012 required a college diploma by the time the younguns like me hit working age it'll basically be a requirement (6 years from now i hit the workforce, i hope) in japan a lot of women don't go to college (i wuz pretty shocked cause its asia and i thought everyone would be a doctor) a swedish friend of mine told me that no one goes to college cause a lot of your wage gets taxed anyway so theres not that much reason |
RegicideOct 22, 2013 6:26 PM
| ~"The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands." (Pirsig) |
| Canada still on top yolo: http://www.oecd.org/education/EAG2012%20-%20Country%20note%20-%20Canada.pdf |
LoneWolf said: @Josh makes me sad to call myself Canadian. |
| look at this blatant sensationalism ...but many countries surpass Canada in the rate at which their tertiary education attainment levels have grown in recent years. cherry picking like the american president for state of the union addresses |
| ~"The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands." (Pirsig) |
Araby said: It's very possible that it could. English is a major, you know. Yes, the focus is usually on essay writing rather than creative writing (assuming that you want to write fiction), but either way you're learning how to write better. Even if you are a technically sound writer (you're good at expressing your thoughts), you also need the ability to asses your own experiences in nontrivial ways (you need to have good thoughts, so to speak). Formal education can be useful in honing this ability (critical thinking, analytical thinking). Last, but certainly not least, you'll be exposed to what the academic community thinks about different things related to writing. Specific works, genres of works, styles of writing, etc. This could be very useful to you. All of this can be achieved by doing private research at a much less prohibitive cost. I'll walk back on my original statement though, college would help, but it wouldn't be worth the price tag that comes with it. It would only help if I applied myself and did my own research anyway, as it's very, very easy to pass with decent grades without doing any real research. If I'm going to be doing my own research anyway, I might as well do it cheaply instead of paying thousands of dollars so that a professor can point me in the direction of the right book. College is more specialized than high-school. Unless your friends took english, heck, even if they took english, they probably wouldn't have studied R&J (english profs don't usually like it, because the discussion of the content is "over saturated" and everyone's already read it). So, it's very likely the case that your friends were never familiar with the quote. Maybe high-school let them down, maybe #yolo let them down, but regardless, your criticism of college on that grounds is completely unfounded. Every single degree in this country requires college level general education. >90% of which require some form of literature class and/or multiple English classes. The idea that college is this super specialized place where you only learn what is immediately relevant to your field is a myth. And the Shakespeare quote was just an example. Most college graduates probably couldn't even define the word "philistine", much less know where it comes from and how it applies to them. The fact is: college does not require one to be intelligent or educated in the classical sense. It requires two things: the ability to do homework and the same basic reasoning skills that will get your through high-school. The point isn't that not reading Shakespeare or even having a cursory knowledge of basic history invalidates college, the point is that it is not useful for education unless one applies oneself to being educated. Using the same effort one would use in being educated in college, one could educate themselves by using the internet, the library, and Barnes and Noble; with much less cost to ones overall budget. While little bits of truth can be salvaged from this pretentious mess, you're going to need to find them and state them explicitly. What you've written here is meaningless. It is quite common for a person who has 20+ years of experience (with no degree) in a field to be passed over for a promotion to allow room for a person with a college degree, and then be required to train said college graduate (who would be completely unprepared for the job without the training). College degrees are generally much less useful than real work experience. The problem is that the standards of primary education have fallen so far as to require a college degree from a young person to be able to gain experience in whatever field they've chosen. It is particularly edgy to say that the only benefit of college is a piece of paper. For the vast majority of college graduates, that is its only benefit. Education can and does serve both of those purposes. You're not being realistic, you're being flat out wrong. Can and does for the few who actually go into a field that requires the knowledge their college courses conferred. For the vast majority of college graduates, that same education can be gained by applying oneself. A requirement, as I've said, exists in college. If we're talking about doctors, who make up about a tiny minority of the overall college graduates, then yes, college is absolutely necessary for the education. If we're talking about the majority of college graduates, work experience and a bit of outside reading would actually have prepared them for the job much better than college. The problem is gaining said work experience, which is currently impossible without the degree. This is why college is, for most people, buying a piece of paper. Sure, the average college graduate will disagree with me, but then again, the average college graduate can't tell me who invented dynamite, who wrote Brave New World, who discovered radium, who is the "father" of geometry, or the last name of the leader whom Fidel Castro overthrew. But they sure can tell me all about the latest Dancing With the Stars episode. |
StopDropAndBowlOct 22, 2013 6:57 PM
| Let's go bowling. |
| >implying politics jokes have ever been, are, or will ever be funny In all seriousness though, I was being facetious. Canada still has a wide portfolio of education related problems. |
LoneWolf said: @Josh makes me sad to call myself Canadian. |
Araby said: >implying politics jokes have ever been, are, or will ever be funny In all seriousness though, I was being facetious. Canada still has a wide portfolio of education related problems. politics jokes are funny stand up comedy is pretty nice and its basically all political i was also being facetious (remind me what this means) |
| ~"The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands." (Pirsig) |
StopDropAndBowl said: No, it really can't. To basically parrot what I said earlier in this thread, having personal access to knowledgeable people is invaluable. Those people can critique your writing and have discussions with you about whatever it is. All of this can be achieved by doing private research at a much less prohibitive cost. Pick any prominent intellectual that comes to mind. I'll bet you that, at some point, they've attested to the value of regularly conversing with other intellectuals. Discussion between intellectuals is often how new ideas/theories/models/etc. are born. It is invaluable. If you already have a tight network of strong writers and intellectuals, then maybe you're set. However, I doubt that that is the case. Every single degree in this country requires college level general education. >90% of which require some form of literature class and/or multiple English classes. The idea that college is this super specialized place where you only learn what is immediately relevant to your field is a myth. Okay, let me back up. I don't know where you live, so maybe that's true in your case. In Canada however, you don't have to take anything that isn't directly related to your major. You can, if you choose to, but you're never forced to. English is not very high on most people's priority lists. ---- all of the times you said some variation of: college graduates are "uncultured," and don't know specific things that I think they should know, therefore college is useless ------ You keep repeating this argument, but it doesn't make any sense. Those premises don't imply anything about the quality of education via. college. You could benefit from taking a course on logic. It is quite common for a person who has 20+ years of experience (with no degree) in a field to be passed over for a promotion to allow room for a person with a college degree, and then be required to train said college graduate (who would be completely unprepared for the job without the training). What is your conclusion here? That degrees are functionally useless? If so, once again, your conclusion does not follow for your premise. You're trying to draw implications where they don't exist. College degrees are generally much less useful than real work experience. Less useful when it comes to what? Learning how to do a very specific task? That's true in some specific cases, but it is certainly not general. It's completely useless to try and gain "real" work experience in a field that requires advanced technical knowledge, without having some sort of a handle on that knowledge first. I'd love to see you show up at NASA and say, "I'm here to gain work experience, I did pretty well in grade 11 physics." Or a bank, or an IT firm, or law firm, etc. That argument does not hold any water. You honestly just sound like you're trying to make yourself feel better about not having or wanting to have a degree. There is nothing wrong with not getting a degree, but there's no reason for you to make logically bankrupt claims about the quality of college education. It just makes you look bad, especially since you're arguing against formal education. Also, since you seem to admire Huxley, you might be interested in knowing that he had a degree in literature. |
JoshOct 22, 2013 7:35 PM
LoneWolf said: @Josh makes me sad to call myself Canadian. |
Araby said: No, it really can't. To basically parrot what I said earlier in this thread, having personal access to knowledgeable people is invaluable. Those people can critique your writing and have discussions with you about whatever it is. Knowledgeable people are not exclusive to academia. Okay, let me back up. I don't know where you live, so maybe that's true in your case. In Canada however, you don't have to take anything that isn't directly related to your major. You can, if you choose to, but you're never forced to. English is not very high on most people's priority lists. Ah, well then the Canadian system is better than the US system in that regard. In the US, every college degree requires general education. You keep repeating this argument, but it doesn't make any sense. Those premises don't imply anything about the quality of education via. college. You could benefit from taking a course on logic. I'm sorry, but if one can graduate college without ever having read an actual book during ones entire college career, that speaks volumes about the quality of education college can give you. That's not illogical, it's common sense. If I consider an "education" to necessarily include some sort of basic grounding in ones cultural history, and college does not provide that in any way, shape, or form, then it follows that college is not useful for education. Thus far, you have yet to provide any reason why a basic knowledge of ones culture and history should not be considered as necessary for one to claim to be educated. What is your conclusion here? That degrees are functionally useless? If so, once again, your conclusion does not follow for your premise. You're trying to draw implications where they don't exist. Of course degrees are not functionally useless. They are perfectly useful at serving their real function: opening the door for a person to get the job so that they can build work experience. The vast majority of jobs that require degrees only do so because the standards of primary education have fallen so far as to allow the functionally illiterate to gain high-school diplomas. Less useful when it comes to what? Learning how to do a very specific task? That's true in some specific cases, but it is certainly not general. It's completely useless to try and gain "real" work experience in a field that requires advanced technical knowledge, without having some sort of a handle on that knowledge first. I'd love to see you show up at NASA and say, "I'm here to gain work experience, I did pretty well in grade 11 physics." Or a bank, or an IT firm, or law firm, etc. That argument does not hold any water. I think you need to learn what the word: "general" means. The majority of college degrees are not awarded in the field of physics, law, or information technology. In the USA, at least, the majority of college graduates do not even work in a field of their degree. There are specific fields, as I've already mentioned, that require the actual knowledge that one's degree will confer. The majority of jobs that require a degree do not require any sort of technical knowledge that comes from studying. You honestly just sound like you're trying to make yourself feel better about not having or wanting to have a degree. There is nothing wrong with not getting a degree, but there's no reason for you to make logically bankrupt claims about the quality of college education. It just makes you look bad, especially since you're arguing against formal education. I'm going to let you try and find what is logically incorrect about your first statement, but in the mean time I will turn it around on you. It sounds as though you are merely fighting to internally justify the cost of your degree and education. As far as the quality of education goes, I have made no real claims other than the fact that the vast majority of college degrees do not confer what I would consider to be an "education". For most of human history, being "educated" meant that you had a deep knowledge in history, culture, literature, and science. Obviously, we have become more specific in some ways, but I still highly disagree with the idea that one is educated if they are completely bankrupt (a word I notice you employ quite often) of even the most basic knowledge of any subject except perhaps the hyper-focus of their own field of study. You can call this the fault of primary school, but then one should not even be able to graduate college with such a lack of primary grounding. The fact that one can easily graduate college with high scores with only the abysmal education that primary school offers as their foundation is most certainly a sign of college's overall worth in that regard. It is not logically inconsistent for me to claim that the ease with which even the most moronic person can gain his degree speaks to the quality of that degree. As for Huxley, he attended college in the early 1900s. Hardly comparable to now. |
StopDropAndBowlOct 23, 2013 7:14 AM
| Let's go bowling. |
StopDropAndBowl said: Of course not. As I said, if you have a network of intellectuals specializing in various areas that you see personally on a regular basis, then that's great. Knowledgeable people are not exclusive to academia. Thus far, you have yet to provide any reason why a basic knowledge of ones culture and history should not be considered as necessary for one to claim to be educated. I never made that claim. However, the all too obvious reason as to why college isn't to blame for the lack of "educated" people is that high-school is. In most countries, from what I understand, it is supposed to be the job of high-school to provide the type of education that you want to see. I think you need to learn what the word: "general" means. In the context that I used it, it means, "not true in all cases."It sounds as though you are merely fighting to internally justify the cost of your degree and education. I'm going to school for free, so I have no need to do that. For most of human history, being "educated" meant that you had a deep knowledge in history, culture, literature, and science. High-school. Obviously, we have become more specific in some ways, but I still highly disagree with the idea that one is educated if they are completely bankrupt (a word I notice you employ quite often) of even the most basic knowledge of any subject except perhaps the hyper-focus of their own field of study. So you just don't like that college grads are formally referred to as 'educated'? Is that what this is all about? You can call this the fault of primary school, but then one should not even be able to graduate college with such a lack of primary grounding. The fact that one can easily graduate college with high scores with only the abysmal education that primary school offers as their foundation is most certainly a sign of college's overall worth in that regard. It is not logically inconsistent for me to claim that the ease with which even the most moronic person can gain his degree speaks to the quality of that degree. Yes, it is. It's logically inconsistent, because it would be irrational for college programs to waste their time/resources re-testing students on knowledge that is not directly relevant to their program. Can you imagine if "general education" were part of every academic program at every level? "MS in Chem Eng? Write a report on your favourite Shakespeare work please." "PhD in Math? Read Brave New World and The Communist Manifesto by next week. It'll be an embarrassment to our program if we award "morons" a PhD." It's nonsensical, it's infeasible, it's insane. PhD's would take 20 years and be nearly impossible to achieve. Somewhere along the line it has to be someone's job and, at the moment, it's high-school's job. You're barking up the wrong tree. |
LoneWolf said: @Josh makes me sad to call myself Canadian. |
| If high school does not provide that education, and college does not require that education, then it follows that a college education does not create an educated person. Which is my point: college, in general, does not create educated people. College is therefore not useful in most cases for being educational, rather it is useful in giving a degree, and in some cases useful for training a person in one specific area. The point still stands: college does not educate in any meaningful sense of the word. The argument is not so much one of semantics as it is of reality: one does not have to be educated or even moderately intelligent to be granted a degree in most fields. Reading Shakespeare, or being familiar with the works of Homer and Herodotus, or knowing what the Norman invasion is, or having read at least some Plutarch (which for a very long time was considered a requirement to call oneself educated), or to know what the Byzantine empire is, or to know the political situations that surrounded the Crusades were, or to know the basics behind the theory of general relativity; all of these things can be called irrelevant to being educated, and one can certainly get a degree without having the slightest idea what any of these things are, but if that is your idea of education, then I question the value of that degree and of your overall conception of education. And I question whether any institution that requires of it's pupils not even the slightest bit of essential cultural/historic/scientific knowledge is worth my time, or is filled with intellectuals who are worth the title that they've so eagerly place upon themselves. By all means, go to college. Get the piece of paper. But if you desire a real education that can allow you to give respectable discourse on a wide variety of topics, then do not expect college to give you that. If you expect an institution that requires the highest standard of its students, then college will disappoint you, as it has me and many others. And yes, there will be plenty in their ivory towers who view the self-educated with disdain, and they will be quick to point to the many luminaries who are alumni to such institutions. And the self-educated should rest comfortably in the knowledge that those same geniuses would hang their heads in disgust at what those great institutions have become. |
| Let's go bowling. |
| Above all else, please stop making idiotic statements that are so vague that they are utterly meaningless. I'm talking about things like, "what these once great institutions have become is disgusting." It makes you sound like a washed-up mechanic who didn't make it out of grade school, which is laughable in this context of this conversation. Perhaps you should consider either attending college yourself or actually self-educating yourself on what college is like. You could start by scraping everything you think you know about college; then go talk to some college professors, staff, or others with firsthand knowledge. You've also been a living, breathing contradiction throughout this argument. This could have been avoided if you had a stronger handle on logic and critical thinking more generally (skills often developed or strengthened during formal education). (1) Your original point was, "college just gets you a piece of paper," which is a far cry from, "college does not satisfy my extremely specific and shallow definition of education," which is what you now claim in your most recent post. You then conclude said post with your original point, "college just gets you a piece of paper." Which is it? I agree with your second point (in a trivial sense), but, as I have argued, your original statement is absurd. (2) You believe that college studies should be more broad, yet you also complain that college degrees are not specific enough to be relevant in the workplace. You can't have both, unless you want college degrees to take a lot more time, be even more expensive, and be functionally useless to a lot of people. (3) You question the value of a degree on the basis of things that are entirely irrelevant to what that degree entails and represents. It's called a degree in CHEMISTRY for a reason. Finally, there is a significant difference between advocating for the value of formal education and viewing self-education with disdain. Almost everyone who is keen on learning, college grad or not, embraces self-education. Personally, I do a lot of self-study on climate change and social justice, because they are relevant to my interests and not the focus of my formal studies. Best of luck with your future self-studies. I highly recommend including critical thinking and logic as part of them. |
JoshOct 23, 2013 2:09 PM
LoneWolf said: @Josh makes me sad to call myself Canadian. |
JD2411 said: No, they will always be areas of vital importance:Depends what you do. Computers will be able to all maths and science in 10 years so they're kind of redundant. Things like languages and social sciences are good investments for your future (1) Running data through computer software is useless if you don't know which kinds of data the software is useful for dealing with, how the software works, why the software works, and how to interpret the results it spits out. Those things require advanced technical and theoretical knowledge. (2) Computers aren't creative. They aren't going to cure cancer, curb climate change, further space exploration, or anything like that. Those things require creativity, which is something that only humans can offer (at this point, at least). If you mean that manual number crunching is becoming less necessary and therefore the amount of number crunching jobs available is decreasing, then sure, that's true. However, that doesn't imply that those areas of study are becoming of decreased importance. |
LoneWolf said: @Josh makes me sad to call myself Canadian. |
JD2411 said: Depends what you do. Computers will be able to all maths and science in 10 years so they're kind of redundant. Things like languages and social sciences are good investments for your future Holy fuck uninstall your brain please. |
| Not gonna pay for school,its a total waste of time...who cares if u will get a good work place...in the end we all die.. |
 |
| This thread degraded pretty quickly, it is fun to read though. |
|
Ulquiorra1923 said: Not gonna pay for school,its a total waste of time...who cares if u will get a good work place...in the end we all die.. #yolo |
 |
| My roommate is doing his PhD in math and that shit is cray. |
LoneWolf said: @Josh makes me sad to call myself Canadian. |
| If you want a job with a reasonable salary, then of course go to college. Just make sure you have a plan going in to college and don't end up majoring in something you have no interest in whatsoever(eg engineering if you like philosophy) |
hentai_proxy said: Not sure. I know he's giving a presentation on "fault detection in nonlinear systems," though.Araby said: Do you know what field he's working in?My roommate is doing his PhD in math and that shit is cray. |
LoneWolf said: @Josh makes me sad to call myself Canadian. |
| no i hate college |
| B.S. in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics, having that little piece of paper has opened a lot of doors for me career wise that would otherwise be closed. That being said I don't use 95% of what I learned in college, and that was going to a very good school. |
| I'm just going lay in my bed until the moment comes that the robot overlords will work for me so I can pay my bills. |
Makomonogatari said: lupadim said: The best part is that you somehow actually exist.And the best part is that no one can prove it wrong |
hentai_proxy said: gstaad said: the robot overlords will work for me Orly. JD2411 has spoken. |
Makomonogatari said: lupadim said: The best part is that you somehow actually exist.And the best part is that no one can prove it wrong |
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