2

6/29/2011 3:05:30 PM

If it weren't for college, I wouldn't have gotten any of the jobs I've had since college. I guess I got my money's worth.

6/29/2011 3:09:21 PM

The first figure to believe in the societal divide that should happen given this milestone (university education) was Petrarch. His thoughts on the transition of being a person in a medieval mindset to an enlightened university grad promised a transitive change in your life that will change who you are in essence.

I feel that I achieved my Petrarchan transition.

Also - I cannot do math.

6/29/2011 3:12:23 PM

Aren't you an accountant?

6/29/2011 3:13:20 PM

I tell bad jokes.

6/29/2011 3:14:10 PM

i saw this article the other day. well it wasn't this one exactly but one that said basically the same thing. i can't remember where i saw the original one. googling only brought this article up. maybe someone already posted it. i have the hiccups right now and it is making me want to vomit so i am having trouble focusing on the thread lol

http://tinyurl.com/6f2bnzm

[Edited on June 29, 2011 at 3:16 PM. Reason : .]

6/29/2011 3:15:16 PM

a university isn't a fucking trade school

some people need to quit their bitching and call DeVry, Durham Tech, or the Diesel Driving Academy

6/29/2011 3:17:08 PM

DDA WHA WHA

6/29/2011 3:17:40 PM

Ive been hearing more and more news outlets rehashing these points and cant help but think its a conspiracy to produce an ignorant working class that doesn't perceive the need for advanced education

6/29/2011 3:17:49 PM

I continue to be dumbfounded by the amount of college graduates that still cannot write a complete and error-free sentence, let alone an entire paragraph. And on resumes no less. I have seen firsthand some of the work they turn in that passes with As and Bs, and it makes my jaw drop with disbelief. 80% graduate and take jobs that they could learn to do with zero experience and a month tops of on-the-job training. I die inside a little each time.

6/29/2011 3:18:32 PM

^ mafucka I got my damn degree and achieved my Petrarchan shit so step off


now gimme back my iPod you bitch I gotta hear my lil tunechi ya dun did hurrrrrrddddd

6/29/2011 3:19:38 PM

for some reason during my final semester in high school we spent weeks on elementary grammar. I was chastised for busting the curve because the class didn't know what a clause was. not santa.

6/29/2011 3:20:20 PM

^ I would have enacted an escape clause in that scenario.....am-i-right??? imean srsly

6/29/2011 3:24:46 PM

Quote :

"I have seen firsthand some of the work they turn in that passes with As and Bs, and it makes my jaw drop with disbelief. 80% graduate and take jobs that they could learn to do with zero experience and a month tops of on-the-job training. I die inside a little each time."

Is this not true for anything though. I mean I'm fairly sure I could be a lab tech just be learning having hands on experience with lab equipment. But it's also nice to get some background in what your going to be working on.

6/29/2011 3:24:51 PM

Quote :

"what your going to be working on."

nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

6/29/2011 3:27:00 PM

OH SHIT HAMLET! LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU.

6/29/2011 3:29:09 PM

WHAT HAD HAPPENED?!!!

6/29/2011 3:30:24 PM

It raises a lot of good points, but there's definitely an element of elitism in this article. A lot of people don't have the drive, talent, or connections to go off and do something valuable at age 18-19.

6/29/2011 3:34:36 PM

Umm hello folks there's a flipside to this supposed increase on the investment value of an undergraduate degree.


Consider it more of a transfer of the equity that used to exist in state-sponsored public education and what it could do for your income over your lifetime. 80 years ago Uncle Sam thought it was great for every citizen to learn Latin, civics, the shorthand method to long division in your head.

Now we pump them through while they're playing on their iPhones and award threm degrees in mass communications and [various obsolete and parochial cultural]-ural studies.

The increase in the investment value on paper is the quantity of what's been lost in the public high school side.

[Edited on June 29, 2011 at 3:41 PM. Reason : clean-up]

6/29/2011 3:38:30 PM

There are only two things I think that degrees are necessary for. Engineering and Medical. All else could be BSed.

But in this world. If you don't at least have a BS degree in something, most employers will put your resume on the bottom stack, no matter if you had x amount of years in a variety of fields that are important to whatever job you are applying for.

Shit a lot of places puts a necessity for Masters or PHD for positions that don't need it cause they know it will string out the herd of applicants.

6/29/2011 3:43:21 PM

Nah man, for engineering and medical you just have to know how to read a book and follow directions.

6/29/2011 3:46:10 PM

Measure twice, cut once.

6/29/2011 3:46:51 PM

LOOK AT ME! MY MAJOR IS BETTER THAN YOURS BECAUSE YOURS IS STUPID AND MINE IS NOT.

these threads always turn out like this.

College is what you make of it.

6/29/2011 3:48:04 PM

^ Exactly

Measure twice, cut once.

6/29/2011 3:49:06 PM

Quote :

"Nah man, for engineering and medical you just have to know how to read a book and follow directions."

It's still a lot of books and information to read.

6/29/2011 6:16:04 PM

College taught me that everyone is trying to take your money no matter how ideological their mission is

6/29/2011 6:59:28 PM

best thing i learned in college was how to learn things on my own

6/29/2011 7:01:32 PM

best thing i learned in college is how to fuck dumb 17yr olds


HINT: JUST BUY BARTLES AND JAMES WINE COOLERS AND HANG OUT OUTSIDE FYC DORMS

6/29/2011 7:07:49 PM

lolololol FYC

6/29/2011 7:52:17 PM

i agree with this guy completely

I do not feel college itself any advantage other than playing the game and winning a diploma, that is nothing more than a badge saying you completed something

I say this because i got to my junior year and realizxed i didnt want a job in my major, i graduated, got out and just got a job as an intern for something i wanted to do and 6 months later my hard work got me a full time job.

So my question is why the hell did i spend five years playing a game? I see people that stay in the professors grade coming up with every trick in the book to change a B to an A. I went through college, never did homework, never did any assignments that were less than 10% of my total grade, never cared to to do bonus work or extra credit. I just sat in class, took notes, and read them a few nights before an exam, made my B or C, moved on with my life.

So i must rephrase, i dont think that college is a joke as a whole, the grading system and basing wether you learned anything or not based on some freakin number you earn on a test that covers some stuff somebody says needs to be covered

These NC State professors and their researtch are amazing, I could never replace or replicate the learning i got from them, thats why I hold on tight to my notes. I dont hold on to these bullshit text books that i never read (if the test covered shit in the book and not on notes, fuck it ill take my C or D) I learned A LOT and i retained a lot of information. I dont believe in the concept of busy work or empty work for the sole purpose of earning a grade. I didnt give a damn about my GPA. I didnt care about establishing a relationship with these professors outside of sitting at a desk in front of them for an hour and going to the next class.

The point is, I feel like continuing education courses and paying for individual classes that are actually prudent to your interests are much more beneficial than playing these bullshit games for years just to hand over a transcript. Its a freakin poker chip.

I would much sooner take a class and pay out of pocket for a semester course than i would go to graduate school. for instance, for my job I se it as beneficial to go back and take a few semester courses plus continuing educational courses for some knowledge on pesticide application and chemicals used in greenhouses. College is being used in a perverse way with respect to learning i feel.

god damn i ranted

6/29/2011 8:18:13 PM

6/29/2011 8:19:20 PM

i just basically feel that once again, work and what you actually know is lesser valued than who you know and how well youve stroked their ego

theres a dude at work that did not ever darken the door of an admissions office, and im learning from HIM. despite this big push for post doctorate hirings, these guys come down and we are explaining very basic plant care stuff to them. Theres just a lot more equity between the post docs and those who worked in the industry without going to school than people want to admit. I thnik that is a problem if collegiate degree is supposed to prove you are more of an expert in your field than others, and it is generally regarded as such.

[Edited on June 29, 2011 at 8:24 PM. Reason : f]

6/29/2011 8:21:07 PM

^You didn't want a job in your major, didn't do your homework, or read textbooks. What did you expect to get out of college?

Yes, on-the-job experience usually beats education. Yes, if you're a genius with an invention and a business plan, you can skip college. But for me and my field, Statistics, I wasn't ready to do that professionally out of high school. Even if I wanted to, who's going to hire me? Who's going to pick up a teenager and hold his hand until he knows distributions, regression, sampling, data cleansing, programming, writiing skills, working in groups, critical thinking skills, and a variety of other subjects that may be relevant to clients? Companies won't do that, but they might be glad if I spent a few years in a place with people whose job it was to teach all that.

Also, does the guy in the article even have a talent besides criticizing college?

6/29/2011 11:52:21 PM

ibt unc flipping burgers

6/29/2011 11:53:16 PM

I Spent 4 Years In College And All I Got Was This T-Shirt

6/29/2011 11:54:55 PM

ibt I unexpectedly had to start collecting unemployment because my double major in MDS didn't make me CEO the next day

6/29/2011 11:57:07 PM

Good luck with being a doctor/lawyer/dentist/professor/blah blah blah without going to college.


Sucka!

6/29/2011 11:58:16 PM

i think the point is that if you get out of high school and work for four years alongside an experienced staff you are stilll at a disadvantage if you apply for an equitable job compared to someone that has a piece of paper saying he made good grades

these tests usually dont cover everything you learned at any capacity in a class. It is a frequent complaint amongst college students.

you dont get to be a doctor lawyer etc til you take specialized courses and job training, the point still stands


its just my opinion, everything aint for everybody

[Edited on June 30, 2011 at 12:04 AM. Reason : de]

6/29/2011 11:59:11 PM

Sounds like college was a waste of time for you because you wasted your time during college. But go ahead and blame "the system" if it helps you sleep at night.

6/30/2011 12:04:37 AM

i dont blame the system i just think it can easily be exploited and typically is.

the professors and many of the courses were not wastes of time, like i said i value the lectures and the notes i took

but as far as exams and busy work, tutoring, i barely had time

trust me i know not doin half my work ws gonna get me half the grades, i just chose not to worry about it so much, im doin fine.

[Edited on June 30, 2011 at 12:09 AM. Reason : f]

6/30/2011 12:08:07 AM

I think the article is somewhat valid, but its interesting a couple of the first posts ITT were about which major you had...I had some classes that were kind of in-line with the quoted part of the OP, but others that were completely different...I would assume different majors' curriculum and class requirements had different percentages of classes that fit this description to some extent

but overall I think its what you make of it

6/30/2011 12:08:20 AM

It is a waste for a lot of people getting degrees. The government promotes a college degree bubble and wants to jam as many people through college as possible. To do this, standards have to go down.

A large percentage of degrees aren't sound financial decisions.

We have secretaries with college degrees. That's fucking retarded. There are plenty of highly valuable trades, and the time people spend in college could be used to build experience in a trade.

College doesn't make anyone smarter -- it just says who can jump through certain types of hoops.

[Edited on June 30, 2011 at 12:20 AM. Reason : .]

6/30/2011 12:17:35 AM

If you wanted to compare undergraduate attrition rate against the successful collection rates on the debt the failed students incurred, that number reflects straight profit. I love failed students. They bring money to my university and thin out the competition in the job market. (Universities love them too for accounting purposes but they won't tell you that. Their favorites are the ones who take one class a semester for 20 years and barely show up to campus. They pay full service fees and don't hurt their academic statistics. A close second is students who fail out during the very end because they've given the most money and hurt the statistics marginally compared to first-year failures.)

6/30/2011 12:23:14 AM

i think that for some majors that do not require technical application, there should be 2 years in core courses/2 years studying in a field related to your major.

like Sociology (my major was Criminology)...you learn the same basic theories for 4 years in core courses, and i would rather learn them and apply them to higher level courses and then work in the field (possibly, likely, unpaid).

outside courses are great, but learning physics or some BIO when my future career has nothing to do with it seemed pointless sometimes. taking something like anthropology makes way more sense in reference to a SOC degree as opposed to learning math and science. i don't think we should do away with these courses outside a particular major, but some of the graduation requirements are a little off-kilter.

all that said, i value all the courses i took and think they made me more well rounded.

6/30/2011 12:42:38 AM

Quote :

"A B.A./B.S. is the new high school diploma. There are many good, entry level jobs (albeit competitive) that pretty much only consider college graduates."

......and I guess a Master's is the new B.A/B.S and a Doctorate is the new Masters?


Get really tired it being called the new high school diploma, because it is not, but it is fun to say and repeat and repeat and repeat as if it is the truth.....

6/30/2011 12:59:47 AM

well a lot of people that go to college just don't want to go to work and don't want to go to the military, so what else is there to do really? And in a lot of cases it's like a four year paid vacation from your parents. I really don't think that those kinds of students will be actively working hard to learn a trade and show any form of discipline, if they were not in school.

Sure some people get screwed over by going to college instead of working and vice versa, but the bottom line is that it does benefit you to have a degree: It is a measure of intelligence and discipline.

[Edited on June 30, 2011 at 1:09 AM. Reason : er]

6/30/2011 1:08:21 AM

There is far more to a education than having well written prose with correct punctuation. Sure it's impressive if you sound great on paper, but as long as idea "A" is transmitted to another human being as idea "A" and not idea "B" the writing has achieved its purpose.

Being capable of understanding concepts and methods and recognize not only why they work but why they exist is the very basis of education. By this understanding one can not only use and maintain a system they can also improve it and spur innovation.

Post-secondary education is supposed to instil these abilities in graduates at different levels. The first level is that of understanding what it is, and how not to mess it up. The second level adds the why things work that way. The third and fourth levels are supposed to add skills and abilities to alter and experiment with the ideas.

Currently far too many people graduate a 4 year college or university only at the first level. When that is a 2 year at the most achievement.

Theorycrafting: Technical/trade/vocational/artistan schools for that first level. Colleges with focused 4 year degrees for the second levels. Universities with 4 year degrees and graduate / professional schools should focus on getting students to (prepping for and getting to) the third and fourth levels.

[Edited on June 30, 2011 at 1:16 AM. Reason : /theorycrafting]

6/30/2011 1:10:39 AM

6/30/2011 1:31:22 AM

Quote :

"There are only two things I think that degrees are necessary for. Engineering and Medical. All else could be BSed. But in this world."

I really hope the poor sentence mechanics were for trolling purposes, because I count 4 fragments and 0 complete sentences, yet I see the punctuation for 4.

[Edited on June 30, 2011 at 2:47 AM. Reason : but im the dropout]

6/30/2011 2:47:09 AM

it's a waste of time if you are

if this is the case then do what the guy in the OP did: get the fuck out and give the seat to someone who wants to be there

universities aren't fucking votec schools, they're institutions of higher learning. if high schools did a better job then less people would need to go to college.

[Edited on June 30, 2011 at 3:12 AM. Reason : .]

6/30/2011 3:11:23 AM