Is College Bull****? I think it is.

[hgc]

I watched this on the News the other night. Over the past 30 years the number of courses given on average in college went down as did the graduation rate and the difficulty of those courses.

Did that news story, always a great source of information, give you the basis for comparison of the study? i.e., Did they compare the same institutions then and now, or did they include the entire universe (or a statistically relevant sample thereof) of colleges and universities? Because there has probably been a big increase in students coming into colleges at the lower strata over that time -- community colleges, technical schools and the like, where there would certainly be different standards of difficulty, and considering the amount of students with full-time jobs and families to support, a higher drop-out rate. The opportunity for a college education is available to more people, but then the average level of achievement within the context of higher education can go down while the level of achievement for society in general can go up at the same time.

 

[Dustin Kesselberg]

Hmmm...
This I really do not understand. You say college is ********. But at least 99% of scientific achievements are done by college graduates.
It appears that college did not hurt these people.

You say that without college degree you cannot be successful in an academic environment. Yet you gave names of people who did that nevertheless.
It appears that you do not have to graduate from college to be successful (e.g. Buckminster-Fuller).

Those people are 'rare cases' because of the limitations of not having a college degree.

To make it short.
Most of the successful people graduated from college. Some successful people did not graduate from college.

To make it shorter: Were's your beef?

You do not have to go to college to be successful. You might HAVE to go to college in order to take up a PARTICULAR job. For example lawyer and surgeon (and these are almost always jobs that could screw up the life of your prospective customers; that's why they are regulated).

In almost all other cases no college is really required. You just have to convince your prospective employer that you are up to the job. Some people have diplomas, some people have life experience, others have something else.
Employers define the qualifications that they need for a job done. If they ask for a college degree then better provide one. If they ask for a sky divers license a doctorate will be useless.

Get your own company and you can hire everybody you want. But until then do not prescribe ME whom I should hire. No selftaught bookworm will come near my (our) multi billion accelerator.

In the cases it isn't regulated. The problem is the perception that those without college degrees are somehow 'less knowledgeable' than those with college degrees.

 

[JamesDillon]

In the cases it isn't regulated. The problem is the perception that those without college degrees are somehow 'less knowledgeable' than those with college degrees.

That's probably because people without college degrees generally are less knowledgable than people with college degrees.

 

[Johnny Pixels]

P2P downloading.

Kazaa
Limewire
Rip-Torrent

All free.

This isn't the sort of stuff you get on Kazaa. This stuff is thousands of pounds each, and very specialised. The only people who have it are engineering companies and universities. Not teenage kids with Kazaa. Even if they did, that wouldn't teach me how to use it, because the only people that have it are engineering companies and universities. They don't have manuals, they have people to train you. And the front end for one piece of software was written by one of my lecturers.

Read their personal insights online or in books.
or
Contact them yourself.

They work for my university. They are too busy teaching students that they get paid to teach, rather than people who email them.

Give me an example.

Engine mapping occurs at engine manufacturers. Why would they let me in and teach me how to do it. They're busy enough making engines. Why would they let some guy in, who for all they know, is there to sell their ideas to a rival?

You aren't everyone. Using your own personal need for a university isn't an argument that EVERYONE must go to learn.

I didn't say that everyone must go to learn. People that want to learn stuff properly must go there to learn. For example, go to the Loose Change Forum and read the insights of armchair engineers.

Moreover, This is a very specific case among few where you need things that you can't afford to learn what you need to learn. In most cases all you need is a Library card.

And a university library.

Who checks your work when you're wrong? Who puts you back on the right track? There's a reason why there are lecturers at college.

 

[Skeptic]

You could use these labs and simply pay fees to use them opposed to enrolling in the university and paying tens of thousands of dollars? You could have specific instruction on lab procedure instead of going through the entire 3 or 4 years to get a degree in the field itself?

Of course you could--but, then again, that is hardly enough to be a doctor, is it?

You'd also have to get specific instruction in, say, anatomy in order to know what you are sending to the lab, and pathology in order to know what disease different lab results might indicate, and parasitology to know what germs you might find in the lab report, and internal medicine to know what to ask someone who comes to you with "a tummy ache" before you decide if and what kind of tests he needs to do in the lab, and...

...gee, I think there is an institution that teaches you all of that. It's called "medical school", or something like that. Appears to have something to do with college and higher education.

You could have your own lab.

Of course you could. If you got a spare $10,000,000 or so to set up one. And even if you buy all that equipment, you'd still have to go to medical school to learn how and for what purpose to use it.

This only applies to specific sciences. Not including zoology or archeology where you could learn the skills without a lab.

Well, for starters, zoologists and archeologists use laboratories all the time, but let's leave that aside. Now, let's see: I want to become an archeologist (say). Well, I can go an learn from one person who happens to be an expert in all fields of archeology, from fieldwork to the decipherment of unknown languages, but the problem is such a person doesn't exist. So I would rather learn from a group of people, each experts in their specific field of archeology, so that I would really know what I am doing.

Hmmm, there's a name for such a collection of people, isn't there? It's called "the archeology department" at your local college.

What can they teach you that you can't learn at the Public Library?

Nothing.

Utter nonsense. The relation between the quality of knowledge that a real expert has, and the quality of information in widely-available books in your public library, is like the relation between day and night. Do you really think graduate students, for example, learn from books found in the public library?

Let me give you an example from my own experience. I am currently involved in researching a certain historical subject. This is in the humanities--in history. Yet I assure you that the information I found about the subject in the Public Library--and I checked many more than one library--is virtually *nothing* compared to the information I had to get from experts in the fields through interviews, cooperation in working on an article, etc., etc. And this is in a field that needs no laboratories, expensive equipment, and so on.

In most fields of inquiry, you are lucky if the material you "find in the public library" teaches you 2% or 5% of what you really need to know to master the subject. Being "self-trained" in the public library is, in the vast majority of cases, the equivalent of trying to fly a real 747 after you "trained" by playing Microsoft Flight Simulator on your PC.

Unlikely but still a chance.

So is winning the lottery. But that's hardly a reason to argue that education in college is worthless because you might win the lottery and not have to work after all.

You claim that the day of self-taught scientist or experts is 'over' yet I can name dozens of contemporary examples in science or technology where people exceeded without college educations.

Yes, dozens--out of hundreds of thousands or millions of technicians and scientists who are university-trained. For every technological patent by a non-college-educated person, there must be a thousand by those who are.

Moreover...None of which has anything to do with the fact (as you yourself admit) people can be self taught and are currently being prohibited from perusing careers because they didn't take the 'common means' to getting their education.

The reason for that is public safety. Perhaps you are willing to have a self-taught physician operate on you, or a self-taught engineer build your house, or a self-taught pilot fly a plane you're on, with them basing their knowledge on trips to the public library. Most of us won't take such a risk, thankyouverymuch.

 

[Dave1001]

I've always wondered about College and what exactly its point is. There are several things that really don't make sense about College and most people’s view of College and it's adequacy.
In my opinion college should be the judge of whether someone gets a job or not. Their SKILL should be the judge of that. College should simply be there to help educate people who can’t educate themselves. That’s it. Period.

Discuss.

What's there to discuss? You're right, of course. Although technically a college degree is required neither for law school or medical school admissions, nor for licensing. Also, in a number of states (maybe a majority) a law degree is not required for licensing. But there are comparable barriers within the alternate routes that render this point moot.

College is a business. Having said that, I'll take my chances with a college degree rather than without one. I don't have a young Bill Gates' or Michael Dell's confidence that a college degree will only hinder my future achievement.

 

[JamesDillon]

What's there to discuss? You're right, of course. Although technically a college degree is required neither for law school or medical school admissions, nor for licensing. Also, in a number of states (maybe a majority) a law degree is not required for licensing. But there are comparable barriers within the alternate routes that render this point moot.

Not true. Most states require a degree from an accredited law school in order to sit for the bar exam (California is the only exception that comes to mind offhand). To the best of my knowledge, most (probably all) accredited law schools require an undergraduate degree. Feel free to correct me if this is not the case, but I would be quite surprised.

 

[timhau]

1. More detailed
2. Area it's explaining is much more vast than a single study on a single topic in most cases.
3. Sources are more varied.

Just to name a few reasons.

I agree, it does cover a vast area -- which is exactly why I dispute #1 on that list. Sources may be more varied, but if you count hunting down the sources as part of the work (assuming you use only primary sources, which probably isn't always a given), doing the experiment reported in the short paper has to count as well.

But your insulting tone and lack of reading comprehension is making me decide not to respond to your posts anymore.

OK, it's no skin off my back. Maybe we could resume the discussion in Finnish, so I can use my native stylistic sense and reading comprehension. (And sure, I might tell you how this "I won't talk to you, or you, or about that" strategy makes you look from my end of the internet, but why bother?)

 

[Darth Rotor]

I agree...Except...
You can get an education without college.

True.

You must still convince someone to hire you in your chosen field, or have some connections, or have a project or "thing you did" to demonstrate to a prospective employer your qualifications or skills in a given area. Otherwise, you are one more talking head who claims to be qualified for a job, with no evidence to support the claim.

Or, start your own business. Start small, and grow. If you are any good at what you do, you'll succeed. All it takes is total commitment and hard work by the bushel full.

As to college expense, aye, 'tis high.

One way to overcome that is to get a lot of credits and requirements taken care of on the cheap, at the local community college. If you are as smart as you think you are, you'll ace each course, and the credits will transfer and you can "do college" on the three year plan, or two.

Meanwhile, you can work part or full time to help pay for your room and board, save a bit for later tuition. Live austerely. Downstream your student loan burden won't be as onerous when you graduate.

I suggest you get thee to a community college, and quickly. Enroll and excel. You are wasting your youth, and your time, posting on this board with your whining about how imperfect the world is, according to you. Life isn't fair, deal with it.

There are more ways to a college degree than a four year program at university. That is one path, and there are others. If you have the moxy to try and be hugely successful without college, pick a field and throw yourself into it.

Best of luck.

DR

 

[69dodge]

I should probably act all responsible-like, and encourage Dustin to go to college. But instead I'm gonna post this link:

http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~kovar/hall.html

 

[Darth Rotor]

I should probably act all responsible-like, and encourage Dustin to go to college. But instead I'm gonna post this link:

http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~kovar/hall.html

That made me LOL, recalling some of the labs I while an undergrad. Thanks.

DR

 

[timhau]

I should probably act all responsible-like, and encourage Dustin to go to college. But instead I'm gonna post this link:

http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~kovar/hall.html

Thanks! I needed that. This'll get me through the last remnants of that pile of exams I have to grade...

 

[Lurker]

Those people are 'rare cases' because of the limitations of not having a college degree.

In the cases it isn't regulated. The problem is the perception that those without college degrees are somehow 'less knowledgeable' than those with college degrees.

In my line of work, we have engineers who went to school and engineers who did not and kind of learned it over the years. I have a lot of respect for those engineers who kind of picked up the craft over time. They are good at what they do.

But they are in my office all the time asking me how to perform basic calculations. I can trust them to solve the sorts of problems that they have seen before. Very good at that. But when they see a problem they have not seen before, they are in trouble. Why? Because they cannot fall back on basic theory to work their way through the problem. Again, they come to my office.

College grads can learn form these "engineers" but they also can go much further in their career than these self-taught engineers. I speak from personal experience. Dustin, perhaps you see all these self-taught people performing as well or better than their college contemporaries but in my field, I have not seen it.

 

[drkitten]

Not true. Most states require a degree from an accredited law school in order to sit for the bar exam (California is the only exception that comes to mind offhand).

From Dustin's own Wikipedia citation:

In California, Virginia, Vermont and Washington, an applicant who has not attended law school may take the bar exam after study under a judge or practicing attorney for an extended period of time. This method is known as "reading law" or "reading the law".

New York requires that applicants who are reading the law must have at least one year of law school study. (See Rule 540.4 of the Rules of the Court of Appeals for the Admission of Attorneys.)

Which suggests that he didn't even read the article he's been citing so extensively.

 

[slingblade]

There's NOTHING that you can learn in college that you can't learn out of college. Period. I challenge you to name something.

It isn't so much what you learn, as how you learn it.

Learning does not take place in a vacuum. I worked for 20 years to teach myself how to write, in my spare time, and I was pretty damned good at it before I ever set foot in college at the age of 41. But the one thing I did not and could not get was the benefit of peer review, and the benefit of experience. Sure, I could have found a writer's group, and a couple of times I did sit in on such groups. I found they knew no more, and usually much less, than I did about the art of writing, and I ended up teaching them instead of them helping me. That didn't do me much good, and in fact just reinforced certain bad habits I'd developed, as I had no one to teach me any better.

College taught me many things I had not yet been able to learn on my own in 41 years. (I'm 47 now, JSYK.) College helped me with subjects I'd given up on as a lost cause--like math. I didn't learn algebra until college. I didn't have anyone to make me learn it, which is very important with intimidating subjects. I had to learn it, like it or not, and I certainly didn't like it. But I went from a D to a B in just a year of instruction.

College exposed me to new ideas I had never considered. The exchange of ideas is extremely important to learning, as it's not about simply digesting what's gone before, but learning how to create what will come next.

College taught me discipline. There were places I had to be and things I had to accomplish, at specific times, whether I had the "want to" or not. For many people, this is a difficult skill to learn. It was for me, and college has helped me in this as nothing else in my life--parenthood and employment, for example--ever did.

College got me to read things I had always disdained before. I had never read a word of Hemingway until college, and only then did I realize what I had been missing. Likewise Melville, Frost, HD, Dickinson, and other Western classics I had always ignored as passe', old hat, unimportant. College taught me how to analyze these authors' works; I woudn't have begun to know the right questions to ask, nor how to find the answers, without college. I certainly didn't get it in high school. Discovering all of this, under the expert guidance of my professors, has helped my writing immeasurably.

College exposed me to new subjects I hadn't even known I had an interest in learning. Logic, sociology, anthropology, geology, weather and climate, 3-D art, 2-D art, sculpture, poetry (I'm a 5-time award winning poet, which I would never have been without college to encourage me and give me a place to get published) and much more were all opened up to me.

College helps you sift and organize what you're learning. Learning can be like setting out on a trip for a place you've never been, without a map. Which way do you go? What should you see along the way and what will just waste your time? Some side roads are beneficial, while some just take you further away from your destination. Are you sure, before you set out, that you know exactly which is which? A guide might be handy...someone who has been there before. Now where might I find that? Gee, I wish I knew.....

College is voluntary. No one will force you to go. You have to choose it. This says something about you to the rest of the world. You have to choose to finish it, too. This also speaks volumes. And you have to choose to do well, to complete your assignments, to earn a good grade...all of these things show others that you are serious, that your future means enough to you that you choose to better yourself, not just to sit around whining and waiting for people to hand you things.

College, above all, is not magic. You don't just walk in one door an ignoramus and walk out the other a blooming genius, with no effort or sweat required on your part in between. College is work; you get out of it what you put into it. Do people get graduated without having learned what they ought to have? Yep. I saw it with my own eyes. I've said it before--there are now, at this moment, people teaching English who can't properly use it themselves. This doesn't mean college was a waste of time and money for me, however. I got much more out of my 5 years of college (now edging into six as I change course) than I got out of the previous 41 years taken together. Mostly because I put much more into college than I've ever put into anything before.

You don't think college is worthwhile? Don't go. It's that simple.

But don't even try to disparage me because I did. Having read your posts, I know for a fact that there are things I know which, until and unless you go to college, you never will know.

And to quote Mr. Frost, that has made all the difference.

 

[drkitten]

]The fact is...There's NOTHING that you can learn in college that you can't learn out of college. Period.

Of course not. SImilarly, there's nothing that you can get to by car that you can't get to by pogo stick.

And yet people prefer to drive. I wonder why.....

 

[Katana]

No, I was right.

This seems to be your only strategy. Pretty lame.

I have had numerous other dermatologists identify what I had as blackheads and I have read in numerous dermatology journals that what I had were indeed blackheads.

The only people who seperate blackheads from 'acne' are the laymen. Every journal i've read and professional I have talked to identify blackheads as a form of acne.

She was wrong. Pure and simple.

Every journal that you have read? Which ones are those?

If you had read every journal like the Journal of the American Dermatologic Society, you might have come across articles that describe comedones (blackheads) that result from certain cosmetic substances. Some labeled this as acne cosmetica in order to identify a subset of "acne" patients whose problems are due to topical exposure and resolve after they stop using the offending product. Some consider this a subset of acne while others consider it a separate entity labeled in such a manner because it's appearance resembles acne.

If you had read a journal like Dermatologic Clinics, you would have seen references to comedones as a pre-cursor to acne but not acne itself.

I'm sure that you could do a literature search, although I don't expect you to, and find articles to support what you have been told or have read. That only serves to support my point. There is a lack of universal agreement.

Anyway, since you seem to need to hold on to the idea that your dermatologist was wrong and glean some inflated sense self worth from that, I suspect that you will continue to go on thinking as you do regardless of what any of us have to say.

But this isn't what I emphasized, so I'm not sure why you chose to respond to it alone rather than the more substantive issue of why you are wrong to suggest that you can do certain fields, like medicine, without a college degree.

 

[ingoa]

First of all, a college degree is the proof that you attended college successfully. Not more, not less. By that definition you cannot get a degree without going to college.

As Dustin wants a non-college exam, there comes a need to introduce an additional qualification. This will INCREASE cost. If this additional qualification is only taken by non-college people it would be quite meaningless. It lacks comparability. So college people would have to take it also. Thus the total cost would increase. On the other hand there is no demand from industry and research for such an additional exam.

So Dustin wants an additional qualification that nobody (except him) asked for. Fine. Dustin, set-up a facility that produces the needed tests and diplomas. But please do not spend our tax dollars for that. Let's see how far you come. No diploma alone will get you a job. Otherwise the printers of students would run hot. It is the package that comes with a degree.

Industry and academia hire people because they HAVE been at college and have a degree to prove that they did so successfully. If this system would not work than industry would press for change (hence the many new study topics that came with the rise of computers and new media).

That was the employer view. The student might view it quite differently. If you go to college and study some obscure semi-scientific subject (NO! I do not want to mention one explicitly ;-) )than you are qualified to work in that particular field. It will not help to get you into a lawyers firm or a scientific institution. But college students are (at least here) grown-ups which are free to waste their life on anything they want. If you believe that college is nothing for you: don't go. But do not request access to jobs where the employer demands a college degree.

It is very hard to get a job as truck driver without having a driving license. Now that is something I call unfair! I could learn driving easily by reading books in the public library.

 

[JamesDillon]

First of all, a college degree is the proof that you attended college successfully. Not more, not less. By that definition you cannot get a degree without going to college.

As Dillon wants a non-college exam, there comes a need to introduce an additional qualification. This will INCREASE cost. If this additional qualification is only taken by non-college people it would be quite meaningless. It lacks comparability. So college people would have to take it also. Thus the total cost would increase. On the other hand there is no demand from industry and research for such an additional exam.

So Dillon wants an additional qualification that nobody (except him) asked for. Fine. Dillon, set-up a facility that produces the needed tests and diplomas. But please do not spend our tax dollars for that. Let's see how far you come. No diploma alone will get you a job. Otherwise the printers of students would run hot. It is the package that comes with a degree.

Industry and academia hire people because they HAVE been at college and have a degree to prove that they did so successfully. If this system would not work than industry would press for change (hence the many new study topics that came with the rise of computers and new media).

That was the employer view. The student might view it quite differently. If you go to college and study some obscure semi-scientific subject (NO! I do not want to mention one explicitly ;-) )than you are qualified to work in that particular field. It will not help to get you into a lawyers firm or a scientific institution. But college students are (at least here) grown-ups which are free to waste their life on anything they want. If you believe that college is nothing for you: don't go. But do not request access to jobs where the employer demands a college degree.

It is very hard to get a job as truck driver without having a driving license. Now that is something I call unfair! I could learn driving easily by reading books in the public library.

I think you mean Dustin. Different person altogether.

 

[Katana]

First of all, a college degree is the proof that you attended college successfully. Not more, not less. By that definition you cannot get a degree without going to college.

As Dillon wants a non-college exam, there comes a need to introduce an additional qualification. This will INCREASE cost. If this additional qualification is only taken by non-college people it would be quite meaningless. It lacks comparability. So college people would have to take it also. Thus the total cost would increase. On the other hand there is no demand from industry and research for such an additional exam.

So Dillon wants an additional qualification that nobody (except him) asked for. Fine. Dillon, set-up a facility that produces the needed tests and diplomas. But please do not spend our tax dollars for that. Let's see how far you come. No diploma alone will get you a job. Otherwise the printers of students would run hot. It is the package that comes with a degree.

Psst. Did you mean Dustin? I ask because there's a JamesDillon who I didn't think was espousing these views.

ETA: Scooped!