Is a college education a sign of hard work, and intelligence?

[Nathiest]

Lets see. I'm lazy. I am unemployed. I'm pretty darn stupid. I am not College educated.

[Faunwea]

It really depends on the person and the college. The definition of "smart" is pretty subjective.

Edit: I wouldn't be so quick to write off art majors as slackers. Although I myself am not an art major all of the students I have met who are majoring in art take their course seriously and work hard to do well in the classes. College art classes are not a bunch of adult kids screwing off and doing finger-painting. The job field in the arts is highly competitive and there are many real-world jobs for artists.

[Slammin Shaman]

I would wager to say that education and intellect have a correlation, but not causation. Spending a large amount of time in school may make you smart by some degree, but you can have all the schooling in the world with no common sense. The inverse of that statement applies too. Nowadays you don't necessarily need a college degree to have a good job.

Possibly the smartest person I know was only in college for 6 days before she dropped out and currently makes quite a bit of money working for an attorney.

Just to prove the opposite, I have a friend going for psychology, 4.0 GPA in a very highly rated graduate school, with the common sense of a brick.

[smelltheglove]

i think it can be either. some work hard to get there and take it seriously. some are born in and dont

[GreatOak]

Yes, but to varying degrees depending on the college and major. The lack of a degree also doesn't mean the lack of intelligence or hard work

[Zpriten]

For many fields out there, I've seen employers select employees based on work experience over a degree. However, the disadvantage for a non-degree employee is employer might give you less pay with more responsibilities.

[Lysah]

Hard work and intelligence are generally inversely related. The harder you work the less intelligent you need to be. The more intelligent you are the less hard you need to work.

This might not be true in the work force because there is always more work that can be done, however, it's pretty much how college is. Personally, I would never show up for class if it wasn't a requirement. I took introductory physics my freshman year and showed up for four classes - each of them were test days.

A university degree has always been an investment, I don't know why people forget this. If your future employer has 30 applications, 29 of them have college degrees and yours does not, who's application do you think he's going to throw out immediately? No one will care that you worked for Food Lion for those four years that everyone else was getting more educated, unless, of course, you're applying to a Food Lion (hilariously, they will probably still prefer the college grads to your relevant work experience).

Today's youth attend university because it's very nearly a requirement. You don't have to learn anything, you just have to put up with it, pay for it, and survive it. After that's done with you're on equal or worse standing with about fifty million people, so good luck getting a job anyway, but it's better than being a college degree short on all of the competition.

tl;dr and to answer the thread title, then,
A degree is a sign of EITHER hard work OR intelligence. It proves to employers/society that you can survive an average workload.

[Mormolyce]

I was at university for 7 years, undergrad honours and PhD. Waste of time, most of it. It is certainly no indication of intelligence. Some people stick around at uni that long because they are really good at their field or really love it (and that field only exists in the context of a university, typically) but the majority of them are there because the real world is big and scary and it's easier to just keep studying :P