Going to college is about getting a great job. Why do we have to learn random topics?

[Kraenen]

For some reason you think we couldn't learn these random facts on youtube or wikipedia.

And way to bash autistic people.

And this is really the problem isn't it? You think it's just about consuming factoids, not learning how to think.

[bloodrunner]

For some reason you think we couldn't learn these random facts on youtube or wikipedia.

good luck with that on your resume. "I learned all i know from wiki."

[crunk]

For some reason you think we couldn't learn these random facts on youtube or wikipedia.

And way to bash autistic people.

im not using autism pejoratively. i'm confident that the values you claim you have are literally responsible for the rise in autism worldwide. i think society is producing more autistics because we slam people into a world where information is basically free but then have the nerve to tell them what they want. it creates a cognitive disconnect between people and society, and its a huge problem for the 21st century.

[AdamC]

im not using autism pejoratively. i'm confident that the values you claim you have are literally responsible for the rise in autism worldwide. i think society is producing more autistics because we slam people into a world where information is basically free but then have the nerve to tell them what they want. it creates a cognitive disconnect between people and society, and its a huge problem for the 21st century.

And you have evidence to cite your sources? No sources = Liar.

[Kellhound]

College is about becoming a well rounded person, not just a narrow minded "professional". All the class requirements are intended to expand your general knowledge, which in turn will help with your chosen field.

[crunk]

And you have evidence to cite your sources? No sources = Liar.

The Social Construction of What by Ian Hacking

also, if i had cited one of Charles Manson's crazy prison tracts does that mean i would have spoken true words? because that's what you said.

[Arcanimus]

found the problem.

school isn't about training you for a job, but to make you better at being a human.

Found the problem. In the US, school is a for-profit industry designed to milk as much money as possible from its vict-err students.

[crunk]

Found the problem. In the US, school is a for-profit industry designed to milk as much money as possible from its vict-err students.

this is /thread right here

[AdamC]

Found the problem. In the US, school is a for-profit industry designed to milk as much money as possible from its vict-err students.

And that is the reason for arbitrary requirements.

[Coldhearth]

Going to college isn't about what you did or didn't learn.

College exists to prove to a future employer that you made it through the mindless grind. They know you are another sheep they can safely add to their flock who will work 9-5 monday through friday doing all the gruntwork for moderate pay under depressing fluorescent lighting.

Real "learning" comes in specialized schooling such a law school or medical school. Most people do their 4 years and enter the rat race where they spend their lives earning money for much, much smarter people.

[crunk]

I gotta disagree here. Autism is detected very early in childhood, long before education and social constructs are fully established. The reason for the rise in autism is because we know what to look for now, which leads to higher rates of detection. Before we knew about it, we wrote those kids off as socially inept or put them in special ed classes. You can probably account some of the rise to other things, such as diet, or other things psychologists might indicate as factors for increasing rates of autism.

Simply put, autism isn't a disorder you develop when you're a teenager/adult.

well if we're going to talk about this now, i think that there might certainly be a genetic factor that produces real, serious autistic cases. there's also an argument there from evolution as to how western culture can stimulate those genes. i also think that even if someone is slightly autistic they can fare better in life by just being a weirdo then they can by carrying the albatross of autism around their neck.

truthfully, there's a million theories about it and there's probably some truth in many of them but we lack enough understanding of the disorder to really know. however i do think the social construct theory is true in a lot of cases. i think the APA's revision in DSM-5 is evidence of that. you can't just call a weird kid autistic and lump him in with all the other retards, otherwise you get autistic kids.

i mean, when i reflect on my childhood, i could have easily been diagnosed as an autist and gone to the special school and gotten a ton of special help. i didn't though, i struggled through, found a few people to connect with and now i just get by the best i can. shit, do i fall on the spectrum? maybe, but i'd rather not have some hack psychologist tell me that. why would i want to live my life with a label that tells me im dysfunctional just because my brain works a little different and i don't pick up on the stupid shit people do very quickly?

[bloodrunner]

I think we have gotten off the topic of the OP, University was developed as a place for the upper class (rich) to get education to be able to rule. For the US, the 1960's it became a place for the "underclass" to dodge the military draft and stay stateside. NOW it is considered a mandatory step for anyone wanting to get a "good" job. THAT IS FALSE. University is for learning about the world, not getting a job. Language, philosophy, economics, business, communications, history is the task of the University. Getting you a JOB is NOT what that is for. If you are trying to get into a profession that is NOT medicine or business management, you are looking to the wrong source.

[Very Tired]

I think we have gotten off the topic of the OP, University was developed as a place for the upper class (rich) to get education to be able to rule. For the US, the 1960's it became a place for the "underclass" to dodge the military draft and stay stateside. NOW it is considered a mandatory step for anyone wanting to get a "good" job. THAT IS FALSE. University is for learning about the world, not getting a job. Language, philosophy, economics, business, communications, history is the task of the University. Getting you a JOB is NOT what that is for. If you are trying to get into a profession that is NOT medicine or business management, you are looking to the wrong source.

I know for some fields you don't need a degree, but for mine, it's pretty much required on your resume to be considered. There are sometimes hundreds of people appliny for a single entry level job. If you don't have a college degree on your resume like everyone else, you can't expect to get far.

[Dolus]

Some courses you are required to take because of pure politics.

[Finith]

Going to college isn't about what you did or didn't learn.

College exists to prove to a future employer that you made it through the mindless grind. They know you are another sheep they can safely add to their flock who will work 9-5 monday through friday doing all the gruntwork for moderate pay under depressing fluorescent lighting.

Real "learning" comes in specialized schooling such a law school or medical school. Most people do their 4 years and enter the rat race where they spend their lives earning money for much, much smarter people.

That is thoroughly depressing. Education as a cog of economics, divorced from its own foundations. If you go to college for no other reason, at all, than to provide a potential employer with a certificate of some generic degree, then you should consider not going to college. And if you feel like you simply must go to college in order to land a decent job, you should try to make the most out of it, diluted and shallow as it is these days.

If a person cannot see the value of learning for learnings sake, then where do we really locate the problem? How is it possible that without even noticing so many of us have become convinced that education is an extension of labour? That topics which do not relate to the daily functioning of the economy should be done away with? That the supposed value of learning about something just to learn about it has been revealed as the lie that is?

Do you want to know why college has so utterly lost sight of its ideals and principles? Because a public has allowed education to become the tool of economics, at the expensive of providing people with a truly satisfying life experience. It is easier to convince someone of whatever ideology you wish to push on them, if they do not possess the cognitive tools to proactively engage with your rhetoric. Do you know what it says when websites and news agencies find themselves talking about how X number of people believed that the story about the flying dog in Indonesia was true; so many in fact, that they had to clarify that it was made up in an attempt to push spam on users? It says that there has never been a time where it is more important for young people to learn how to learn, how to think, how to discern fact from fiction.

[Very Tired]

i don't think the world would be a better place. i think you're just being petty and whiney because you don't like doing homework.

There is actually a lot more at stake here than complaining about homework. If you cut out all these extra classes you could potentially cut off a year of the four required for a college education. Less college loans for everyone, less rip off textbooks you are forced into buying, less stress, start your professional career earlier, etc.

[Yvaelle]

University should not be a vocational school. I think we need to differentiate universities from vocational schools in general - that if people want to work in field X, there should be a program at a technical institute that focuses precisely on learning the needed skills for that field.

University is supposed to be about opening your mind, learning to study, and learning to critically think - and it's backward that it's the last thing we teach people (a different rant of mine entirely, it should be the first thing we teach kids). It's really only in the last 10-15 years that university has been viewed (particularly in the US, if I may say) as a vocational training for a white collar job. Previously - rightly IMO - you would go get a Masters in Philosophy or Poetry or something - and then apply your intelligence and reasoning to the harder problems in any field. University is supposed to be about making better people - regardless of occupation.

I think this perception shifted particularly in the US (though it bleeds into other countries all over the world now), because of the rising cost of post-secondary education. Now since post-secondary is a significant investment that must be paid off, it has to result in a higher salary at completion. This is probably not the case still in countries where post-secondary is entirely free of charge - where it is likely still more about learning and refining yourself - and less about the technical skill acquisition to perform a specific job.

I did my masters in commerce and economics - and while that sometimes sounds fancier than english or philosophy - really it's just philosophy of money, or variously sociology of scarcity. I didn't learn tax laws, or how to write trade agreements, I left school with no specific skill set that makes me great at sitting behind a desk at a bank and shuffling accounts around. A friend of mine has his financial securities certificate (a few months of self-study), and is better at stock prediction than me: I'm not a trader.

Instead I spent some years studying rough models for trade or currency interactions between markets, or historical trends in growth - and any reasonably intelligent person can understand the math - but speculating on the human equation is the only appreciable skill I honed. I have a better than average idea of the ebb and flow of global markets, I pick up seemingly unimportant details in articles and recognize their influence on a greater system. I can't tell you what the price of oil will be three years from now, but I can grasp a very complex system: if I apply myself to learning it. That will apply to any job I ever hold - not my knowledge of economics or international business - but my confidence and capability to grasp at the incomprehensible.

University is about opening minds, keep it that way.

[Conspicuous Cultist]

If the thing wasn't so darn expensive I could understand the whole "it teaches you to be a better human" thing, I really could.

But it's expensive and it's expected to get a good job out of it, otherwise it's pointless debt tacked on.

[Yvaelle]

If the thing wasn't so darn expensive I could understand the whole "it teaches you to be a better human" thing, I really could.

But it's expensive and it's expected to get a good job out of it, otherwise it's pointless debt tacked on.

See that's the thing though, in the US it's horrendously expensive - in many other developed countries it is free or near-free. As example, I'm Canadian - I spent the last 10 years in university - and I have zero debt. University attendance was an almost trivial cost, when the real costs for me were rent/food/entertainment. If I were Scandinavian or European, I might have spent nothing at all for attendance/books/etc.

We need to split universities up. There should be focused technical schools that teach people to be engineers or accountants or etc, without requiring them to learn a second language, some basic science, some basic humanities, along the way. These should be called something distinct from "Universities" - and that shouldn't be a negative about their quality, just a descriptive difference about their function.

Something like this might work:

Technical Institute: teaches you how to be a nurse, or a carpenter, or an electrician, or a blacksmith

Professional Institute: teaches you a profession, accounting, lawyering, medicine, engineering, etc

University: enables you to grow your mind in weird ways, humanities, maths, science, social sciences, etc

People who want to be Doctors and Engineers don't need mandatory French and Medieval Poetry. The Technical Institutes already figured this out, but the same should be true for the professional trades.

There is still a contingent of people (perhaps only 5-25%) who just want to learn weird and disconnected topics, and see how that changes their perceptions. That can be valuable to society as a whole - and that is what university should be for - but 55% of Canadians in my generation have at least a Bachelors from a university - that seems wholly unnecessary.


Edit: I just noticed that you are also a servant of She Who Thirsts

[Conspicuous Cultist]

See that's the thing though, in the US it's horrendously expensive - in many other developed countries it is free or near-free. As example, I'm Canadian - I spent the last 10 years in university - and I have zero debt. University attendance was an almost trivial cost, when the real costs for me were rent/food/entertainment. If I were Scandinavian or European, I might have spent nothing at all for attendance/books/etc.

We'll get tax-funded education after prostitution, gay marriage, and legal weed is a thing.

It's amazing how slow things are here to change for better or for worse.

But for now, academia is going to get warped as another vessel to get a better, higher paying job... Except it doesn't, unless you're doing something in demand.