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On April 15 2018 13:29 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2018 13:23 KwarK wrote:On April 15 2018 12:54 IgnE wrote:On April 15 2018 12:48 KwarK wrote:
University did nothing to prepare me for accounting. One day the world will realize that auditors are stretching the hell out of the word reasonable in “reasonable assurance” and that we work for the people paying us, the entity being audited. We add no value. So was college a waste of time? It allowed me to signal to an accounting firm that I was worth training to be an accountant but it didn’t teach me shit about accounting. They teach that on the job. I'm asking about non-accountant aspects of your life. Was it worth something beyond simply the job you have obtained?
No. I was working full time through school. It detracted from my life. I met some cool people I guess but the same would be true of basically anything I’d done with that time. Beyond social and professional signaling I’d say it made both my life and society collectively poorer.
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I have a very hard time reconciling a technology based service economy not benefiting from university education. Moreover, I would argue that it is outright impossible to quantify the economic benefit people enjoy as a result of those universities, direct or not.
I do think that the focus of university has shifted away from rigorous research into a vocational drop off, which can easily be argued is a bad thing. I don't think I'd shed a single tear if about 50% of the courses offered disappeared from university and either went to a trade school or just vanished. For what it's worth, philosophy is not one of them, though I do have grievances of it being a course in and of itself.
As to the above point regarding research turning into trade school, one must only look into a "computer science" degree to see what a shit show pretty much every non top 50 university on the planet delivers in that space (and many within that too). Programming fits in perfectly at a trade school, computer science does not, the end result is a weird amalgamation which is about 70% programming, 20% computer science, and 10% engineering best practices.
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On April 15 2018 13:43 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2018 13:29 IgnE wrote:On April 15 2018 13:23 KwarK wrote:On April 15 2018 12:54 IgnE wrote:On April 15 2018 12:48 KwarK wrote:
University did nothing to prepare me for accounting. One day the world will realize that auditors are stretching the hell out of the word reasonable in “reasonable assurance” and that we work for the people paying us, the entity being audited. We add no value. So was college a waste of time? It allowed me to signal to an accounting firm that I was worth training to be an accountant but it didn’t teach me shit about accounting. They teach that on the job. I'm asking about non-accountant aspects of your life. Was it worth something beyond simply the job you have obtained? No. I was working full time through school. It detracted from my life. I met some cool people I guess but the same would be true of basically anything I’d done with that time. Beyond social and professional signaling I’d say it made both my life and society collectively poorer.
Do you enjoy your job? Do you think you do something important? Maybe you would balk at the word important, so perhaps I should ask if you think you do something worth doing.
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On April 15 2018 12:43 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2018 12:32 mozoku wrote:On April 15 2018 12:28 IgnE wrote:On April 15 2018 12:16 mozoku wrote:On April 15 2018 12:07 IgnE wrote:On April 15 2018 10:49 mozoku wrote:
If students aren't learning marketable skills, how do you know they're learning non-marketable "how to live a life" skills? Especially when most of them are there for the marketable skills, rather than the non-marketable skills, to start with. (this applies to Nebuchad's addendum as well)
In addition, it's more or less impossible to disentangle how much of the world's educated populace gained any of their desirable qualities attributed to education actually from education itself, as opposed to the careers/life situations their education signal enabled them to reach. This is an intentionally extreme example to demonstrate a point, but it's quite obvious Zuck and Bill Gates are "more enlightened" than your average college-educated Burger King worker. On a less extreme level, are software engineers who didn't go to college any "less enlightened" than their peers who did?
My guess is that "to get a job" is the plurality, if not the majority, answer you'll get from college students if you ask them what they're doing there. It feels like you're pulling a bit of a bait-and-switch if you support sending more kids to college for reasons that they themselves aren't going there for.
If we're willing to acknowledge that taxpayers aren't getting a return when they fund Student X's tuition, it also raises individualism vs. communism type questions about whether it's justified to be spending my tax dollars to make Student X's life better. Are you asking how we can measure the non-economic value of a university education? I take it as given that disentangling the certification from the process of a university education would change the proportion of people who go to college. I'm not asking how to measure it. It doesn't have to be quantitative. I'm asking how we can be sure there's any real benefit at all--especially when the primary proponents and authorities disseminating the non-marketable skill theory (i.e. liberal arts professors and Democratic voters/politicians) have enormous self-interests in the proliferation of university attendance. How can we be sure there's any real benefit at all? Are you contesting that it does? On April 15 2018 10:42 IgnE wrote:
Maybe college adds non-economic value to life. You asserted that it does, no? I'm asking how you're sure that it does. I'm not contesting there's non-economic value to life. I'm contesting whether we have any reason to believe higher education (in its current state) teaches anything (economic or non-economic) at all. Is it just a matter of faith for you? I think it does and I went to college. Prima facie case is that I say it does. Right?
I would hope that for an investment as expensive as higher education (both from a societal and individual perspective), we have better assurances that students are getting value (economic or not) out of it than purely uncontrolled anecdotal evidence.
As an individual, personal experience and word of mouth might be okay but from a policy perspective it shouldn't fly.
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On April 15 2018 14:25 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2018 13:43 KwarK wrote:On April 15 2018 13:29 IgnE wrote:On April 15 2018 13:23 KwarK wrote:On April 15 2018 12:54 IgnE wrote:On April 15 2018 12:48 KwarK wrote:
University did nothing to prepare me for accounting. One day the world will realize that auditors are stretching the hell out of the word reasonable in “reasonable assurance” and that we work for the people paying us, the entity being audited. We add no value. So was college a waste of time? It allowed me to signal to an accounting firm that I was worth training to be an accountant but it didn’t teach me shit about accounting. They teach that on the job. I'm asking about non-accountant aspects of your life. Was it worth something beyond simply the job you have obtained? No. I was working full time through school. It detracted from my life. I met some cool people I guess but the same would be true of basically anything I’d done with that time. Beyond social and professional signaling I’d say it made both my life and society collectively poorer. Do you enjoy your job? Do you think you do something important? Maybe you would balk at the word important, so perhaps I should ask if you think you do something worth doing.
A lot of jobs are "worth doing" but don't pay anything close to a comfortable wage. I majored in physics and math, tried grad school and hated it, and now at am a relatively dead end IT job. I learned a lot and made so many friends / had so many experiences that I can't really say my education wasn't "worth it" per se, but the critical thinking and problem solving strategies college helped me refine have in no way helped me in the "real world". I don't think I'm alone in this kind of situation.
EDIT: Those experiences have helped me be a great employee, but that in no way is related to compensation.
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On April 15 2018 13:43 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2018 13:29 IgnE wrote:On April 15 2018 13:23 KwarK wrote:On April 15 2018 12:54 IgnE wrote:On April 15 2018 12:48 KwarK wrote:
University did nothing to prepare me for accounting. One day the world will realize that auditors are stretching the hell out of the word reasonable in “reasonable assurance” and that we work for the people paying us, the entity being audited. We add no value. So was college a waste of time? It allowed me to signal to an accounting firm that I was worth training to be an accountant but it didn’t teach me shit about accounting. They teach that on the job. I'm asking about non-accountant aspects of your life. Was it worth something beyond simply the job you have obtained? No. I was working full time through school. It detracted from my life. I met some cool people I guess but the same would be true of basically anything I’d done with that time. Beyond social and professional signaling I’d say it made both my life and society collectively poorer.
I am not up for trying to quantify 'collectively poorer' but I will say that I found your rant on the tenuousness of the claim that "western culture grew out of Greek philosophy" rather interesting, and it made me have thoughts I hadn't had before.
I think ideally that's what education does, it allows large segments of the population to not spend all their mental energies grinding a job and instead generating and spreading ideas.
As for economic value, I know it's hip in certain circles to point out that people like Gates or Zuckerberg dropped out of college to become successful entrepreneurs and generate lots of value. I think it's exceedingly unlikely that they would have had the ideas they had, and the energy to execute them, if they had spent their days working 7-6 jobs as chemical engineers, or lawyers, or lumber jacks.
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On April 15 2018 14:31 mozoku wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2018 12:43 IgnE wrote:On April 15 2018 12:32 mozoku wrote:On April 15 2018 12:28 IgnE wrote:On April 15 2018 12:16 mozoku wrote:On April 15 2018 12:07 IgnE wrote:On April 15 2018 10:49 mozoku wrote:
If students aren't learning marketable skills, how do you know they're learning non-marketable "how to live a life" skills? Especially when most of them are there for the marketable skills, rather than the non-marketable skills, to start with. (this applies to Nebuchad's addendum as well)
In addition, it's more or less impossible to disentangle how much of the world's educated populace gained any of their desirable qualities attributed to education actually from education itself, as opposed to the careers/life situations their education signal enabled them to reach. This is an intentionally extreme example to demonstrate a point, but it's quite obvious Zuck and Bill Gates are "more enlightened" than your average college-educated Burger King worker. On a less extreme level, are software engineers who didn't go to college any "less enlightened" than their peers who did?
My guess is that "to get a job" is the plurality, if not the majority, answer you'll get from college students if you ask them what they're doing there. It feels like you're pulling a bit of a bait-and-switch if you support sending more kids to college for reasons that they themselves aren't going there for.
If we're willing to acknowledge that taxpayers aren't getting a return when they fund Student X's tuition, it also raises individualism vs. communism type questions about whether it's justified to be spending my tax dollars to make Student X's life better. Are you asking how we can measure the non-economic value of a university education? I take it as given that disentangling the certification from the process of a university education would change the proportion of people who go to college. I'm not asking how to measure it. It doesn't have to be quantitative. I'm asking how we can be sure there's any real benefit at all--especially when the primary proponents and authorities disseminating the non-marketable skill theory (i.e. liberal arts professors and Democratic voters/politicians) have enormous self-interests in the proliferation of university attendance. How can we be sure there's any real benefit at all? Are you contesting that it does? On April 15 2018 10:42 IgnE wrote:
Maybe college adds non-economic value to life. You asserted that it does, no? I'm asking how you're sure that it does. I'm not contesting there's non-economic value to life. I'm contesting whether we have any reason to believe higher education (in its current state) teaches anything (economic or non-economic) at all. Is it just a matter of faith for you? I think it does and I went to college. Prima facie case is that I say it does. Right? I would hope that for an investment as expensive as higher education (both from a societal and individual perspective), we have better assurances that students are getting value (economic or not) out of it than purely uncontrolled anecdotal evidence. As an individual, personal experience and word of mouth might be okay but from a policy perspective it shouldn't fly.
Why not if the people vote for it?
Kwark's story sounds very sad to me. What a sad way to spend an education. It may be true that many people only view it as an unnecessary burden. I surely agree that there's no point in pointless certification.
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Eh, that's a philosophical discussion I've voiced my opinion on already. I don't see democracy as an end unto itself; I see it as the system that happens to prevent government abuse more than other systems. It still sucks for administering functioning policy in large part, and I don't feel I'm being inconsistent in complaining when it continues to do that.
If a majority of Americans are comfortable to effectively mandating university attendance without bothering to do proper policy analysis (even though doing so quite possibly exacerbates inequality and wastes large amounts of time and money), then they're quite frankly being idiots. That's the downside of democracy; voters are mostly incompetent at their jobs.
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On April 15 2018 16:28 mozoku wrote:
Eh, that's a philosophical discussion I've voiced my opinion on already. I don't see democracy as an end unto itself; I see it as the system that happens to prevent government abuse more than other systems. It still sucks for administering functioning policy in large part, and I don't feel I'm being inconsistent in complaining when it continues to do that.
If a majority of Americans are comfortable to effectively mandating university attendance without bothering to do proper policy analysis (even though doing so quite possibly exacerbates inequality and wastes large amounts of time and money), then they're quite frankly being idiots. That's the downside of democracy; voters are mostly incompetent at their jobs. Hmm, this seems like a problem that a robust education that teaches skills such as critical thinking, analysis of available data, and how and when to question assertions from other people. Not that all universities are necessarily doing a great job of it, but they're generally doing a better job than nothing.
I'm more comfortable saying that university attendance has become increasingly important as our public school system has been systematically undermined and destroyed by punitory policies such as No Child Left Behind and a steady push towards privatization and school choice.
+ Show Spoiler +This became a political issue because questioning things told by people with authority (pastors, priests, etc., politicians, parents) does not mesh well with a large part of conservative ideology.
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On April 15 2018 14:18 bo1b wrote:
I have a very hard time reconciling a technology based service economy not benefiting from university education. Moreover, I would argue that it is outright impossible to quantify the economic benefit people enjoy as a result of those universities, direct or not.
I do think that the focus of university has shifted away from rigorous research into a vocational drop off, which can easily be argued is a bad thing. I don't think I'd shed a single tear if about 50% of the courses offered disappeared from university and either went to a trade school or just vanished. For what it's worth, philosophy is not one of them, though I do have grievances of it being a course in and of itself.
As to the above point regarding research turning into trade school, one must only look into a "computer science" degree to see what a shit show pretty much every non top 50 university on the planet delivers in that space (and many within that too). Programming fits in perfectly at a trade school, computer science does not, the end result is a weird amalgamation which is about 70% programming, 20% computer science, and 10% engineering best practices.
There's no programming without computer science. You have to study both if you want to be a software engineer. It's the same as having wheels which you can't put anywhere (car, chair, etc). Computer science has to stay at university and programming is one part of it.
On April 15 2018 13:43 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2018 13:29 IgnE wrote:On April 15 2018 13:23 KwarK wrote:On April 15 2018 12:54 IgnE wrote:On April 15 2018 12:48 KwarK wrote:
University did nothing to prepare me for accounting. One day the world will realize that auditors are stretching the hell out of the word reasonable in “reasonable assurance” and that we work for the people paying us, the entity being audited. We add no value. So was college a waste of time? It allowed me to signal to an accounting firm that I was worth training to be an accountant but it didn’t teach me shit about accounting. They teach that on the job. I'm asking about non-accountant aspects of your life. Was it worth something beyond simply the job you have obtained? No. I was working full time through school. It detracted from my life. I met some cool people I guess but the same would be true of basically anything I’d done with that time. Beyond social and professional signaling I’d say it made both my life and society collectively poorer.
Social life is a good enough reason for me to recommend going to university if you have a nice degree. Fun at this age is different from fun you'll have later. Also, you learn how to live on your own.
Also, how do you know how to do X, Y and Z when you don't know about A, B and C? University teaches you about A, B and C topics so you know about them. It's your job to apply them so you can do X, Y and Z.
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On April 15 2018 17:29 Kyadytim wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2018 16:28 mozoku wrote:
Eh, that's a philosophical discussion I've voiced my opinion on already. I don't see democracy as an end unto itself; I see it as the system that happens to prevent government abuse more than other systems. It still sucks for administering functioning policy in large part, and I don't feel I'm being inconsistent in complaining when it continues to do that.
If a majority of Americans are comfortable to effectively mandating university attendance without bothering to do proper policy analysis (even though doing so quite possibly exacerbates inequality and wastes large amounts of time and money), then they're quite frankly being idiots. That's the downside of democracy; voters are mostly incompetent at their jobs. Hmm, this seems like a problem that a robust education that teaches skills such as critical thinking, analysis of available data, and how and when to question assertions from other people. Not that all universities are necessarily doing a great job of it, but they're generally doing a better job than nothing. I'm more comfortable saying that university attendance has become increasingly important as our public school system has been systematically undermined and destroyed by punitory policies such as No Child Left Behind and a steady push towards privatization and school choice. + Show Spoiler +This became a political issue because questioning things told by people with authority (pastors, priests, etc., politicians, parents) does not mesh well with a large part of conservative ideology.
So you are saying that what we should focus on then is to promote critical thinking and judging sources before university? Which I would agree with. The recent focus in many countries on programming earlier in the school system is likely to help a bit with this. Highlighting that you can do one thing in many ways but the basic logic still needs to be there or it will do something else. Math and the natural sciences has been the other topics highlighting this historically with history giving context to use those skills in.
The big question should probably be what an education is for. Preparing people for the work force? (Then why is it that long.) Promoting discussions and seeing nuances? That isn't what has happened, only recently a shift away from rote learning has been promoted.
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On April 15 2018 18:29 sc-darkness wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2018 14:18 bo1b wrote:
I have a very hard time reconciling a technology based service economy not benefiting from university education. Moreover, I would argue that it is outright impossible to quantify the economic benefit people enjoy as a result of those universities, direct or not.
I do think that the focus of university has shifted away from rigorous research into a vocational drop off, which can easily be argued is a bad thing. I don't think I'd shed a single tear if about 50% of the courses offered disappeared from university and either went to a trade school or just vanished. For what it's worth, philosophy is not one of them, though I do have grievances of it being a course in and of itself.
As to the above point regarding research turning into trade school, one must only look into a "computer science" degree to see what a shit show pretty much every non top 50 university on the planet delivers in that space (and many within that too). Programming fits in perfectly at a trade school, computer science does not, the end result is a weird amalgamation which is about 70% programming, 20% computer science, and 10% engineering best practices. There's no programming without computer science. You have to study both if you want to be a software engineer. It's the same as having wheels which you can't put anywhere (car, chair, etc). Computer science has to stay at university and programming is one part of it. Show nested quote +On April 15 2018 13:43 KwarK wrote:On April 15 2018 13:29 IgnE wrote:On April 15 2018 13:23 KwarK wrote:On April 15 2018 12:54 IgnE wrote:On April 15 2018 12:48 KwarK wrote:
University did nothing to prepare me for accounting. One day the world will realize that auditors are stretching the hell out of the word reasonable in “reasonable assurance” and that we work for the people paying us, the entity being audited. We add no value. So was college a waste of time? It allowed me to signal to an accounting firm that I was worth training to be an accountant but it didn’t teach me shit about accounting. They teach that on the job. I'm asking about non-accountant aspects of your life. Was it worth something beyond simply the job you have obtained? No. I was working full time through school. It detracted from my life. I met some cool people I guess but the same would be true of basically anything I’d done with that time. Beyond social and professional signaling I’d say it made both my life and society collectively poorer. Social life is a good enough reason for me to recommend going to university if you have a nice degree. Fun at this age is different from fun you'll have later. Also, you learn how to live on your own. Also, how do you know how to do X, Y and Z when you don't know about A, B and C? University teaches you about A, B and C topics so you know about them. It's your job to apply them so you can do X, Y and Z.
There is an enormous difference between researching algorithms in Haskell and webdev with JavaScript. You need almost no mathematics for the latter. More over, I think you're flat out wrong about what's needed for the majority of people programming.
Once upon a time training like that was undertaken at the work place.
Also, I think it's worth mentioning that I whole heartedly believe computer science should stay at universities, but I also think that the amount of mathematics being done is directly proportional to how computer sciency the course actually is, if that makes sense.If the degree does not include at least the following, I don't consider it a proper computer science education:
single and multivariate calculus, linear algebra, analysis, some level of statistics and probability
networks, compilers, operating systems, data structures, algorithms
theory of computation, so recursion automata etc
at the very least a low level overview of something currently being researched, such as computer graphics, machine learning, natural language processing etc
Almost none of the above is necessary at all for the average coder, which is why 3 month bootcamps which teach a low level amount of data structurs, basic algorithms and ruby exist and are successful.
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I think viewing education through such a narrow lens is extraordinarily short sighted and crippling for society. One of the big advantages of a - in my case - university education (I think it's the same as college for you?) was being around other people and other peoples. My girlfriend of 13 years was (we broke up a few years ago) a Dutch exchange student I'd never have met if I hadn't gone to university. And just meeting her revealed a new perspective on the world. I met people from Japan and China, people on the LGBT spectrum (my first, since I grew up in a small former mining village that never recovered from the Thatcher years, and whose culture has eroded into being among the worst of Britain), and my mind was generally opened up to ideas.
I didn't need to work through university because my parents saved and I had a generous educational grant from the government, so I spent the time I wasn't studying hanging out with people and learning about other things, sharing ideas and bullshitting about larger issues I'd never really thought about until then, such as politics (never an interest of mine until university, because when you grow up in a village that's already dead, the government really doesn't matter).
I don't have a good job today. But I picked up skills at university that let me supplement my income with fairly lucrative, one-off editing jobs, and I enjoy that. And I might have a better job if I'd left at sixteen and got a vocational qualification and become an engineer at a garage like many of my school mates did.
But I'd be a worse person. Not in terms of being 'good' or 'bad', but I'd be less aware. University makes people more aware of the world beyond themselves, by sheer ambient contact with that larger world.
That's the non-economic advantage, and it's unfathomably important. Breaking it down to 'why should I pay for someone else to be a better person' is, ironically, exactly the sort of thing you go to university to be able to see past.
Not that I see no problem with the educational environment. These days especially, with no-platforming being a thing, I feel that some of that awareness is being actively fought against, and it's very harmful to the students, far more harmful than any 'upset' they might be spared. But I unreservedly believe higher education is a good thing for society as a whole, that can't easily be put into numbers, and especially can't be judged by resultant economic success.
And lets not forget just how much our lives naturally narrow once we enter the workplace. These days I have a handful of friends I see maybe once a week (twice if I'm feeling energetic), and speak to every other day online. And the rest of the time I get up at 7, work until 6, get home at 6:30, and I just want to relax for the rest of my evening before bed.
Going into that life pattern without higher education is going to naturally give you a narrower and narrower view of the world due to fewer opportunities and less reason to interact with things outside your working boundaries.
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On April 15 2018 15:09 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2018 14:31 mozoku wrote:On April 15 2018 12:43 IgnE wrote:On April 15 2018 12:32 mozoku wrote:On April 15 2018 12:28 IgnE wrote:On April 15 2018 12:16 mozoku wrote:On April 15 2018 12:07 IgnE wrote:On April 15 2018 10:49 mozoku wrote:
If students aren't learning marketable skills, how do you know they're learning non-marketable "how to live a life" skills? Especially when most of them are there for the marketable skills, rather than the non-marketable skills, to start with. (this applies to Nebuchad's addendum as well)
In addition, it's more or less impossible to disentangle how much of the world's educated populace gained any of their desirable qualities attributed to education actually from education itself, as opposed to the careers/life situations their education signal enabled them to reach. This is an intentionally extreme example to demonstrate a point, but it's quite obvious Zuck and Bill Gates are "more enlightened" than your average college-educated Burger King worker. On a less extreme level, are software engineers who didn't go to college any "less enlightened" than their peers who did?
My guess is that "to get a job" is the plurality, if not the majority, answer you'll get from college students if you ask them what they're doing there. It feels like you're pulling a bit of a bait-and-switch if you support sending more kids to college for reasons that they themselves aren't going there for.
If we're willing to acknowledge that taxpayers aren't getting a return when they fund Student X's tuition, it also raises individualism vs. communism type questions about whether it's justified to be spending my tax dollars to make Student X's life better. Are you asking how we can measure the non-economic value of a university education? I take it as given that disentangling the certification from the process of a university education would change the proportion of people who go to college. I'm not asking how to measure it. It doesn't have to be quantitative. I'm asking how we can be sure there's any real benefit at all--especially when the primary proponents and authorities disseminating the non-marketable skill theory (i.e. liberal arts professors and Democratic voters/politicians) have enormous self-interests in the proliferation of university attendance. How can we be sure there's any real benefit at all? Are you contesting that it does? On April 15 2018 10:42 IgnE wrote:
Maybe college adds non-economic value to life. You asserted that it does, no? I'm asking how you're sure that it does. I'm not contesting there's non-economic value to life. I'm contesting whether we have any reason to believe higher education (in its current state) teaches anything (economic or non-economic) at all. Is it just a matter of faith for you? I think it does and I went to college. Prima facie case is that I say it does. Right? I would hope that for an investment as expensive as higher education (both from a societal and individual perspective), we have better assurances that students are getting value (economic or not) out of it than purely uncontrolled anecdotal evidence. As an individual, personal experience and word of mouth might be okay but from a policy perspective it shouldn't fly. Why not if the people vote for it? Kwark's story sounds very sad to me. What a sad way to spend an education. It may be true that many people only view it as an unnecessary burden. I surely agree that there's no point in pointless certification.
Learning, knowledge, and education are often conflated. You agree that there's no point in pointless certifications, but that's the system the Government has foisted upon society. Licensing is out of control. Regulation is out of control. Guilds of yore have nothing on the choking of opportunity and gating behind credentialing that our "modern" societies do. The point is that education and learning are often at odds. Learning is something that takes place with innate desire. Education is meant to choke the motivation to learn and is there to create rote employees and obedient citizens for the State and its tentacles (read: quasi or pseudo-private Corporations that rely on Government power). That's the entire point of the Prussian education system that this countries "education" institutions are built upon.
As relevant then as today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Holt_(educator)#Holt_on_education
a place where children learn to be stupid
It is as salient to higher "education" today. Don't conflate our "education" institutions with learning and knowledge.
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On April 15 2018 18:33 Yurie wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2018 17:29 Kyadytim wrote:On April 15 2018 16:28 mozoku wrote:
Eh, that's a philosophical discussion I've voiced my opinion on already. I don't see democracy as an end unto itself; I see it as the system that happens to prevent government abuse more than other systems. It still sucks for administering functioning policy in large part, and I don't feel I'm being inconsistent in complaining when it continues to do that.
If a majority of Americans are comfortable to effectively mandating university attendance without bothering to do proper policy analysis (even though doing so quite possibly exacerbates inequality and wastes large amounts of time and money), then they're quite frankly being idiots. That's the downside of democracy; voters are mostly incompetent at their jobs. Hmm, this seems like a problem that a robust education that teaches skills such as critical thinking, analysis of available data, and how and when to question assertions from other people. Not that all universities are necessarily doing a great job of it, but they're generally doing a better job than nothing. I'm more comfortable saying that university attendance has become increasingly important as our public school system has been systematically undermined and destroyed by punitory policies such as No Child Left Behind and a steady push towards privatization and school choice. + Show Spoiler +This became a political issue because questioning things told by people with authority (pastors, priests, etc., politicians, parents) does not mesh well with a large part of conservative ideology. So you are saying that what we should focus on then is to promote critical thinking and judging sources before university? Which I would agree with. The recent focus in many countries on programming earlier in the school system is likely to help a bit with this. Highlighting that you can do one thing in many ways but the basic logic still needs to be there or it will do something else. Math and the natural sciences has been the other topics highlighting this historically with history giving context to use those skills in. The big question should probably be what an education is for. Preparing people for the work force? (Then why is it that long.) Promoting discussions and seeing nuances? That isn't what has happened, only recently a shift away from rote learning has been promoted.
Y'all some naive folks. Gotta say.
User was warned for this post
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if it was purely about signalling more basic skills; why hasn't someone found a way to prove that people have those things at a lower cost? college is quite pricey after all; if someone could make a certification that proved workers were just as good, but that certification cost far less to get, they'd make a fortune off the volume as everyone shifts to using them.
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On April 15 2018 21:29 zlefin wrote:
if it was purely about signalling more basic skills; why hasn't someone found a way to prove that people have those things at a lower cost? college is quite pricey after all; if someone could make a certification that proved workers were just as good, but that certification cost far less to get, they'd make a fortune off the volume as everyone shifts to using them.
Though I don't believe the premise argument to be true, I can see a counterpoint to what you say here.
The educational establishment generates a lot of money for itself, and it'd be very invested in preventing such a thing from being ratified or permitted. I don't know how much power it would have to prevent it, of course, but I can certainly see forces aligning to prevent such a thing being part of the public consciousness.
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On April 15 2018 22:51 iamthedave wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2018 21:29 zlefin wrote:
if it was purely about signalling more basic skills; why hasn't someone found a way to prove that people have those things at a lower cost? college is quite pricey after all; if someone could make a certification that proved workers were just as good, but that certification cost far less to get, they'd make a fortune off the volume as everyone shifts to using them. Though I don't believe the premise argument to be true, I can see a counterpoint to what you say here. The educational establishment generates a lot of money for itself, and it'd be very invested in preventing such a thing from being ratified or permitted. I don't know how much power it would have to prevent it, of course, but I can certainly see forces aligning to prevent such a thing being part of the public consciousness.
that would mostly apply in cases where a formal certification is required for a job. which while it covers a fair number of cases, leaves a lot of cases uncovered.
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Why are you all talking about "college/university" as if it's one single thing? When did an arts degree suddenly become the same as a stem degree? Why are you all discussing it like Surgeons provide the same value as Community Organization? You can't just comb everything as the same and try to conclude whether college provides benefits to society, both economical in the long term and in other aspects.
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Norway28706 Posts
I think arts degrees are just as valuable as stem degrees. Probably not for a developing country, but in Norway? Absolutely.
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EPT
