Is College Worth It?

[colinian]

It all depends on why you go.

 

If you go for the fraternity experience, major in jerking off and minor in smoking dope, the answer would be NO.

 

If you go for a REAL DEGREE like engineering, computer science, Bio, Chem, Physics, Mathematics, etc- then it is well worth it.

I learned so much that's valuable and "worth it" as an undergrad CompSci major, and I'm learning even more in my first year of grad school. Maybe James' REAL DEGREE part is blunt and sounds derogatory, but IMO he's 100% correct.

 

Colin

[Tipdin]

But when would you need cursive? The only time -- the only time -- I've used it in the last several years is to sign my name.

 

I usually print, in all capital letters; too many years as an architectural draftsman, I guess. But I enjoy writing. In fact, as a left-handed person going through school, I learned to use my spiral notebooks in an unusual way. I hated my hand resting on the spiral so I started writing backward. Everybody shook their heads, thinking I was crazy, but it worked. My hand wasn't smearing the lead or ink, and I can read backward as well as I can forward. Even today, in my college classes, people know me as the old man who writes his notes backwards.

 

I think, however, you're probably correct, that either writing or printing, or both will eventually go away. As technology and customs change, humans will do more of their everyday tasks on a machine of sorts. The need for printing and writing will diminish. Signatures may be a fingerprint or an eye-scan, who knows...maybe an imprint of a number that is embedded in the skin at birth.

 

My calligraphy practice was still worth the effort! I wrote stories for my kids and tried to make them look like illuminated manuscripts. If I live another 200 years, maybe I could start a business doing that...!

[old bob]

Definitely Yes !

Here some reasons :

 

- You will earn more money in your jobs.

-You will find more interesting jobs.

-You will be better to understand the world around you.

-You will increase your knowledge and have a better use of it.

-you will expand your understanding of the world.

- you will getmore possibilities to travel around the world.

- you will get to know more people and find more friends.

 

As Jamessavik said, the main problem is to choose the right degree, a degree which suits you and correspond to what you will do with your future life.

 

It's what I did .

I studied electronics and management engineering. I worked in "energy fields (oil, building storage centers) , consulting authorities and trading companies, managing companies in the film industry, counseling in long term strategy matters, a lot of things I only could do thanks my college degrees.

The most important matters I learnt in college were accounting and law, and applying it in technical fields made me rich, until I lost almost everything through producing myself films (!). But this is another story .

 

After reading th other comments, I must add that the most important decision is the choice of the right college, not always the most expensive, but one which correspond to what you will do with your future life.

 

It's what I did (Swiss Institute of Technology, same as MIT). I was a working student, I had to pay the college fees from my salary, but it was worth it.

Edited January 21, 2011 by old bob

[Raijen]

We need to buckle down and understand that learning is work, and that it's work no one is going to do unless society and their elders makes them do it, makes them understand how important the acquisition and use of knowledge is important and that they are darned well expected to do it.

 

 

Oh my god... I think I just fell in love... lol.

 

Seriously though, I agree one hundred percent. I just started college last fall after taking four years to get "Real world Experience", and in my basic classes I am still ahead of people who are fresh out of high school. In English I can write circles around classmates, I know what "phenomenon" and "propensity" mean, and in my history class I was asking questions that astounded the instructor.

 

That's not to brag, at all. I don't consider myself smart nor intelligent. I just read a lot, I use the internet to find information, and I know a little bit about logic. From my point of view, I don't understand why other people have difficulty using a dictionary or even friggin' context clues (that's how I have such a large vocabulary).

 

The only thing I can figure out is that people are lazy, instructors are too busy wigging out about the NCLB (damn you to hell, Bush administration), and students like me are rarer than a dodo bird at the South Pole.

 

I think the problem is that education was hijacked by the corporate/business model. "Teach students x,y,z so that they will be good workers". Yeah... Doesn't work like that. A student needs to understand the concepts and the practical end of theory. I have friends in psychology who are oblivious to the fact that their field of study allows them access to all kinds of information that would make navigating society much easier, and would help them achieve almost anything they want to do (the use of the unconscious, social mechanisms, general mentalities...etc etc). Student's don't realize that they have access to information that is nothing short of magical.

 

But then... Maybe it really is a matter of inborn intelligence... I really hope not though. I've always believed that anyone can learn, if they just put their back into it.

 

And yes... college is worth it, if you put in the effort.

[Rilbur]

I think the problem is that education was hijacked by the corporate/business model. "Teach students x,y,z so that they will be good workers". Yeah... Doesn't work like that.

 

I think one reason I have an advantage is that I've managed to mostly avoid schools that don't understand that learning isn't just about the acquisition of knowledge, it's about learning how to use it -- how to reason, think, speak using the things we've learned.

[Menorain]

I'm studying at university at the minute and I don't feel like I've become any more intelligent than I was when I left secondary school. Personally I find the academic side of things quite easy, but I was hoping that university would push me a bit more. That said, it needs to be done if you're going into something that requires the degree.

[TrevorTime]

 

5. Sadly, in this time in the economy, most people won't even give you a second glance if you don't have a degree, even if you're only applying to flip burgers. You've got to have the best you can just to survive, it seems.

 

 

Sorry Jay, I just can't agree with you on that one. I worked at a sandwich restaurant (not Subway, thank God) for two years and got hired on the spot, with no college degree, just a high school diploma. And in my second year, I had worked my way up to shift leader.

 

It was my people skills that got me there, not a silly piece of paper.

 

 

 

 

 

[hh5]

Well if you take a salary and the hours you put in

 

$100,000 divided by ( 100 HRS/WEEK times 50 weeks ) thats $20 per hour. + 56 Sleep => 156 => 12 HRS Free Time

$65,000 divided by ( 65 HRS/WEEK times 50 weeks ) thats $20 per hour. + 56 Sleep => 121 => 35 HRS Free Time

$56,000 divided by ( 56 HRS/WEEK times 50 weeks ) thats $20 per hour. + 56 Sleep => 112 => 44 HRS Free Time

 

Then add Certifications and Renewals and classes to keep you up to date

 

Then add being married and having children .... oops no time

 

Any way my economics teacher says if you don't learn any thing please learn Living Standard = Disposable Income divided by Consumer Price Index

 

My accounting teacher said do all you can in life before you get married and have children

 

- - - - -

 

Retirement according to the govn't

 

IRA 5,000 x 40 Years + Saving 5,000 x 40 Years = 20 Years of retirement at minimum Wage (SS + Savings + Owning a house)

 

That does not factor in the 14 Trillion DEBT and the New Health Care ( a family of four owes 160,000 in Taxes even if the two kids are one month old)

 

In 2016 SS is going to raise their rates ... like how much will that mean

 

- - - -

 

I say there are a lot of factors to making successful life = Opportunity costs + an Education + Personal life + Pot of Gold (for retirement)

 

I say if you don't have a clue it makes it harder to figure out the above equation to be happy

If you're able to make all four things happen before you get married and have kids ... that is surely successful

 

I say Education is one of the pieces of the puzzle ... all of it ... still needs that one thing .... that movie City Slickers sure did point that important quality

[AntonEckhoff]

I personally think that uni is absolutely worth the expense; but only if you are willing to put a monetary value on it. I believe this is the problem that we have in Britain: students don't value their education enough to pay for it. This is obviously a personal preference; but I get really frustrated when I see the student protests. It's not that you are 'too poor to go to uni' it is that you don't place a cash value on your education. Personally, I would never pay for a Bentley car – because I wouldn't value a car as being worth £120,000. Obviously other people have different priorities than myself, and that is fine. I would never expect someone to give me a Bentley and since I don't value that vehicle at £120,000 I'll never have one. But if a person does not place a monetary value on your education, why should you get one. I just think the question is all about priorities.

 

 

[Y_B]

Sorry Jay, I just can't agree with you on that one. I worked at a sandwich restaurant (not Subway, thank God) for two years and got hired on the spot, with no college degree, just a high school diploma. And in my second year, I had worked my way up to shift leader.

It was my people skills that got me there, not a silly piece of paper.

 

Sandwich shop....

Ballin..........

 

; ) (I'm only half-teasing)

[Johnathan Colourfield]

University is important for those that need a degree to get a job.

 

Those that just go for the fun or go just because its a high paying job shouldn't go to university.

 

For me, nowadays there is a certain lack of passion for what people study and it depresses me.

[Adam Phillips]

I think the question isn't relevant to the assessment criteria (and that's not a slam at you Mike.)

 

College isn't about what you learn, it's about learning who you are, discovering things you didn't know about, and growing as a person. It's about learning how to do critical thinking. It's about being able to divine the difference between fact and opinion. It's about being exposed to things like archaeology, Chaucer, the Franco-Prussian War, and the Beatnik movement, because even though you could have picked up books on that stuff, you wouldn't have. It's about going to parties and getting drunk and/or high and getting laid. A lot.

 

And when you come out, it's not about whether you can recite the periodic table, it's about the person you are.

 

 

 

Thank you. If you ever wonder why I love you, just return to this post.

 

The Great Conversation has brought us to where we are. College is supposed to be about immersing oneself in that. With mind...and, as you observed, with body.

 

But it does seem that things have gotten to the point where people--from their little individual spots in the Vast Stream--question the whole enterprise now. I'm sure the ridiculous expense has something to do with it. And you do have to wonder about the wisdom of sending everybody off to college as a matter of course. Maybe that's the problem with college right now, and maybe that's why the question comes up. It seems manifest that it's not for everyone.

[James Hiwatari]

In Brazil if you want to have any chance at succeeding at all, you need to go to university. We have public universities that are free, but have very competitive entrance exams (which is to be expected), and loads of private universities where you pay loads of money for a degree that in most cases is not worth the money you put on it. Their entrance exams are a joke - they basically pass anyone with minimum IQ as long as they can pay for the course.

Thus High School education is solely devoted to make us pass in the public university's entrance exam. The best schools are the private ones (also expensive), and they offer the better preparation and give you the highest chances of passing that entrance exam. Public schools, the free ones, are not very good. Most of their students are the poor children who can't afford a decent private school. Thus they finish school and have very little chance of getting into that free university, because their preparation for the entrance exam is less than adequate.

What this means is that we get lots of well-off students in the public universities because they paid for their schools. They could probably afford a private university, but the public universities offer better quality learning (despite problems in infra-structure) at very little cost. And the poor people, who should be the ones getting on free education, end up not being able to go to university at all because, despite the fact that we have free higher education, the competitiveness of the entrance exam keeps them away from it.

 

All of this is to say that I think higher education should be free for everyone. I'm living in the UK now, and because I'm an overseas student I pay £10,000 a year to study here (EU students pay around £3,000, UK students pay nothing, at least for now). I'm not going to comment on the unfairness and prejudice involved in that system (overseas: mostly developing countries with poorer people in them. Make the fees higher, they are less likely to come! Yay! We're "ethically" dis-encouraging the foreigners to come! ) - I would be here for hours.

The thing is, the university is not that great. I did six months of university in Brazil (I was one of those students who went to a good private high school - paid for by a relative, because I'm not all that well-off - and managed to get into the good public university) and frankly, it was much better. I was given more things to read and more choices of subjects in those six months than I did for the first two years of my degree. The uni in Brazil was lacking in infra-structure (not many computer rooms, small-ish library, no toilet rolls in the toilets, and a new two-store building had no lift, and only an external staircase to go from one floor to another - oh, the wonders of architecture!). Had I stayed in Brazil, I would have studied much more things (much more INTERESTING things as well) in the same four years.

But no, I'm in the UK in an Scottish university hoping money will someday grow in trees because I don't know how to pay for the rest of the course. I've been struggling every since I came to afford those damn £10,000. And is it worth it? Sadly, it is. Because I'm in the UK, any degree I get here will be much more valuable than the degree I would get in Brazil, just because it's from a university in a developed country. Despite the fact that I would probably learn much more in the Brazilian course.

 

And a funny thing I realised having had experience in those two universities: a great number of my classmates also lacked general skills in writing, spelling, grammar, maths, and doing presentations in public. I had better grammar and spelling than quite a few fellow students I met here in Scotland. ME, the FOREIGNER who hasn't got English as his first language.

It's more to do with people not learning basic grammar at school, but still... if a foreigner who has only been speaking your language for a couple of years knows more about it than you, you should feel ashamed. In Brazil we have grammar at school. "Portuguese" is the class were we learn about grammar. We have it from Primary 1 to the last year of High School. We also have "Literature" for, you know, literature. This way we learn about the books and we learn how to write properly (in theory, at least).

 

Now back to the main question. A degree should be useful. If not for helping people get a job, than at least to make people have a bit more of general culture. "Knowledge for knowledge's sake" is a good thing. The more educated people are, the more they get exposed to different opinions and different people and are, in one way or the other, forced to think about things and get to some sort of conclusion about the world around them. The more information you have before making a decision, the more beneficial this decision is going to be.

There are a lot of degrees that don't say more more than common sense, yes (psychology thinks it's a science! ), but it doesn't mean all higher education should be focused on "practical things" either. It's good to have engineers, mathematicians, physicists and the whatnots. It's good to go to university and get a job related to the degree you did later on. Of course it is. But if it wasn't for philosophers, historians, geographers, and all those "intellectuals" that seem to be doing nothing useful - or teaching nothing useful - then, well...

 

We wouldn't know about the Greeks and their civilisations. We only know about them because a) Arab historians found their writings, translated them to Arabic and, because of wars and commerce with the Christian world, brought them to Europe and because GREEK historians wrote about their lives and the things happening around them (one of the things I studied in Brazil but never saw in here was the history of History as a discipline - it was quite interesting).

Had the Greeks not decided to record their past, the Arabs would not have discovered their writings. Had the Arabs not discovered their writings, they would never get to Europe. And then Europe in the Middle Ages would have very little knowledge of Medicine and Astronomy, to cite a few examples. It was the Greek's knowledge of Astronomy that allowed them to cross the Atlantic (Vikings had done it too, but the rest of Europe didn't like them very much) and colonise Europe.

 

My university is one of those that is cutting the Humanities department to allow the "sciences" and "research" to flourish. I think it's ridiculous. This way they are making higher education completely career-orientated, much like the High School in Brazil is public-university-entrance-exam orientated. If the only reason you go to university is to get a certain "practical" job, then we are at risk of learning nothing apart from the "practical" applications necessary for that job, and forget there is a world out there and that in real life nothing is really "practical" like they teach in the textbooks.

History and other disciplines that are not seen as "practical" are the sort of disciplines that teach you to think. There is never a right or wrong answer in History - because you have to think and arrive at your own conclusions about things. You have to use your brain and get your own answer. In maths there is only one answer, and to get to that answer there is some deduction, but also loads of linear thinking and "a should inevitably follow b". No wonder science guys panic when something unexpected comes up. ; )

 

Anyway, university is worth it. It should be free for everyone because "knowledge for knowledge's sake" should not be a privilege. It's not good only for getting a job - or at least it should not be.

 

I think I went on for too long. My apologies to those who didn't have the patience to read it all - congratulations for those who did!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Adam Phillips]

 

 

My university is one of those that is cutting the Humanities department to allow the "sciences" and "research" to flourish. I think it's ridiculous. This way they are making higher education completely career-orientated, much like the High School in Brazil is public-university-entrance-exam orientated. If the only reason you go to university is to get a certain "practical" job, then we are at risk of learning nothing apart from the "practical" applications necessary for that job, and forget there is a world out there and that in real life nothing is really "practical" like they teach in the textbooks.

History and other disciplines that are not seen as "practical" are the sort of disciplines that teach you to think. There is never a right or wrong answer in History - because you have to think and arrive at your own conclusions about things. You have to use your brain and get your own answer. In maths there is only one answer, and to get to that answer there is some deduction, but also loads of linear thinking and "a should inevitably follow b". No wonder science guys panic when something unexpected comes up. ; )

 

Anyway, university is worth it. It should be free for everyone because "knowledge for knowledge's sake" should not be a privilege. It's not good only for getting a job - or at least it should not be.

 

 

 

 

I'm in agreement with much of what you said; I think college should be all about a liberal arts education and not primarily about getting a job. Could be that it's inevitable, though.

 

I have to take issue with you on your characterization of math. As a college math teacher, who also has a minor in philosophy and has studied more than his share of music and literature and history, I have to tell you there's ever so much more to math and science than "linear thinking." A brief walk through the world of theoretical math would blow the doors off your conception of math and science. Beyond that, the mathematical and scientific accomplishments in Western Civilization arose not in opposition to the liberal arts, but in dialog with them, and often inspired by them. The type of inquiry characteristic of the liberal arts is also what has fueled achievements in math and science. Commitment to the liberal arts makes for better mathematical thinkers and better scientific thinkers, just as math-and-science guys can keep the folks in the liberal arts/humanities/etc. honest.

[James Hiwatari]

I'm in agreement with much of what you said; I think college should be all about a liberal arts education and not primarily about getting a job. Could be that it's inevitable, though.

 

I have to take issue with you on your characterization of math. As a college math teacher, who also has a minor in philosophy and has studied more than his share of music and literature and history, I have to tell you there's ever so much more to math and science than "linear thinking." A brief walk through the world of theoretical math would blow the doors off your conception of math and science. Beyond that, the mathematical and scientific accomplishments in Western Civilization arose not in opposition to the liberal arts, but in dialog with them, and often inspired by them. The type of inquiry characteristic of the liberal arts is also what has fueled achievements in math and science. Commitment to the liberal arts makes for better mathematical thinkers and better scientific thinkers, just as math-and-science guys can keep the folks in the liberal arts/humanities/etc. honest.

 

 

I believe you, actually. My mother did maths at uni (did not graduate because I was born - then she came back and did counselling) and she tells me about the more "interesting" aspects of it. It doesn't make me like maths, but I do see your point.

The thing is: you really have to be into it to get to the good parts. The stereotyped, overused view of maths and exact sciences is that of black and white and one right answer. And this view is used to justify why more people should do more of it then they should other stuff - and then there is no fund for Humanities, and life gets boring.

 

Maybe if more people realised that what you said is true I wouldn't need to write such a long rant...