remember people.. i'm not saing that education is worthless... with the billions of comments about the outright "school is worth it try to get a job without one"" kind of thing... its like anything else... do everything you can to get ahead.. increase you probability... but if you think school is the ticket to sucess your dumb.. just go ahead take out all the loans you can and jump into the droves of people working for the rest of hteir lifes with only faint hopes of retirement!
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
College isn't just "not worth it", unfortunately, it's a negative.
- Thread starter wilburbear
- Start date
You don't use it (your mind) you lose it!Quote from wilburbear:
Had lunch with a guy this weekend, he said he wishes he just gave his kid $100,000 instead of paying it to some school and the kid still can't find a job - though the kid does know what the European capitols are.
Colleges are even a bigger negative on a relative basis. Now there's this for young people:
http://www.upstart.com/
Personally, I think concluding that college is a waste of time, or a negative -- as the OP put it -- is far to general and broad a conclusion.
Surely the value of a college education is almost entirely dependent on the quality of the student and the quality of the institution, especially the student! And who could not agree that the range is tremendous, from the barely literate attending for-profit degree mills part time or via the internet to brilliant, hard working students at highly selective and demanding colleges and universities with highly skilled and accomplished faculty.
The results from this education mishmash should be highly variable. That's precisely what we see.
Surely the value of a college education is almost entirely dependent on the quality of the student and the quality of the institution, especially the student! And who could not agree that the range is tremendous, from the barely literate attending for-profit degree mills part time or via the internet to brilliant, hard working students at highly selective and demanding colleges and universities with highly skilled and accomplished faculty.
The results from this education mishmash should be highly variable. That's precisely what we see.
Quote from piezoe:
Eventually, he predicted, that only the very bright or very wealthy will be able to study in the more esoteric fields because these programs will no longer co-exist with more job oriented programs in our publicly funded colleges and universities.
I disagree completely...
Today anyone can get an excellent education free. Take a look at
https://www.coursera.org/
These are the best schools and the best instructors in the world open to anyone.
This thread confuses 'education' with 'credentials'. In the next few years there will be a way to obtain credentials for a BA or MBA degree the same way that one can become a CPA or CFA today.
If you want to study any 'esoteric' field of study you will be able to do so without worrying about credentials which do not help for these fields as there are no paying jobs there anyway. If you want recognition and respect then publish an original body of work which is also open to more and more people.
What is more and more worthless are the credentials from institutions. Institutions have been 'printing degrees' like the Fed 'prints dollars'.
Education is free to all.
Good luck
Quote from slacker:
I disagree completely...
Today anyone can get an excellent education free. Take a look at
https://www.coursera.org/
These are the best schools and the best instructors in the world open to anyone.
This thread confuses 'education' with 'credentials'. In the next few years there will be a way to obtain credentials for a BA or MBA degree the same way that one can become a CPA or CFA today.
If you want to study any 'esoteric' field of study you will be able to do so without worrying about credentials which do not help for these fields as there are no paying jobs there anyway. If you want recognition and respect then publish an original body of work which is also open to more and more people.
What is more and more worthless are the credentials from institutions. Institutions have been 'printing degrees' like the Fed 'prints dollars'.
Education is free to all.
Good luck
Thanks for posting never heard of that site. I just knew about Khan Academy and MIT's free courses.
Quote from dandxg:
Thanks for posting never heard of that site. I just knew about Khan Academy and MIT's free courses.
Those are also good--at least I know that Khan is.
And even in the most prestigious universities, the tenured faculty is often more concerned about publishing journal articles than students. (And the stuff they publish has its own narrow guidelines and biases, but I digress.) The idea that college is largely some "Dead Poets Society" experience for students is a joke. It's more about drinking games than the Socratic method. There are a few small colleges that are exceptions, but not many.
It won't hurt my feelings at all to see the big brick-and-mortar institutions fall as the student loan bubble explodes. The sooner we get past the "Everyone should go to college!" myth, the better.
Quote from MKTrader:
Those are also good--at least I know that Khan is.
And even in the most prestigious universities, the tenured faculty is often more concerned about publishing journal articles than students. (And the stuff they publish has its own narrow guidelines and biases, but I digress.) The idea that college is largely some "Dead Poets Society" experience for students is a joke. It's more about drinking games than the Socratic method. There are a few small colleges that are exceptions, but not many.
It won't hurt my feelings at all to see the big brick-and-mortar institutions fall as the student loan bubble explodes. The sooner we get past the "Everyone should go to college!" myth, the better.
+10 for student loan bubble...
Quote from slacker:
I disagree completely...
Today anyone can get an excellent education free. Take a look at
https://www.coursera.org/
Education is free to all.
Good luck
I get it, a FREE education. I'm with you!!! I go to the library, check out maybe 50 books a year. it's awesome.
BUT (you knew this was coming)......the point of college is to get a job and make money. Network, make more cash, meet girls, whatever. bottom line, for this argument, make cash.
if i put this on my resume, instead of a "real" degree....good luck getting a job as an ibanker. can't i just trade and then say i know as much as the guy who is a prop. trader at GS? no. you can't.
can i go to grad school on this site? no. yes, i can learn a great deal, but sometimes when it's free you don't care much for it....that's a different topic.
let's say you want to work on wall street. how many don't have a college degree? i bet 90%+ have a real degree. so for them, was it a negative if they make 1 million a year?
what about NASA engineers, rocket scientists, brain surgeons....can you get there from this site that's free? no
Quote from BlueTurtle:
what about NASA engineers, rocket scientists, brain surgeons....can you get there from this site that's free? no
That is a credential problem that is going to be solved in the next 5 years.
If I was hiring and someone just passed a 'respected' qualification for an MBA equivalent and he interviewed just as well and had job experience equal to a traditional MBA then I would hire the guy who tested out. I would trust a CPA or CFA exam score much more than the grade inflation and cheating that is acceptable at universities. I would also trust the education toward a standardized 'body of knowledge' instead of a 'professor bias' of classes today. There is no 'quality standard' at the university, it is a body of old farts who gained tenure and stopped working.
Companies know that this degree fixation has got to end, there simply is no alternative to screening candidates today. Soon there will be. Stanford in the AI class had over 100,000 students take the class. They did not issue a transcript but then did send a letter saying that "you placed 520 out of 100,000" instead of an A, B, C, or D. The highest score any Stanford student placed was 441 out of 100,000. I want to hire the 'top 1000' of the graduates of this class. I would know that they are at least as good as a Stanford student taking the same class.
Times are changing, first content moves online, then credentials.
Good luck,
College is worthy of your time and money IF you plan to be a plastic surgeon, physicist, nuclear engineer, divorce lawyer, etc. Otherwise, you are better off buying some profitable businesses and work your ass off. Most millionaires I met only have high school diplomas. They have several homes and now retire in their thirties.