Post: #26

(04-26-2011 10:21 PM)Samseau Wrote:  let's be honest: formal education sucks and is a waste of youth (including ours).

I was going to disagree here, but on second thought I think it is a good mindset. After all, the less educated people are around me, the higher value me and my friends would have as professionals. Which means better career options (I just was offered a 8K/mo job in Singapore), better pay and early retirement.

So please go ahead, skip education and travel over the world, and the more people you convince to do so, the better I'll do.

Post: #27

I think its just that before a bachelors degree was a ticket to a career. As time moved on, more and more people attained bachelors and they become devalued. So now, in order to have that ticket to a career you need a masters or higher. The next generation is children may very well need Doctorate degrees to have that same guarantee.

Post: #28

(04-27-2011 06:22 PM)oldnemesis Wrote:  

(04-26-2011 10:21 PM)Samseau Wrote:  formal education sucks and is a waste of youth

the less educated people are around me, the higher value me and my friends would have as professionals.

I meet loads of smart, ambitious people from Asia. At one time I might have felt guilty about exploiting unskilled immigrants. Now I can have my pool cleaned and my wheelchair pushed by American-born citizens. And I can feel good knowing these were the self-absorbed assholes who goofed off in school and never learned any skills.

The Mexican-American comedian Carlos Mencia had a funny comment about immigrants taking jobs - "How bad was your interview if you lost the job to someone who can't speak English?!" Suppose you were surrounded for years by experts in math, science, engineering, accounting, finance, and economics. How bad are your job skills if you can't dominate a high-school student? It's like walking out of a buffet hungry!

Some smart people have a different opinion though.
Michael Spence

Post: #29

(04-27-2011 06:22 PM)oldnemesis Wrote:  

(04-26-2011 10:21 PM)Samseau Wrote:  let's be honest: formal education sucks and is a waste of youth (including ours).

I was going to disagree here, but on second thought I think it is a good mindset. After all, the less educated people are around me, the higher value me and my friends would have as professionals. Which means better career options (I just was offered a 8K/mo job in Singapore), better pay and early retirement.

So please go ahead, skip education and travel over the world, and the more people you convince to do so, the better I'll do.

Most people who get some crappy degree never use it, its only useful to get a degree thats substantial or will have some help towards what you do. It would be far more useful for some people to learn a technical trade than to waste money for an useless degree.

At least I know I'm going to use my degree when I get it which makes it worth it(Bsc. in Psychology). A lot of people go to college with no clear aim in mind and it would be better if they took a gap year or learned a technical trade so they can find out what they want to do.

Post: #30

These technical degrees (engineering, healthcare, finance, etc) will eventually get outsourced. I give them 5 years tops.

Post: #31

(04-27-2011 08:27 PM)torontokid Wrote:  

(04-27-2011 06:22 PM)oldnemesis Wrote:  

(04-26-2011 10:21 PM)Samseau Wrote:  let's be honest: formal education sucks and is a waste of youth (including ours).

I was going to disagree here, but on second thought I think it is a good mindset. After all, the less educated people are around me, the higher value me and my friends would have as professionals. Which means better career options (I just was offered a 8K/mo job in Singapore), better pay and early retirement.

So please go ahead, skip education and travel over the world, and the more people you convince to do so, the better I'll do.

Most people who get some crappy degree never use it, its only useful to get a degree thats substantial or will have some help towards what you do. It would be far more useful for some people to learn a technical trade than to waste money for an useless degree.

At least I know I'm going to use my degree when I get it which makes it worth it(Bsc. in Psychology). A lot of people go to college with no clear aim in mind and it would be better if they took a gap year or learned a technical trade so they can find out what they want to do.

Curious, how does one actually use a psychology degree? That is a notorious bs degree, usually chosen by feminist/insecure/dumb chicks in the uni.

Post: #32

While browsing the forum, I found this excellent thread, quite similar to this one:
/thread-55.html

An informative and entertaining read. Needless to say, I fully agree with it all: college is a rip off!

Post: #33

(04-27-2011 07:07 PM)lavidaloca Wrote:  I think its just that before a bachelors degree was a ticket to a career. As time moved on, more and more people attained bachelors and they become devalued.

Just a degree alone was never a ticket to a successful career. What mattered is studying. Your employer need your skills, not your diploma, and it is irrelevant for them in most cases how you got them. Then it only matters how much experience you've got. So if you can study and practice on your own, then you don't need college. But you still need studying.

The only exception I know is the case when your occupation is licensed, and the license requires some formal education. In this case college may be necessary. Such cases, however, are not obvious - for example, in California you may become a lawyer without ever stepping your foot in a law school, but you cannot become a hairdresser because the license requires formal education. So check.

Post: #34

(04-27-2011 09:32 PM)manilaguy Wrote:  

(04-27-2011 08:27 PM)torontokid Wrote:  

(04-27-2011 06:22 PM)oldnemesis Wrote:  

(04-26-2011 10:21 PM)Samseau Wrote:  let's be honest: formal education sucks and is a waste of youth (including ours).

I was going to disagree here, but on second thought I think it is a good mindset. After all, the less educated people are around me, the higher value me and my friends would have as professionals. Which means better career options (I just was offered a 8K/mo job in Singapore), better pay and early retirement.

So please go ahead, skip education and travel over the world, and the more people you convince to do so, the better I'll do.

Most people who get some crappy degree never use it, its only useful to get a degree thats substantial or will have some help towards what you do. It would be far more useful for some people to learn a technical trade than to waste money for an useless degree.

At least I know I'm going to use my degree when I get it which makes it worth it(Bsc. in Psychology). A lot of people go to college with no clear aim in mind and it would be better if they took a gap year or learned a technical trade so they can find out what they want to do.

Curious, how does one actually use a psychology degree? That is a notorious bs degree, usually chosen by feminist/insecure/dumb chicks in the uni.

I'm not going to use the Psychology degree to directly make money, I plan to do that through entrepreneurship. As Oldnemesis said, the important thing is being educated for most trades. I can educate myself outside of school by constantly reading books and researching things.

I want to learn more about the human mind and the scientific side of it. Basically most people on this forum are self development junkies. Many of the people here have built their own lifestyles and constantly push themselves to the limit. As somebody who's gradually learning to push myself into doing things outside my comfort zone which started with game I'm very thankful for what I've learned.

Most people don't have the luck or the will to get into something like game. Out of desperation I found game, then started working on myself. After seeing myself change so significantly I've become much more willing to try other things. Lately I've been practicing meditation which has made me much calmer and relaxed.

This is what drew me into Psychology. I think this sort of information is extremely potent and studying it in college will definitely sharpen my use of it. I just have to be careful and avoid the Bullshit feminist classes and just take the more science related classes. I'm fascinated by this and thats why I'm pursuing it.

However, to be quite frank, If I was paying for college i would just rather not pay for it and drop out. My parents are paying for it so I am not going to refuse free education that can offer value to me. If my parents just gave me the tuition money instead I'd just spend it on establishing a business with my money.

So to sum it up, I think my college education is going to be of great value to me. I just don't think its worth the amount it costs. For the amount of a 4 year education(lets assume 70-90 K) I could probably start up my first business(Investment of 40 K) and have enough money to survive a year and a half while trying to push the business into profitability.

Post: #35

"buck fifty in late charges at the local library"

Post: #36

(04-28-2011 03:19 AM)oldnemesis Wrote:  Just a degree alone was never a ticket to a successful career. What mattered is studying. Your employer need your skills, not your diploma, and it is irrelevant for them in most cases how you got them. Then it only matters how much experience you've got. So if you can study and practice on your own, then you don't need college. But you still need studying.

What the hell "skills" are you talking about? What "skills" did you learn in college that you use for any job? Can you name a single one? I majored in mechanical engineering, and despite taking twice as many classes as even other hard science majors like math and physics, I learned virtually zilch that is of any practical application. I realize that mechanical engineering is probably among the worst of the engineering majors in this regard, but from what I understand even EE/CS are pretty worthless as far as teaching real world skills. And these are considered the most "practical" of majors. Frankly, I wish I'd studied Ancient Greek instead.

99% of skills are learned on the job, not in classrooms. I suppose the old idea was to give workers the theoretical knowledge in school and then let people pick up the practical stuff on their first job, but these days a college degree doesn't promise you a better job than you could have gotten straight out of high school. So what's the point?

Post: #37

Regardless to anything in order to make it today you will need one of three things higher education , deep pockets or a military background

well i guess there is another ... a lucky break!

Post: #38

skills couldn't be picked in school nowadays. but general education as well as ability/knowledge how to study, yeah. so, there is certainly more use of studying maths or philosophy than engineering or business

Post: #39

(05-01-2011 03:05 PM)maestrobaires Wrote:  there is certainly more use of studying maths or philosophy than engineering or business

I dont know about that. business and engineering degrees will keep you employed. i work in contracting and those are the criteria that employers want. it's a lucrative field thats in demand. google contract engineer or contract administrator and you'll see what i mean.

on a side note, math/accounting is also good. where ever you have a contracting officer you have a cost specialist (google it)

Post: #40

fundamental sciences give you an egde over others. you know how to acquire the knowledge so you can master pretty much anything

i studied philosophy, but i work as a graphic designer. held plethora of other posts too.... software developer, forex trader, stock broker, journalist, translator, teacher, tour guide, ...

Post: #41

@Irminsul:

You obviously didn't read my post where I talked that studying is necessary, not just "visiting college".And yes, every skill I use for my job came from my studies, even though I preferred to study on my own. You may be surprised, but when an employer is looking for someone to do Android development, they're looking for the people who know how to do it, and preferably who have done it before - they're not looking for the people who'd come to the office and start learning it.

No, the skills you learned aren't worthless unless you define worthlessness as "the first employer I sent my resume to didn't want to hire me for a $100/hr job". They give you the base to start with, so you can get hired into junior position and polish your skills and learn new ones. And I can guarantee that you will not get hired for even a shitty, $10/hr entry-level software development job if you studied Ancient Greek, while a CS graduate can.

Some might ask what's the difference between doing software development for $10/hr on entry level position and working in McDonald for the same amount which obviously requires no college education? The difference is your career opportunities. After ten years spent in McDonald type jobs you may get to $20/hr but there is a hard limit which you'll likely never overcome as there is significant competition for those unskilled job from other people - younger and more ambitious - who don't have any skills. Now after ten years in the software development you are typically in $70/hr range, and have a range of growth opportunities.

And note that in this case your income increases as your needs do; when you're 22, you can live for $10/hr. But you definitely do not want to live for $10/hr when you're 50.

Post: #42

(05-01-2011 03:56 AM)Irminsul Wrote:  

(04-28-2011 03:19 AM)oldnemesis Wrote:  Just a degree alone was never a ticket to a successful career. What mattered is studying. Your employer need your skills, not your diploma, and it is irrelevant for them in most cases how you got them. Then it only matters how much experience you've got. So if you can study and practice on your own, then you don't need college. But you still need studying.

What the hell "skills" are you talking about? What "skills" did you learn in college that you use for any job? Can you name a single one? I majored in mechanical engineering, and despite taking twice as many classes as even other hard science majors like math and physics, I learned virtually zilch that is of any practical application. I realize that mechanical engineering is probably among the worst of the engineering majors in this regard, but from what I understand even EE/CS are pretty worthless as far as teaching real world skills. And these are considered the most "practical" of majors. Frankly, I wish I'd studied Ancient Greek instead.

99% of skills are learned on the job, not in classrooms. I suppose the old idea was to give workers the theoretical knowledge in school and then let people pick up the practical stuff on their first job, but these days a college degree doesn't promise you a better job than you could have gotten straight out of high school. So what's the point?

Nope. The degree is to land the interview, not to learn the skills. Think of it as a labor intensive degree that gets you the interview. Sure you learn the skills on the job, but it all does not matter if you can't get your foot in the door anyways.

degree => land interview => learn the skills

That's the model.

.

Post: #43

(05-01-2011 05:28 PM)oldnemesis Wrote:  And yes, every skill I use for my job came from my studies, even though I preferred to study on my own.

Pretty much proving my point. I can guarantee that virtually nothing you taught yourself is something that is taught at a university.

Post: #44

If I could do college all over again I would double major in Chinese and International Business.

Then I'd set up my college experience like this:

Summer before college - Intensive Mandarin bootcamp in Kunming, China

Goals:

-Reach a functional level of Mandarin before school starts
-Hit the ground running with my curriculum


Freshman year on campus
Freshman year summer internship in Shanghai

Goals:

-Knock out university core curriculum requirements as fast as possible
-Gain critical first work experience in China

Sophomore fall on campus

-Knock out core curriculum requirements



Sophomore spring at Tsinghua University

Goals:

-Knock out Chinese language major requirements at Tsinghua University, make friends with Tsinghua students in business and engineering fields. Students from Tsinghua will be running China in twenty years.

Sophomore Year Summer Internship in Beijing

Goals:

-Gain second critical work placement in China.

-Tactically build professional network and line myself up for junior year internship in private equity.

Junior Year Fall on campus

Goal:

-Continue knocking out credits for core curriculum

Junior Year Spring Semester

-Study in Chongqing, regardless of whether or not I get credits

Chongqing is a "municipality" the size of Belgium with an enormous 31.4 million people. It is on the Yangtze river that empties out where Shanghai is. In China's quest to develop the interior western regions, Chongqing is considered the "pole" city from which the development of the west will be conducted. As all future economic growth in China will occur from the west, I would strategically position myself to create relationships with the US Chamber of Commerce and local academia.

-Spring internship with US Chamber of Commerce in Chongqing, while studying

Goals:

-Build a business base of contacts in China's launchpad for development of its western region
-Get cozy with the US Chamber of Commerce representatives

Junior Year Summer Internship

-Hack my way into a summer internship with a private equity company conducting high level deals in Chongqing. This is to be achieved tactically through my spring internship with the US Chamber of Commerce, who undoubtedly have a black book with all the biggest private equity players operating in China's west

Goals:

-Gain access to groundbreaking private equity deals
-Elicit full time offer for post-grad
-Be on the front lines of China's development as it moves to the interior regions


Senior Year

PARTY~



This won't work for everyone. I can certainly say that I learned a shitload of street smarts by studying and working abroad.

If possible, use a college education as a means to travel the world and hustle your way into elite business circles in emerging markets.

Post: #45

(05-02-2011 01:09 AM)youngmobileglobal Wrote:  If I could do college all over again I would double major in Chinese and International Business.

Good plan - I think mine would be Arabic and International Business

Post: #46

I'm going back to school in August but I'm not sure what I want to major in. Dont want to be in school more than 4 years.

Post: #47

(05-01-2011 11:53 PM)Irminsul Wrote:  Pretty much proving my point.

That was my point from the beginning - that you need to study, and you can do it either on your own or in a college. But to succeed, you need to STUDY in a college, not to party.

Quote:I can guarantee that virtually nothing you taught yourself is something that is taught at a university.

This is false. As I have said, a dude who got a BCS degree from college has much better chance to get hired to an entry software position than a dude who just claims he studied the same thing. While the second dude might know his shit better, it is unlikely he'd ever get called for an interview.

Post: #48

If I had a choice to do it again, i'd do this.

Year 1: Work good experience job, part time school
Year 2: Work good experience job, part time school
Year 3: Work good experience job, part time school
Year 4: Work good experiencee job, part time school
Year 5: Study abroad one year, finish 1st degree.

Year 6: Enter management. part time school
Year 7: Work management, part time school
Year 8: Work management, part time school, finish 2nd degree
Year 9: Major Travel abroad

Year 10: Enter partnership status, bang bitches part time.
Year 11: Enter partner...

you get the idea. Shoulda would coulda. Note that by year 11 you will only be 28 years old.

Post: #49

(04-27-2011 07:40 AM)kimleebj Wrote:  

(04-26-2011 10:21 PM)Samseau Wrote:  a country that only made school mandatory up until age 12 would probably become one of the better/richer nations on the planet.

Education Across Countries
# 1 Norway: 16.9 years
# 2 Finland: 16.7 years
# 3 Australia: 16.6 years
# 4 United Kingdom: 16.4 years
# 5 New Zealand: 16.2 years
# 106 Chad: 3.9 years
# 107 Djibouti: 3.4 years
# 108 Burkina Faso: 2.8 years
# 109 Niger: 2.3 years
# 110 Mali: 2.1 years.

Factually, you are wrong:

Education in chad is compulsory
Education in Djibouti is compulsory
education in mali is compulsory

I'm not going to look up the other places, because you should research your posts better.

Theoretically:

making children attend school does not make them intelligent or knowledgeable or better human beings in any shape or fashion. children are only as good as their teachers.

cultures are what produces high quality children, and to a lesser extent, their IQ. smart children are bred by educated parents. education does not come from schools, it comes from hard work and a burning desire to learn. formal education destroys this drive.

this is why when we compare europe of today to europe of 200 years ago, although europeans were overall more illiterate, huge numbers of original thinkers and innovators came about during that time. conversely, present-day europe hasn't come up with anyone close to the likes of Rousseau, Kant, Hume, Newton, etc. etc.

hell, european thinkers of 100 years ago blows away anything modern europe can offer. and this was all before the rise of modern education, aka the death of creativity.

Quote:

Quote:society is collapsing today is because of ... falling birthrates

Birthrates per 1000 by Country
1 Democratic Republic of the Congo 49.6
2 Guinea-Bissau 49.6
3 Liberia 49.6
4 Niger 49.0
5 Afghanistan 48.2
191 Japan 8.3
192 Germany 8.2
193 Singapore 8.2
194 Hong Kong 7.6
195 Macau 7.6

way to prove my point. shithole nations are filling up the world while civilized ones are disappearing.



Roosh:

Quote:Samseau: I agree with you in spirit but historically those societies which focused on advanced education for its populace have had the most successful empires (economically speaking). Say what you want about the American empire today, but for a period of time our educated elite was outclassed by no one. Not long ago a college degree from an American university meant a job and a career. Not anymore, unfortunately.

Actually, it's precisely the opposite: the societies that built the best educational institutions were freely created out of curiosity and a desire to learn. There were no other incentives. The economic benefits as a result of this were more or less accidental. And I stand by the truth:

All the institutions which produced the great thinkers of the west - from Plato's Academy, to Aristotle's Lyceum, to the universities at Alexandria, to the great monasteries of the middle ages, to the men of letters of the enlightenment, and to the rise of the modern university system in Germany during the 1800's - not one was compulsory.

Educated elite are created by a fine culling of intellectual men out of society writ large in order to pool together the more cerebral members of society. The elite is destroyed when all mechanisms of separating genuine thinkers from the common man are nullified.

Before, when college was a distinction and mark of honor for one's resume, few possessed the mental acuity to perform in such an environment. When men congregated at a university, they found themselves surrounded by other thinking types who brimmed with the life of the mind.

College, and formal education as a whole in America, has been completely corrupted by the desire to make money. Due to some weird accident of history, Americans equate education with making money, something that has only occurred at the tail ends of every empire. (at the end of Athens and Rome, men were sending their sons to learn rhetoric, boys in china were trained to pass state exams that would no longer be there by the time they grew up, men piled into the clergy in the days before the protestant reformation, etc.) Basically, people run out of ideas and don't know how to succeed, so everyone sends their children to an institution with a "proven" track record to gain a competitive edge in the market. This means the death of learning as true talent is drowned in a sea of democratic noise.


You can see such backwards thinking perfectly reflected in OldNemesis' post:

Quote:I was going to disagree here, but on second thought I think it is a good mindset. After all, the less educated people are around me, the higher value me and my friends would have as professionals. Which means better career options (I just was offered a 8K/mo job in Singapore), better pay and early retirement.

So please go ahead, skip education and travel over the world, and the more people you convince to do so, the better I'll do.

Not once did I say to skip education, only that formal education is a waste of our time and youth. Instead of concerning ourselves with learning about this world, we wrap ourselves around a fruitless pursuit of money and place everything else in ancillary to it.

Poor OldNemesis is so trapped in today's time period he cannot understand the distinction between education and making money; probably a fault of 95% of today's population.

Post: #50

(05-03-2011 12:56 AM)Samseau Wrote:  Factually, you are wrong:
Education in chad is compulsory
Education in Djibouti is compulsory
education in mali is compulsory
I'm not going to look up the other places, because you should research your posts better.

You said that "a country that only made school mandatory up until age 12 would probably become one of the better/richer nations on the planet". Mandatory in this regard is same as compulsory, meaning it cannot be skipped. Which is the case in most countries around the world, including the USA. So what was your point?

Quote:children are only as good as their teachers.

This is a major logical fallacy. If every student was only as good as their teacher, this would mean the education level would in the best case stay the same (or slowly degrade) and we'd still live in caves.

Quote:cultures are what produces high quality children, and to a lesser extent, their IQ. smart children are bred by educated parents. education does not come from schools, it comes from hard work and a burning desire to learn. formal education destroys this drive.

The obvious problem here is that most parents have no idea how to educate kids. You know, teaching is a skill people actually study for several years. And AFAIR homeschooling in the USA at least in half cases includes reading them the bible and other crap which has nothing to do with education.

Quote:hell, european thinkers of 100 years ago blows away anything modern europe can offer. and this was all before the rise of modern education, aka the death of creativity.

So you disregard nuclear energy, plastics, superconducting, computers, satellites, Internet? You disregard genome and drug research? You disregard research in physics (LHC), chemistry, medicine (vaccines)? Do you actually read about Nobel prize nominees?
Really, Samseau, were you homeschooled? I'm serious. At least in a few cases you made some logical or practical mistakes which are so obvious, so I start wondering if you got any formal education.

Quote:way to prove my point. shithole nations are filling up the world while civilized ones are disappearing.

This question pops up frequently during discussions, and actually I found an interesting correlation. So far everyone who complained about "civilized nations disappearing" had zero kids, and when asked why, they typically came up with a bunch of crappy excuses. Note that a couple needs at least 2.2 kids to just keep the population steady. So what is your personal contribution to reverse the situation, besides complaining?

Quote:Not once did I say to skip education, only that formal education is a waste of our time and youth. Instead of concerning ourselves with learning about this world, we wrap ourselves around a fruitless pursuit of money and place everything else in ancillary to it.

Formal education is exactly that - learning about this world. Chemistry, physics, biology, history, geography, even foreign languages - it is all learning about this world. The main advantage is that it gives you the platform to continue the self-study. Maybe you're one of those rare people who can learn quantum physics just by getting a book in the library and reading it, but most people aren't that bright. At least I don't know a single recent Nobel laureate who got there just by reading books, without any formal study.

Quote:Poor OldNemesis is so trapped in today's time period he cannot understand the distinction between education and making money; probably a fault of 95% of today's population.

Poor oldnemesis just paid over $100K in taxes for 2010 and is doing very well. I'd speculate, much better than 98% of the world. And I can indeed attribute most of my success to the formal school education. So I stand my opinion - go travel and see the world, more money for me.