Post: #26

(01-22-2016 09:17 PM)Disco_Volante Wrote:  Imagine you could invite a large pool of recent high school graduates, narrow down the ones you like, and pay them a shit wage to train them on
Microsoft excel, accounting software, and whatever other shit you want them to know.

then after a year you have a 19 yr old employee who knows every skill you want them to, instead of paying more for a college graduate whom you're not sure knows all the software skills you want them to.

You've also described the airline industry of the past ~20 years.

Post: #27

(01-22-2016 09:17 PM)Disco_Volante Wrote:  It's far more efficient for corporations to have their own training programs then filter out who doesn't meet their standards. Casinos have their own training programs to be a dealer that's open to most anyone.

Imagine you could invite a large pool of recent high school graduates, narrow down the ones you like, and pay them a shit wage to train them on
Microsoft excel, accounting software, and whatever other shit you want them to know.

then after a year you have a 19 yr old employee who knows every skill you want them to, instead of paying more for a college graduate whom you're not sure knows all the software skills you want them to.

And they spend XX,XXX training people, and their competitors offer the new trainees, 50 cents more per hour.

The trainers aren't able to recoup their investment. And their competitors come out ahead.

"Why don't they put their money together and create industry schools?"
.."Why should we have to pay for the training at these industry schools, let the government take care of it?"
"Why should the government pay for it, let the students finance it themselves?"

So you get Wyotech, ITT Tech, Phoenix, Coding Boot Camps...

The problem here isn't the the education. It's the financial incentives of the employers don't encourage long term thinking. If the company is publicly traded, profits should be used to buy back stock, and a distant second is paying a dividend. Company management typically ups the salary of those non-essential people like Division Heads and Senior VP's, but lots of times the money just stays off shore - where it's not doing anyone any good.

A underwater basket weaving degree is economically valuable - just not as an employee.

People buy bootcamps and seminars on how to be better men. All that stuff is already out there, in books, on youtube, et cetera. But people will pay for it.

So you take those useless degrees, Sociology, Social Work, Teaching, Anthropology, History, Biology, Psychology, Literature, French, Botany, Ocean Engineering/Aeronautical Engineers (a hard STEM with very few employers vis a vis students unlike say Chemical or Comp Sci Engineering) - and you figure out what they can do to create their own jobs.

Lawyers, Doctors, and MBA's are usually not taught how to start their own businesses. They just become employees of some other organization for their early years, and maybe just maybe open a shop of their own. Most MBA's are great at *managing* existing businesses. But building a new venture was never really part of the overall MBA curriculum until maybe the last 10 years or so. And a lot of the new Entrepreneur MBA (which is oxymoronic) focuses on Silicon Valley Start Ups.

I met a young lawyer last year. He was grinding out some bullshit at a temp spot. He mentioned that he took Japanese in college.
He was making 22 an hour doing shit that high school kids could do.

If he were to double down on his japanese studies, he could bump that to 60-80 an hour for the same work - but he could also do it remotely. He was hype. Then the company gave him more permanent work, though never actually hiring him, and not giving him much more of a raise.

He promptly forgot using his Japanese degree, but because he got a bit more "stability".

There are far too many sheep out there.

You can try and be a shepherd, like I have...but it usually makes more sense to become the wolf.

WIA

Post: #28

One of the my biggest personal gripes with society is that we fail to update old models that have been made obsolete.

Think about the origins of lectures in college. People didn't have easy access to books and needed someone to stand in from of them and present the material. Now that you can read virtually anything online lectures just seem pointless. This used to piss me off in uni. Professors would have a required reading of pages 80-160 from some book. Then give us a lecture on that same material during the next class period. Entirely redundant.

To be completely honest though, the biggest problem that I see in my field isn't that people are uneducated, it's that they are so immature that it makes them incompetent at their jobs.

Post: #29

(01-23-2016 01:45 PM)General Mayhem Wrote:  One of the my biggest personal gripes with society is that we fail to update old models that have been made obsolete.

Think about the origins of lectures in college. People didn't have easy access to books and needed someone to stand in from of them and present the material. Now that you can read virtually anything online lectures just seem pointless. This used to piss me off in uni. Professors would have a required reading of pages 80-160 from some book. Then give us a lecture on that same material during the next class period. Entirely redundant.

To be completely honest though, the biggest problem that I see in my field isn't that people are uneducated, it's that they are so immature that it makes them incompetent at their jobs.

No, I will disagree completely with your statements.

There has never been any shortage of books for students. Every ancient student was drowning in papyrus scrolls, wax tablets, and copyists. They were plentiful and abundant.

The lecture format developed because personal communication and interaction with a master is the best way to impart knowledge.

People need to be around others, to hear knowledge conveyed, and to hear questions answered and propositions tested.

That is how information sinks in.

The modern dork of today thinks he has reached the apex of culture and civilization simply because he has an iPhone in his hand and can see a lot of YouTube videos.

Little does he suspect that, compared with his ancestors, he is nothing but a logic-chopping, mental tidbit-tasting barbarian.

A pure savage.

People think that they are "educated" if they can waste time on the internet. Shallowness, superficiality, and lack of rigor are the order of the day now. Most people are functionally illiterate, and it's because of the Internet and the smart phone apps.

If we really want to improve education, we need to look backwards. People would be better off sitting under a tree, listening to a master or expert in some field, than sitting in front of a computer pretending he knows something.

Just because you downloaded an app, doesn't make you a master of the material. You are confusing the process with the outcome.

Education was better 100 years ago. It was more rigorous, people learned things more fully, had better critical faculties, and were deeper people.

Don't believe me? Look at the textbooks used in American colleges in the 1890s.

Technology may have advanced a huge amount, but not our understanding, not our wisdom, and not our depth.

.

Post: #30

(01-23-2016 01:07 PM)thoughtgypsy Wrote:  Companies used to administer IQ testing for applicants in certain positions that required high reasoning skills. That was made illegal through the Griggs vs. Duke Power Co. case, and now college is used as a proxy.

Ironically, college application tests like the SAT and ACT are basically the same as an IQ test. Test scores are highly correlated with IQ, so essentially serve the same purpose. Colleges and academia are institutions which serve the elite, so they've escaped punishment.

So now, instead of a simple test, people are forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars and 4 years of their life to perform the same task. Good for college administrators, bad for students. Also allows the government to collect inflated debt servicing payments which can't be discharged through bankruptcy.

This pretty much establishes everything everyone needs to know.

The current college scam is entirely political. Very little "education" is provided at universities.

QC, the idea that men go to college to learn is laughable. It sounds like you haven't attended the average class in a long time.

Also, as a student of history you should know there is a cyclical pattern of educational institutions becoming corrupted.

The original groups of scholars and monks like St. Augustine hated and rejected the Roman and Greek universities of the day.

The enlightenment thinkers like Descartes and Rousseau hated and rejected the Catholic monasteries and universities of the day.

Likewise our schools have become shit, and until the political problems are resolved these schools are causing great damage to students who attend them.

Hopefully things can be fixed soon. Currently the advice I give to kids of college age is, "If you can find a way to make money outside of college, you'll be better off sticking with that. 2/3's of the people I know who went to college never got value out of their degrees."

Post: #31

A related anecdote on damage via subversion from Vox Day's blog:

Quote:It's even worse to grease the skids for the untalented and unable.

Fifteen years ago, Michigan State University had a Veterinary school that was routinely rated between first and at worst third in the the entire world.

ONE SJW got put in charge of the admissions office at the Vet school. She routinely steps on the rope to get women, minorities and worst of all imbecilic SJW animal rights activists into the program.

If that wasn't bad enough she also raises that rope over her head for Cis-gendered white males and any other brand of conservative come to that.

The school's large animal program (which is in fact the real reason State has this program in the first damn place) is in complete fucking shambles because SJW vets only want to play with kittens and bunnies.

Today, MSU's Vet school is rated at thirteenth in the country.

And it only took one SJW in the right place to do all that damage.

Post: #32

All I'm saying is this.

Colleges and universities definitely have a lot of problems, and those have been unaddressed for a long time. Drastic reform is needed on many levels, and I agree with that.

And they aren't for everyone. I've never said they were for everyone. Trade or vocational schools may be better choices for many people who are currently in colleges.

But the anti-college people take it too far, in my opinion. They go beyond just criticizing the institutions. They make blanket statements that easily lend themselves to abuse or misguided application. They say, or imply, that young guys should basically drop out of the game and pursue some imaginary pipe-dream of being a business-owner.

You can't cure the headache by cutting off the head. You can't cure the educational system by maligning education itself. And this is what I'm seeing far too often in discussions of this type.

And the reality is that many people are not suited to being an Indiana Jones-type of entrepreneur. To say otherwise is to talk rot.

We're doing these young guys a disservice by making irresponsible suggestions like this.

There is a lot of bitterness in the manosphere against institutions of all types--and much of this rage is justifiable. I've done more than my share in fanning the flames of resentment.

And yet we should not allow ourselves to become so blinded with rage, or so lazy with disinterest, that we reject the very idea of organized education.

No one every promised anyone here shit. No one ever promised you a rose garden.

It's YOUR job to get out into the world and make your own way.

Feel betrayed by organized education? Then feel betrayed. But at the end of the day, no one gives a shit about your feelings of hurt.

Can't find a job after getting out of school? You need to think of creative solutions. You do what you have to do to survive.

(And Samulus, for the record, your statements about Augustine, and Descartes, and Rousseau as being anti-establishment are true only in a very limited context. But they are also extremely misleading.

One could say the same thing about Einstein. He was also anti-establishment. But the vast majority of mankind are not visionary geniuses like these men, and we should not model our lives around their unique examples. No one can afford to bet the farm on being a Renee Descartes.

I also don't these men should necessarily be models of conduct to imitate for the average man. Rousseau, for example, was in some ways a madman).

Post: #33

Dismiss education, but do so at your own peril. The most successful people I know also have at least some modicum of formal post secondary education.

Most who are struggling or working precarious positions, have none, or very limited post secondary.

I have a university education - and a trade certificate, and I work in the trades.

I wouldn't discard my post graduate education even if I would receive a full refund for it. Its actually been invaluable in helping me progress in my trade career.

Post: #34

(01-22-2016 09:27 PM)Begriff Wrote:  I have been working in the trades for 7 years, In that time I've been getting paid and can literally build a house with a no English speaking helper.

most young guys come on a construction job and walk off in 4 hours .... not for them, others with some kind of "construction degree'' want top dollar and are literally a hazard on the job.

heck, I only went to college because I thought it would be an easy way out of hard work, thank jesus I saw the light.
you can learn every thing in college on your own, you just have to want it.

My degree specialty is construction. I was averse to doing site work because I didn't expect much from it but I did it anyway and for a year I put up with shit managers, shit wages and few people who were worth talking to.

Now I got offered a graduate position almost 2 years after graduating in my field. In the end I was more employable than others on the day because they liked me in the interview, I charmed them and had the technical knowledge to back it up.

If you're not able to game an interview you are going to get shafted, regardless of what experience you have.

University is bad enough with debt but it is a cocoon that is not part of the real world, it is akin to being asleep for 3-4 years, doing whatever the fuck you want to do and then think you're hot shit.

Post: #35

My advice on college would be to use this simple measurement: if the average job interviewer on the other side of the country has heard of the school and thinks it's "for smart people" (ie Ivy League schools and a handful of others with equivalent reputations like MIT or Stanford), then it might be worth it, especially if you can get a scholarship. If not, then it's not worth it (unless you can get a full ride or close to it). The only value you can get from a liberal arts degree is name recognition and alumni networks, so in the vast majority of cases it's a very bad trade-off. For fields that pay reliably well like engineering, it's a different story, but people should still look long and hard at what they can probably earn and what the degree costs.

As for liberal arts in and of themselves...yes the benefits of such an education are intangible at best, and the faculties are usually stuffed from cellar to chimney with SJW nonsense, but immersing oneself in a scholarly environment can still bring benefits if one applies oneself. Even with all of academia's inanity, the humanities can certainly be well worth studying. However, the unavoidable trouble is that paying over $15k a year for it (much less the ballpark of $50k a year demanded by some of these parasitical institutions) should strike any sensible person as quite insane. There's virtually nothing you can learn from a liberal arts course that you can't learn from a tall pile of good books. Even if one's family can pay for all of it, why not use a fraction of that money for other, more helpful methods of improvement? Most of it goes to superfluous administrators and bureaucrats making hugely inflated wages, and unnecessary facilities that you either won't use or never get the chance to. It's a con.

Also, the reason why non-American students are pouring with alacrity into top US schools is because the schools themselves are promoting it for financial gain and because the picture looks very different for those students. The cost-benefit for a decent American degree is much improved in many foreign job markets, especially if one has family and connections in important industries. However, some American kid trying to make his way in the US market with a decent liberal arts degree from SomeSnowyPlaceUpNorth College, when he doesn't have a nepotistic culture and network to fall back on, when he can't say "我的美国的大学..." and automatically get an advantage over other applicants, when he probably doesn't come from an ascendant economy with growing job prospects...it's terribly bleak. He'll probably find in short order that he's been taken for a ride, swindled, conned. My hope is that as millennial graduates get wise to the college con and give better advice to younger guys, those kinds of prospective students will start to get very skeptical about so-called higher education and avoid getting hosed. In many if not most cases, better lives are to be lived without the college cartel.

And the problem transcends individual interests. Most indications point to the fact that the American middle class is teetering on the brink of collapse: savings are being depleted, debt is increasing, the job market has only marginally improved for most...and on the horizon there's yet another massive free trade deal and more gluts of H1B visas to lower pay and decrease availability for good jobs. The borderline criminal gouging of the price of college is a major part in what could be the coup de grace to what was once the backbone of the country. Higher education itself is a good thing, yes, but in its present form it's pure avarice and ruin. I hope colleges start going out of business in bunches all over the country, the nation and the world would be better for it.

Post: #36

Some excellent points that have raised by others on the forum about higher education.

Since I'm now in a position to hire Graduates my thoughts are that the quality varies dramatically both within and between institutions. Certainly as a Chartered Accountant to bring back the older way, which involved a five year cadetship at a public accounting firm after completing high school. This has the advantage of getting someone into employment immediately so that no gaps emerge between theory and practice to the detriment of the Graduate or the Practice. But I have also always admired the German method of taking on large numbers of cadets simulating the old apprentice, journeyman, craftsman path - but that is another point.

As for higher education certainly some of my lecturers were excellent and pushed their students, but if I'm honest I was extended more at high school. Furthermore in my opinion most jobs really require a high school education and that is where we should be focusing upon. If needed technical colleges offering further education of up to two years would seem a better fit.

Post: #37

(01-24-2016 01:18 AM)Numbers Man Wrote:  Some excellent points that have raised by others on the forum about higher education.

Since I'm now in a position to hire Graduates my thoughts are that the quality varies dramatically both within and between institutions. Certainly as a Chartered Accountant to bring back the older way, which involved a five year cadetship at a public accounting firm after completing high school. This has the advantage of getting someone into employment immediately so that no gaps emerge between theory and practice to the detriment of the Graduate or the Practice. But I have also always admired the German method of taking on large numbers of cadets simulating the old apprentice, journeyman, craftsman path - but that is another point.

As for higher education certainly some of my lecturers were excellent and pushed their students, but if I'm honest I was extended more at high school. Furthermore in my opinion most jobs really require a high school education and that is where we should be focusing upon. If needed technical colleges offering further education of up to two years would seem a better fit.

Unfortunately Victorian snobbery in British-derived countries is one reason why technical education and apprenticeships have been looked down on. This contrasts with the status of technical education in Germany which is why Germany has surpassed British manufacturing three times in a century despite Germany suffering the Versailles Treaty and mass-carpet bombing of industry and civilians towards the end of WW2.

British education has favoured the classics, law, finance - in short - subjects that support jobs which are overheads. Professor Hudson made an interesting comment that WW1 was a war of two banking systems: The Prussian system of leveraging lending from productive manufacturing output versus the Anglo banking system based on inflated property speculation.

A good book is 'The Collapse of British Power' by Correlli Barnett.

Post: #38

I'd say the answer lies somewhere between the two poles.

I would say it IS a waste of time to get a C average from a no name college and get a worthless degree.

On that same token, I think it is a good idea to graduate with a decent average (above 3.5) from a state school with a degree in something that someone will pay you for.

Of course, if you can go to Harvard and bust out an A+ in finance then you should do it, but I do think a lot of people (not on this forum) sleep on the trades and end up in debt with a worthless degree because they didn't know any better.

I think what it all revolves around is getting yourself educated in some way: trades, STEM degree, med school, accounting degree, finance degree, the family business, self-study or something.

For many of those things you'll need a degree, but I don't think anyone was seriously thinking that hospitals would stop requiring med school or something.

Post: #39

I think we should be drawing a firm distinction between courses for professions and thematic courses.

Professional courses train you for a specific job. Law, medicine, architecture, etc. Not much room for interpretation there.
Thematic ones just sort of marinate the student in facts and opinions on the same theme, and were originally a cultural sampler for rich people, not a proxy IQ test for unskilled office workers.
Somewhere between these two are (foreign) language courses and STEM. Useful, but not a fast track to a specific job.

No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Post: #40

Damn, I posted this in my Accounting thread already but this may be a better venue to discuss it.

I agree with the "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" analogy. Why?

There are a lot of college haters on this side of the manosphere. I'd like to think they know the difference between a liberal arts education and a technical education. Totally different in the sense that the former will not prepare you adequately for many jobs. The latter, however, is geared towards productivity in moving the economy forward. So yes, you need to go to college to learn about law and engineering. Period. Don't believe all of a sudden that you can get educated through the internet in technical fields such as these. It's utter bullshit. I agree with QC that this type of education is best delivered by a lecturer that may understand the practicality of the knowledge. However, by the same token, my question then becomes, in today's college environment, how practical is that knowledge? Maybe it's fine that it's not practical as there is a good amount of technical ability necessary without practicing. Maybe.

I have an Accounting degree and I'm a CPA. I understand businesses pretty well, especially larger ones since I audited a good amount of them. However, this knowledge came to me through working, not at all through college. The reason was that my professors were never Business practitioners. They were PhDs that learned about the business world in books and case studies but never once talked to a client and told them that they have issues with their internal control structure or financial information. Not once. I also worked at an accounting/audit practice at one of the firms in the OP that is changing its tune regarding college grads. I'm happy they are doing that because they are seeing through the bull shit brought in by college grads that were taught by non-practicing professors.

I went to a great Accounting program, which is why I was recruited by one of these firms. However, I never had one professor that ever practiced; at least not in an environment that is conducive to producing a confidence that allows them to present it effectively to a class of college kids that are eventually entering the profession. A lot of this is because colleges don't have the money to pay a Partner at a Big 4 firm a half a million dollars to come teach students. They can't even pay a Big 4 Manager's salary to some starting professors (and they're more equipped to teach it than crusty professors with 20+ years of experience if they can train themselves to be instructors).

So the components are not just theory and practice but rather theory, practical education and practice. We don't have enough of that in the Finance or Accounting academic environment in my opinion. That's also likely because Accounting and Finance are likely professions that go through a lot of change and a lot of learning happens in the field. Other professions may differ from this but interested to hear others' thoughts on those and if you guys see the same patterns.

Post: #41

To get a CPA, you need 150 hours of college education, so I don't see why PWC or any other accounting firm would care less about a college education.

Post: #42

(01-23-2016 02:22 PM)Quintus Curtius Wrote:  

(01-23-2016 01:45 PM)General Mayhem Wrote:  One of the my biggest personal gripes with society is that we fail to update old models that have been made obsolete.

Think about the origins of lectures in college. People didn't have easy access to books and needed someone to stand in from of them and present the material. Now that you can read virtually anything online lectures just seem pointless. This used to piss me off in uni. Professors would have a required reading of pages 80-160 from some book. Then give us a lecture on that same material during the next class period. Entirely redundant.

To be completely honest though, the biggest problem that I see in my field isn't that people are uneducated, it's that they are so immature that it makes them incompetent at their jobs.

No, I will disagree completely with your statements.

There has never been any shortage of books for students. Every ancient student was drowning in papyrus scrolls, wax tablets, and copyists. They were plentiful and abundant.

The lecture format developed because personal communication and interaction with a master is the best way to impart knowledge.

People need to be around others, to hear knowledge conveyed, and to hear questions answered and propositions tested.

That is how information sinks in.

The modern dork of today thinks he has reached the apex of culture and civilization simply because he has an iPhone in his hand and can see a lot of YouTube videos.

Little does he suspect that, compared with his ancestors, he is nothing but a logic-chopping, mental tidbit-tasting barbarian.

A pure savage.

People think that they are "educated" if they can waste time on the internet. Shallowness, superficiality, and lack of rigor are the order of the day now. Most people are functionally illiterate, and it's because of the Internet and the smart phone apps.

If we really want to improve education, we need to look backwards. People would be better off sitting under a tree, listening to a master or expert in some field, than sitting in front of a computer pretending he knows something.

Just because you downloaded an app, doesn't make you a master of the material. You are confusing the process with the outcome.

Education was better 100 years ago. It was more rigorous, people learned things more fully, had better critical faculties, and were deeper people.

Don't believe me? Look at the textbooks used in American colleges in the 1890s.

Technology may have advanced a huge amount, but not our understanding, not our wisdom, and not our depth.

I can concede to being wrong. If the lecture concept still consisted of personal communication and interaction with a master I would sing the praises but in uni that was never the case.

I agree that you need interaction and discussion to facilitate knowledge but that seems hard to find. I've gotten into self-study and it feels empty sometimes because there is no one around to discuss it with. I think philosophy is a great topic for self-study, but who the fuck wants to devote time in person to discussing philosophy anymore?

If you can't binge-watch it on netflix nobody cares about it.

Post: #43

There's a lot of hate for liberal arts degrees, but I have a poli sci degree and I make over $150k a year working in human resources for an oil and gas company. I'm only 5 years into
My career also. If you're competent and hard working, that will put you above the mostly incompetent work force in large corporations. I wouldn't have been able to get this job without a degree, it opened doors for me.

However, my advice to college students is to stay away from liberal arts degrees and go for something STEM related. But the cream will always ride to the top regardless what degree you have or field you work in.

Post: #44

(01-24-2016 03:43 PM)Oilrig Wrote:  However, my advice to college students is to stay away from liberal arts degrees and go for something STEM related. But the cream will always ride to the top regardless what degree you have or field you work in.

The problem is the Socialist Theories beloved of the Humanities - particularly Anti-Capitalism, and subversion to take control of Institutions, are leaking into every other field, including STEM. This is the easily-identifiable Subversive Push dictated for the back half of the 10's, the way childhood education was in the 70's, or Hollywood and Policing was in the 80's, or the Catholic Church was in the 90's.

And trust me, socialists will - not if - will take control of all STEM fields, if not in terms of getting intelligent socialist graduates in place - true believers are midwitted morons, but, as they always do, setting themselves up within the institutions as the Monitoring and Policing Authority and destroying the careers of any Scientist who doesn't show proper deference for Socialist concerns, including what can and can't be researched.

It's already happening to medicine: the quality of health services in my hometown has fallen to third world levels, where you're more likely to end up with life-threatening staph infections from attending the hospital, or having the wrong drugs administered, but hey, it's diverse. What's it matter if the odd Indian Doctor drugs and rapes his patients whilst they're unconscious, or a Somalian Emergency Admittance Nurse doesn't seem to understand how serious an overdose of Paracetamol is?

I visited an old workplace recently, and noted one of the long term (Older, White) Specialists had been blocked from operating in both private and public hospitals here. Curious, I inquired and the word around the grapevine was his record of 'incompetence' had gotten him banned. I remembered the incidents in question so looked up the records: six complaints over a 45 year career, all wrongdoing cleared by the board each time.

I was talking with my elderly neighbour a few days later, and she brought up her health problems, and stated she was having trouble finding a new Specialist since hers [the man in question] had been 'blacklisted'. I was curious about her phrasing and mentioned that I'd looked into it and it seemed like an overreaction since he was cleared of any malpractice or incompetence.

She shook her head. "It's not that. They're railroading him out because he was Catholic and voiced his opinion that abortion was morally-wrong."

I thought of his office, with multiple pictures of a very large family, including grand and great-grandchildren. I instantly thought of the Women Who Run both Hospitals, (including the 'Catholic' one): all overweight, miserable frumps with Subversive Hair and no pictures on their walls, and knew the truth of the situation.

What this sort of thing means for STEM:

For Capitalist employers, this will eventually means weighing up the cost / benefit ratio if a potential employee comes from a school known for producing consistently-destructive graduates.

Unfortunately, if they have a HR department, the subversion will happen regardless.

For Non-Socialist employees, this means enduring a suffocating culture of Political Correctness in the workplace, propping up people who aren't qualified for their job, and losing your career if you're deemed 'problematic'.

Post: #45

There is a lot to be said for and against University education. I would agree that for many people it's largely worthless, and incurs a massive debt that will haunt someone for decades. This is largely due to the government underwriting useless degrees, and the conspiracy between high schools and colleges to encourage people to "follow their passion" regarding their vocations.

In my opinion, enriching yourself and studying a diverse array of literature doesn't require a 5 figure annual outlay. If you really want to learn, you can do it on your own time and dime. I don't think this approach should extend to every situation, though.

Looking back on it, I'm glad I chose to attend University. I got an engineering degree which landed me a job with high pay and good benefits for my age. I will admit that most of what I've learned has been on the job, though the academic background has been useful. A lot of things that I've said to myself in the past that "I will never use this!" I ended up using multiple times.

Most work is accomplished leveraging computer programs and takes the necessity of knowing a lot of the complex math out of the picture, but I'm still happy I learned how to write out proofs. An intimate understanding of the basic concepts helps you draw conclusions over the results you're seeing, and analyze what's going on. If you're just a monkey processing input and output, you're gonna have a hard time making sense of your output if you can't think about what you're looking for.

I could say that university is unnecessary, and that I could have learned all of that through independent study. It's true in theory, but in reality, I know I wouldn't have been capable of that. University provided the environment to motivate me and keep me disciplined to digest a large volume of difficult subjects. I wouldn't have been able to do it without such a rigid structure. I know this because I tried doing an independent study for Ordinary Differential Equations and Boundary Elements (Post Calc III math) and barely passed. I was a Dean's lister at the time and it opened my eyes.

So it does have its place. I will say, the government involvement in student loans has caused a lot of the mess in college education. I'd appreciate it if I could have had the same education, but without the inflated costs. It makes it hard to judge the worth of pursuing degrees for folks just entering school.

Post: #46

(01-23-2016 01:34 PM)Quintus Curtius Wrote:  Damn, man.

Thank you, J, for this great comment. I think the anti-college rhetoric has gone way too far.

And I've said this before.

If you're a man, you have an obligation to educate and better yourself. What type of school you choose--trade school, technical school, or university--is up to you.

But the anti-college people eventually start to sound like anti-education people. And that is a dead end that leads nowhere.

Don't listen to the hucksters and jerkoffs who tell you to become a millionaire by dropping out of society and making YouTube videos all day.

I'm getting tired of this shit. These bloggers telling young guys to do this are lying to them, feeding them bullshit so that they can make money selling their supplements and "hopium" of living the vida loca in tropical climes.

We know who they are.

Chances are, you will wind up an asshole.

Life is not a fucking game.

Don't be an asshole.

http://qcurtius.com/2015/09/08/you-need-...l-choices/

Don't disgrace your ancestors, who worked hard to get you where you are now.

No whining. Get in there and work.

The world is a competitive place. You need all the edge you can get. Drop out of education, and you surrender the playing field to hordes of hungry, aggressive Chinese, Indians, feminists, and the rest of the hungry world.

You make a good point. Don't drop out of college if you don't have a plan and a legitimate strategy. Quite frankly, for most people staying in college and taking it seriously by getting a useful degree probably makes more sense.

At the same time, for many people, college simply isn't a great vehicle for us to get where we need to. Getting a traditional job isn't either. There's also an opportunity cost with college.

It's easy to hate on "Digital Nomads" and such because there are many hucksters out there, but there are people making that happen, and many people who make millions in the new online economy. It takes a fuckton of work, and it isn't all sitting on beaches and chilling, but the fact is that you have a ton more freedom than working at an office job.

Post: #47

(01-23-2016 12:47 PM)jariel Wrote:  

(01-23-2016 12:32 PM)ColSpanker Wrote:  

(01-22-2016 09:27 PM)Begriff Wrote:  I went to college 4 years for bio chem, C average, saw the jobs / debt students my (average) caliber were getting..... 15hr lab tech plunging shit into test tubes 40 hours a week with limited potential for job growth. If your an A student with, a personality, that degree the world is your oyster, but your still going to need an additional 2-4 years of school to make the bucks.

I have been working in the trades for 7 years, In that time I've been getting paid and can literally build a house with a no English speaking helper.

most young guys come on a construction job and walk off in 4 hours .... not for them, others with some kind of "construction degree'' want top dollar and are literally a hazard on the job.

heck, I only went to college because I thought it would be an easy way out of hard work, thank jesus I saw the light.
you can learn every thing in college on your own, you just have to want it.

Word! 25 years as an industrial chemist and saw company after company downsized, sold-off or borged.

Excuse me if you I am taking your statements the wrong way, but you guys are college graduates who have been employed -- and have probably made at least decent money -- for your entire adult lives, where exactly is the complaint?

Companies are created to be sold, that is part of the game.

You moved into your house, and at some point when the market was looking good, you sold your house, that is part of the game.

What's the difference?

I mean come on, for at least 25 years you've had work.

Again, excuse me if I'm misreading your statement, but I feel like some perspective is very much needed.

Let me explain this in the most simple way: I never made the big bucks.
I was stuck in a series of industrial chemical companies where there was no room to advance, the management did everything they could to squeeze the lab to produce more and every two to five years the companies were either sold or eliminated. I saw chemists who knew more about chemistry than I ever did pushed out the door when the overpaid manager needed to make his budget. I saw functional psychopaths put in charge of plants until the corporation could squeeze no more and shut them down. I saw companies sold to lunatics who turned Christmas (oops, holiday) parties into Hitler Youth rallies.
Perhaps this was the result of my blue bill thought that all I had to do was find the right job and the money I made in the day could take care of my physical needs. I have since learned this is a fool's path that might have existed in the old days and still might be out there if you get the right guberment job. But for most of us who can see the truth, it's not an option.
What I am trying to say is not to go work for a buggy whip company. As Danny Devito said in OTHER PEOPLE'S' MONEY:
"You know, at one time there must've been dozens of companies making buggy whips. And I'll bet the last company around was the one that made the best goddamn buggy whip you ever saw."

Post: #48

How do you guys plan to separate the wheat from the chaff?

Colleges whether we like to admit it or not, are festering pools of subversive SJW activity. It's as wide as it is deep and is begin to seep into STEM fields within institutions.

They're going to eventually make education so bad that no one will be able to be educated or at least take a degree seriously. I'm willing to bet money we're going to see the collapse or worse the long drawn out decline of the great institutions world wide because of this too.

I still have vivid memories of my negative experiences in college. I had a politics professor actively ignore me in class debates to the point where I gave up and surfed the internet on my phone. I even had an administer of an admissions program tell me to my face that I lacked leadership skills and would be a detriment to the peace corps. Amongst other things.

The teasing from classmates in grade school wasn't nearly as bad as this. For whatever reason, these occurrences rattled me. I've never been treated like that before in my life.

I have to admit, i'm out for blood.

Post: #49

(01-24-2016 09:59 AM)Fortis Wrote:  I'd say the answer lies somewhere between the two poles.

I would say it IS a waste of time to get a C average from a no name college and get a worthless degree.

On that same token, I think it is a good idea to graduate with a decent average (above 3.5) from a state school with a degree in something that someone will pay you for.

Of course, if you can go to Harvard and bust out an A+ in finance then you should do it, but I do think a lot of people (not on this forum) sleep on the trades and end up in debt with a worthless degree because they didn't know any better.

I think what it all revolves around is getting yourself educated in some way: trades, STEM degree, med school, accounting degree, finance degree, the family business, self-study or something.

For many of those things you'll need a degree, but I don't think anyone was seriously thinking that hospitals would stop requiring med school or something.

I agree but the problem is that the U.S. education system doesn't really cultivate or identify different skills or interests in different kids. It's designed to hammer everyone into a uniform path through standardized curriculum and then puts everyone on a testing block (SAT) then funnels them into higher education which is usually worthless these days. Kids will never be wise enough to figure it all out before high school but the options have been narrowed down to nothing these days.

Back in the day there seemed to be more shop classes and "vocational" type classes in high school which got kids interested in the trades. Courses in basic business entrepeneurship and trades apprenticeship would be amazing for kids these days.

All this stuff has gone by the wayside in favor of more standardized test heavy routes. Stem fields are great and all but there's really not that many people in a given population who are suited for that route.

Post: #50

(01-24-2016 07:42 PM)The Beast1 Wrote:  How do you guys plan to separate the wheat from the chaff?

They're going to eventually make education so bad that no one will be able to be educated or at least take a degree seriously. I'm willing to bet money we're going to see the collapse or worse the long drawn out decline of the great institutions world wide because of this too.

I'm going to assume that only the smallest and most elite STEM schools will survive the SJW onslaught. Places like Cal Tech are so elite that only a very small percentage of people will be accepted and can hack the curriculum there. It's also not infested with bullshit programs like many of the larger schools like the Ivy leagues.

Bullshit humanities like gender womyn queer space alien studies are the incubation centers for SJW crap. Schools like Cal Tech are deep pools of genius level intellect that run the space program. Plus there's nothing sexy about Cal Tech it doesn't attract SJW fuckwits because it's off the mainstream radar and doesn't have the cultural cache of Harvard.

It's possible that even Cal Tech could lower the bar to accept more women but it's still unlikely because they are a feeder to NASA.

I can't imagine them lowering the bar that much and still be able to launch satellites without them crashing down because the feminist project coordinator wants to make a vagina shaped rocket and put all her incompetent "besties" in charge.