Post: #51

I've always told people that if they want to make good money then seek out the industries/jobs that pay the most. Right now tech and oil and gas are the two highest paying industries in the world. The engineers in either industry probably make the most right out of college than any other degree. So it's simple, major in computer science or petroleum engineering and live in an area where tech or oil dominates.

If you are not smart enough to study those disciplines then seek out another degree that can get you into a tech or oil company (accounting, IT, HR, supply chain etc).

Post: #52

(01-24-2016 05:55 PM)AnonymousBosch Wrote:  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.

Certainly the writing was on the wall for the medical profession in Australia fifteen years ago when my classmates were applying to medical school. One of the key questions in the interview was if one or either of your parents was a doctor. Apparently the universities even then were concerned about inadequate diversity and preventing or further entrenching white male privilege. Personally I'd rather be treated by someone who has won their place on merit and who has the intellectual ability to pass what should be a pretty rigorous course.

Post: #53

(01-24-2016 06:39 PM)thoughtgypsy Wrote:  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.

As my first manager told me "I really only view the degree as proof you could commit to accomplishing something. Majority of your skills we be taught on the job."

Really a degree is just another background check for a hiring manager.

As far as getting a degree or not getting one. I think it boils down to what type of job are you specifically trying to get. Most white collar jobs you're going to want to have one. I think most people fall into the trap of getting a degree in something they 'like' instead of either getting something thats 'marketable' like most STEM degrees or something they 'love'. I see a lot of English and Psychology majors floating around because they 'like' those subjects. They fucked up in that they choose degrees that won't land them any jobs by themselves and they don't truly love that subject area. You can get by with just liking Engineering or Accounting if you can get through the program since the degree itself can land you a job. If your going to choose some liberal arts degree that isn't in demand you better love it or your probably throwing money down a toilet. Even if you are passionate about it you still need to think exactly what the degree is going to do for you. For example majoring in Photography at some run of the mill State U. may not be the brightest idea since your networking options in a bumblefuck area for say fashion photography is next to nothing. The only thing the State school will probably get you if you are lucky is a job doing boring product photography making shit money while doing anything creative and exciting is probably reserved for NYC, LA..etc.

Post: #54

(01-24-2016 05:55 PM)AnonymousBosch Wrote:  

(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'.

This has definitely already been happening in STEM. Across industries. The more PhDs and deep graduate education to be had, the more over-credentialed and under-accomplished "leadership" exists. There are many, many multi-hundred million or billion dollar programs that have been funded through the state, have produced nothing, and have faded into nothingness. The people that have run these are mostly well-intentioned, but look down on those that aren't as degreed as them like they are primitive, bumbling barbarians half of the time. They have an arrogance that anything outside of their specialty is easy, and it can be done simply by them, without any experience in the matter. They then waste years and millions on projects until someone that knows better makes them put their grownup pants on and do real work, or they lose their jobs. I have been getting better at navigating this highly political environment by simply realizing that they aren't evil people like I want to believe, no matter how destructive and wasteful their actions end up being. They're just highly invested in their desires, get tunnel vision, and default on the brainwashing they received in college. They mean well. However, they drive out competent people. All this can take place without an adversarial HR department.

The same goes for the STEM grads with business degrees. They take their business school theories and remove all means of quality production from companies, increase the visible profits for a short time, and then move on when the jobs collapse. They don't do this intentionally, but it is a side-effect of their training. Massive groupthink. Some are so tied to the government that they are effectively members of the USSA Nomenklatura.

I used to think all the highly socialist/communist believers were downright evil, but they simply just have never working philosophical tools in their toolbelt. Too much time was spent on feelgood theories, or theories looking for hypotheses, that never stand the test of reality. Very few move past the cognitive dissonance that develops. Too much personal investment. The few that do become reformed very quickly, and get successful.

The higher up in the military-industrial complex, the more like Soviet Russia the corporate management becomes. Subcontractors that have to deal with large military/federal contract winners adopt the beauracratic culture and eventually topple over, or survive by never-ending hair-of-the-dog.

I've personally witnessed 100s of millions of dollars, if not more, invested in very specific technology only to watch it get cancelled as soon as congress changes their mind. I'd love to work in a capitalist society that was actively developing this tech, but outside of my specialty there are very few of these organizations here. The entire market is almost completely distorted by the structure put in place by federal money, management and tracking/performance indication requirements, and all the organizations keeping it running and wasting money.

I'd love to see it all keel over and managers get forced to do productive work again to survive.

Post: #55

I'm an electrical engineer from New Zealand. I just completed my four year Bachelors degree couple of years ago. I can tell you that despite coming from engineering, my degree was largely a waste of time. To say this is applicable to all engineering disciplines would be wrong, but from talks with a lot of graduates in various fields, almost everyone feels the same way .

I design heavy electrical machinery so this is amongst the most theoretical of jobs you can get. You would expect that I would be pro-tertiary education but the thing is, I'm only using less than a handful of formulas I learnt from my degree. The very basics at that too. These formulas don't need the aid of an instructor. All of the advanced concepts had to be learnt through reading specialised textbooks and under the guidance of those more experienced at my workplace. That's the issue with the educational system; they cram students with a shitload of useless theory thereby wasting a lot of time and in return, pocket thousands and thousands of your dollars. By the time the next semester begins, you've already forgotten 60-70% of the material covered in the prior semester. To me it feels nothing more than a scam.

Maybe a paper or two at the most touching upon core concepts would be good. Anything more and you're highly unlikely to ever use it again in your life.

Despite everything being said, I still highly recommend a person expressing interest in engineering to complete his degree. Why? Because no one is ever likely to hire you. That's it. Your degree is just a formality in order to get your foot in the door. From a knowledge standpoint, it is a waste. You learn almost everything at your workplace. The degree also does little to develop one's nature and aptitude for the workplace. A lot of kids that pop out of university, irregardless of their discipline, come across underdeveloped with little perspective to offer because a lot of that time is spent on "learning" mindless theory. If that time was instead spent on refining one's mindset, learning discipline and developing genuine confidence, while studying only relevant material, they would be on a completely different level.

Post: #56

For some jobs, there's also one huge reason why you'd want to go to a particular school:


A lot of employers hiring for the job you want recruit on campus

This one's hard to overstate. If you're at the right school it lets you, very literally, jump right to the front of the line for certain jobs at certain companies.

I'm at such a school. I've gotten access to unique job URL's that only we get that put our applications in a separate pile from the rest, ability to attend job conferences open only to certain schools, job openings posted only for us.

Most importantly I've gotten hiring managers coming directly to campus to network with students I can't overstate the importance of this one because it means that at no point in your application process are you going to have to deal with the trollish and (most likely) feminist HR lady who gets to screen you for "fit".



I've seen what the job search is like for students at un-named schools, and after seeing what it's like at a supposedly "top tier" program I will vouch that you are wasting your time at an unnamed program.

Post: #57

(01-24-2016 11:09 PM)Suave Wrote:  I'm an electrical engineer from New Zealand. I just completed my four year Bachelors degree couple of years ago. I can tell you that despite coming from engineering, my degree was largely a waste of time. To say this is applicable to all engineering disciplines would be wrong, but from talks with a lot of graduates in various fields, almost everyone feels the same way .

I design heavy electrical machinery so this is amongst the most theoretical of jobs you can get. You would expect that I would be pro-tertiary education but the thing is, I'm only using less than a handful of formulas I learnt from my degree. The very basics at that too. These formulas don't need the aid of an instructor. All of the advanced concepts had to be learnt through reading specialised textbooks and under the guidance of those more experienced at my workplace. That's the issue with the educational system; they cram students with a shitload of useless theory thereby wasting a lot of time and in return, pocket thousands and thousands of your dollars. By the time the next semester begins, you've already forgotten 60-70% of the material covered in the prior semester. To me it feels nothing more than a scam.

Maybe a paper or two at the most touching upon core concepts would be good. Anything more and you're highly unlikely to ever use it again in your life.

Despite everything being said, I still highly recommend a person expressing interest in engineering to complete his degree. Why? Because no one is ever likely to hire you. That's it. Your degree is just a formality in order to get your foot in the door. From a knowledge standpoint, it is a waste. You learn almost everything at your workplace. The degree also does little to develop one's nature and aptitude for the workplace. A lot of kids that pop out of university, irregardless of their discipline, come across underdeveloped with little perspective to offer because a lot of that time is spent on "learning" mindless theory. If that time was instead spent on refining one's mindset, learning discipline and developing genuine confidence, while studying only relevant material, they would be on a completely different level.

One of the first things I do when I come across an area I am unfamiliar with in an engineering discipline is go back to who founded the theory behind it. Chances are, they did a crapload of testing, have a library of terms to familiarize myself with, and point to other work which shines light on an obscure area. They effectively create a sieve for the problem that lets you classify what you are dealing with. After a while, patterns start to emerge, fundamentals distill their way out of the mess, and you can design things well without too much fuss.

But that practice definitely didn't come from school. The language came from school. Hard repetition of difficult concepts and working the problems did. That was required to survive schools. There are other ways to do it, but as others pointed out, if you train employees this way you have to pay them what they are worth to others. One of my dreams is hiring a bunch of 18 year olds with good math skills and starting an design and production facility. Screw college. Accepting that they could/will leave with a large investment is just going to be part of the game.

Post: #58

(01-23-2016 11:30 AM)Razgriz Wrote:  1. Eliminate tenure.
2. Pay teachers more
3. End "pay raises" for pointless master's degrees. I had a marginal teacher who did a two year master's program. He was still a marginal teacher after it was completed. Yet he gets 15k more a year WTF?!
4. End summer vacation and spread more breaks throughout the year.
5. Make class days last from 9-5. Fit in sports programs or hour long physical fitness programs in to make up for the extra time. Tie physical education into graduation. The nerds and class fatties may hate gym class, but they'll be able to at least squat their body weight by graduation whether they like it or not.
6. Eliminate homework and any "read this book over break" bullshit
7. Separate out boys and girls into different school buildings. Mingle sparingly.
8. Bring back corporal punishment, the fear of a cafeteria paddling worked. Reserve for the truly disturbed.
9. Teach shooting and marksmanship. Give out gun permits at graduation for completion of the course.
10. And finally, since school performance is directly correlated with parental involvement, have a family's tax burden be directly influenced by a child's school performance.
Betcha those absent parents will take more of an influence in those apathetic children's lives when it means $2-3k back extra each year.


This should be the curriculum of the ROK school.

It really depends on where you're from. For example would you say these elementary and high school teachers/administrators deserve a pay raise?

https://www.tcdsb.org/Board/BudgetandFin...LOSURE.pdf

Note that while the currency is CAD, the salaries were paid in 2014 when 1 CAD ~ 0.90 USD.


I think the problem with the education system is that it attracts a certain type of person. I suspect the main objective of most people who go into teaching isn't to impart knowledge but rather to extend their own childhood indefinitely. I've noticed that there's something odd about the people from my peer group who've decided to attend teacher's college. They're the least mature, and some of the most unambitious people I've ever met. Basically they're the last sort of people I'd want teaching the next generation

I don't know if there's an easy solution to fixing the education system - the solution probably doesn't involve throwing money around in order to attract better talent.

If the goal is to have ambitious, industrious people in charge of education then selecting for people who've decided to go for an education degree is counterproductive. I see no reason why someone who's worked as an engineer for 5-10 years isn't qualified to teach high school level physics, mathematics, or chemistry. Certainly they should be screened for other qualities but removing the teaching certification barriers would dramatically improve the quality of teachers.

Teacher's college certifications should be considered an asset at best when making hiring decisions. It shouldn't be a requirement. Teaching should be a temporary (<5 year) job, not a lifetime profession for people looking for a way to coast through life.

Post: #59

(01-24-2016 11:17 PM)philosophical_recovery Wrote:  

(01-24-2016 11:09 PM)Suave Wrote:  I'm an electrical engineer from New Zealand. I just completed my four year Bachelors degree couple of years ago. I can tell you that despite coming from engineering, my degree was largely a waste of time. To say this is applicable to all engineering disciplines would be wrong, but from talks with a lot of graduates in various fields, almost everyone feels the same way .

I design heavy electrical machinery so this is amongst the most theoretical of jobs you can get. You would expect that I would be pro-tertiary education but the thing is, I'm only using less than a handful of formulas I learnt from my degree. The very basics at that too. These formulas don't need the aid of an instructor. All of the advanced concepts had to be learnt through reading specialised textbooks and under the guidance of those more experienced at my workplace. That's the issue with the educational system; they cram students with a shitload of useless theory thereby wasting a lot of time and in return, pocket thousands and thousands of your dollars. By the time the next semester begins, you've already forgotten 60-70% of the material covered in the prior semester. To me it feels nothing more than a scam.

Maybe a paper or two at the most touching upon core concepts would be good. Anything more and you're highly unlikely to ever use it again in your life.

Despite everything being said, I still highly recommend a person expressing interest in engineering to complete his degree. Why? Because no one is ever likely to hire you. That's it. Your degree is just a formality in order to get your foot in the door. From a knowledge standpoint, it is a waste. You learn almost everything at your workplace. The degree also does little to develop one's nature and aptitude for the workplace. A lot of kids that pop out of university, irregardless of their discipline, come across underdeveloped with little perspective to offer because a lot of that time is spent on "learning" mindless theory. If that time was instead spent on refining one's mindset, learning discipline and developing genuine confidence, while studying only relevant material, they would be on a completely different level.

One of the first things I do when I come across an area I am unfamiliar with in an engineering discipline is go back to who founded the theory behind it. Chances are, they did a crapload of testing, have a library of terms to familiarize myself with, and point to other work which shines light on an obscure area. They effectively create a sieve for the problem that lets you classify what you are dealing with. After a while, patterns start to emerge, fundamentals distill their way out of the mess, and you can design things well without too much fuss.

But that practice definitely didn't come from school. The language came from school. Hard repetition of difficult concepts and working the problems did. That was required to survive schools. There are other ways to do it, but as others pointed out, if you train employees this way you have to pay them what they are worth to others. One of my dreams is hiring a bunch of 18 year olds with good math skills and starting an design and production facility. Screw college. Accepting that they could/will leave with a large investment is just going to be part of the game.

Complete layman's observation but what came to me reading Suave's post is what PR touched on in his:

You might not be using the actual content, but you became versed in the process of leaning those types of concepts/applications/formulas. While you may not use what you learned exactly in your role, the people training you know you have the capacity to the learn the things of the nature which they must teach you.

Great thread. Lot's of good discourse and perspectives I would not have encountered otherwise on a topic I know not much about.

I've said it before I'll say it again: One of the best resourced on the internet.

Post: #60

(01-24-2016 11:39 PM)Ollave Wrote:  Complete layman's observation but what came to me reading Suave's post is what PR touched on in his:

You might not be using the actual content, but you became versed in the process of leaning those types of concepts/applications/formulas. While you may not use what you learned exactly in your role, the people training you know you have the capacity to the learn the things of the nature which they must teach you.

Great thread. Lot's of good discourse and perspectives I would not have encountered otherwise on a topic I know not much about.

I've said it before I'll say it again: One of the best resourced on the internet.

You've raised a good point, and same with PR. But here's the thing, outside of my situation which is highly theoretical, how many jobs require that sort of technical knowledge? Very, very few. Most require the basics of their respective field. You will almost never need to apply yourself theoretically to that kind of level, yet you have thousands upon thousands of kids fumbling through hundreds of pages of gibberish in textbooks.

For most jobs, coming in with solid foundational knowledge of your field coupled with strong interpersonal skills will without a doubt, pave the road to success.

Post: #61

(01-23-2016 03:16 PM)Quintus Curtius Wrote:  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.

No one says that. We say that you'll likely be unemployed with huge debt after college, so it's better off not to get the debt and live life unemployed without debt.

Quote: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.

So on one hand, you're telling young guys to go to school because they don't have what it takes to do it on their own, but if they fail to get a job from their degree it's their fault.

The contradictions are heavy here.

Quote: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.

Is this supposed to be advice man? Why go to school just so you can get betrayed?

Quote: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.

So why the fuck go to school in the first place...?

Quote:(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).

Visionaries? How about the fact that America, now the richest country in the world, was built by 99% men who never went to college? Other examples of successful men who didn't go to college are also endless.

It's the visionaries who are the first to leave. Everyone else plays catch up.

Basically, in this thread, everyone under the age of 30 agrees: college fucking sucks. It's corrupt with SJW politics, ineffective at teaching practical skills, and has a shit return on investment due to a depressed job market plus overinflated degree cost.

And everyone over the age of 40 agrees: Without college I would have never got my job. I needed that degree to slave away for corporations for my entire adult life.

And the guys between 30-40 are a mixed bag on whether or not college is good or not.

The bottom line is pretty obvious. College, once upon a time, was a good investment. It's not anymore. And until things are fixed, there is no point in attending.

Some of the older guys make it sound like if you don't go to college right out of high school you are fucked for life. That is bullshit.

The problems with college are political. Once the problems are addressed, then it will make sense for men to return to schools. Otherwise they need to find a job doing blue collar work unless they can get into a top-tier school with scholarships.

Who cares if young guys need to wait 4-8 years until the political problems are addressed? Who cares if they do not attend college until age 25-35? They will have accumulated job experience and savings, and avoid a shitload of debt. It's not ideal, but it's still the smartest move available to them.

Post: #62

tuition is way lower in most of Europe, why not do it there? But you probably still have to deal with sjw and related

Post: #63

(01-25-2016 12:53 AM)Suave Wrote:  

(01-24-2016 11:39 PM)Ollave Wrote:  Complete layman's observation but what came to me reading Suave's post is what PR touched on in his:

You might not be using the actual content, but you became versed in the process of leaning those types of concepts/applications/formulas. While you may not use what you learned exactly in your role, the people training you know you have the capacity to the learn the things of the nature which they must teach you.

Great thread. Lot's of good discourse and perspectives I would not have encountered otherwise on a topic I know not much about.

I've said it before I'll say it again: One of the best resourced on the internet.

You've raised a good point, and same with PR. But here's the thing, outside of my situation which is highly theoretical, how many jobs require that sort of technical knowledge? Very, very few. Most require the basics of their respective field. You will almost never need to apply yourself theoretically to that kind of level, yet you have thousands upon thousands of kids fumbling through hundreds of pages of gibberish in textbooks.

For most jobs, coming in with solid foundational knowledge of your field coupled with strong interpersonal skills will without a doubt, pave the road to success.

I also have a background in Electrical Engineering. I'll say this: be careful regarding what people say regarding their own engineering education. Everyone focuses on the tangible: why did I take that electromagnetism course, I've never used Maxwell'equations.

OK, maybe not. But the reality is that it helped with having a broader understanding of your field. This is something I've only appreciated now, 4 years after getting my degree. I was doing a quick test and realized a few courses were relevant that hadn't been in the past 4 years.

There's also the intangible, especially learning how to logically problem solve. There's a reason why all the top management consulting firms (McKinsey, BCG) had people with engineering degrees be instrumental to their growth. Top consulting firms love hiring engineers, top MBA programs love engineers as well. And that's the thing, people don't appreciate the intangibles. They're usually not self-aware or reflective enough to see that the project they did in course X is now helping them solve problems in real world job project Y.

It's a common refrain I've heard: "I only use 10% of what I've learned in my classes. What was the point of the other 90%?". But really they're only focusing on the formulas and equations, not the entire learning how to learn and learning how to solve problems component. I can tell you that every year in college I got better at learning new technical information (I breezed through my senior year, even though my classes were technically the most challenging). I can also tell you that I was able to leverage problem solving skills I learned in my sophomore year in my senior year design project. AND I've built upon those skills in my career.

As for "you will never need to apply yourself theoretically"...I disagree. How do you know that for a fact? One of your friends might for example change jobs and need to apply himself that theoretically. People don't appreciate that the value of an engineering degree is to give you the broadest possible foundation in your field and have you be ready for many different types of situations/jobs. Time again and again, I've been surprised by how random classes seem to once again become highly relevant to my job. That may not be case for everyone, or most engineers. But you can't deny the large foundation you have to be flexible.

As for non-technical fields...I have no comments. I do love the discussion on this thread though.

Post: #64

(01-24-2016 07:54 PM)El Chinito loco Wrote:  

(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.

I wish it were true, but alas it isn't so:

https://diversitycenter.caltech.edu/reso...bresources
https://wgs.mit.edu/
http://feminist.stanford.edu/
http://www.history.cmu.edu/undergraduate/gender.html (thankfully CMU only has a minor which gender/womyn's studies should be)

Even elite STEM institutions are infected.

(01-24-2016 11:11 PM)Easy_C Wrote:  For some jobs, there's also one huge reason why you'd want to go to a particular school:


A lot of employers hiring for the job you want recruit on campus

This one's hard to overstate. If you're at the right school it lets you, very literally, jump right to the front of the line for certain jobs at certain companies.

Key word right there, if you don't mind me asking Easy_C what type of school do you attend? Is it a big state school, ivy league, elite college like CMU, Stanford, MIT, etc?

The type of school you attend is important. I got duped by a supposed "Alumni" network by my private college. When push came to shove, the alumni network was completely absent. Job fairs and "networking" nights were all pretty much the same. Very disappointing in terms of who was present and the advice they were willing to offer.

Hilariously, the only people who ever seemed to get anything out of those on campus events were women and attractive ones at that. I got the impression I was un-welcomed at most of those events.

I got my first job carpet bombing Linkedin job postings.

(01-24-2016 11:24 PM)Hedonist94 Wrote:  

(01-23-2016 11:30 AM)Razgriz Wrote:  1. Eliminate tenure.
2. Pay teachers more
3. End "pay raises" for pointless master's degrees. I had a marginal teacher who did a two year master's program. He was still a marginal teacher after it was completed. Yet he gets 15k more a year WTF?!
4. End summer vacation and spread more breaks throughout the year.
5. Make class days last from 9-5. Fit in sports programs or hour long physical fitness programs in to make up for the extra time. Tie physical education into graduation. The nerds and class fatties may hate gym class, but they'll be able to at least squat their body weight by graduation whether they like it or not.
6. Eliminate homework and any "read this book over break" bullshit
7. Separate out boys and girls into different school buildings. Mingle sparingly.
8. Bring back corporal punishment, the fear of a cafeteria paddling worked. Reserve for the truly disturbed.
9. Teach shooting and marksmanship. Give out gun permits at graduation for completion of the course.
10. And finally, since school performance is directly correlated with parental involvement, have a family's tax burden be directly influenced by a child's school performance.
Betcha those absent parents will take more of an influence in those apathetic children's lives when it means $2-3k back extra each year.


This should be the curriculum of the ROK school.

It really depends on where you're from. For example would you say these elementary and high school teachers/administrators deserve a pay raise?

https://www.tcdsb.org/Board/BudgetandFin...LOSURE.pdf

Note that while the currency is CAD, the salaries were paid in 2014 when 1 CAD ~ 0.90 USD.


I think the problem with the education system is that it attracts a certain type of person. I suspect the main objective of most people who go into teaching isn't to impart knowledge but rather to extend their own childhood indefinitely. I've noticed that there's something odd about the people from my peer group who've decided to attend teacher's college. They're the least mature, and some of the most unambitious people I've ever met. Basically they're the last sort of people I'd want teaching the next generation

I don't know if there's an easy solution to fixing the education system - the solution probably doesn't involve throwing money around in order to attract better talent.

If the goal is to have ambitious, industrious people in charge of education then selecting for people who've decided to go for an education degree is counterproductive. I see no reason why someone who's worked as an engineer for 5-10 years isn't qualified to teach high school level physics, mathematics, or chemistry. Certainly they should be screened for other qualities but removing the teaching certification barriers would dramatically improve the quality of teachers.

Teacher's college certifications should be considered an asset at best when making hiring decisions. It shouldn't be a requirement. Teaching should be a temporary (<5 year) job, not a lifetime profession for people looking for a way to coast through life.

I mirror my opinions on the high school I attended which paid a 15% pay premium on salaries as a public school over all of the other schools in the district which put them over top of the private schools as well. The union threw a massive hissy fit over this for obvious reasons as well as a many internal folks within the superintendents office who wanted the program killed off.

The people they got were the cream of the crop of the local colleges in the area. Granted I grew up in the country and the local colleges weren't top tier by any stretch of the imagination. But the teachers were passionate and meant well. I only had one bad teacher who coincidentally got arrested for kiddie porn a few years after I graduated.

Schools won't be perfect, but there are some things we can begin doing right now to clean them up. It disgusts me that most of the schools in my home town churn out more female valedictorians than men.

The best teachers I had were formerly employed in the private sector and one who worked for the state department. This is how education used to be, but was done away with once we entered the 20th century.

Post: #65

I agree that getting a degree is very useful. To dismiss it and not suggest that a younger person get one is bad advice. People love to use exceptions as a rule of thumb. Most people say "Ohhh, who needs a degree..Bill Gates didn't even finish college!". He started college though..and he's an exception. "Ohh, who needs a degree, Mark Zuckenberg didn't get a degree!" Those guys are exceptions.

How many cats do I know without a degree who are just working in Walmart or Winn Dixie, howling when Walmart plans to close the stores?!

As QC said, not everyone has the temperament to be a leader. Some people are just followers and there is nothing wrong with that. It's all about knowing thyself. A team full of leaders will crash because you need people to step back and allow one person to lead at a particular time. Someone has to do the grunt work. Not to say that leaders don't do the grunt work but it's not as optimal to have innovation when you down in the trenches moving marble and limestone.

Regarding the concept of university, let me do as I always do and leverage personal relationships to see how it matches up.

America is different where you can actually launch into something innovative without the need for a degree per se but in the UK, in my time, you were capped financially if you went into the game without a degree. I would imagine that is the same for other parts of Europe. If you were a minority, you were definitely capped. The guys I know who decided not to go to uni, took several years to get to a reasonable standpoint financially. I knew a lot of people and knew of their lives because people would see you after a long time and do a quick 'life check' perhaps hoping that your life was veering downwards. The guys who went uni were all working in decent companies, IBM, Tescos head office and so on. The ones who may not have been able to get local jobs (London) had the mental mobility to at least move and try different territories.

One guy I know who wasn't feeling the UK too tough although he had a job as a teacher (if you do that degree program, you were GUARANTEED a position), was able to put in for a transfer and began teaching in Barcelona where h was much happier. By that time, their peers who had gone to uni were far ahead and had been able to travel widely and garner valuable experiences in the world. I know of quite a few guys who went to uni. Lacking a trained mindset to learn new things or recognise changing trends in society and try to make necessary adjustments. University provides a good training ground for this.

I hail from possibly the most educated group in Africa which are the Nigerians. I don't want to keep harping on about them (I'm sure a few members and lurkers may tire of hearing about my loud mouthed people (KWENU!). I am able to step outside of the culture and look at it with an unbiased eye. Even when I'm around people of that extract with unsavory intent, they still strive to get a degree. "When I get to America, I will read <insert degree program>!". "When I go to Londawnn, I will read <insert degree program>!!"
They don't always use it afterwards directly for the job that the degree would prepare them for but their minds are trained in a certain fashion by undergoing the rigour of higher education.

In university, socialising with like minded people, the discipline of learning and churning through courses, learning how to structure dissertations, performing presentations all under one environment is very important.

The value one gets from higher education also depends on the university that they go to and the type of course one does. We can all go to the gym but if you go to one with plastic weights and spend your time there working on pole dancing and customised twerking as a man, yeah, you can say you go to the gym but your body will be different from someone who goes there to move some free weights in a trained fashion.

It's the same with a degree. If you go to study a degree in 'Fondling doughnuts' at Yo Mama State university, you will be assed out in the current economic climate.

Post: #66

(01-25-2016 04:19 AM)avantgarde Wrote:  tuition is way lower in most of Europe, why not do it there? But you probably still have to deal with sjw and related

SJW in Europe is nowhere near as high as it in the US. I guarantee this. I still converse with people almost daily in Europe (not just England) and they look at the antics in the US with amusement. That's akin to how you would feel if I created a debate panel to discuss why the bear in the circus dropped the bananas it was juggling during a theme song to Hannah Montana. Pure gibberish.

Post: #67

Most university graduates I've encountered are dumb.

Post: #68

My degree was accredited by a professional body and I studied at a University which was well known for the course. Not many finished it.

I can tell you now though, the amount of filler content is ridiculous. I can count on one hand how many core subjects I was taught in three years that were actually relevant but only two are what I need for my career in the same field.

Graduate programs train you up and mould you to what the company needs out of you. Universities just use you as a canvass and goes all over the place.

If you want to be really upset just stick around your University in the Summer and early September months. Chinese students descend en-mass and complete their degree year between mid-late June and late August/early September.

Post: #69

If you must go to college, get a STEM degree at a respectable, accredited university. Fight blood, tooth, and nail to get in and go through it without paying one red penny in tuition via scholarship. You can also get in as summer interns at engineering firms, before college with just a high school education. Guess what? Even now, a lot will pay for tuition/degrees if you're sharp and show the interest and aptitude for a degree. But, you have to hit the pavement for you to find these opportunities if you don't see them right away. And you may have to focus on a field unsexy for you. But, if you're willing to keep learning, it won't be a limitation.

If you're young enough to be making this decision right now, read blogs like The WallStreet Playboys. Advice like theirs was not easily available when I was younger and more able to take it.

Post: #70

So basically universities and colleges are a waste of time, but how about a specialization practical course for several months like programming?

Post: #71

(01-25-2016 08:44 AM)pizdets Wrote:  So basically universities and colleges are a waste of time, but how about a specialization practical course for several months like programming?

Like college, it's up to the person taking it.
I've known people that have foregone college to take one of those. It's a mixed bag. The successful ones I know were already doing some self-taught programming and other work beforehand, but that's just my experience. Some of those programs come with guarantees of a job in x months or your money back (which is a good deal, much better than college!)

I've also known people to take those, then (from what I can tell) fuck off afterward and still aren't producing money.

I'm wary of programming due to the working conditions I've seen some people get into. Probably the largest variance in the market as far as pay, working conditions, and prestige. It's all over the place. Some people pretty much live for it, and they look the role. In a stronger market, it would even out a bit more like engineering.

Regardless of which, all parties (those focusing on STEM or vocational-type schools) should be reading a steady stream of non-fiction, which includes the Western classics and history. The perspective it grants is absolutely necessary. You may not have time in school, but it should be a goal of yours. It would also behoove anyone to pick up Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, as he was a total savage.