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What happened to studying?

boston.com

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Re: What happened to studying?

#51

Post by kjhghjklkjmn »

seancron wrote: post #4

This part made me cringe: "Marks herself points out that employers don’t generally care about the content of job applicants’ classes; they’re more interested in whether an applicant graduated, was able to meet deadlines, and work within a bureaucracy"

True - except for the % that are heading to grad school to do physics studying is irrelevent.

The purpose of a college degree is to reduce the number of job applicants HR depts have to deal with.

Since everybody now gets A for every class recruiters now look for extra-activities. So studing to understand the causes of WWI in more detail is less use to you, and the recruiter, than you also being in the junior entrepreneurs club.

Re: What happened to studying?

#52

Post by reader5000 »

cj wrote: post #48
reader5000 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, students never "cared" about learning. College started in the U.S. as a way for the upper classes to cavort under the ostentation of "learning about the world". It has always been a status signal. This is why the middle classes are willing to pay their left nut for a suitably prestigious degree - status signals to the middle classes are like honey to a bee (or something). There are perhaps .5% of the population…

You're saying 199 in 200 people should not go to college? I disagree. A lot of people are going to state and community colleges and are not spending very much money to do so. There are very few people who graduate with over $100k in debt. Most have much less, if any.

I am saying there is no productive value in them going relative to their financial burden. For the many who go for free/cheap thanks to state subsidy, that's great. But then we shouldn't worry that students aren't studying, since college doesn't really DO anything in regards to future productivity and the like.

Also, a lot of the "soft" factors people romanticize about college (spawning appreciation for the arts or some niche intellectual pursuit, civic/social development) have occurred for thousands of years by people just growing up.

Re: What happened to studying?

#53

Post by eru »

rick888 wrote: post #44
eru wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Without them, many people wouldn't bother studying. With them, many people don't bother studying.

"With them, many people don't bother studying." Why? Because they are afraid of failing?

Who knows? But I guess you know (or have heard) of some people who do not bother studying attending institutions that issue grades.

(I do not want to claim that grades cause non-studying. Just that even with grades non-studying does occur--thus invalidating the grandfather-comment's argument.)

Re: What happened to studying?

#54

Post by rick888 »

eru wrote: post #53
rick888 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"With them, many people don't bother studying." Why? Because they are afraid of failing?

Who knows? But I guess you know (or have heard) of some people who do not bother studying attending institutions that issue grades. (I do not want to claim that grades cause non-studying. Just that even with grades non-studying does occur--thus invalidating the grandfather-comment's argument.)

"Who knows? But I guess you know (or have heard) of some people who do not bother studying attending institutions that issue grades."

Some. But why cater to the minority? If the grade system wasn't working, we would see more problems in schools and universities. I also don't really know of a good alternative.

Re: What happened to studying?

#55

Post by adi92 »

1) People had fewer distractions earlier

2) Thanks to the Flynn effect, people are growing smarter, so need less time for the same content

3) Thanks to the internet, its a lot easier and faster to learn something than it was earlier (more cliffnotes type resources)

4)People today can probably make much better assessments to what things will actually help them in their professional lives, and what things are random rites of passage i.e. hoops they have to jump through to get their degree

Re: What happened to studying?

#56

Post by mkramlich »

most of what they have most students "study" is academic trivia that (1) won't be retained for very long after exams are done anyway, and (2) doesn't have use after leaving college. Note I said 'most' and 'most'. The tech fields tend to have more stickability and usefulness in what is taught (though it's not perfect either). Most of the "studying" in college, from what I remember, was about doing short-term memorization cramming in the days or weeks, and very often just the night before or hours before a test of some kind.

Memorize, regurgitate/apply, purge and move on.

Re: What happened to studying?

#57

Post by mkramlich »

If I wanted to, I could probably learn more in a month or so of home schooling using the Internet that what I could in an entire semester at a traditional college. Roughly speaking, YMMV, etc. Could pick my own hours, topics, pace, no need to cram for tests, no worry about grades, spend a ton less money, etc.

Re: What happened to studying?

#58

Post by mkramlich »

reader5000 wrote: post #41
dkarl wrote: post #39

College is losing its romantic lustre. Students used to believe in education for itself, but now ambitious students just cram in more classes and activities to graduate faster or pad their grad school applications. Before, a student studying the American Revolution in class might go to the library and flip through the books in the professor's "suggested reading" section on the syllabus looking for a particularly inte…

Nah, students never "cared" about learning. College started in the U.S. as a way for the upper classes to cavort under the ostentation of "learning about the world". It has always been a status signal. This is why the middle classes are willing to pay their left nut for a suitably prestigious degree - status signals to the middle classes are like honey to a bee (or something). There are perhaps .5% of the population…

> "those intelligent and driven enough to devote their life to producing original research."

you've heard of engineers, doctors and lawyers, right? lots of folks go to college to, in part, prepare to work in those fields. they may never do "original research" but can be quite intelligent and driven. I'm going to make a guess that you might be grad student or are otherwise on the academic/professor career path, if you said something like that. Because there are a lot of people who don't go down that path and actually have a uncomplimentary view of it, pretty much the inverse of what you said. i won't repeat the stereotypes here but they exist.

Re: What happened to studying?

#59

Post by mkramlich »

orangecat wrote: post #20
seancron wrote: post #4

This part made me cringe: "Marks herself points out that employers don’t generally care about the content of job applicants’ classes; they’re more interested in whether an applicant graduated, was able to meet deadlines, and work within a bureaucracy"

Not surprising. The degree requirement is largely a (time-consuming, expensive, and inaccurate) IQ and class filter that employers can use without getting sued out of existence.

agreed. for a lot of folks I believe it's used as a filter. and yes, a very expensive and time-consuming one. kinda sad actually. college is not without substantive merit to the student, beyond the filter effect, so it's not all superficial however.

Re: What happened to studying?

#60

Post by electromagnetic »

jseliger wrote: post #36
zackattack wrote: post #11

if you want students to study then you should eliminate grades. grades simply encourage them to game the system. of course, gaming the system is a very valuable real world skill.

A few schools, like Evergreen in Washington State, have done precisely this. The other problem is that grades still solve some practical problems, which I discuss here: http://jseliger.com/2010/02/17/the-validity-of-grades . Not having grades will probably encourage system gaming too, just in a different (and probably worse) way than one has now.

Note: the effects may or may not be worse, however in the inter-rim present (say the next 40 years) our teaching staff would have no way to understand how the system is being gamed. You'd be changing the sport without changing the referee, an umpire can't referee a football game.

Changing from grades and teachers who've learnt graded systems and inherently learnt the systems pitfalls is a much better compromise than changing the system to no grades with teachers who've learnt graded systems and inherently have no knowledge on the pitfalls of an ungraded system.

We could overall decrease the ability to game the system, however we wouldn't be able to adapt our teachers as fast as we could change the system. Our students would be as knowledgeable of the system as our teachers, which is like turning our entire system of educators into fresh-faced Teacher's School graduates. It would quite possibly be the death of education for the next decade.

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