Earlier quoted context omitted.
The grading just gets kicked down the road. Now, because we don't trust your credentials, we give you a coding exam, that is effectively a grade. Likewise, an open secret is that college work is a simulation of the workplace. Those college students who develop through practice the ability to turn in work on time that makes their teachers happy, will also be able to do the same in the workplace. If you give up the cha…
> Likewise, an open secret is that college work is a simulation of the workplace. I don't think this is the case, and hasn't been for a long time. Assuming you're not looking at graduate classes college is largely a game of keeping your head down and doing the work you need to when you need to and the minimizing effort other than that. Cramming is totally a viable option as the metrics for success in college are tota…
Here's my stupid parable. Give two people shovels and send them into a mine. One of them comes back with a bag of gold. The other comes back with an intense hangover. What's broken, the shovel or the mine?
Colleges, despite the image of paternalism, are actually designed to let you fail. People will leak clues on how to survive, but are less likely to tell you explicitly how to succeed. But everybody has the same chance of getting a degree in something. As a result, the people who benefit from the signaling and branding of the college outnumber the people who got a good education out of it, creating the impression that college is largely about signaling and branding. But college is really about deciding what you want to get out of it.
There are doubtlessly many things wrong with college education today, but in spite of that, taking college at face value and pursuing it in a relatively straightforward way may still be a better strategy than trying to figure out what game to play in order to survive.