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Not Everyone has to go to College

blog.skillshare.com

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Re: Not Everyone has to go to College

#3

Post by CodeMage »

I agree with you on a lot of points, especially the following two:

1. College doesn't guarantee success.

2. Not everyone should go to college.

But here's where we diverge: I believe we'll never get to the point where everyone will "succeed". We all want our kids to succeed, but our definition of success is usually based on things like "have a high-paying job", "be important", "be powerful" or "be famous". This is because we want our kids to be happy and we come up with cookie-cutter solutions for happiness: "have a high-paying job" supplants "not have to have headaches about money", "be important", "be powerful" and "be famous" supplant "be harder to oppress by society or more powerful people".

To me, that seems to be a more fundamental problem than the problem of education and one a lot harder to solve. Disclaimer: Please don't take this as a criticism; on the contrary, when you have two important problems and you can see the solution to the one that's easier, it's a lot better to try to solve it than to sit down and lament the fact that you can't solve the harder one.

That said, I believe that we should define "success" differently for our kids. I believe we should give them a different goal: happiness. Believe it or not, you don't have to achieve greatness to be happy. As long as you can enjoy your work, your family and your life in general, you can be happy, without Leaving Your Footprints In The Sands Of History.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't teach our kids to strive to achieve as much as they can. It just means that we should try to encourage them to look for their own path to happiness. It shouldn't matter if theirs doesn't happen to pass through fame, power, influence or riches, as long as it leads them to happiness.

Re: Not Everyone has to go to College

#4

Post by hsmyers »

CodeMage wrote: post #3

I agree with you on a lot of points, especially the following two: 1. College doesn't guarantee success. 2. Not everyone should go to college. But here's where we diverge: I believe we'll never get to the point where everyone will "succeed". We all want our kids to succeed, but our definition of success is usually based on things like "have a high-paying job", "be important", "be powerful" or "be famous". This is bec…

There was in fact, too much emphasis on 'success for everyone'. That said, if you look at the rest of the arguments, I think that he begins to form a new definition of success, one that may be a better fit for far more people. In some respects this reminds me of the incredibly bad fad/decision to destroy the high-school votech department(s). We went from being able to give students something useful and more importantly something they wanted to forcing them all into the pre-college mold; with attendant disastrous results. Dropping out at all levels from that point onwards.

Re: Not Everyone has to go to College

#6

Post by mikle »

First a bit of criticism - I don't like this way of presenting. 193 slides? Each with one sentence? This is borderline maddening and if this wasn't a topic I was interested in I wouldn't have made it even 30 slides in. A tl:dr would just tell you to skip to slide 160.

Not only that but the parts about Skillshare itself are so disguised that I still don't have a firm grasp of why should I go there and what can I do there besides "learn" (I can just google a cupcake recipe, why should I learn through you?).

Now about the content itself - as someone from outside of the US, I'm amazed and frightened at this phenomenon. There were similar threads on reddit with people with over 200,000$ of debt. This is irrational and borderline irresponsible to owe someone so much money. I think education should be reconsidered and a better method tried. With the internet and the wealth of information on it, I find it hard to believe we can't optimize and improve upon the current education structures.

Edit: After exploring the site, I think I really like it. I'd probably like it more if I lived in NY, where most of the classes take place :) I think this idea is great and worth expanding,

I think, since your site is fairly young, it will benefit a user voice page, since I can think of tonnes of things I'd like to see there.

Re: Not Everyone has to go to College

#8

Post by Maro »

I agree with most of what you said. I also like the idea of Skillshare.

But, watching the slides, jumping from "you don't have to go to college" to Skillshare gave me the impression (even though the slides didn't say) that Skillshare is a substitute for a college education, which it clearly is not. Based on the current courses, it's more like a "social tradeschool". I'm not saying you are misleading, but the presentation may be.

Re: Not Everyone has to go to College

#9

Post by exi »

Great read. I'd like to say that I've been okay with my decision to drop out of college. Yet several years later all I've found is that 98% of companies now want a BA just to answer phones. A number of friends that I went to school with cruised their way through with C averages. I would be amazed when they'd ask me to read some of their senior level work and it would have the spelling mistakes of a 2nd grader. They spent most of their time at parties while being supported financially by their parents. Meanwhile I was attending the funeral of mine and facing homelessness, so dropping out was what was right for me at the time.

Now I'm the idiot for not having a degree, while those same guys I knew all have fantastic jobs. I think that many companies just use degree requirements as resume filtering tools and nothing more. It doesn't seem to matter that you can't write or that you learned nothing.

Re: Not Everyone has to go to College

#10

Post by JTCJr »

The freakenomics podcast guys answered a listeners question regarding 'does college still matter?'

Worth checking out the answer just for the unambiguous the answer is. (Answer starts at 3:00)

http://freakonomicsradio.com/does-college-still-matter-and-o...

[Spoiler alert: the answer is 'hell yes' (paraphrased).]

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