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More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

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Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#491

Post by mym1990 »

mantas wrote: post #130
azinman2 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: critical analysis. I agree with you that inconvenient truths now get muzzled because they don’t fit an acceptable meta-narrative. This is very problematic for society and when taken to the maximum, can lead to thinks like Cambodia’s attempt at restarting society by killing all those who didn’t fit the model they were looking for. > If that's what you are hungry for, college is perhaps even your least likely bet.…

Cultures shall be analyzed as a whole, advantages, weakness and not skip infamous parts. Cherry picking is a direct way to indoctrination.

Ah yes, just like things such as slavery, Native American history, colonialism was glossed over in US History so that the great achievements could be celebrated, and we didn't have to actually think about who paid the price.

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#492

Post by pinkmuffinere »

phist_mcgee wrote: post #483
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All paid workers real enemy is the capital class, and we should never forget that. I totally agree with you up to this point, so just want to explain why i disagree with this particular point. I want better treatment for all humans, and I agree that some of the "capital class" is actively fighting this, but some is actively helping it as well. For example, I think Bill Gates, the Collison Brothers, and some of the K…

The people can do good things, but in an exploitative manner?. Earning billions off the labor of others and then giving back is still not moral in my eyes. And I think it's an exception to the rule any way that any in the capital class produce a net benefit to society.

I don't think profit necessarily implies exploitation. People could make billions while also helping the labor class, and then give back to society. Think of things that improve safety, efficiency, or extend human life -- fire extinguishers, farm implements, some medicines, etc. I'm sure people make money off of these, but I'm still thankful to them. You may be right that most of the capital class is not a net benefit. Nonetheless, I think this kind of broad generalization just distracts us from the real goal of improving human lives.

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#493

Post by churchill »

ricardobeat wrote: post #471
wolverine876 wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not reading articles (especially Wikipedia) and trying to infer your argument for you. You state it if you've got it. Stop making excuses. Assume I know about the Cambodian genocide.

"tried to restart society by eliminating people who didn't fit the mold" seems like a decent, if a bit simplistic, description of the Cambodian genocide. What exactly are you up against?

Dude, why not read the article first? Kampuchean communists (under Pol Pot) murdered nearly 20% of Cambodia's population of 7.8 million in just four years.

There goal was to build a self-sustaining agrarian society and everyone who even looked like an intellectual, had a university education, had glasses, or some other trappings of Western life was eliminated or sent to concentration camps where they mostly died.

Why? Because the didn't fit the mold of "suffering farmers oppressed under capitalism & imperialism, waiting to be rescued."

Please, this is widely documented and trying to suggest otherwise seems quite disingenuous.

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#494

Post by Balgair »

zinckiwi wrote: post #409
OJFord wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People sometimes talk about it in terms of exams in the sense that they'd achieve a first overall if that exam was 'it', or that it brings their average up etc. - but strictly speaking you can only achieve first class (or any other) honours for the degree as a whole. It's commonly (but not necessarily) >70% overall. Equivalent to achieving some high GPA range.

American translation: graduating with anything other than a 4.0 or a 1.0 is wasted.

Oh got it now, thanks!

Here in the US we have a saying of " C equals Degree", so kinda the exact opposite of the UK saying. Strange!

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#495

Post by mym1990 »

azinman2 wrote: post #75
xyzelement wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are referring to something on one hand very valuable, on the other hand it's very easy to graduate college without learning that, and I think colleges themselves in recent decades are pivoting away from. A hundred+ years ago when "almost nobody" went to college, college was a place for those hungry and willing to sacrifice for intellectual growth. Nowadays college is a baseline consumer good that "almost…

Re: critical analysis. I agree with you that inconvenient truths now get muzzled because they don’t fit an acceptable meta-narrative. This is very problematic for society and when taken to the maximum, can lead to thinks like Cambodia’s attempt at restarting society by killing all those who didn’t fit the model they were looking for. > If that's what you are hungry for, college is perhaps even your least likely bet.…

You really think that before this era of education there wasn't a meta-narrative and inconvenient truths were also hidden? Are you that naive?

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#496

Post by lumb63 »

azinman2 wrote: post #40
pclmulqdq wrote: post #26

College seems to have ~3 uses from students' perspectives: 1. A trade school for technical professionals who actually need specialist education (scientists, engineers, lawyers, doctors, etc.) 2. A finishing school for the elite 3. A blood sports arena for the brilliant to complete for professorships (almost all of whom will lose and be saddled with 6 figures of debt and 7 figures of opportunity cost) A lot of people…

It also grows the intellectual souls, exposing people to far more depth of thought. It also builds professional networks. If a person is smart enough to receive it, more education is almost always good. Of course money is a factor, and schools have gotten insanely expensive. I’m glad to hear that more people are finding alternative routes - it shouldn’t be that everyone needs college because quite frankly many career…

I suspect the folks here defending philosophy had a very different experience with philosophy than I did. I took an ethics class in college through the philosophy department and all I remember from the class was the professor telling us that pro-choice was the only philosophically defensible position, and reading various excerpts from Plato, etc., without ever discussing “how to think about it” like some siblings mention.

Does anyone have any recommended resources for learning about philosophy? I’ve read some Aristotle and Plato but I think I’d benefit from something more structured.

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#497

Post by Turing_Machine »

OJFord wrote: post #332
Balgair wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an uncle told me many moons ago: Do more in college. Write a rock opera, spend a week curled up in the union learning about black holes, be good enough to tutor. Don't just graduate with nothing but a taste for bad jazz and cheap beer.

Or, as cousin Melchior put it, 'anything other than a first or a fourth is wasted'. ( Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh. Not sure how internationally read it is, but a worthwhile classic. British degrees are classified from firsts to thirds (via upper and lower second class honours) - but the story is (initially) set at Oxford, which at the time awarded fourths.)

I think it's reasonably widely-read in the United States, though I haven't read it myself.

Probably more are familiar with the British Granada Television adaptation, which was shown here on the Great Performances series on PBS. I don't know how well that conformed with the book.

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#498

Post by jackcosgrove »

rootusrootus wrote: post #449
xyzelement wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are referring to something on one hand very valuable, on the other hand it's very easy to graduate college without learning that, and I think colleges themselves in recent decades are pivoting away from. A hundred+ years ago when "almost nobody" went to college, college was a place for those hungry and willing to sacrifice for intellectual growth. Nowadays college is a baseline consumer good that "almost…

> I had a class that really critically analyzed native American cultures. Today the class would be considered racist, it would have to a priori be an admiration of those cultures, rather than a critical analysis. It's amazing that now we're getting hit from both directions in this regard. The left would like minorities treated with kid gloves, and now the right wants to muzzle schools that would say anything critical…

The 80s and the 90s do seem in retrospect to be exemplars of what I consider the college experience.

By the end of the 80s, the canon wars had been fought and lost, so any topic was fair game for study. In loco parentis had been gone for a while. Ethnic boundaries were all but gone, and class boundaries were disappearing as well as more people went to college.

By the time the 90s rolled around university life seemed to be the free-wheeling intellectual pursuit with a healthy dose of libertinism that I considered the college experience. I grew up in that era, so maybe I am just a product of it. But there seems to be something pure in that model of university life.

In later years after the 90s, taboo subjects became more common, in loco parentis returned under the guise of limiting legal liability, tuition costs made class differences more stark, and most sadly of all I think we've lost a bit of the universality of the human experience thing, and focus too much on identity and how that divides people.

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#499

Post by bumby »

pdntspa wrote: post #405
bumby wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it’s like basic math Did you continue to read it? Because it covers other topics. Without using the internet, can you name the eligibility requirements of the Gov. of Kentucky? How about five county officers and their principle duties? I think your initial response belies a deeper problem we struggle with. Our attention span has shortened and social media has biased us towards more course interactions.

That's all shit that I am sure I would be able to answer if I had paid attention in class. Which is what they are trying to test.

Obviously the entire test is about what’s taught in class, but distilling it down to the single dimension of “basic math” in your dismissal was what I found interesting.

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#500

Post by bumby »

Larrikin wrote: post #400
bumby wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it’s like basic math Did you continue to read it? Because it covers other topics. Without using the internet, can you name the eligibility requirements of the Gov. of Kentucky? How about five county officers and their principle duties? I think your initial response belies a deeper problem we struggle with. Our attention span has shortened and social media has biased us towards more course interactions.

I would say that knowing eligibility requirements of the governor of Kentucky without using the internet is useless information to everyone that doesn't work in the Kentucky election office. The useful skill is being able to find the information on the Internet if you want to run for governor of Kentucky. If you grow up in Kentucky learning it once in seventh grade is sufficient so you know it's a possibility, but wi…

Why learn math when we all carry a superhuman calculator in our pocket?
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