Schools Out, Forever
avandamiri.com
Schools Out, Forever
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Re: Schools Out, Forever
#2Yet another helpful individual mistaking university for some kind of career training centre...
Universities are not there to get you a career, a high paying job, etc. I'll grant you that they've been mis-represented to many people, often by greedy people who wanted to boost the ranks of students to make money (another good reason why universities shouldn't be for-profit).
There are many purposes served by universities, and one of them may occasionally, as an added bonus, to help you in landing a great job. But the primary purposes of universities, and degrees, are:
- Research/Academic study
- To train the next generation of researchers/academics
- To give people who want to study a subject in a formal setting the opportunity to do so
- Allow 18-ish teenagers to mature into quasi-adults in an environment, surrounded by smart people, that will expand their minds and make them better people.
"Getting you a job" is not, and should not be, an objective of university. Most jobs should not require a degree, either. The fact that unrelated degrees are being used as a front-line filtering system is tragic. If universities themselves are to blame for this failure of perception management, it is doubly tragic - it may destroy their primary reasons for existence in the end.
Re: Schools Out, Forever
#3If you're an incredibly self-motivated and intelligent person when your 17 or 18 and you are passionate about learning and excelling, then sure, skip university if that's what you want.
I'd venture to say it's more rare than not to find someone who could successfully utilize 4 years and $150,000 in an unstructured environment. It's unfortunate that this is the case, but I just don't think it happens very often given the emotional maturity of many high school students.
I "did well" in high school because it wasn't difficult to do well by grading standards. College was when it all clicked and I developed a passion for learning. Obviously this is my experience, but I see this sort of thing in those around me (and many that still, even after college, wouldn't know how to use that money in a truly beneficial manner). University often puts you in the company of some intelligent individuals in a learning environment, as well as the opportunity to meet some great mentors that help mature.
Re: Schools Out, Forever
#4Yet another helpful individual mistaking university for some kind of career training centre... Universities are not there to get you a career, a high paying job, etc. I'll grant you that they've been mis-represented to many people, often by greedy people who wanted to boost the ranks of students to make money (another good reason why universities shouldn't be for-profit). There are many purposes served by universitie…
I'd say universities are to blame. My alma mater's main selling point is its co-op program. Instead of 4 years of straight classes, you have 5 years total split up as follows:
- freshman year as normal
- the next 3 years are spent with 6 month classes/6 months co-op with some local company
- senior year as normal
My alma mater is not alone in this kind of marketing though. How many commercials do you see (especially during noon and in the late evening) about going back to school so you can make more money/land a better job?
Re: Schools Out, Forever
#5Yet another helpful individual mistaking university for some kind of career training centre... Universities are not there to get you a career, a high paying job, etc. I'll grant you that they've been mis-represented to many people, often by greedy people who wanted to boost the ranks of students to make money (another good reason why universities shouldn't be for-profit). There are many purposes served by universitie…
Universities are there to get you a job. In fact, it's part of their marketing strategy. In technical curricula, nearly every decision they make is based around predictions of future job growth.
It is a very real problem right now, because technical jobs are changing so fast. The universities don't know what to teach kids. Corporations aren't hiring people to write Fortran or C++. They hire them to write .NET and Java, so students are going to universities who are teaching them those languages instead of the universities who concentrate on the primary purposes you state.
It's very hard to sell students on the principles you describe. They'll get that at ANY university, so what distinguishes programs among different universities, essentially comes down to ROI for the tuition.
Re: Schools Out, Forever
#6Yet another helpful individual mistaking university for some kind of career training centre... Universities are not there to get you a career, a high paying job, etc. I'll grant you that they've been mis-represented to many people, often by greedy people who wanted to boost the ranks of students to make money (another good reason why universities shouldn't be for-profit). There are many purposes served by universitie…
I'd say universities are to blame. My alma mater's main selling point is its co-op program. Instead of 4 years of straight classes, you have 5 years total split up as follows: - freshman year as normal - the next 3 years are spent with 6 month classes/6 months co-op with some local company - senior year as normal My alma mater is not alone in this kind of marketing though. How many commercials do you see (especially…
And a lot of those commercials are for trade schools teaching welding, health care instrument management (mri, phlebotomy, nuclear)... Not traditional universities, so the unis, which are much more expensive than those schools, are really hurting right now. People are going to the University of Phoenix online to learn vb.net instead of Harvard to learn "computer science".
Re: Schools Out, Forever
#7I went to a school that taught me, among other things, how to use apostrophes, how to make web sites with readable text, how to avoid phrases like "kitchen of education", and how to make a poll that shows results when I vote instead of thanking me for voting.
If you're some sort of mindless soulless fuck who equates everything in life to "will this help me get a job?", then skip school. It won't teach you what you want to know, and I don't want to be bothered dealing with you.
The questions you ought to be asking:
- What don't I know yet? What do I not even realize I don't know?
- Who are the sorts of people I want to spend the rest of my life with? Where do I feel comfortable?
- Given the ideas I have, what can I do? How can I combine these with other ideas to make something extraordinary?
Here's what school gives you that the Internet doesn't. Faces. Instinctive responses. Chemistry. Nobody knows better than I how easy it is to build a brand for yourself online. In person, you don't get a brand. You get a person. You can judge people more accurately, both people who're good at public image and people who suck at it and would look like shit if you found them completely at random.
Frankly, Avand, you don't have the credentials to get away with saying shit like this. Not as confidently as you're saying it. Looking at your resume, I'm not seeing anything that would stand out particularly if I saw it from an undergraduate resume. You're not a good writer and you haven't got a good grip on aesthetics. Do something smart before you start bashing my education.
Re: Schools Out, Forever
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd say universities are to blame. My alma mater's main selling point is its co-op program. Instead of 4 years of straight classes, you have 5 years total split up as follows: - freshman year as normal - the next 3 years are spent with 6 month classes/6 months co-op with some local company - senior year as normal My alma mater is not alone in this kind of marketing though. How many commercials do you see (especially…
And a lot of those commercials are for trade schools teaching welding, health care instrument management (mri, phlebotomy, nuclear)... Not traditional universities, so the unis, which are much more expensive than those schools, are really hurting right now. People are going to the University of Phoenix online to learn vb.net instead of Harvard to learn "computer science".
I really doubt Harvard or any of the other top schools are hurting for applicants. When I was entering school, Harvard and MIT were taking <15% of their applicants, which leaves quite a bit of wiggle room.
Re: Schools Out, Forever
#9I did not get much in the way of programming out of my Math/CS degree, other than socially accepted (encouraged, even) time to fiddle with my own projects.
I did get an clear benefit out of the institution of university, in socialization and in closed-world long term interaction with other like-minded, intelligent people.
i.e. Courses were often a waste of time, University was not.
Re: Schools Out, Forever
#10I went to a school that taught me, among other things, how to use apostrophes, how to make web sites with readable text, how to avoid phrases like "kitchen of education", and how to make a poll that shows results when I vote instead of thanking me for voting. If you're some sort of mindless soulless fuck who equates everything in life to "will this help me get a job?", then skip school. It won't teach you what you wa…
This is the type of post that is contributing to the decline of HN. It's mean spirited and inflamatory, veiled by a thin layer of actual argument. You critize the author for a lack of credentials, yet claim that no one knows better than you how to create a brand online? Let's see your credentials then, because apparently you are God's gift to earth.
Quite frankly no one had the credentials to write a post like yours. It doesn't matter if you are right about the article. What a joke.