Should third-level education be more study-oriented

Not everyone dislikes their college course enough to want a break from it?

I don't disagree with work experience, I disagree with the compulsory work experience you're suggesting. It's not for everyone.

Ok, but that still doesn't mean it should be compulsory..

Powerhouse wrote: »

College is hardly useless. The idea would be that a college education produces a person who is well rounded and can apply themselves to anything outside as a result.

Specialisation through work experience misses the point really. College should be about keeping possibilities open rather than closing them down. People will be working for the following 45/50 years. They'll pick up plenty of work experience then. What's the big rush to start during college?

Never said it was useless. I'm just saying a lot of what you learn is useless and never gets applied in the real world. At least from my course and everyone I know with a similar degree agrees.

I actually learnt a lot more from the social aspects of college than I did from the academic stuff.

I studied Law, and it has absolutely no bearing on my current career. It was great, and I feel better for knowing it (mostly the theory stuff, it's taught me those coveted skills I read about in CV's), but the really useful things I learnt from interacting with a hugely diverse group of people that I never would have known had I remained in my small town/village/"city" (which was full of characters, but I'd grown up with most of them and we all came from same background, so I knew most of them fairly well).

Without getting too Hallmark card about it, I learned a lot about people (and trust and faith and lots of other abstract nouns!). I also learnt that (away from a relatively protective location of a public secondary school or my parents' house) sh!t really did happen - both stuff that I was responsible for (teaching me the Disney-esque value of responsibility) and stuff that I had absolutely no control over (which taught me the slightly more practical lesson that people can do just about anything to each other*). I feel like a more rounded person from the interaction that college required of me - both with the semi-formal relationship with lecturers and the interpersonal relationships with other students.

And yes, I just typed the word "interpersonal relationships". That probably makes me "socially retarded".

* Okay, that sounds slightly more dramatic than I intended it to. I just mean that people can be incredibly resourceful when being vindictive. No one has attempted a genocide** on me. Yet.

** I know it wouldn't technically be a genocide, but still...

Karlusss wrote: »

This is probably closer to how I feel about than I would have been able to post, I think. Drink all year - cram for exams, and then you have what? Proof that you can work under pressure? You knew that from the Leaving Cert, probably. Proof that you're clever? **** that, if you need to be able to tell people you did nothing to get your first, your mindset is wrong from the beginning.

If you're not reading the whole way through (and this is specific to humanities subjects because I have no experience of anything else), you are missing the point of your degree. University is not about proving you can pass it, it's about lofty things like gaining insight on the world and on yourself and becoming... educated, stupid as that last sentence may sound.

Which is not to say you can't go out and get pissed all the time... or some of the time.

I think you were doing youself down in the opening sentence, You pretty much nailed it in that post.

EGaffney wrote: »

I don't really think that is the case. At final examination level, first class degrees tend to require broad knowledge of the literature and some original insight - I'm approaching this from an economics/social science perspective. As for II.1/II.2 degrees, does the average employer really need their graduates to have a unique interpretation of Camus?

Perhaps it's different in other subjects, but the people whom I know who can say "they did nothing to get their first" are rare if they exist at all...

I agree that nobody can get a first without plenty of work, but what I have said is that it is possible to get one with short-term hard work rather than with wide reading and having a deep broad knowledge of the course that has been studied. As I often say, exams actually suit students rather than markers as it is possible to cherry pick material so it is relatively easy to present a good front in exams, while perhaps being unable to even attempt other questions on the paper.

In fact if I was advising a student on how to get a first I would probably advise them to steer clear of most of the average course and specialise in one or two areas. Of course this would be to the detriment of their general education but it is an effecive startegy as under-graduate papers are so predictable.

On your question "as for II.1/II.2 degrees, does the average employer really need their graduates to have a unique interpretation of Camus?" - the answer is perhaps not. But do employers not look at grades?

The education of the individual might not be directly applicable to a work situation - and usually won't be let's be honest - but grades say, fairly or unfairly, plenty about a student's ability to think individually and innovatively as well as work fairly hard when required to do so.

Being well-read and well-educated in the abstract is quite a different matter of course, but on balance employers probably prefer cleverer people irrespective of the area in which that cleverness has been established. The assumption would be that skills and a work ethic are transferable and the student who limps home with low grades after 3/4 years in college is also likely to be a 'limper' in the workforce.

Karlusss wrote: »

If you're not reading the whole way through (and this is specific to humanities subjects because I have no experience of anything else), you are missing the point of your degree.

What point?

thebman wrote: »

One could argue that cramming is more like the real world. You learn fast. You won't get to do 3 months research before doing a project in the private sector, you'll be expected to learn as you go.

I think crammers are better suited to this system.

The idea that everyone gets three months to do college projects is laughable!

But leaving that aside, there is an assumption here that people who work diligently and consistently are on top of their game somehow are likely to creak under pressure. There is no basis for this. Any employer would look for someone who works consistently above the 'all-nighter' college assignment specialist who has to constantly panic his way out of the mess his procrastination created in the first place. There is an essential weakness in crammers that lowers their standards that would hardly appeal to an employer.

I should admit that I tried it both ways in college, and I know which version I'd prefer to be employing.

But there is an underlying assumption here that college is meant to be direct preparation for employment. It is not. It is there to educate people and it is almost inevitable that people will along the way display/develop the type of skills that will be applicable to the workplace and perform them in a manner which suggests to a potential employer how they might operate in the 'real world' as you call it.

The idea that the college hero who needed bucketfuls of red bull to keep him awake for the three nights before his exams before limping to a white-knuckle 62% and thereby beating the system hands down is somehow more employable or would be more favourably looked upon by a potential employer than someone who is more reliable, consistent and ultimately effective might be a plausible yarn in the pub but shows little appreciation of the more prosaic and sober judgements in the real world you've cited. A 'skin of the teeth' merchant is the last thing most employers covet.

Powerhouse wrote: »

This is incredible rambling nonsense to be honest about it.

There is absolutely no doubt that people who immerse themselves in their subject will have a far better grasp of it. It is, as I have said, a crammer's system but to say that crammers have as much of a grasp of things at the end is ridiculous.

And the notion that studying and getting laid/having de craic are mutually exclusive is quite a novel idea. The one thing students have plenty of is time. There's little excuse not to be able to do all of the above.

Though I am sure an employer would be impressed with an "actually I know sweet FA about my subject after 4 years studying it but I had great craic" on the average CV.

Of course it's nonsense, you're all talking nonsense. the institution, the lectures or the material that people study doesn't matter at all.In fact it doesn't even matter if someone goes to college at all.What matters is the individual.Anyone can read a lot of books but what employers want are people who are versatile and find diverse problems intuitively clear and solvable.
If someone wants a deep understanding of any subject they can do it at home.

Powerhouse wrote: »

This is all very fine in a Barack Obama 'yes we can' moment of aspiration but of course it is simply untrue.

The reality, as anyone who looks at job adverts will attest, is that someone with a lack of qualifications will struggle to get past a screening for interview never mind get a job.

Perhaps that is because without having studied to a fair level, it is difficult to adduce any evidence that you "are versatile and find diverse problems intuitively clear and solvable".

One can indeed question the significance of the evidence of college performance as a guide to future performance but then one might ask does not attending college at all show that you are a versatile problem identifier and solver?

If you went back and edited you post to replace each "doesn't" with "shouldn't" you might have a point.

And if you think that someone can get a deep undertstanding of something at home rather than bothering going to college you must have some library there.

I actually thought it was quite cynical but that is coming from someone who's over-educated and under-skilled.

Anyway with regards the huge personal library, the advent of the internet and Amazon and the fact that local libraries will basically ship in any book that you ask for means that you don't need a huge personal library.
THe problem is motivation more than anything but the universal fact is that if you want to learn something you've got to do it yourself.

claire h wrote: »

Re: personal library et al - one of the benefits of academic libraries is that they have all those absurdly expensive academic texts, which are a) out of the price range of most people and b) often so specialist that you might not hear of them if not already reading extensively or being provided with a framework (i.e. lectures by an expert in the field) with which to interpret these books and read them critically.

A lecturer of mine recently made the point that something like the Open University is really the way to go - basic lectures, textbooks, providing you with that 'basic framework' from which to do your own reading or independent research, and someone knowledgeable in the field to ask questions of if necessary. I do think that having some kind of guideline set out by someone-with-a-clue is useful, and suspect that it's fairly important to people when they're deciding whether or not to study something formally or just read some books on it (apart from, of course, the getting-a-qualification angle).

Incidentally, as an arts/humanities student I'm always surprised when I remember that some people actually make any kind of connection between degrees and employment...

Yes, of course the idea that you can achieve at home what you achieve in University is a ridiculous suggestion since the main business of lecturers is to direct you towards reading which is what you cannot possibly know at home. What they'll tell you in a hour's lecture is hardly worth talkking about - it's where they point you to that earns them their money.

Potential employers will always look at someone's educational record, it's just a fact of life. That their studies might have been something other than vocational training for the particular job you want to do is neither here not there really.

I know a journalist with a Law degree who never worked in a legal setting.

I know a Primary school teacher with a Primary degree and Master's in Law.

I know a solicitor with a BA who never did a degree in law.

There are actually few enough areas/jobs where you need a specific qualification, but there are very few jobs where you do not need some qualification as evidence that you are educated to a certain level with all the assurances that this gives to employers regarding likely maturity, relability, consistency and ability to deliver and complete projects.

pisslips wrote: »

I was thinking of people like this:
Ramanujan
And to a lesser extent:

Einstein was working in the Swiss patent office when he published the 1905 papers.
Actually he has a very famous quote on the matter
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education."

Benjamin Franklin had no formal education and he invented, bifocal lenses, pigeon holes and lightning rods, was publisher,writer and politician among other things.

What one can achieve in college could definitely be achieved in a proportion of the time at home. I mean lecture notes can often be found on the web, along with ''recommended reading''.In fact you can now stream lectures from some of the most prestigous universities in the world.I think it's great, no point in hoarding the knowledge!

Of course the big problem is motivation, without those lectures drip feeding you you might just give up.

You can find exceptions to every generally held principle,without undermining the generally held principle.

Funny how Einstein decided to formally study physics despite his reservations about formal education. But then again he wavered a little in his views. He has another famous quote "education is what's left after you've forgotten everything you learned in school".

I dearly wish you were right about the lack of a need for formal education, but as someone who didn't graduate with a primary degree until 40 years of age and a Masters a year later, it is my own personal experience that doors opened for me at that stage that would have remained firmly shut when I was 25 with no qualifications but with presumably as much innate ability, only unable to demonstrate it or get the opportunity to do so.

I am, perhaps like yourself, not setting the world alight despite my education and am too long in the tooth to really get the full benefits in the way that I might have had I graduated from college at 21/22 just like other people.

But I can open the jobs pages of the newpapers now in the same way that I watched my college educated friends do over the years, in the knowledge that I am no longer on the margins without the remotest possibility of even being considered for any of the positions.

If you're going to use historical examples you might at least try to take account of their historical context and what was attainable without formal education then as opposed to now. Specialist vocabulary and methods, the specialisation of knowledge generally, makes it very very difficult for anyone trying to be an expert in their field without formal education, not to mention the barriers in place without the associated piece of paper.