Is college pointless?

Cpt_Blackbeard · 12-05-2011 01:42PM

I've yet to see a post here that accurately explains what I believe a University's function to be. Most posters here seem to be assuming that a University's function is to educate undergraduates, but - even as an undergraduate myself - I don't agree.

The education of undergraduates is a moneymaking venture which facilitates postgraduates to partake in important research and the formation of new ideas. They pass on their knowledge to students because it is the most effective/only way for them to fund their own research interests.

It is a win-win situation as students will become educated to a point where they can get a job in industry or pursue a career in research themselves. These now-postgraduates will pass on their knowledge to the next generation of undergraduates and the wheels keep turning.

Without 3rd level education this whole process will come grinding to a halt; hence the number of people coming up with new ideas will greatly decline. It may seem like a waste of 4 years but the vast numbers that enter 3rd-level education is needed to keep this stream of innovation flowing.

Valmont · 12-05-2011 02:23PM

My undergraduate degree was very useful. I went to a small, Dublin based, private institution and in my opinion, received a far better education than my peers in UCD or Trinity (in the same subject) because of the small classes and the university's ability to recruit some brilliant lecturers.

Currently, I'm just finishing up an Msc in a top-ten UK university and I can only describe the entire experience as boring and uninspiring. While most of my classmates sit around moaning about their workloads and how to spend their loan funds, I've been working 25-30 hours a week for a legal firm, not really doing much coursework because it's so awfully dull and repetitive ("How to read a paper") and I'm still averaging a high first. Not because I'm particularly clever or applied but because the standards are low and the coursework is easy for anyone who has worked hard during their undergraduate degree.

I spend most of my time pursuing my own interests, working on my writing, and making plans for the future. This money making racket of masters degrees is a sham and I'm angry for having fallen for it. I stacked shelves for a year to pay for the tuition fees!

To answer the above question- yes, to an extent. With more and more students going to "do a degree" for the hell of it, standards have fallen, the paper has lost its value amid the inflation, and the intellectual atmosphere is quite stifling in certain respects. I don't see a bright future for somebody entering an arts degree program during the next five years.

Valmont · 12-05-2011 02:27PM

liah wrote: »

I can't help but wonder if the mentality towards slacking off in university/doing it because it's "the done thing" rather than a passion, has to do with the primary and secondary levels of education that have killed their learning spirit, so to speak. That's, essentially, what my problem is - school killed my passion for learning so I had to leave school to rediscover it.

I agree entirely. During the week before my leaving certificate I was in the local library reading a pile of books on everything from Napoleon to psychological experimentation in the 70s. The very thought of sitting down and memorising ten marker-oriented reasons as to why Hamlet was brilliant or to practice drawing an Oxbow lake for the millionth time sent me into spasms of irritability that usually resulted in something being thrown across the library or classroom. Indeed it was this mentality that forced me to leave my first secondary school. Ha.

Permabear · 12-05-2011 02:53PM

This post has been deleted.

Zombrex · 12-05-2011 03:04PM

I don't really think that college is pointless. More that people who have no interest in getting anything out of college go to college because it is the done thing.

That is hardly something to blame college for.

Saying that the person would be better off not going but instead training themselves or getting on the job training seems some what paradoxical. I wouldn't hold up much hope that a person who dosses their way through college would not doss their way through anything else they were doing instead.

Most of the kids in my course in UL expected the teachers to make them work, as had been the case in secondary school. When they didn't a lot of them simply used the 4 years to party.

The issue seems to be more the apathy of middle class kids who have no idea what they want to do or how to achieve it. And that will be the case whether they are at college or not.

If you are committed to getting the best out of college it is a really good place to learn and study, without the pressure of a commercial environment. It is also a good place to meet new people, experience new things (as Chief from South Park would say there is a time and place for everything and it is called college). The person has to be in the right mind set for it and if they aren't it will certainly be a waste. But then I'm not sure what wouldn't be a waste for that person.

Zombrex · 12-05-2011 03:09PM

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

I don't think anyone has ever become a teacher for the "comfortable salary".:pac:

As for factory systems the current Irish curriculum covers a wide range of subjects from the arts to the technical to the scientific. Students are given choice in selection of subjects. The State also spends millions each year on classes for special needs and training teachers to identify students with particular learning difficulties (I went through the system with dyslexia, as did my brother).

All these things could be improved of course, and these things tend to be the first cut in difficult times, but your cynical take on teachers and their motivations is quite misrepresentative and misleading.

liah · 12-05-2011 03:25PM

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

The thing is, there needs to be some kind of regulation as to what, exactly, is being taught (e.g. in science, maths, history, etc). As long as the basic facts are covered and remain unalterable, I can see the movement away from state-run schools as a good thing; at the very least it would encourage competition which should, theoretically, lead to quality and better prices.

But then that could result in an even wider class gap for those who can't afford to pay at all (as lack of education tends to lead to poverty, which would then lead to more lack of education, and so on).

I have no idea how it would be viable without some potentially devastating effects, but I suppose the current system isn't exactly viable, either. While normally I'm for a free market, education is too important to mess around with. It can't become something thats quality ascends as your class ascends, which is what would happen if it was dictated by going completely private.

southsiderosie · 12-05-2011 03:25PM

I think there are a number of factors at play.

I think college is pointless for a lot of kids who are interested in the skilled trades, and there should be much more focus on vocational and adult education. One think I admire about a lot of Northern European countries is that learning is a lifelong process, and spells of unemployment are seen as opportunities to 'skill up'. To be fair, I think there is a lot of latent interest in this kind of thing in the US, but the opportunities are limited for a lot of people, and the cost is increasingly prohibitive.

At mid-level colleges and universities, there is a terrible confluence of consumerism and commodification of education. I think standards have dropped in part because they are too reliant on adjunct staff who teach four courses a semester and therefore a) don't have the time to assign long essays and papers and therefore rely on multiple choice exams and less time-intensive assignments and b) have little incentive to assign challenging work and be a tough grader because they are heavily reliant on student reviews. On the other hand, the students know the work is pointless, but they also know that they need good grades in order to justify the time and in particular the money put into higher ed - they see themselves as consumers rather than students. So there is a lot of grade grubbing on the one side and acquiescence on the other.

At elite colleges and universities, the problems are slightly different. The battle at places like Harvard isn't graduating, it's getting admitted in the first place. So the kids who go are very well trained in taking standardized tests and overscheduling a million different extracurricular activities. They also see themselves as somehow special and unique; yet a significant percentage of them will be chasing the same jobs at McKinsey or Goldman. The problem is, although they are clearly smart and hardworking, they are not necessarily creative thinkers or even risk takers. Hence, I can understand the frustration of venture capitalists in the OP. However, college isn't beating the life out of these kids, the process of getting into an elite college is. Therefore, offering someone lots of money to skip going to Stanford in favor of entrepreneurship isn't going to have the effect I think he expects to get. To me, the more interesting kid is the one who is entrepreneurial enough to start their own business or service in order to work their way through school - that's the kind of kid that probably doesn't need to be there in the first place.

I guess this is a very long way of saying that college isn't pointless, but the requirements for getting into college, the way we think about it as an event rather than a process, and the commodification of education have all served to cheapen the experience somewhat. And any reform of this system will be difficult because there are deep financial interests at stake. But reform is clearly necessary; hopefully if anything good comes out of the current economic crisis, it will be a forced re-thinking of how we manage and conceptualize higher ed.

Bottle_of_Smoke · 12-05-2011 03:36PM

Wicknight wrote: »

I don't think anyone has ever become a teacher for the "comfortable salary".:pac:

Really? Used to work in a bank and saw teacher's accounts. Looked pretty comfortable to me

southsiderosie · 12-05-2011 03:37PM

As an aside, there was a long-ish but very accurate assessment (in my view anyway) of the state of higher ed in the US recently in The Nation (a lefty US magazine). It starts out as a critique of the current graduate puppy mill training system, but it is really a broader critique of higher ed in general. A few highlights:

Faulty Towers: The Crisis in Higher Education

...But the answer now is not to raise professors’ salaries. Professors already make enough. The answer is to hire more professors: real ones, not academic lettuce-pickers.

Yet that’s the last thing schools are apt to do. What we have seen instead over the past forty years, in addition to the raising of a reserve army of contingent labor, is a kind of administrative elephantiasis, an explosion in the number of people working at colleges and universities who aren’t faculty, full-time or part-time, of any kind. From 1976 to 2001, the number of nonfaculty professionals ballooned nearly 240 percent, growing more than three times as fast as the faculty. Coaching staffs and salaries have grown without limit; athletic departments are virtually separate colleges within universities now, competing (successfully) with academics. The size of presidential salaries—more than $1 million in several dozen cases—has become notorious. Nor is it only the presidents; the next six most highly paid administrative officers at Yale averaged over $430,000 in 2007. As Gaye Tuchman explains in Wannabe U (2009), a case study in the sorrows of academic corporatization, deans, provosts and presidents are no longer professors who cycle through administrative duties and then return to teaching and research. Instead, they have become a separate stratum of managerial careerists, jumping from job to job and organization to organization like any other executive: isolated from the faculty and its values, loyal to an ethos of short-term expansion, and trading in the business blather of measurability, revenue streams, mission statements and the like. They do not have the long-term health of their institutions at heart. They want to pump up the stock price (i.e., U.S. News and World Report ranking) and move on to the next fat post...

...What we have in academia, in other words, is a microcosm of the American economy as a whole: a self-enriching aristocracy, a swelling and increasingly immiserated proletariat, and a shrinking middle class. The same devil’s bargain stabilizes the system: the middle, or at least the upper middle, the tenured professoriate, is allowed to retain its prerogatives—its comfortable compensation packages, its workplace autonomy and its job security—in return for acquiescing to the exploitation of the bottom by the top, and indirectly, the betrayal of the future of the entire enterprise...

...Here we come to the most important issue facing American higher education. Public institutions enroll about three-quarters of the nation’s college students, and public institutions are everywhere under financial attack. As Nancy Folbre explains in Saving State U (2010), a short, sharp, lucid account, spending on higher education has been falling as a percentage of state budgets for more than twenty years, to about two-thirds of what it was in 1980. The average six-year graduation rate at state schools is now a dismal 60 percent, a function of class size and availability, faculty accessibility, the use of contingent instructors and other budget-related issues. Private universities actually lobby against public funding for state schools, which they see as competitors. In any case, a large portion of state scholarship aid goes to students at private colleges (in some cases, more than half)—a kind of voucher system for higher education.

Meanwhile, public universities have been shifting their financial aid criteria from need to merit to attract applicants with higher scores (good old U.S. News again), who tend to come from wealthier families. Per-family costs at state schools have soared in recent years, from 18 percent of income for those in the middle of the income distribution in 1999 to 25 percent in 2007. Estimates are that over the past decade, between 1.4 million and 2.4 million students have been prevented from going to college for financial reasons—about 50 percent more than during the 1990s. And of course, in the present climate of universal fiscal crisis, it is all about to get a lot worse.

* * *

Our system of public higher education is one of the great achievements of American civilization. In its breadth and excellence, it has no peer. It embodies some of our nation’s highest ideals: democracy, equality, opportunity, self-improvement, useful knowledge and collective public purpose. The same president who emancipated the slaves and funded the transcontinental railroad signed the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862, which set the system on its feet. Public higher education is a bulwark against hereditary privilege and an engine of social mobility. It is altogether to the point that the strongest state systems are not to be found in the Northeast, the domain of the old WASP aristocracy and its elite private colleges and universities, but in places like Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Virginia, North Carolina and, above all, California.

Now the system is in danger of falling into ruin. Public higher education was essential to creating the mass middle class of the postwar decades—and with it, a new birth of political empowerment and human flourishing. The defunding of public higher education has been essential to its slow destruction. In Unmaking the Public University, Newfield argues that the process has been deliberate, a campaign by the economic elite against the class that threatened to supplant it as the leading power in society. Social mobility is now lower in the United States than it is in Northern Europe, Australia, Canada and even France and Spain, a fact that ought to be tattooed on the foreheads of every member of Congress, so directly does it strike at America’s identity as the land of opportunity.

But it was not only the postwar middle class that public higher education helped create; it was the postwar prosperity altogether. Knowledge, again, is our most important resource. States that balance their budgets on the backs of their public universities are not eating their seed corn; they’re trampling it into the mud. My state of Oregon, a chronic economic underperformer, has difficulty attracting investment, not because its corporate taxes are high—they’re among the lowest—but because its workforce is poorly educated. So it will be for the nation as a whole. Our college-completion rate has fallen from second to eighth. And we are not just defunding instruction; we are defunding research, the creation of knowledge itself. Stipends are so low at the University of California, Berkeley, the third-ranked research institution on the planet, that the school is having trouble attracting graduate students. In fact, the whole California system, the crown jewel of American public higher education, is being torn apart by budget cuts. This is not a problem; it is a calamity.

Zombrex · 12-05-2011 03:42PM

Bottle_of_Smoke wrote: »

Really? Used to work in a bank and saw teacher's accounts. Looked pretty comfortable to me

How much teachers are paid is a matter of public record. How much money they have in their accounts is entirely different. I've no idea what was in that particular teacher's account, I do know teachers don't get paid that much.

Out if interest why where you looking up the accounts of teachers?

beeftotheheels · 12-05-2011 04:06PM

southsiderosie wrote: »

At mid-level colleges and universities, there is a terrible confluence of consumerism and commodification of education. I think standards have dropped in part because they are too reliant on adjunct staff who teach four courses a semester and therefore a) don't have the time to assign long essays and papers and therefore rely on multiple choice exams and less time-intensive assignments and b) have little incentive to assign challenging work and be a tough grader because they are heavily reliant on student reviews. On the other hand, the students know the work is pointless, but they also know that they need good grades in order to justify the time and in particular the money put into higher ed - they see themselves as consumers rather than students. So there is a lot of grade grubbing on the one side and acquiescence on the other.

Another point in my opinion is the level of "teaching" at universities. Many academics, while undoubtedly being experts in their subjects are in fact $h!te teachers of their subjects, and every academic department has to weigh up the merits an academic brings both in terms of their academic output and their teaching abilities.

I know I tended to love the courses taught by good teachers, be they young lecturers who were working on their thesis', or old relics who limited their academic output to editing materials books but loved teaching.

On the other side I had the privilege of being taught a course by a genuine intellectual heavyweight, but good god the man was dull. I don't think he liked undergraduates, I don't think he liked that we were debating subjects so far below his level. His interest was in the subject but not in the teaching yet his standing in the subject meant that he was expected to teach. And we were supposed to flock to his classes because of who he was when the better answer from an educational perspective would have been to have had someone else teach the class and just get us to read his books.

I'm not suggesting that all great thinkers are bad teachers, many excel at both. But being a great thinker does not require you to be a great teacher.

I think a lot of UK colleges have recognized this issue recently and are putting more emphasis on teaching and the UK university rankings now separate academic standing from teaching which is a good thing, and I think we're now seeing the colleges (and indeed departments within colleges) which invest in teaching move up the league tables.

Bottle_of_Smoke · 12-05-2011 04:10PM

Wicknight wrote: »

How much teachers are paid is a matter of public record. How much money they have in their accounts is entirely different. I've no idea what was in that particular teacher's account, I do know teachers don't get paid that much.

Out if interest why where you looking up the accounts of teachers?

I saw their salaries come in every fortnight too. I had a job approving overdrafts

whydoibother? · 12-05-2011 04:46PM

Cpt_Blackbeard wrote: »

I've yet to see a post here that accurately explains what I believe a University's function to be. Most posters here seem to be assuming that a University's function is to educate undergraduates, but - even as an undergraduate myself - I don't agree.

I don't think many people would dispute that research is an important function of a university, but a universities main point is and what an undergrad. would hope to get out of going are two different things. A 17 year old is focusing on the degree. That's the bit that concerns them. They have no idea if they will have sufficient aptitude or interest to go on to research. Most people make the decision about whether it is worthwhile or pointless to go to college from their own point of view, not taking into account the interests of society as a whole.

12-05-2011 06:38PM

beeftotheheels wrote: »

Another point in my opinion is the level of "teaching" at universities. Many academics, while undoubtedly being experts in their subjects are in fact $h!te teachers of their subjects, and every academic department has to weigh up the merits an academic brings both in terms of their academic output and their teaching abilities.

I know I tended to love the courses taught by good teachers, be they young lecturers who were working on their thesis', or old relics who limited their academic output to editing materials books but loved teaching.

On the other side I had the privilege of being taught a course by a genuine intellectual heavyweight, but good god the man was dull. I don't think he liked undergraduates, I don't think he liked that we were debating subjects so far below his level. His interest was in the subject but not in the teaching yet his standing in the subject meant that he was expected to teach. And we were supposed to flock to his classes because of who he was when the better answer from an educational perspective would have been to have had someone else teach the class and just get us to read his books.

I'm not suggesting that all great thinkers are bad teachers, many excel at both. But being a great thinker does not require you to be a great teacher.

I think a lot of UK colleges have recognized this issue recently and are putting more emphasis on teaching and the UK university rankings now separate academic standing from teaching which is a good thing, and I think we're now seeing the colleges (and indeed departments within colleges) which invest in teaching move up the league tables.

This is so true - knowing your subject does not mean being able to teach it!

Valmont · 12-05-2011 07:41PM

Wicknight wrote: »

I do know teachers don't get paid that much.

Laughable.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0714/1224274659883.html
Irish teachers are some of the best paid in the world, ironically, with some of the lowest educational outcomes. Look at our recent PISA ranking, it's terrible. 77% of our education budget is spent on wages and the teachers have a very long summer holiday. Cushy, comfortable, inefficient, and unionised. Irish teachers have it very nice indeed.

southsiderosie · 12-05-2011 08:08PM

bluewolf wrote: »

This is so true - knowing your subject does not mean being able to teach it!

I have found this to be particularly true for math - for example, people who are quite good at advanced statistics just seem to intuitively "get it", so sadly many of them are not particularly good at explaining it to people who don't.

12-05-2011 08:21PM

southsiderosie wrote: »

I have found this to be particularly true for math - for example, people who are quite good at advanced statistics just seem to intuitively "get it", so sadly many of them are not particularly good at explaining it to people who don't.

I think that is why actuaries are required to take a communications course

southsiderosie · 12-05-2011 08:34PM

Valmont wrote: »

Laughable.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0714/1224274659883.html
Irish teachers are some of the best paid in the world, ironically, with some of the lowest educational outcomes. Look at our recent PISA ranking, it's terrible. 77% of our education budget is spent on wages and the teachers have a very long summer holiday. Cushy, comfortable, inefficient, and unionised. Irish teachers have it very nice indeed.

I find it more amazing that medical specialists who are state employees and are not saddled with $200K of student loans and multi-million dollar malpractice insurance policies still make $225K a year...and don't even bother to work weekends.

Zombrex · 12-05-2011 09:21PM

Valmont wrote: »

Laughable.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0714/1224274659883.html
Irish teachers are some of the best paid in the world, ironically, with some of the lowest educational outcomes.

And? I didn't say anything about teachers pay in relation to other countries. I said in relation to other careers. I almost make as much as the top salary a teacher can earn and I'm only 6 years out of college. By the time I retire I plan to be making multiples of that salary.

I'm not sure why everyone is having such a problem with this concept. I've never in my life heard anyone say they became a teacher because they wanted to make lots of money :rolleyes:

#15 · 12-05-2011 11:03PM

Valmont wrote: »

Laughable.
77% of our education budget is spent on wages and the teachers have a very long summer holiday.

Wages:

OECD wrote:

The salaries of teachers and other staff employed in education account for the largest proportion
of current expenditure in all OECD countries. Expenditure on compensation of educational
personnel accounts on average for 79% of current expenditure at the primary, secondary and
post-secondary non-tertiary levels of education, taken together. In all countries except the
Czech Republic, Finland, Korea and the Slovak Republic, 70% or more of current expenditure at
these levels is spent on staff salaries.

You make it sound as if Ireland is unique in its distribution of expenditure going towards salaries.

It's also strange how you highlight the higher salaries of Irish teachers, but not the higher number of hours worked. Seems a bit like cherrypicking.

Hours:

In the EU, only Dutch teachers have more contact hours with their students than Irish teachers (primary level).

At second level, they're in the top third.

What was it you said? Laughable.

On a more general note, the whole education system itself is outdated IMO. I'm not sure curriculum should be driven by a national agenda. I think it would be much better for schools and parents to work together in setting a local curriculum that would respond to the needs of the children. Contrary to some baseless assertions in this thread, most educators do care about outcomes for their students.
IMO, the 'one size fits all' method leaves too many children behind. That is not to say that there shouldn't be high standards.
This talk is always worth a look.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

The Scientician wrote: »

I don't think it's pointless by any means, but it doesn't suit everybody. I also think that if you can, when you leave school you should work for a couple of years, or do something other than college before deciding what course to pursue. A lot of students leave school at 17/18 without a pup's notion what to do education and careerwise and end up picking courses that don't interest them or don't suit them or ultimately turn out to be useful from any economic perspective.

Good post IMO.

Denerick · 13-05-2011 02:54AM

Wicknight wrote: »

I'm not sure why everyone is having such a problem with this concept. I've never in my life heard anyone say they became a teacher because they wanted to make lots of money :rolleyes:

Comparatively few people will ever have a job earning more than 50k per annum. Teachers are on very comfortable salaries, not extravagant salaries. But to say that they are underpaid is stretching credulity somewhat, especially considering that primary school teachers will usually only have 30 hours per week to work (Consider the one hour lunchbreak in a 9-3 day) plus a very generous summer holiday (In fact I know a few teachers who chose the career because they want to go on epic adventures for three months every year...)

mikemac · 13-05-2011 03:03AM

I don't think it's pointless.

I do think doing your leaving cert at 17 and going straight to college isn't always a great idea.
I took a year off and worked in a local factory and saved plenty. Meant I was pretty comfortable in college, sharing a house with a large gang of lads is not for me! I like my comforts and clean house and paid hefty rent for it.

I learned more team working skills, team leadership skills and self confidence in 12 months on a factory floor then four years in college. Ideal for any 17 year old, Irish people are very young heading off to college. A year off can work well.

As for college, my degree is just something on a CV imo. Learned little on it that I ever actually use.
I could have studied something mad like fish farming or History of Art and I think I'd still have the same job nowadays. It's just a piece of paper
I did computing as it was the IT boom at the time, I'd a bit of interest but I never used Windows or had an email address until I started in college. The lecturer was shocked at the ignorance of us lol
"What's that lecturer, right click and file > save as? Can you repeat that?" We were clueless but everyone starts sometime!

Nowadays most ten year olds know all about the internet and email and facebook, know more at ten then I did at 18

Finally, the drop out rate in my course was shocking. A number of reasons of course but whatever government body is looking after this should be looking at this closely

Zombrex · 13-05-2011 03:43AM

Denerick wrote: »

Comparatively few people will ever have a job earning more than 50k per annum. Teachers are on very comfortable salaries, not extravagant salaries.

50k is not a very comfortable salary. I should know I'm on more than that already, and I'm single without a wife or kids.

It is certainly not a salary anyone getting into something for the money would be looking for.

Denerick wrote: »

But to say that they are underpaid is stretching credulity somewhat

I didn't say they are underpaid. I said the idea that teachers are in it for the money is ridiculous. "Being a teacher" would be near the bottom of most people's lists of things to do if you want to become rich.

TaraFoxglove · 13-05-2011 09:02AM

Wicknight wrote: »

50k is not a very comfortable salary.

Excuse me? :eek:

50k is very nice indeed.

My first graduate job paid £20kstg per year and it was a skilled role. This was in 2010, by the way. The next promotion up for me would have got me maybe £28kstg and it would've taken a few years to get that far. Again a technically skilled job. My boss was doing an incredibly responsible job and had been at the company for years and was getting £45kstg for her trouble. And before you say, the cost of living in the south of England where I was isn't much lower than Ireland.

50k isn't a comfortable for a single person? What planet are you living on?

Plus, you seem to missing the point that it's not just about the pay. Teaching is seen as a cushy number because of the holidays and because it is nearly impossible to get sacked from the job.

Red Hand · 13-05-2011 10:17AM

Wicknight wrote: »

50k is not a very comfortable salary. I should know I'm on more than that already, and I'm single without a wife or kids.

It is certainly not a salary anyone getting into something for the money would be looking for.

No, but it's a job with quite a good salary...above the average industrial wage. I know that salary is all relative and to some people 50k a year is peanuts, but not everyone is capable of achieving a six, seven or eight figure income.

Teaching has always been seen by many Irish people as being "a good job". No back breaking physical labour, a reasonable wage and 3 months holidays.

What my mother would call "a clean job" (no getting your hands dirty).:)

Permabear · 13-05-2011 10:48AM

This post has been deleted.

beeftotheheels · 13-05-2011 11:46AM

feelingstressed wrote: »

I don't think it's pointless.

I do think doing your leaving cert at 17 and going straight to college isn't always a great idea.
I took a year off and worked in a local factory and saved plenty. Meant I was pretty comfortable in college, sharing a house with a large gang of lads is not for me! I like my comforts and clean house and paid hefty rent for it.

I learned more team working skills, team leadership skills and self confidence in 12 months on a factory floor then four years in college. Ideal for any 17 year old, Irish people are very young heading off to college. A year off can work well.

As for college, my degree is just something on a CV imo. Learned little on it that I ever actually use.
I could have studied something mad like fish farming or History of Art and I think I'd still have the same job nowadays. It's just a piece of paper
I did computing as it was the IT boom at the time, I'd a bit of interest but I never used Windows or had an email address until I started in college. The lecturer was shocked at the ignorance of us lol
"What's that lecturer, right click and file > save as? Can you repeat that?" We were clueless but everyone starts sometime!

Nowadays most ten year olds know all about the internet and email and facebook, know more at ten then I did at 18

Finally, the drop out rate in my course was shocking. A number of reasons of course but whatever government body is looking after this should be looking at this closely

But what do you think of splitting vocational type degrees from academic type degrees and treating them completely differently?

My degrees are of the traditional type, not only learning what is, but thinking about why that is, and how things should be (airy fairy nonsense for want of a better phrase).

I suspect, and this is where I would like your input, that that process does not necessarily work so well for vocational type degrees (the traditional vocational degrees of law and medicine aside), since as you said you learned a myriad of things in the workplace which you did not learn in college and if the purpose of having a degree in IT is to be able to work in IT, then it should involve all of the skills, not just the IT skills, required. As such it could be perfectly well run outside the traditional college campus structure and I guess that this is reflected in some of the vocational degrees having work placement.

A philosophy degree by contrast, is not designed to equip the holder to do any particular job, it is an exercise in pure thought. It has its benefits to a potential employer in terms of proving that a job candidate has a basic minimum level of intelligence and education, but it has none in terms of indicating that the candidate has any of the specific skills required for any particular job.

If we separate them then we stop trying to force two very different objectives and learning exercises into one system, developed over centuries, to support the traditional type of degree (the airy fairy, library based one).

I have such library based degrees and I loved them, but then my degrees are in Law so are amongst the oldest in existence. The system has been built to support us, and not you. We've even adjusted the system to require that the vocational skills, the soft skills, be studied after the degree in order to practice as a lawyer. But we've had a very long time to figure this out, and it strikes me as being problematic that a process which can work fine for degrees based, at least in part, on questioning why and what should be, does not work so well for degrees designed to equip a student to enter a particular employment.

Thoughts would be welcome

Zombrex · 13-05-2011 11:56AM

TaraFoxglove wrote: »

50k is very nice indeed.

No it isn't. In my experience the only people who think like this are very young people who have zero responsibilities and think anything is better than the minimum wage job they had waiting tables in college.

Throw a mortgage, a few kids, bills, a car, savings etc and that 50k is gone pretty fast.

TaraFoxglove wrote: »

My first graduate job paid £20kstg per year and it was a skilled role. This was in 2010, by the way. The next promotion up for me would have got me maybe £28kstg and it would've taken a few years to get that far.

I suggest you leave what ever industry as they are paying far too little.

TaraFoxglove wrote: »

Again a technically skilled job. My boss was doing an incredibly responsible job and had been at the company for years and was getting £45kstg for her trouble.

I find that very difficult to believe, but again if that is the case your boss should be looking around for a better company to work for.

For example the average wage for a manager in IT is $90,000 (approx 65,000 euro), with over 100,000 not being at all uncommon. Someone working at a company for years in a manager role who was still on £45k (50k euro) is being a fool.

Where the heck did you work?

TaraFoxglove wrote: »

And before you say, the cost of living in the south of England where I was isn't much lower than Ireland.

I've no doubt. The company you worked for was ripping off its employees big time (if we assume your story is true)

TaraFoxglove wrote: »

50k isn't a comfortable for a single person? What planet are you living on?

This one. The one where the average salary in IT for a developer is $75,000 (50k euro). An average brought down by things like call centre staff.

TaraFoxglove wrote: »

Plus, you seem to missing the point that it's not just about the pay. Teaching is seen as a cushy number because of the holidays and because it is nearly impossible to get sacked from the job.

You don't get extra money for holidays, as such it is irrelevant to the original objection to the idea that people become teachers for the money.

Bottle_of_Smoke · 13-05-2011 12:25PM

Wicknight wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

Wick 50K really is comfortable for most people. The claim wasn't made that teachers are only in it for the money:

Permabear wrote:

This post has been deleted.

That to me does not say "teachers are only in it for the money" - it says a comfortable salary is part of the attraction.

It may be something I'll go into in a few years. The main reasons in no particular order are the long holidays, rewarding job, I think I'd be good at it and I'd be comfortable with the salary.

Is college pointless?

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