Is college pointless?

Nolanger · 06-06-2011 03:06PM

whydoibother? wrote: »

My comments were confined to people who want to go to college and most of those who do, and have the grades to get in are capable of completing courses. Entrance requirements mean that generally people do have the capacity for the courses they choose. What I was objecting to, drastically reducing the number of courses as has been proposed by many previous posters. That will just lead to ridiculous inflation of entry requirements as we previously saw with courses like medicine.

The reason there is a shortage of Irish doctors in our hospitals is because of the feminisation of the LC where girls do better and go on to train as doctors. Then they quit to have kids or take maternity leave resulting in overpaid consultants and waiting lists.

whydoibother? wrote: »

In relation to your drivers exam analogy. I'm not saying you should be granted a licence if you fail your exam, I'm merely arguing for your right to have lessons. You should be given a chance first. Also please note that I said "college" should be for everybody who wants to learn, not "university". I had anticipated the life-long learning point.

If someone is bright they can learn themselves. They don't need to be 'taught'. This is especially true with the arts subjects.

whydoibother? wrote: »

The kind of skills for entrepreneurship that I would see as relevant being taught in a college could come from potentially any field. Business is the first obvious example - somebody who understands market research, financial planning, management, accounting, product design etc. (I could go on forever) will have a stronger chance when they apply this in conjunction with their "gut feeling" that there is a gap in the market for something than somebody who does it all on instinct. Somebody from a non business field may see a gap. A chemistry graduate may think of something that would be a real hit in that industry that the average person without any particular science knowledge could never come up with. College is a life experience too.

Most chemistry graduates are nerds with zero business skills. The kind of people who do well in business are 'players' - people who can talk and sell themselves and bounce back. Colleges do not produce these people - they are born that way. Another point is that most successful things happen by accident. They are discovered by chance by people who don't know what they're really doing. You don't need a degree for that. Colleges produce conformists not rule breakers or outsiders.

06-06-2011 03:16PM

Nolanger wrote: »

the feminisation of the LC

The what?

Nolanger · 06-06-2011 03:19PM

bluewolf wrote: »

The what?

Leaving Certificate!

06-06-2011 03:23PM

Nolanger wrote: »

Leaving Certificate!

lol!
I was asking what you meant by its feminisation

Nolanger · 06-06-2011 03:49PM

There have been several reports on how male pupils get less points in the LC than girls due to the absence of male teachers. Here's an older article:

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/lack-of-male-teachers-hits-boys-grades-1077763.html

Eliot Rosewater · 06-06-2011 05:46PM

whydoibother? wrote: »

My comments were confined to people who want to go to college and most of those who do, and have the grades to get in are capable of completing courses. Entrance requirements mean that generally people do have the capacity for the courses they choose.

Not really. The drop out rates in some colleges like DCU are enormous. Entrance requirements aren't directly based on the difficulty of the course, but rather on demand. Most worryingly, if a college wants to expand a course to take on more students (for more government funding, or whatever) they will have to lower the standards of the course so that the new entrants (who wouldn't make it under the old scheme) will be able to get by. One of the disadvantages of the college-for-all policy is that standards must inevitably go down as people who wouldn't otherwise go to college do.

whydoibother? wrote: »

College is a life experience too.

Nowadays the college experience mostly revolves around drinking, sex and having a laugh. I'm not saying that they're necessarily bad things in isolation, but under the current system the government is effectively subsidising that kind of lifestyle. It's not a lifestyle which yields economically, intellectually or socially beneficial people. Once again, that's not a problem by itself. The problem is that the government is paying for it. Taxpayers should be looking for dividends on their investments, and under the current set-up I'm not sure they're getting many. (At least, they're not getting as many as the USI would like them to think. They're obviously getting some.)

whydoibother? wrote: »

I also would like to point out that I never said that people should never take risks. I just think that nobody should be forced into it because it's the only option available to them. If someone fancies themselves as the next Bill Gates, good luck to them. But there has to be options for people who don't particularly have that kind of nature. Some people just aren't naturally entrepreneurs.

Sure, but to be brutally honest they shouldn't expect so much. People are always demanding that the government (or other people) should be creating jobs for them. But if those people don't lead the way and at least try to create a job for themselves, do they have moral authority to demand it of others? I'm not so sure.

I would also dispute this "Bill Gates" portrayal of entrepreneurship. I think it gives a false impression of what entrepreneurship is, and gives a means of escape for people who don't want to be challenged. ("Sure I'm never going to be as rich as Bill Gates, so why even try?") Setting up your own business can be financially rewarding, but it needn't be done in an attempt to hit the jackpot. Many business owners and job-creators earn the same amount of money as teachers. It's not a totally different world.

And I say that, by the way, as someone who has a tendency to choose easy options. Sure, after my undergrad, I'll do a PhD. Trying to break out of that cultural mold is tough.

Nolanger · 06-06-2011 06:15PM

Those are not my quotes. They belong to whydoibother?

mcjagger · 06-06-2011 06:55PM

i went to college in 2004 to study irish teaching. i took so many drugs there that i ended up dropping out with a mental illness

Permabear · 06-06-2011 07:11PM

This post has been deleted.

08-06-2011 10:25AM

Its a very complex area, what do you want the vast majority of 18 year old's to do? ( as they the vast majority won't be going to university in the system you are proposing )

There is a strong correlation between your level of education and how much you earn, how long you live, and your health,... in other words if you go to college you will have a better quality of life over your whole life.

My eldest daughter is a nurse and she went to university to do nursing if you asked her she would say she that she learned the practical skill of nursing on her placements...what she got for the academic part of her course was the ability to criticality read and understand research, how find information and how to write an academic paper....skills that have stood her in good stead but which aren't directly relevant to everyday nursing.

Its not as simple as saying too many 18 year old's go to college.

08-06-2011 10:28AM

mariaalice wrote: »

Its a very complex area, what do you want the vast majority of 18 year old's to do? ( as they the vast majority won't be going to university in the system you are proposing )

I don't know about vast majority, but they could work? Do trades? Other non-uni courses? It is a problem if we are assuming uni should be the default option for everyone

There is a strong correlation between your level of education and how much you earn, how long you live, and your health,... in other words if you go to college you will have a better quality of life over your whole life.

Doesn't have to be at 18 though does it

Nolanger · 08-06-2011 06:28PM

bluewolf wrote: »

I don't know about vast majority, but they could work? Do trades? Other non-uni courses? It is a problem if we are assuming uni should be the default option for everyone

Also, you don't need to emigrate to set up a website for e-business?

Permabear · 08-06-2011 08:52PM

This post has been deleted.

09-06-2011 11:39AM

Permabear I am not saying you don't have a point but I think you are taking it too far...college is not just about an academic education is much more that that.

locked_out · 02-08-2011 05:28AM

mariaalice wrote: »

Permabear I am not saying you don't have a point but I think you are taking it too far...college is not just about an academic education is much more that that.

What the hell are you going to college for then? It's all about the "dugree" at the end of the day. People don't give a **** about anything else. You are talking crap, dear sir.

More than that my fat arse...

johnnyskeleton · 09-08-2011 07:30PM

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

There was a time when if you wanted to be a doctor/lawyer/accountant etc you didn't need a college degree, you simply apprenticed into it and figured it out on the job.

There is an argument that modern college degrees in medicine/law/business are too academic and are divorced from the reality of practice in those professions. There is much weight behind this.

However, I think that a well rounded professional person will benefit from experience on the job but also from a well grounded academic background. Working familiarises you with what is, academic training introduces you to what could be.

Mr. Loverman · 11-08-2011 04:33AM

I am currently in Japan and foreigners are required to have a college degree before they can get a job here, even in McDonalds. So if you want to live and work in certain parts of Asia a degree is a necessity.

Bukit Timah · 11-08-2011 04:47AM

College is pointless if you do a pointless course

Blisterman · 31-08-2011 04:53PM

There's some major generalisation about college students here.

Speaking for myself and nearly everyone in my graduating class of architecture, we put in at least 80 hours of coursework a week, and I know I certainly learned a lot in terms of knowledge, skills and creative thinking. Not so much from the tutors, but because I was in such a competitive environment, that I was compelled to push myself to learn.

At the time, the only use I saw for being enrolled on the course was to get the necessary degree, the tutors certaintly didn't teach me much. But thinking about it honestly, if I had been left to my own devices with no deadlines or assessments, I wouldn't have pushed myself nearly as hard to learn. So I think despite the numerous major issues I've found with the university system: bias, beurocracy, apathy, favouritism etc., I think there's definitely some value to the university experience.

Permabear · 31-08-2011 04:59PM

This post has been deleted.

Blisterman · 31-08-2011 05:09PM

Yeah, 9 to 9.30 was my usual schedule. Half an hour for lunch, with the odd few hours off for sports etc. Longer hours approaching deadlines, and I was pretty relaxed compared to many others on my course. Still managed to go out 2 or 3 nights a week, and I mostly enjoyed the work, so it wasn't a problem.

But yeah, Architecture is unusally hard. My ex's law course seemed like a holiday by comparison. The last year we had to work through the summer.

Geekness1234 · 31-08-2011 05:15PM

It really depends on where your skills are.If you like fooling around with test-tubes then a chemistry degree would be nice.Then again if you like tinkering with cars trade school would be good.

doopa · 31-08-2011 09:18PM

Interesting post via irishscience blog:

http://cmpo.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/is-it-worth-going-to-university-part-i/

Basically doing the economics of higher education for students.

For what its worth I think it really depends on what course you do. Personally I can't see the point in a degree if you do business, media etc. A traditional liberal arts degree and then a specialisation, work experience internship would be a more productive use of your time. I would question the academic aspects of many of these type of business or generic training courses. When I talk about liberal arts in Europe I guess I mean courses like PPE in Oxbridge (don't know about equivalents here - but classics things like that).

Its worth looking at what people who excel in the field your interesting in did originally - take advertising, Saatchi and Saatchi one of them studied at LSE. However most graduates entering it except to suceed having taken relatively easier courses.

Villette · 01-09-2011 05:22PM

A popular opinion seems to be that if you study a so-called 'useless' degree then college is pointless and that college should be about getting a job. I completely disagree. I don't think college is pointless if you're not qualified to do anything straight after graduation. In fact, I think that the point of education generally shouldn't be considered as solely to do with getting a job. This is the problem with education in Ireland, where the focus is on points in the leaving cert, and getting into a course that will get you the highest paid job.
I think that going to college is beneficial in a number of areas - and of course getting a job in a preferred area is one of these benefits. However, I think the most important aspect of college is getting an education that opens the mind. The so-called pointless degrees (the most obvious being the mocked Arts degree) are important because they teach you to think and question, and they open you up to new ideas.
I actually think that the degrees that educate rather than train are more important. You should come out of a college degree asking more questions than you had on entering.

Geekness1234 · 02-09-2011 08:50PM

Considering american parents don't see much change out of $200000 it can be viewed as pointless if lil'jimmy is getting sh!t faced every second day and hung over other day instead giving it a lash for a while.

Is college pointless?

Comments