College is a waste of time.
14 Sep 2007, 4:54 pm
This way to think is based on common sense and reflects what all people think. It is hard to argue against that and it is okay as a general rule.
However, obtaining a Master's degree or a PhD is obtained by following patterns. It also often is related to knowing or working with the right people and getting into the right projects.
I would like to recommend caution when applying special merits to academic degrees. While a degree always is worth something very little is to be said about the person having it. That person will likely have deserved it but there are also other things involved. Again, working in the right teams, getting access to the right interesting projects, dialing the right phone numbers or being out for lunch with the right people also matter. I do not talk like that because I suffered from those conditions but because I was lucky and had the support from people who could get me further at critical times.
So while it is okay to use academic degrees as a general rule, having a degree means a lot of knowledge but little about the ability to apply that knowledge. People without a degree might have better abilities but have had less chances. Lack of access to interesting projects or not getting into the good teams can kill every motivation efficiently. Last but not least the difference of having and not having an advanced degree is often made by the size of the pockets of your parents.
15 Sep 2007, 4:01 am
I want to add one more comment to explain why some students show a tendency of calling teachers and lecturers incapable or a failure. The key to that notion is the presence or absence of visual spatial abilities.
Having this abilities means you can visualize almost everything. In geometry or calculus you can see planes and spaces intersecting, points merging from many to only one points, you can see how functions generate a mountain landscape and you can visualize how to put that landscape somewhere, shrinking and stretching it and suddenly you understand things many people would consider incomprehensible.
The sad thing is: Many people working at college or university teach that stuff without having those abilities. They have good understanding and knowledge of concepts, facts and formulas and how to apply them but they lack the final spark of visual abilities. So their lectures are often unintuitive, like a drill, uncreative and far from being fascinating, entertaining and meaning fun.
Following such a lecture is not only exhausting because you cannot not use your own visual spatial abilites, it is also exhausting and frustrating because you have to follow the path of the tiny steps that resembles the lecturers way to get along with those things. Exams do not become interesting challenges but only stress your ability to concentrate on meaningless repetitive drills and those students excell who just make fewer mistakes. Usually it is those students who lack visual abilities as well and just would not get as frustrated as you.
When you attent a lecture you will soon realize whether the person in front of the class is a visual spatial thinker. He will either intuitively teach a way that is compatible with visual thinking or he will be ignorant of it. You can still take that lecture and pass the exams, but it is not the same and you will not feel as satisfied as if you would have had another person teaching you.
Last edited by byrlawson on 15 Sep 2007, 6:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
02 Oct 2007, 12:36 am
Thanks for all your posts. I took your advice and continue my 'studies' nonetheless. But recently, my patience has been pushed to the limits.
I did well in my quiz. I answered most of the questions correctly. My answers are perfectly logical, backed with facts and have virtually no grammatical nor spelling errors.
And what did I get? 45%.
Apparently that stupid b***h lecturer decided to give all my correct answers partial marks due to some mysterious reason that she won't explain (actually she does gave a catch-all excuse: MATURITY. What do you expect?). I am so angry that I feel like wanting to kill her.
Like someone here have wrote, I should really focus on mastering the subject and improving my work skills rather than trying to look good on a piece of paper. Ultimately it would be ME who is there working and earning myself money, not the grades. But if I am being bullied up to the point of forcing to repeat the subject, how on earth can I ignore this problem!?
The no-good scum lecturer today gave another oh-so-lame speech about us needing to pay more attention in class or be more brave on asking her questions. Pay more attention?Yeah.....I would if she would stop writing in f*****g Manglish. Ask her questions?Maaaaaaaaybee......if she would stop giving a rude face to those who do ask questions.
I am damn sure she would have noticed the crititisms from the various course evaluation papers we students fill in after the end of each subjects we take. But I suppose like all Malaysians do, they just simply pretend they are always right.
You know what? I have this disturbing notion that the admins up there somehow are telling the lecturers to mark students badly so that they would be encouraged to repeat the subjects and give them more money. Heck, seeing from the various corrupt practices in the academia (like taking in students with "greater alumni donating potential") I fail to see how is that unlikely. Private colleges,after all, are built on the premise of EARNING MAXIMUM PROFITS...
By the time my current part time job generates high enough income for me, I am QUITTING college even if it is my last semester!!
02 Oct 2007, 3:10 pm
Sorry I can't help you with your problem - you're obviously in an institution outside the USA. I can sympathize - I once had a lecturer who so infused every lecture she gave with her personal opinions that they were worthless. The class - in English Children's Literature...sigh... the final exam, which I would have expected to contain questions about themes, motivations, anything related to the work, actually contained questions like "what was the author's father-in-law's line of business?" and "list several justifications for the author to have been such a sexist pig", etc., etc., etc. I took a class on American Indian History and the questions on the exam had nothing to do with the forces or cultures at play - I remember one question was "how many feathers were on Chief So-And-So's war bonnet?". Another was "In what state was the first federal indian reservation established." I once worked in a doctoral program with a woman who gave me a low "A" ("A" is excellent) on a one-question essay. When I dropped her class due to an overload and took it again in a future term and answered the same question with precisely the same answer gave me a "C-" (barely passing at the undergraduate level and implying failing at the grad level). Her rationale was that "I'd been in that PhD program for a year and should know better by then." And that I was "too dismissive". I also wasn't in her clique of followers, so that kind of sealed my doom in interactions with her. Sometimes you just have to suffer through, with the understanding that in the "real world" as well there are an awful lot of idiots and unclear information, and people who and situations that will bore you s**tless. Still, you have to deal with them. (At this point, I wish I had all the money I'd spent on all those years in university in my pocket, instead of in theirs or as listed on a loan note!)
On the US Education Front (lecture coming, warning!):
The last time I looked at the stats (about 10 years ago), only 30% of the people in any given degree field in the USA ended up working in that field a few years later. A general university degree in the US is basically a certificate for middle-class finishing school.
If you choose a major wisely (i.e., you've done your research on what's hot on the job market), and have talent in it, and are able to get into the schools that have enough placement connections to get you launched properly on graduation, you can parley a university degree into a solid career. Should you borrow extensively to pay for it? My hunch is that if you get on in the mailroom of a company, without a college degree, and work your way up in the organization, you'll actually come out ahead in the overall - you'll have a resume that'd choke a horse and not have tens of thousands of dollars of student loans to pay back. Many of the larger companies will reimburse your tuition costs, so why not let them buy your diploma? It's not always possible, but if you see that option, you might seriously consider it.
From what I've seen in my 30-odd years working, that BA/BS diploma is only good as an entry-level credential, and then only sometimes. (And in those cases where it was a door-opener, five years into a career nobody cares if you did or didn't get a BA. It's your resume and references that carry you.)
You will definitely run into organizations that won't talk to you if you don't have a degree (this is not including those fields that do require specialized training - the professions, etc.). That tends to have less to do with the actual value of the information you've supposedly gotten at school and more about a social expectation - class snobbery, if you want to think of it in those terms. The folks that spent all the time and money getting their degrees want to work with other people of the same ilk. (I've never been sure but that it wasn't so they could justify, in their own minds, that they'd done the right thing in having jumped the academic hoops themselves.)
Given that, there are an enormous number of organizations and jobs that do NOT require a university education. I've been in the hiring seat many times in my life. I would almost always take someone with a years' experience over a new college graduate with no experience for any placement I was making. Quite frankly, most of the administration and business jobs for which I've hired people get no benefit in being filled by someone having a degree. If you are already relatively literate - if you can read and write coherently - and are intelligent and want to learn, you don't need a diploma to do most jobs I've come across. My experience is that those that require specialized training are so specialized that the training isn't available in a university setting - it's gotten OTJ or through very short educational programs at the workplace or affiliated with the industries.
On the other hand, those specialized fields where a university degree is needed tend to need advanced degrees - medicine, nursing, research, engineering, mental health, etc. So, if you're seriously into that kind of field as a chosen profession, you'll have to jump the hoops and hopefully learn the material and skills that go with an advanced degree.
If you happen to have a third hand, and a rich uncle who wants you to be "fulfilled" and "enriched", or you don't mind taking on debt for a project that won't have a financial payoff, you can get a bachelors' degree (or more) in a subject that you love simply for the love of the subject. That used to be the province of the monied classes - those who had the luxury and the cash to attend universities, in a different age. Still, it's available if you want the millstone-debt around your neck. Just be aware that you cannot discharge government student loans via bankruptcy. They'll let you get rid of all your other debt, but those student loans will follow you to your grave. I met a woman a few years ago who had terminal brain cancer. The feds would not forgive her loans and garnished part of what she had as needed income in her final years of life.
The higher education industry IS an industry. With salespeople, and their own propaganda, and an agenda. Don't mistake it for a generically benign force in the world. It does a lot of good, but it exists to self-perpetuate. If you can use it to get ahead, go for it. But don't buy into the propaganda.
And the best of luck to you, whatever you choose!
04 Oct 2007, 8:00 am
Any college that applies working in the right teams is a significant part of getting a master's or Ph. D. isn't worth the ink on your diploma, and has probably not produced enough quality graduates for the vast majority of students to even consider matriculating there, expecially is one of the most important componenets of a master's is an intense individual original research project that you defend to a group of faculty members, which often manifests itself a thesis of at least 100 pages. When you get a Ph D your individual research is to be even more indepth than the Masters, quite frequently resulting in a 300+ page dissertation. I could show you several of exampls of these the original reasearch. I bet I have 150 theses, and 75 dissertations, from universitys across the globe, give or take a few, saved to my harddrive right now as part of the background on the research i'm currently conducting.
Furthermore, the only people who being out to lunch with would help you get your master's phD degree are professors. They have busy schedules with manys tudents, so you are going to have to prove yourself to be quite worth their time before they are going to spend an hour with you outside of their office hours. Its not like you can go up to them and say, "Hey Dr. Smith, want to go get some pizza." and then have Dr. Smith drop everything to spend an hour of his time chatting with you over pizza, enhancing your connections. Not to mention if a professor is having lunch with you its to focus on a specific topic that you want/need to discuss in detail first. Like how to best tackle your research. While professors can be helpful, friendly and kind, they are not friends - they are professors whose goal is to help you succeed. A professor won't put you into contact with Joe Slick, unless you have already proven to the professor that you are good enough to work for Joe Slick. Its not the "this is my son/friend/neighbor, hire him now" type of deal. Its "This student has done this, this and this, and has these skills. He'd be great for your company" type of deal
What your describing sounds much more like how one succeeds in business, which is known to be quite a different environment from academia (to the point that many graduates have difficulty when they first enter the workplace.)
03 Nov 2007, 1:49 pm
Get a two year diploma in a technical college or simply drop out after taking the first semester. A technical college teaches you more practical skills anyway and being an aspie that loves learning the subject on their own you won't miss the theory portion of it by being forced to attend lectures in a rigid schedule because you'll be learning the theories on your own terms.
I dropping out of my program after my first semester, but before I do I'll simply go to the bookstore and buy the books that goes with the courses in the program and studying them on my own. Besides, with answers printed at the back of these textbooks, you can double check if your understanding of the theories are correct (and don't think textbook authors are infallible either).
11 Nov 2007, 9:33 pm
After great deliberation, i have decided that I am going ahead with this stupid degree.
Regardless of the stupidity of the system, I admit that I have learned many useful things that are difficult to find elsewhere. And since I have gone this far, it would be a waste if I just stopped now. Now if only I could find a job away from these people....
12 Nov 2007, 8:58 pm
The insane amount of money I had to fork in for each subject does not translate fairly to the knowledge that I get. I learn a lot more by studying alone and in solitude under the same period of time - without spending any money!
Attending lectures is a waste of time. The lecturers do nothing but recite the notes in a different tone. I can read through the 2 hour lecture material in 10 minutes under full concentration, but I can only pay attention for the first 15 minutes of the lecture and then doze off doing something else. I guess that it's due to me having AADD, but I noticed that MOST of the students are doing the same as I do.
Lecturers are arrogant and narrow-minded people with an imperfect comprehension of their own subjects. They love to irritate my by encouraging me to ask questions, and throw ridicules like "What year you think you are now?" or "How old are you, really?" when I do ask them questions. They ALWAYS claim to be 'experts' on that subject - - especially that particular as*hole marketing lecturer. But really, why didn't I see him filled with $$$es if he truly know what he teaches?What I think is that "Those who can, do...but those who can't, teach".
Their course materials are anything but sufficient. The lecture notes always have grammatical errors and random copy-pastes from various books that makes comprehension difficult. The only use of these lecture 'notes' and 'handouts' for me is the important keywords it contain. I learn by taking the keywords and then research it on the Internet or at the library. But even without the lecture notes I still can find the keywords on my own anyway.
My no.1 hatred of the system is the marking system. Answers are not evaluated on basis of factual correctness, but on the marker's satisfaction. Yeah, you heard all this nonsense about "not interested in the answers but in how you answer it " or "displaying maturity in writing" or "showing aptitude for the subject". What in actually practice happens is that no matter what you write you will always had marks deducted even though what you wrote is correct. They will always find some excuses not to give you marks, even the silliest ones like spelling errors or lack of pictures (fortunately they can't do that in Math papers lol).
As expected the lecturers always give their own answers full marks during tutorial, even though by close inspection my answers turned out to be more straight-to-the-point, easier to read, more grammatically correct and more concise than theirs. Bloody hypocrites. No wait...hypocrisy is not the best term to describe them. Pseudo-intelligent is more like it.
I have already witnessed the by-products of this so-called "excellent" education system. The graduates are extremely incompetent and unoriginal - even the first-class degree holders. There are some that have excellent working skills - but that is the exception, not the norm - and besides, they usually don't have good grades in their degrees.
I laughed at those so-called successful graduates who got A in marketing. They must be thinking that they would pwn the marketing world with their oh-so-high mastery of the subject. They didn't know that the main problem with applying what college teaches them (aka the "right thing") is that so is everyone else. Pity for them that college never prepares them to deal with the situation where everybody does exactly the same thing. One of the highest demands by the employers is the ability to think out of the box - to dare try out 'wrong' strategies that no one else has tried before. But really, since college punishes anyone that doesn't conform to the lecturers - who in turn are afraid to think differently because of the previous lecturers who taught them - how can they develop the skills nessesary to think differently?
Those I have decided not to focus on college any more. I am going to learn by my own. I will not pursue any more degrees after this. I might even drop immediately when I have a steady part-time job. I will consider other options like online degrees and such, but I am not going to college.
College is for those stupid hypocrites who actually enjoy living under the shadow of inferior individuals and trapping themselves in a never-ending circle of failure (not to mention never ending volumes of debt). An Aspie like me deserves better.
The bulk of my knowledge has always been derived from self study, thus it is logical for me to focus on what I do best.
It's understandable, but do realize that a bachelor's degree gets you taken more seriously in the "real world". I mean, I wish I didn't have to see my parents shell out a new car every near for college, but it's a sacrifice that is (hopefully) worth it.
13 Nov 2007, 11:51 pm
Yeah there is tons of BS you have to put up with in college. But how is that different than in the real world? There is BS everywhere!
If you are a person who loves to learn, then college is a great place to do so. If you are a computer nut like me, you can find people of the like, and most of the professors are too! You also get to study cool things like philosophy that make you think outside of the box. You will probably find it hard to make time things like this once your job is weighing you down in the real world.
Sure many professors are pompus jackasses and love to test you on tedious and unimportant information! Is that a reason to quit??? IT SURE AS **** ISN'T!! ! If learning is your main goal, then you should be able to overlook the BS. If you get a B in a class because of some BS, who cares? Did you learn? You'll make up the grade in your next class where the professor is cool or more your type. It all evens out...if you have a good attitude about it. If you are resentfull, then yes, It WILL suck!! !
Good Luck, learn for the sake of learning, take tests because they require it, do it because you want to stay there and learn even more. Think of tests and projects like a game rather than a prison.
AND....Stop encouraging people to drop out of school!! !! !! !
13 Nov 2007, 11:57 pm
Reagrdless, I need it to get a higher paying job so we really don't have any choice; you pretty much have to go college unless you are Bill Gates.
Bill Gates had to go to college too!! ! Do you think he would have met Paul Allen, went to computer clubs, and eventually start Microsoft if he was woking at a crappy job for no money that dulled his mind and didn't open up any opportunities for him???
13 Nov 2007, 11:57 pm
If you are a person who loves to learn, then college is a great place to do so. If you are a computer nut like me, you can find people of the like, and most of the professors are too! You also get to study cool things like philosophy that make you think outside of the box. You will probably find it hard to make time things like this once your job is weighing you down in the real world.
Sure many professors are pompus jackasses and love to test you on tedious and unimportant information! Is that a reason to quit??? IT SURE AS **** ISN'T!! ! If learning is your main goal, then you should be able to overlook the BS. If you get a B in a class because of some BS, who cares? Did you learn? You'll make up the grade in your next class where the professor is cool or more your type. It all evens out...if you have a good attitude about it. If you are resentfull, then yes, It WILL suck!! !
Good Luck, learn for the sake of learning, take tests because they require it, do it because you want to stay there and learn even more. Think of tests and projects like a game rather than a prison.
AND....Stop encouraging people to drop out of school!! !! !! !
I agree. There are things that suck about every level of school, aswell as different jobs, unemployment, etc. but I think overall University is the best place to be. Even in a job that you love, there are still lots of deadlines and unforseen hassles, in University I basically do whatever the hell I want as long as I attend class and do assignments.
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14 Nov 2007, 12:41 am
depends what u want to do
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