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Great, so what are you doing with all this reading besides beating college kids over the head with it?
I would say that your post is a strong indication you'll be back in college in no time, though. Relieving bitterness by posting essay-length screeds on an internet forum just doesn't scratch the itch. I know from experience.
I will go back...maybe. I can't decide wether I want to go to college, get into debt, OR just go into a little debt at a trade school or something at get a technical job like welding or something and make just as much as a "white collar job" with half the debt and not have to "sell out" (the user ID ain't just for show)
I mean, the only thing I really want to study is religion and philosophy...good like finding a job in those fields!
I fully understand those who rage against the idea of college. Frankly, I think they are much too open. I think a vast public university system is flooding the market with meaningless degrees, which are a product of a depressed public primary school system that pushes the ignorant through.
There is no security in a bachelor's degree anymore, because in most cases it's just a set of secondary high school level classes. I'm in a decent public university right now, and I stick my head in a book and refuse to participate in the asinine BS that is college life. The idiocy really turns a lot of very intellectual people off of college in general. If these people are going through college drunk and high and will come out on the other side with the same degree I do, what is the point in trying?
You just have to learn to play the system. I'm a straight-A pre-med student working in Psychology and Cognitive Science with a minor in Classics and a concentration in neurology and linguistics. You know where I learned most of what I know? Books, reading, and looking it up on my own. College only gives you a framework, that 90% of people refuse to expand on. Before I went to college full-time, I was a cook and dishwasher..and I met some of the smartest people in the world working in a kitchen. But if you aren't happy making $10/hr for hard labor the rest of your life, you have to suck it up, deal with idiots living off of mommy and daddy, and get a degree.
Smart people get disillusioned very easily. I still marvel at the Big Mac culture, and the three car entitlement that we have in the US. My advice: keep humble, admit you don't know anything, and then try to anyways. College will help you keep learning by giving you a career that will actually pay to keep a roof over your head.
No College will not necessarily make you anything.
However, it can open doors to a better $$$ life.
It can't even guarantee that, but it does make it a heck of a lot easier.
What's easier? Making six figures with a GED, or with a J.D. or MBA from Harvard?
On average I think you'll find more of the Harvard crowd earning six figures than the GED crowd. Of course we can all name some exceptions. But that's what they are, *exceptions*.
And that is the only thing Universities have going for them: A "get allot of money" free card....granted, someone like me will be in debt up to their eyeballs, but at least it will let me get a "real job"....or, maybe I could just go to a technical school for two years, have half the debt, and get a skilled labor job, like a mechanist or a welder or something. Right out the door one makes about 30,000-40,000 a year with half the debt of a college grad.
Also, allot of people will NEVER want to go to Harvard. I mean, this is hard for some people to understand but, in allot of circuls, having a Harvard education is like having a Scarlet Letter...I could not imagine having a beer at Hardcore Night somewhere and someone asking me "what do you do?" and I say "I go to Harvard..." I could just imagine the "YUPPIE ALERT!" going off and suddenly I find myself getting the crap beaten out of me.
Quote:
OK, maybe that's elitism. But guess what? We live in a world of elitism. Wish I'd have understood that when I was making decisions about my education.
Trust me, better to blow the 4-10 years of upper education at an Ivy League than a lifetime of second class living because you didn't.
Think about that.
Now let me say it again to make sure it sunk in.
Better to blow the 4-10 years of upper education at an Ivy League than a lifetime of second class living because you didn't.
However, I have met so many people who are ridiculously happy working a blue-coller job and so many yuppies who are miserable...just the notion of looking in the mirror one day and seeing that I have, indeed, become a Yuppie makes me depressed. Racket-Ball? Harvard? A Porsch? (that has oil that I don't know how to change myself) A trophy wife named "Patrecia"? How could I live like that? I mean, getting an eventual Master's in psychology and having a little clinic is one thing...being a CEO who walks like he has a potato chip stuck up his butt that he doen't want to break?
Not everyone wants the same things out of life....I see so many Yuppies who have absolute contempt for the aging DeadHead or Original Punk, who is his age with no money and no career and still living like he's 21 and why the contempt? BECAUSE THE OLD DEADHEAD AND THE OLD ORIGINAL PUNK ARE TEN TIMES AS HAPPY AS THE YUPPIE IS WITH ONE TENTH THE CASH, AND THE YUPPIES KNOWS GOOD AND WELL THAT WHATEVER THEY HAVE INSIDE THAT MAKES THEM HAPPY, HE DOESN'T AND HE CAN'T BUY NO MATTER HOW MUCH HE IS WILLING TO PAY.
I am not saying I want to renounce worldly things (even though it does sound cool as hell) But I still don't want to go to school to become a Yuppie and sell my soul to "The Company" for material wealth either.
I fully understand those who rage against the idea of college. Frankly, I think they are much too open. I think a vast public university system is flooding the market with meaningless degrees, which are a product of a depressed public primary school system that pushes the ignorant through.
There is no security in a bachelor's degree anymore, because in most cases it's just a set of secondary high school level classes. I'm in a decent public university right now, and I stick my head in a book and refuse to participate in the asinine BS that is college life. The idiocy really turns a lot of very intellectual people off of college in general. If these people are going through college drunk and high and will come out on the other side with the same degree I do, what is the point in trying?
You just have to learn to play the system. I'm a straight-A pre-med student working in Psychology and Cognitive Science with a minor in Classics and a concentration in neurology and linguistics. You know where I learned most of what I know? Books, reading, and looking it up on my own. College only gives you a framework, that 90% of people refuse to expand on. Before I went to college full-time, I was a cook and dishwasher..and I met some of the smartest people in the world working in a kitchen. But if you aren't happy making $10/hr for hard labor the rest of your life, you have to suck it up, deal with idiots living off of mommy and daddy, and get a degree.
Smart people get disillusioned very easily. I still marvel at the Big Mac culture, and the three car entitlement that we have in the US. My advice: keep humble, admit you don't know anything, and then try to anyways. College will help you keep learning by giving you a career that will actually pay to keep a roof over your head.
Agreed! I am not saying College is a bad thing, just that people should understand that college ALONE will not make you smart and, like you said, people need to EXPAND on what they are learning and understand that they need to get an education, not just a piece of paper to call themselves "smart".
I know people in graduate school that thought they were doing amazingly difficult concepts but it really wasn't or it wasn't too applicable to the real world but then they would boast and brag about it like they had learned something truly amazing.
A lot of college kids are pretentious, judgmental, take themselves way too seriously, and are too into themselves. It's like junior high but with thousands upon thousands of brats instead of a few hundred here and there.
I see a lot of anti-intellectualism in this thread, disguised as disdain for the college system itself. What's wrong with going to college? Lots of people who ARE smart, who do like to learn things, and who - gasp - even have pink hair, or even radical views on things - go to college. If they're lucky (and smart) they get financial aid and scholarships to cover most of the costs.
Money doesn't mean everything, of course, but frankly that's a separate discussion from whether or not college can make you smart. College is also about more than just reading books and writing papers; it's being exposed to new ideas and new people, learning how to make arguments and how to ask questions. It's not about "technical knowledge." And as for your examples, we could all pick out people without college educations who have done or said incredibly stupid things. Does that mean that all people without college degrees are stupid? Of course not. Do blue-collar workers somehow live on some elevated moral plane? I don't think that's true, either. Making assumptions on people, their intelligence, or their values based on school is a silly thing whichever way you look at it.
And finally, college degree doesn't guarantee you a lot of money. You're more likely to reach that goal with college degree in hand, of course, but don't think that a college degree is going to turn you into an instant yuppie.
I don't spend all my time railing about people who choose not to go to college or who choose to go with a technical program instead; why all the antagonism towards those who have chosen to go the college route? It sounds like you had a bad college experience, but one individual experience is not representative of the system as a whole.
I love the saying " You can't fix stupid" it's true. Some people are stupid. I had a girl in one of my classes who was dumb as dirt,(although that may be an insult to dirt), so yes in her case no amount of school will help.
You can however learn in college. Just because someone does not know absolutly everything does not make them stupid. For example Victorianpunk, do you know who colonized Manhatten, or how many people died building the Brooklyn bridge, or what other used the Brooklyn Bridge used to serve? I doubt it, most people don't, I learned all about it in college. An all womens', liberal arts college.
I was lucky to have a History Professor who is at the top of his field. I studied old French Lit. from a prof. who knows every dialect of french there is, and has been to every French speaking country in the world. I had a genetics teacher that was offered jobs at every major teaching hospital in the U.S., but taught at my college because she loved it.
There are professors who can open your mind in ways you can's imagine, who teach you to think differently. There are bad professors, without a doubt, some who should not even be teaching, but there are also ones who can make you better. Who can teach you things that you can't learn from a book, or who happened to write the book.
allot of people don't need college to "open them up" or "educatate them".
Perhaps, college MIGHT teach you to communicate properly. Frankly, that's one of the most important skills in the workplace.
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I could just imagine the "YUPPIE ALERT!" going off and suddenly I find myself getting the crap beaten out of me. 
How could I live like that? I mean, getting an eventual Master's in psychology and having a little clinic is one thing...being a CEO who walks like he has a potato chip stuck up his butt that he doen't want to break? 
I am not saying College is a bad thing, just that people should understand that college ALONE will not make you smart and, like you said, people need to EXPAND on what they are learning and understand that they need to get an education, not just a piece of paper to call themselves "smart".
