What is education? Think about it for a moment... Is it fancy phrases added to our names like Dr, Phd, Md, etc. or is it something that we internalize and apply in the real world for the betterment of mankind?
Slightly off-topic, but there is a curious situation in the UK where people doing one course at one university seem to have a disproportionate amount of power:
[NB I'm not implying that this is a bad, or indeed a good, thing - just I've started paying much more attention to university courses now that my son is in his mid teens!]
Somehow, I can't be too surprised that the top-level politicians are disproportionately drawn from those who majored in politics at the country's best university.
(Where are you from? To my (US English) ears, a "course" is a class, the kind of thing that might happen every mon/wed/fri in the afternoons, but the article you link is clearly talking about a "major" (as in "I majored in politics & economics"). They refer to it as a "degree", which is also, to me, completely normal use ("my degree was in politics & economics").)
Well, to this Scot "course" ~= "degree". We don't have (or at didn't used to have) any like majors and, thankfully, nothing like the GPA system either.
I don't understand how you think that differs from the US system. As far as I can tell, you're using a different word for the exact same system, and telling me it's different because the name is different.
I majored in math. The level of specificity above that (i.e. less specific) is that my university was UCSC. The level below would be a list of the actual classes I took.
At a US university, you apply to a major (often they can reject you), and the major (usually) requires a set of courses, possibly among other requirements. Meet the requirements and you get a certificate saying "Bachelor of (Arts / Science / Music / whatever) in (history / math / computer and information science / amateur football / sociology / whatever)". That first parenthesized group is the name of the degree itself; the second group is your major. So continuing with the example of myself, my degree would say "Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics".
There are complications. For example, you can get more than one major by fulfilling the requirements of both (I simplified above. This is what I did). You can get a "minor" by meeting a lesser list of requirements which is felt not to indicate that you're as "fully qualified" as someone who majored in that field. But overwhelmingly, as practiced, the system is: you apply to the major, they tell you what courses to take, and you take those courses.
edit:
For the sake of completeness, I should probably point out:
in US usage, "major" unambiguously refers to your (undergraduate) field of study. "Degree" can be used to refer to the same math-chemistry-history-anthropology axis, but can also be used to refer to the prestige axis of bachelor's-master's-doctorate, which I referred to above as the "name of the degree itself".
This article seems to give a view of the UK system from a US perspective (mostly English, the Scottish education system is different but closer to the English that the US, I suspect):
Heh. Depends on your school, but as a "standard" thing, in their third year of college, when they'd be about 20 years old. You can apply to a specialized school, and you can apply directly to particular majors at unspecialized schools, but the generic system is that you come in undeclared and declare a major by year 3.
Specializing kids before college is hugely politically sensitive, probably off the table for a long time into the future.
In the UK most universities don't really have the concept of 'major' and 'minor' - you simple have your degree, which might involve you doing other learning around the subject.
In this context, 'degree' and 'course' are often used interchangeably. 'Degree Course' in UK English is perhaps equivalent to 'Degree Program' in US.
To be perhaps more pedantic, your 'degree' might be the subject ('I have a Degree in Computer Science'), whereas your course would be the particular program ('I took the University of Bristol's Computer Science course'). In this instance, the commentor is referring to not just any PPE Degree qualification, but the PPE Course at Oxford.
I find your comment somewhat confusing. As I read it, you say that your 'degree' is the subject (this is also true in the US; 'degree' can be used with exactly the same semantics as 'major') and the 'course' refers to the university you studied at. But the comment I replied to refers specifically to "one course at one university", which implies that those are separate dimensions of variation; the same course might exist at different universities. In US usage, that's not surprising; lots of colleges have e.g. a "remedial algebra" course. If 'course' refers to the subject, that's also not surprising; lots of colleges will let you earn a degree in math (though not, one hopes, if you had to take remedial algebra). But if a 'course' is defined by the university that houses it, it cannot possibly exist at more than one university.
My main point is that it's not even mildly surprising that students from Oxford should be disproportionately present in the UK government or anywhere else of significance. I have a feeling that, as important as the effect of a PPE degree may be, the effect of an Oxford degree is much stronger.
My minor point was that even after considering Oxford vs. no-name, it's not particularly surprising to see people with politics degrees going into politics.
I think it's part of the concern that our politicians (at least from the main 2 parties) are basically all the same but are only differentiated by the color of badges they wear.
I think we just need to break that expectation of going to college right after high school. Some kids really aren't ready, and then they make ill-informed decisions (sign on to a fat loan, study something they're not sure about, etc). Since graduating in 2007, I've had the misfortune of seeing my friends struggle trying to figure everything. More times than not, a few regret jumping into college right away, or wished they strongly considered other alternatives before college.
Side story related to higher education: My friend's counselor suggested she apply to school in this manner: Apply to 3 Ivy leagues, then 3 reputable out of state schools, then 1 in state school.
What kind of advice is that to give to an 18-year old who only has an inkling of what they'd like to do after college? I swear this guy misguided many students.
I'm just coming to the end of my degree, but something that amazed me was just how many of my school friends changed their degrees in the first year, or dropped out of university all together. I think it must have been nearly 50% of my friends changed significantly what they were doing within the first year, many within the first semester.
My brother has also just started university and he told me he's seen exactly the same thing. Of the 9 close friends that went off to university at the same time as him, only 2 are still on their courses. A few dropped out, most changed courses but won't be able to start the new courses until the next academic year.
Very few people know what they want to do at 18, and many don't know what studying their chosen subject will really be like.
I was really surprised by this because I knew what course I wanted to do at university when I was 13, I thought it was Electronic Engineering, until I found out that Computer Science existed, at which point I immediately recognised that as what I wanted to do. I assumed everyone was like that, but I have friends who at 21-23 are still trying to work out what they want to do.
I'm 30. I have either been in full time education or full time job since I graduated. I am still trying to work out what I want to do. I'm led to believe this is normal.
"I think we just need to break that expectation of going to college right after high school."
Exactly - my wife and I were having a discussion about our son going to University and the general conclusion we came to was that if he isn't really clear on why he wants to go to University then we'll advise him to do something else first. The University course I did in the UK was, oddly, traditionally half-full of Norwegians who were all in their mid 20s - didn't seem to do them any harm!
>I think we just need to break that expectation of going to college right after high school.
Absolutely! But middle/upper class families aren't helping the situation. We have people who start saving for college for fetuses. When you are 18 and you know you've got some hunk of change for college and people are telling you "college," than it doesn't seem like you'd be likely to go to trade school. It seems like you'd be betraying your family's expectations of you. There's also a cultural expectation that if you don't go to college you're nothing or stupid.
See Mike Rowe (of the show Dirty Jobs) for his opinion on the matter:
They just need to prepare them better for life. Period. Like making a personal finance class mandatory so learn not to take out bad loans for school. Or take home economics so they can learn the basics of cooking, so they could make fancier ramen when they're broke in college.
Feedback points make sense, and it looks great for the high school. "We sent X many kids to university, or look at where all our gradutes are going, our school really gets them college-ready".
But any naive ex-student might be frustrated that he made some bad decisions with questionable advice. It's not fair to blame the counselor completely I guess. You'd think that the student seeks other resources to make informed decisions.
Higher Education is on the brink of a crisis. Most hard skills can be learnt online nowadays via MOOCs for things like machine learning, maths, coding or via youtube for things like mastering a particular tool.
I believe in the future higher education will focus on developing soft skills like leadership, negotiation or majoring in a very specific topic through PhDs.
'Solving' higher education is a really, really difficult problem. The size and complexity is mind boggling. It is actually a much more difficult problem than healthcare since with healthcare we have external models that can be copied - with higher education we are not even sure what the problem is.
Ironically, I think the solution to solving the higher education problem is actually education of prospective students (and ideally their parents) on what a University course is actually good and bad at and what is actually expected of you as a student to maximize the value you can get from the experience.
People need to be given enough information to actually conclude that it might not actually be a good idea for them. Of course, as with all manner of high-value products getting sensible advice can be very difficult.
I'd go the other way. Stop sending students to college while someone else pays. People will do all manner of self-education for something they're buying. College today is mostly just a weird, expensive coming-of-age ritual, with (IMO) most of the cost in wasted time rather than wasted money. And not sending your children to college is easily analogized to, under other circumstances, not having your son circumcized or whatever the ingroup marker is. As long as the value of college is "you're not a real person unless you've done it", nobody's going to focus on course content.
"Stop sending students to college while someone else pays."
I fear that might be going too far in the opposite direction - I went to University in the UK in the 1980s and because my parents weren't very well off I didn't pay a penny (fees were paid and I got a grant to live off during term time). In terms of the amount I've paid back in taxes this was a very good investment (e.g. going to University meant I went on to do post-grad study where I met the co-founder of the company I started and met the guy who was an angel investor).
I think this thread is proving my point. We are collectively a group of really smart people and we can't agree on anything in regards what the problem is - we can't even agree we don't know :)
As a holder of five degrees, I haven't found them to be a waste.
Well, three of them came in getting my PhD in physics. Along the way, I got an MA and some degree called a Master of Philosophy (M. Phil. for short). So for three of them I got paid with a stipend, though you could argue my opportunity costs were greater than the roughly $27,000 per year I got paid.
Then I went back for an MBA. I'm still paying it off, but I've used it to improve my quality of life more than I think I would have without that degree. I work fewer hours than most people and consider myself consistently happier and more effective than most people I know, in particular than I was before the leadership classes I took.
Incidentally, they're all from Columbia, so they all happen to be Ivy League degrees too.
>though you could argue my opportunity costs were greater than the roughly $27,000 per year I got paid
Could be...
With the job market the way it is and stagnant wages and rising cost of living, I know quite a few people who would love to make $27,000 a year and would consider that a good income.
It is normal here that about 50% change studies here (Netherlands) in the first year. We even have some rules that make it easier to switch the first half year, and you will get an extra year of scholarships. Because kids are just clueless and usually pick whatever their friends pick.
We get a few days we can walk around at campus, and attend a few classes, but that's it.
Also.
There are a lot of studies here I feel shouldn't even be university level.
However we must not forget that just being 4 years in college and learning whatever you like has. We should never discourage learning.
We might want to encourage studies/trades that provide more benefits for our society and economy as a whole. How about free tuition for such studies?
I'm not Dutch, but I have allowed myself to be told that in the Dutch university system nearly every applicant gets accepted, and those with insufficient course credits get kicked out at the end of first year. Is there even a hint of truth in that?
It's mostly true. Most universities require that incoming bachelor's degree students to have finished either a matching pre-university secondary education program or pass a test (only for people of 21+ years old) that checks whether a student has the required Dutch/English/math skills. After this, universities are allowed to boot students that fail to pass 50, 80 or 100% of the courses in the first or second year (actual percentages differ per university).
On the other hand, master's degree programs tend to require a bachelor's degree that has sufficient overlap in terms of courses. So to start a Computer Science master's degree, you'd probably need some bachelor's degree in engineering, math or physics. If you for instance got a bachelor's degree in Psychology, you'd probably need to attend several courses in order to be allowed to join.
Yes, with the caveat that only 20% of Dutch high school students attend secondary schools that have "go to university" as their desired outcome. Virtually everyone who successfully completes that secondary programme gets into a university (the variation in quality between them isn't nearly as great as it is in the Anglo countries) but it obviously isn't fair to compare that 20% with everyone who graduates an American high school.
Changing majors in the US is very common. I don't have any numbers but I'd guess 30-50% of all US college students have changed their major at least once.
>An angry art history professor forced him to apologise, but he was right.
Oh come on. He apologized? Nobody can stick to what they say anymore?
Of course you aren't going to get a well paying job with a Spanish degree unless perhaps you wanted to teach Spanish. That should be obvious, but for some reason it isn't for kids these days.
For the last 20ish years all you hear is "you have to go to college." In college you can study almost anything, so some people will pick useless degrees because they are just checking off the box "college" without any forethought whatsoever.
I am telling you, the cost of college scared me off so much that there would be no way I'd go unless I was pretty sure that it would pay off. I did go, and it did pay off, and I am now debt free, but while I was there I was constantly thinking about all the debt I was accumulating without (at the time) any way to pay off. It was a huge gamble on the future. It was heavy on my shoulders. I don't know why other kids don't feel that way.
I knew an English major who didn't know the difference between you're and your...
As an aside, one of the most inspiring accounts of time at University that I have read was by Stephen Fry describing his time at Cambridge. He worked fantastically hard, achieved a huge amount but the classes and exams were almost an irrelevance and he had a rather nifty hack for passing his exams with flying colours.
This is the reality for so many that is conveniently ignored by many posts such as this.
My major (finance) has almost nothing to do with my day to day work. But I became best friends with my cofounder our freshman year, met his high school friend and our third cofounder my sophomore year, met my wife my senior year, and utilized our university network to hire our 4th cofounder & CTO after graduation.
I've done two startups with the first two cofounders and by tapping into my wife's network found our first angel investors.
Majors and degrees are important (I'd be in a different position if I'd gone through with the switch to engineering sophomore year), but I met my wife in my final finance credit senior year. I'll take the relationships - along with a semi-practical degree.
[that is if you insist on going to school - definitely not for everyone or necessary]
problem is you're being charged for those relationships, in most cases at a relatively exorbant rate
its not obvious what the replacement value of those relationships are
but you can probably meet and matain relationships with people without paying tuition dollars to do so
in different words: "I met a great cofounder and wife at college" doesn't seem to logically follow to "you have to go to college to meet a great cofounder and wife"
so is seems like a stretch to really give the college (full? much?) credit for those relationships
>> "I met a great cofounder and wife at college" doesn't seem to logically follow to "you have to go to college to meet a great cofounder and wife"
It sure helps. Where else in your life are you going to be surrounded by thousands of other young people that you can date, or classes full of like-minded individuals who you might start a business with?
there many many professional and hobbyist clubs where you can meet like mind individuals that won't require you to spend the 10+ years in debt
similarly there are many many social organizations you can meet young people to date, there are also establishments that sell food and beverages where young people tend to congregate 2-3 nights a week
if all that fails, there are websites that let you contact people for both purposes (albeit the signal to noise for those might be poor)
college is obviously convient for both purposes, but its a mistake, both on a societal level and a personal level, to give college monopoly pricing power if that's what you're in the market for
there many many professional and hobbyist clubs where you can meet like mind individuals that won't require you to spend the 10+ years in debt
How many of them have entrance standards as stringent as the Ivy League? The hardest part isn't what you do while you're there, it's getting in. And how else are parents going to pay for their children to spend so much time around the best class of plausible mates they can find for their children?
serious question - what is the value of stringent entrance requirements so far has it applies to your personal network?
is it so that you don't have to spend resources maintaining a network with those that don't meet them?
for what its worth, any professional and hobbyist club with close proximity to a prestigous school will probably put you in contact with a number of people in that school
you don't have to go to Harvard, MIT, Stanford wherever, to meet/ socialize with students from that school
you probably have to be doing something of interest, to make yourself an attractive socialization member from the other side of that equation, but that probably true (though obviously to a lesser extent) even if your a student of one of those schools
these are all fair points if not slightly pedantic...
obviously I feel I received some value from college (in my case, the soft value outweighs the hard values).
like I said, I don't necessarily think college is the best place to spend 4 years of life and many thousands of dollars if you are not gaining any type of skill, earning a value-add level of expertise in a field, or great general skill set improvements. It had a significant impact on me, although most of the skills I learned there were improvements on traits/ skills I already possessed.
I would whole heartedly agree that coursework can be dramatically optimized to better prepare students for a variety of careers [which I think will be the future case as trade schools, crash course programming schools and various workshops appear, and colleges continue to get pushback from those who have not been snapped up into the workforce]
but as bluedino mentioned, university life allows for a fairly unique set of circumstances: most young people, densely populated by people in relatively similar circumstances, rapidly maturing as people, learning a wide variety of new/ interesting things. >> for me from 18-22 this experience held quite a bit of value.
If it's anything like the colleges in this area, much of that money is going towards endless construction of "student life" type facilities, designed to market the campus towards visiting 17-year olds who will soon be able to mortgage away their future spending power.
Same thing happens which clinics and health providers... new and more new buildings. And with two large competing clinics in town its costing the local region more. Both are trying to out due the other. Every time I visit I look around and think "this is what I'm paying for?" I'm okay with the 70's orange chairs, I don't need a dozen fish tanks and bird cages, I'm guessing all that cool looking glass facade is poor at insulating against outside heat and cold...
EDIT: I suppose these "costs" are probably just a drop in the bucket compared to other expenses. Doctor's salaries are higher do to competing for the "best" doctors (similar to the situation in SV with Apple/Google/etc.) and I'm guessing it's "wasteful" to have two or each machine (one at each clinic/hospital) if they aren't currently being utilized "enough".
Went to the same school as the girl who got the Spanish degree, Kennnesaw State University. I had no shortage of finding job opportunity. Its all about the degree, most of the business school kids were finding decent jobs too.
Even though its a lesser known college most of us in STEM majors easily found jobs with small-large companies in Atlanta.
Its all about your what your degree is in, not how many you have.
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