# College System Vent



## 1000BugsNightSky (May 8, 2014)

I'm about to start college next month. The college system we have right now is so frustrating.

1st of all, it's way too expensive. But you must spend your own money and take X general/ elective classes that have nothing to do with your major. It's supposed to make you well rounded. Well, let the people who want to be well rounded be well rounded and the people who don't, don't. You are on your own in college. Learn to motivate yourself. Those who can motivate themselves should be able to set themselves apart against the unmotivated. Making well-roundedness a requirement can really limit the choices of those with other interests. Ok, so you can't play a sport or you can't draw, or you don't know East Asian literature. Guess what? You can't be a chemist, or kindergarten teacher, or store manager because you aren't qualified to do science, or elementary school education, or business. 

And degrees themselves. The required classes vary from school to school. If you have to take a specific class in one school, but not another, and you fail that class, guess what? Even if you went to a more prestigious school, you don't have that major. But the other student who went to a school with a worse program is now qualified to take the job you should have gotten. Yes, getting a degree does make you more qualified, but it shouldn't be the main factor in determining whether you are qualified. We rely on a degree too much nowadays.

But nowadays, if you don't have a degree, you can't do anything. So many presidents didn't major in anything, but they became presidents. Now, doing something like that is extremely difficult. (List of Presidents of the United States by education - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) 

So everyone get a degree. Well, that defeats the purpose of having college as an _option _to set you apart. If you don't have a bachelor's, you are below the average. Public education is supposed to be free, but college is not even though it is basically required for you to get somewhere (which used to be school in the past). Not saying that making college free would solve anything though. Now, to set yourself apart, you_ have to_ get a master's or doctor's degree (for those higher level positions). But if everyone gets a graduate education, we face a similar problem. By the time we can be free, our lives are already going to be hitting older age. College is becoming a requirement rather than a choice. Our system, at a stretch, is taking away the value of education and replacing it with requirement. You want to attend college to become qualified in something extra, not because college itself can give you all the qualifications. I don't know. It's just very frustrating. Our system rely devalues the value of a degree.


Btw, I'm not opposed to getting a higher level education. Get your degree! Just when we encourage _everyone_, even those who don't want to, we have a problem. Individually, go for it! :happy:


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## Sangmu (Feb 18, 2014)

You're realising the injustice of the inflation of education. 

I have a book of poetry called 'Canadian Poets'. It's a beat up book that was published in 1916 and is a treasure possession of mine. Under the title:

"Chosen & Edited by John W. Garvin, B.A."

Whenever I look at that I think it's somewhat adorable. Baccalaureates actually put B.A. after their name. People would laugh at someone for doing that nowadays. But it truly was something worth celebrating and identifying with one-hundred years ago. Or even fifty years ago.

College was known to be a social priviledge and not a right. For this reason society did not implicitly punish people of a lower or middle socioeconomic background for not holding a degree. It was rare. As in, not to be expected.

The availability of student loans has made college into a cut-throat business. IMO universities are now run like degree mills not academic institutions. And just from knowing the average holder of a baccalaureate...I don't think it's made anyone all the more critically thinking or exceptional. I wish that people would scale back on pushing education. Every other person holding a degree is not a elixer for all of societies ailments and was never intended to be.

The worst consequence of the inflation of education is how it effected the lifespan of people from my generation. It has put unnecessary competition and financial burden on the average joe/jane that just wants to make a living for themselves and have a few kids (by average I'm not talking about intelligence but socioeconomic status).They now delay major life milestones and engage in ridiculous lending practices.

My advice is, unless you're 100% sure what you are going to be going with your degree, skip college. UNLESS you're going into healthcare, enginnering, accounting, or law.

I've met very few people who went to uni "just because" and discovered along the way what they wanted to do with their lives. Most just finish with a drinking problem and terrifying debt.


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## ScientiaOmnisEst (Oct 2, 2013)

*Counter Rant*

I personally think the root of the whole “college is now a requirement” issue is the fact that our schools - elementary and secondary - get worse every year. With the exception of the intellectual basics, schools teach almost nothing that has any potential value, and what they do teach is increasingly watered down and drawn out. Hell, they can’t even teach what kids need to know for college - remediation rates among college freshmen have been disturbingly high in the last decade, no wonder they think they can’t “waste time” on electives that might give students skills for a degreeless-yet-comfortable career, or even teach some basic life skills in general. 

I swear, one of these days I’m going to take my laptop and a crapload of reference materials, and design my own damn hypothetical education system, one that teaches meaningful, useful skills with the purpose of showing future generations how to learn and think, self-direct, all in an efficient manner engineered to be actually compatible with how humans learn most effectively.

I’m afraid I can’t agree with you about the whole “we shouldn’t be forced to be well-rounded” argument. Yes, I fully understand the money issue, I’ve mentally wrestled with it myself, but I bluntly confess that I’m blinded by subjectivity on this one - the thought of plugging away at one subject for several years with nothing to provide a mental respite makes me cringe. Sure, I could have interests and activities on the side, but how much time would I have to really build those skills and knowledge base into something meaningful when I have my college studies to do? Motivation is certainly a factor; personally I think encouraging students to explore other subjects could be an excellent way to motivate them. I’ve heard plenty of anecdotes of students who ended up changing their major on inspiration from an elective they took - something clicked and made them realize they really wanted to study y not x. Why deprive students of that? As you mentioned, you’re on your own in college. And I would assume, free to make such decisions.

A point I hear a lot at home is that spending several years studying to do one career isn’t college - it’s trade school. Breadth of knowledge is (read: used to be) what separates the college-educated person from the common worker. I think if we fixed the damn education system we could go back to that, albeit in a different form than before.

Regarding degrees, yes, at least someone gets it that it does make you more qualified. However, I think people rely on them to determine qualification because…how else are they supposed to tell? Unless you can offer a portfolio of projects you've done or people you’ve worked under, how else is a potential employer supposed to have any indication that you actually have the knowledge base that you claim to have? No one is going to take a chance on temp-hiring someone who may very well be fibbing about their skill set. Even with discrepancies in curricula, a degree is something typically indicates the acquisition of a certain baseline of knowledge. Again, yes, you could be a brilliant autodidact and learn it all on your own. But how to prove it? You know what you can do, but no one else does unless you can show them before they make any sort of contract with you. For many people, a college degree serves as that evidence. Still doesn't justify the outrageous price, but I think there‘s a fairly reasonable logic to it.



Moonious said:


> Making well-roundedness a requirement can really limit the choices of those with other interests. Ok, so you can't play a sport or you can't draw, or you don't know East Asian literature. Guess what? You can't be a chemist, or kindergarten teacher, or store manager because you aren't qualified to do science, or elementary school education, or business.


I'm not entirely sure what you're saying here - I'm certain you had a point, but it seems to have gotten a tad muddled in translation. How exactly is making students take "useless" elective limiting? It seems to me it would be far _more_ limiting to effectively track someone, having them only learn what they need to know for some specialized job.



Moonious said:


> Our system, at a stretch, is taking away the value of education and replacing it with requirement...Our system rely devalues the value of a degree.


YES. All of my yes.



Moonious said:


> Btw, I'm not opposed to getting a higher level education. Get your degree! Just when we encourage _everyone_, even those who don't want to, we have a problem. Individually, go for it! :happy:


There's a phrase I've heard for a good portion of my life - "college material". Everyone isn't it. Those who are not college material shouldn't be in college, they should have opportunities open to them to do not require a degree they are not equipped - be it intellectually, or merely in terms of interest - to get, that still allow them to make a decent living.

Also, nice to see someone who's disillusioned with the ridiculous college system, who still understand the value of a degree. I swear, most other rants of this ilk have these undertones of "College is useless. If you want to get a degree, you're a brainwashed idiot because anything you can learn in a classroom you can learn from books and the internet just as well, and there's literally no difference!"


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## Scrabbletray (Apr 27, 2014)

Moonious said:


> 1st of all, it's way too expensive.


Actually, the expected value of college is FAR more than the cost for most degrees, especially if you aren't going to one of the $45,000/year schools. Certain degrees like engineering have expected values of over a million dollars. Getting a degree worth a million dollars for $30,000 in debt is the best investment decision a person will ever make in their life. Even average degrees are worth several hundred thousand in expected value.



ScientiaOmnemEst said:


> A point I hear a lot at home is that spending several years studying to do one career isn’t college - it’s trade school. Breadth of knowledge is (read: used to be) what separates the college-educated person from the common worker. I think if we fixed the damn education system we could go back to that, albeit in a different form than before.


I think this is a good point, however we also need to get to a point where a trade school education isn't looked down upon. In may cases trade schools provide better job opportunities than 4 years colleges (depending on degrees) and they shouldn't be looked down on so much as being less than a college degree.



WhateverLolaWants said:


> You're realizing the injustice of the inflation of education.


The "inflation" of the required education in order to get a decent job isn't the result of some perverse trend in society, it's the result of technological and demographic shifts in the world economy. It used to be that a person could drop out of school at 12 and get a good job working on a farm, then automated farm equipment came along and now we don't need all these jobs. Then a little later you could get a high school diploma and still get a good job in manufacturing, but then automation and robots came along and we don't need all of those jobs anymore. These days there just isn't enough low-skilled jobs around for everyone to expect they can get one. Even where there are low-skilled jobs available there is now a global economy and there is competition from 2.5 billion people in China and India for those jobs. Human life in the modern world is CHEAP and you need something like a degree to differentiate yourself if you want to make a decent wage.



WhateverLolaWants said:


> My advice is, unless you're 100% sure what you are going to be going with your degree, skip college. UNLESS you're going into healthcare, enginnering, accounting, or law.


This isn't good advice for most professions. The income differential between people with degrees and people without is the highest in US history. It's certainly the case that there are many worthless majors, but it's pretty common knowledge which degrees are worth it and not and it's way more than just what you said.



WhateverLolaWants said:


> I've met very few people who went to uni "just because" and discovered along the way what they wanted to do with their lives. Most just finish with a drinking problem and terrifying debt.


This is just poor planning on their part. Obviously if you go into any major life decision without a plan it's probably not going to go well. A lot of people go to college just to avoid getting a job or because they want to party. If they go to school just to get drunk and have fun then that's THEIR fault, not the college's fault.


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## noz (Dec 7, 2009)

All I know is, the first class they should have given me as a freshman is a personal finance class 101 taught by someone like Suze Orman. That would ease so much future burden.


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## Hurricane Matthew (Nov 9, 2012)

I agree, the US college system is ridiculous. The expense is so high that it should be considered immoral as the cost of college is rising three times the rate of inflation. Once upon a time, a person could go to college and pay for it with a summer job, but this is never an option anymore ((the older people in my life did this for their college degrees and came out with zero debt)). It is very tough for college-aged people to get jobs nowadays, especially for just the summer, and even when they do get it, it's not enough money to pay for a full year of school. College loans are something that people going to college right now shouldn't rely on, either, because the trend of students defaulting on these loans is getting higher and higher. My college is on the verge of bankruptcy because the college loan default rate there is over 30% and if a college has a 30+% loan default rate, the government will stop funding the college. There are several hundred colleges in this situation in the US and at some point, this system will _have to collapse_ because it is simply not sustainable. Too many students taking out loans have been irresponsible with them so banks and those giving out student loans may either become more strict about them or refuse to give them out altogether. Colleges may stop accepting payment in the form of loans if the trends continue. I don't know how much longer my college will continue to exist at this rate and as time goes on, more and more colleges will fall into the same situation. The cost of college REALLY NEEDS TO BE CUT DOWN. The debt bubble for college is already twice as much as the US housing crisis was some number of years ago... and this bubble is about to burst. Nothing about this system is sustainable and the trends are ridiculous.

I also have an issue with those extra expensive classes you are supposed to take for supposed "well-roundedness". I'm a hard science major and yet for some reason my schedule has to be filled with cultural appreciation classes, art classes, health classes, history classes and other random things? All of these are subjects I previously had in high school and homeschool and the subject matter is basically the same so I've been exposed to it already. Why do I have to pay all this extra cash and spend all this extra time on these classes?! It's horrible that not being able to pass these classes means you can't obtain your degree and it's been happening to me. I am doing fine in my science and math courses that are actually more specialized and related to what I'm doing, but I'm flunking these "well-roundedness" courses for the stupidest of reasons. I am a freelance artist and I've made some money off of my art, but I can't pass a college "introduction to drawing" course because the standards are very strange and incredibly frustrating. For one, the class is three hours long and then they give tons of time-consuming home assignments that only take away my focus from the classes I have which are actually important to me. Another thing is these assignments are extremely repetitive and other dumb details get me marked down ((I've been marked down for not holding my pencil correctly while drawing?!? What the fuck?!?!)). I have also failed a speech course because on an assignment where we were supposed to present our political views, I had an opposing opinion from my teacher when it came to our state governor. My grade was fine until that point, but then afterwards, despite putting in the same effort as before that assignment, suddenly the teacher was claiming I never turned in homework that I KNOW I turned in and he started being an incredible asshole towards me. I never had these issues while in my actual courses that are related to my major... and ultimately, these incredibly stupid, worthless classes are preventing me from getting further in my degree. They are crushing my GPA with their unreasonableness to the point of I can't qualify for an internship I wanted and I can't transfer to the university I wanted, but I would have been able to do all those things if these stupid "well roundedness" courses weren't there. College would also be a lot more affordable because then I wouldn't have to spend half my college expenses on these stupid classes ((they've been half of the classes I've had to take!)). I'm out of money now so I guess I have to drop out... Which is too bad because I had a dream, but the college system is so stupid and filled with absolute BS that I hope the whole system collapses. Maybe after the college system collapse, the people in charge will get a reality check and make things more sensible.

I'm thinking I should save up some money and go to a trade school instead. The more people go to college, the less people there are taking up trades, so the competition would be lower and I'd have a better chance at employment. Trade schools are also more focused on one thing, which is good for me as an autistic person ((I hate having so many different, unrelated subjects at once; being more focused is better)).


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## Sangmu (Feb 18, 2014)

a1b2c3d4 said:


> Actually, the expected value of college is FAR more than the cost for most degrees, especially if you aren't going to one of the $45,000/year schools. Certain degrees like engineering have expected values of over a million dollars. Getting a degree worth a million dollars for $30,000 in debt is the best investment decision a person will ever make in their life. Even average degrees are worth several hundred thousand in expected value.
> 
> 
> I think this is a good point, however we also need to get to a point where a trade school education isn't looked down upon. In may cases trade schools provide better job opportunities than 4 years colleges (depending on degrees) and they shouldn't be looked down on so much as being less than a college degree.
> ...


 "College grads earn one million dollars more over their lifetime" is oft quoted but not acccurate. It includes American super earners (as in, billionaires) which skew the average greatly.

It's still my opinion that the majority of jobs I see people doing do not require a B.A., yet people feel real pressure to obtain one for fear of not being hired over someone with a degree. This hurts people from a lower socioeconomic background the most.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/the-great-college-degree-scam/28067


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## Scrabbletray (Apr 27, 2014)

Just today another study has come out confirming the importance for a college education. I think what is confusing to a lot of people is the fact that starting salaries aren't rising nearly as fast as tuition so it seems like the benefits are going down. However, what this ignores is the fact that wages for people without a college degree are falling rapidly due to competition from overseas markets with low costs of labor and as a result the net benefits of a college degree are in fact rising as fast as tuition. It's just unfortunate it's due to the fact that most of it is from low skilled laborers wages falling and not from high skilled laborers wages rising.

It Still Makes Sense to Go to College, Fed Study Says - WSJ



WhateverLolaWants said:


> It's still my opinion that the majority of jobs I see people doing do not require a B.A.


I'm not sure what sort of jobs you're talking about here. Most of the people I see with college degrees are working in fields where a person definitely needs one. Obviously if someone is working at Starbucks they don't need a degree, but that's sort of their own fault if they got a worthless degree and ended up without a job. You can go to Google and find out what the starting salaries are for each major and what percent of people with that major get a good job right out of college. If you go to college and get bad grades in a field with minimal job opportunities you really can't blame society for the fact you didn't get a good job, that's your own fault for not doing the research or working hard enough in school. Only an idiot would buy a car without first shopping around and looking up the pros and cons online. College is a FAR more important decision and if someone doesn't research it that's their own problem.


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## Ben8 (Jul 5, 2013)

The amount of butt-fuckery I am taking with college costs is beyond me.


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## 1000BugsNightSky (May 8, 2014)

a1b2c3d4 said:


> Just today another study has come out confirming the importance for a college education. I think what is confusing to a lot of people is the fact that starting salaries aren't rising nearly as fast as tuition so it seems like the benefits are going down. However, what this ignores is the fact that wages for people without a college degree are falling rapidly due to competition from overseas markets with low costs of labor and as a result the net benefits of a college degree are in fact rising as fast as tuition. It's just unfortunate it's due to the fact that most of it is from low skilled laborers wages falling and not from high skilled laborers wages rising.
> 
> It Still Makes Sense to Go to College, Fed Study Says - WSJ
> 
> ...



Just want to clarify- college is good. Our system of college is what is flawed. And of course, you should still go to college. There are just many problems with it, just like most other large scale systems. They will never be perfect, changable maybe, but it is about finding the right balance.


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