Gordy

What's the point of going to college (unless you want to enter into a professional career like a doctor, lawyer, etc), if the internet and the library enables one to learn everything he/she wants for little to nothing? I've been in college for four years, and while I have learned some things in some classes, a majority of the classes I've taken after about thirty credits are about shit I don't care about. The main things that I've gotten out of college are stress and bullshit.

I feel like I've learned more on my own than I have ever learned in college, and that college simply isn't for everyone. My thing is this: if you want to learn about things that you actually care about, than finding the willpower to educate yourself like many great men have done is the way to do it.

RNG

One hurdle that is overcome by getting a degree is convincing a potential employer that you in fact do possess the knowledge base and skills he needs. We know that is not necessarily a true representation, but it does open doors.

Gordy

Yes, unfortunately. However, what if I had an idea and I wanted to start my own business. I don't need a degree for that.

Athena

And your education probable did not prepare you for that. However, in the past 8th grade drop outs did start their businesses, because from grade school everyone was prepared to be industrial and civic leaders.

Professors are human and so are the folks who hire them. One young professor teaching adolescent psychology, made fun of parents efforts to set limits, and he went on to teach his class that people who smoke pot are the most sociable. I was raising teenagers at the time, and did not appreciate what he was teaching.

Another psychology professor taught his class that women who go out night want to be raped.

Then there is the gerontology professor who didn't even have a good understanding of Social Security, nor any understanding of class differences, and made all the wrong decisions for his mother, when his father died. He could get away with teaching young people, but looked like a pompous fool to those who knew more about life.

On the other hand, The Teaching Company produces excellent educational products including DVD's of excellent professors and teachers. Some public libraries have them. And they can be purchased from the company. I have learned more from these cassettes and DVD's than I did in school, because the information is put together so well. Unfortunately, this education is not respected by employers who think everyone should have state approved ID and a college degree, preferably from a well known and respected college.

Beasty

Coming from someone who feels the same way about education as the OP; I also have to concede that an autodidactic education does nothing to prove to a potential employer that you have any ability to perform a job. Of course, this whole topic is also deeply entrenched with the current formation of the college bubble in that as the amount of graduates with a degree rises, the demand for workers with degrees also rises.

So where does the fault lie? To be blunt, it lies in our economic system. I'm sure the many of the conservatives and libertarians alike are collectively sighing at another Anti-Capitalist tirade by me, but I feel it's kind of important to put blame where blame is due.

So how is Capitalism at fault? In particular, it's about Capitalism's inability to sustain itself in the wake of the technology it brings to fruition. As technology increases, the need of low skill and blue collar work decreases. This is not a new idea, and I believe that everyone regardless of political ideology understands that automation and new technology reduces the amount of work to be done. The problem arises when we still expect everyone to "carry their weight" through a 9 to 5, more specifically within a market economy where there is naturally a competition between a group of people for a singular position. In the past, the losers of such competition would go on to find other positions elsewhere, but as noted before, technology is intrinsically erasing jobs, and so we as a species are approaching (and in the lense of all of human history, relatively rapidly I may add) a point where there may soon be more workers than there is work.

The role of our educational institutions (which also includes our public institutions, I may add) is to increase the rate at which this situation approaches. Because nobody wants their child to become a waitress (and really, who wants to anyway?), the push to fill these more white collar jobs, especially in STEM fields, this process is hastened. And because everybody and their brother is now intending to fill these jobs, the requirements to gain a competitive edge over other competitors for the job will continue to increase, until ultimately things like college degrees mean almost nothing.

The lady bringing you your fries at the restaurant, the plumber coming to fix the pipes in your house- jobs like these are, in the wake of technological advancement, facing obsolescence. What do we intend to do when all the people that would fill these positions suddenly need to be STEM field grads- positions that are already taken? There's a quote by R. Buckminster Fuller, and it goes;


“We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.”

To be fair, there's only so many inspectors of inspectors you can have before the house of cards comes tumbling down.

Now, I don't know the exact implementations required to induce a socio-economic system that can handle this paradigm shift in Human society, but what I do know is that the the one we have now doesn't appear to be equipped to deal with this. I do know one thing, and that is that covering our ears and our eyes and pretending we didn't see this coming is only going to screw over the future generations. And I, for one, don't intend to allow that to happen.

coke

I can relate to this. I became a licensed maritime engineer without obtaining a college degree (in that field). With that being said, I also understand the point of college. What it demonstrates is that you are wiling to put in the time and work to earn that piece of paper. I also think tuition costs are over the top and that a traditional four year degree is not worth the bang for the buck so to speak. But, it depends to on what you get into. I think there was to much of that touchy feely you need to find something you like an do it talk and not enough figure out where you can make a career an go do it.

Jimmyb

The think about a self-education is you do not know what you do not know. Also it takes a certain level of education to accept or reject what you are reading as legitimate.

LongWinded

Absolutely true. The guy with the degree in what it is you love and have studied will get the job, though. That's the only difference in being educated, though. You can either self-educate or get a degree