Ok. the message on DU is clear. Be glad with what you might get, serf!

[BrotherIvan]

52. I used to believe "college" educated a person which led to a better life. I no longer do.

At one time, it was a place of higher learning that would produce critical thinking skills. This was used as a sort of stamp of approval that one was ready for a leadership/management track in the workforce, a reflection of that same differentiation in the military. The college system, with its crushing debt and limited usefulness is a scam for the most part now far more discriminatory against the poor and middle classes than ever.

The trouble is, colleges are not educating people. Except for the very few, they're not. Students are paying exorbitant amounts to be able to place a name on their resume. They are competing to get the most prestigious seal of approval.

Yes, many students are choosing to use college as educational trade schools. The college I graduated from included almost 40% pre-med. The rest were pre-law and MBAs. Leveraging one's degree for money was the name of the game. When I chose to pursue a liberal arts degree, my peers and parents scoffed at me, asking how I could waste so much money on something that couldn't land a high-paying job. That's not education, that's trade school.

When I speak to Europeans, they do not have the same reaction. They are not forced to be mercenaries because they education is no or low cost. On the whole, I find them to be better educated and more excited about their chosen subjects.

At my school, which now costs almost $60k per year in just tuition, the vast majority of the students I met treated it just like high school. They treated classes as an annoyance to partying and hanging out. With the rabid sports and greek culture at many state schools, I fear it is no different. Students didn't care about their classes, they just wanted good grades that reflected well on their transcripts. They forgot the information as soon as they passed the class. And college was not so difficult that one cannot spend most weekends and many weeknights pursuing other activities. I had a full time job and blew through it. It was no harder than high school. The idea that everyone in college is busting their ass to get through the very difficult classes is a complete myth. Classes have been entirely downgraded to match the low academic levels of the students.

So when people ask me how to get into a prestigious school, I often shock them by telling them to wait (or avoid it altogether). They should instead invest their time in at least a year of traveling and study to find what subject they may like to pursue. Traveling matures them, opens their minds, and challenges their ideas. As in Good Will Hunting, directed reading is far more educational that many college courses. I mean truly, in a lecture class of hundreds, with no real access to a professor, what are you getting that you can't get out of reading a book and searching for answers to questions that arise? Some of the most brilliant men in all of history are self-taught, certainly they acquired much of their knowledge from reading. Now with the internet, there are so many resources as well.

Work experience is far more valuable to be good at one's job. I don't know many fields, besides those that require certification, that one actually learns in a college setting. If you're 18, debt-free and willing to live a spartan life, you have the ability to do internships or move around from job to job to find what you want to do. If you walk out with crushing debt and loads of expectations, you will take the highest-paying job you can get and then grind it out from there.

Then, once the student feels they need college in order to advance in their career, perhaps about 25-27, they can go back. In my experience, older students who have made a decision to be there, are in an entirely different class than their younger counterparts. They don't care about parties. They are there to learn and always elevate the discussion because they have been studying the subject for a while. In my film master's program the kids straight out of undergrad who thought they were going to be Spielberg would doodle while the four older students would try to get as much out of the professor as they could. The cinematography teacher offered a free Saturday class because the subject is far too complex to teach in just an hour a day. Free all day workshops! When you're paying that much for classes, that is a true gift. Only the older students showed up. So when it came time to shoot our films, the younger students wasted a whole lot of dad's money having mental breakdowns and screaming hysterically--and nearly electrocuting someone (all true)--because they were totally lost. They just weren't ready. They would have gotten so much more out of their schooling if they had worked in film first. They would not have had to stay at the most basic level.

Anyway, sorry for the long rant. I don't recommend anyone go to college if you can help it any more. Read. Pursue your education on your own. College has become a gatekeeper scam just like anything else. If you can side-step it, and there are many people who do, then do it. And if your skills lie in other areas that are not college subjects, pursue them elsewhere. We are allowing academia, which has become utterly corrupted, too much sway. When MBAs are a dime a dozen, when you work with a newly minted one from a big ivy league school and marvel at their utter cluelessness matched only by their incredible arrogance, the scales fall from your eyes. The whole idea that high school is college prep is also a scam. It completely ignores the majority of students who could be learning their future trade for free rather than paying some predatory trade school when they get out.