the issue of students who throw a fit about taking class X because they’re going for a degree in Y (I see this a lot with science/engineering majors when having to take classes in the humanities).
Yeah. That’s really an ongoing issue that I’ve seen too. “Why do I have to take English Comp and some other art crap, when I’m studying CS?” Is something that I have heard a lot. And the reason is that context matters and humans are not rational actors so, it’s important to learn about other ideas in order to both be able to effectively apply hard sciences in a world that doesn’t always match up to what’s on paper, understand why ethical standards exist, and know about the things that we humans do without clear material reason.
I blame the neoliberal idea that everything must relate to profit and anything that isn’t directly related to profit is luxury as a cause of this problem. Hard sciences are about understanding the world around and, to some degree inside, us. Arts and humanities are about what gives us joy, purpose, and interesting ways to make the world a weirder place.
I’ll be honest, I understand the college student’s point of view because for the most part, the teachers in the geneds did not give two fucks about what they were teaching, and I had already learned enough that wasn’t directly relevant to my interests when it was free. Like, seriously, I put up with over a decade of this palpable disinterest in K-12, now I’m paying for the privilege of taking more of it from adjuncts, because the college says I need to buy $20K worth of credits before I can talk to someone who’s actually motivated?
I identify with your sentiment so much. Forced to spend the first quarter of my life absorbing questionable curriculum that ultimately didn’t prepare me for adulthood, then agree to unforgivable debt, for what?
For many students, Hess said, the point of an expensive college education is not to gain practical job skills. “It’s just a really expensive toll that lets you jump the queue and get the good jobs.”
The current status of college in America is a scam. It’s designed to uplift the upper class and ruin lives of the lower classes to discourage future generations from trying.
Chetty and Friedman and Deming — all of whom work at Ivy League universities — put it starkly: “We conclude that highly selective private colleges currently amplify the persistence of privilege across generations.”
A very good point. The obscene cost and lack of that money going to hiring motivated faculty is more than a but of a buzzkill for humanities. And the use of adjuncts to replace faculty is nothing but exploitation of both the adjunct and the students.
True, but there’s a certain set of STEM students who resent that their BS degrees are not simply technical certifications. The idea of college is supposed to be that you come out a well rounded person who had exposure to a lot of fields of human endeavor at a sophisticated level compared to high school.
Now, can we argue that not everyone qualified to pursue a technical subject needs a well-rounded education? Sure, but I don’t want to work with or for those people. Even for someone who rolled their eyes through English Comp 101, you can expect that they’ve been taught how to write a damn paragraph and how to engage with a narrative beyond the surface level.
This is such a weird idea to me. For my money, the people I’ve met who have a more well rounded understanding of the world aren’t the people who’ve attended expensive colleges and been tucked away in the lap of privilege their entire lives, it’s the people who’ve been through some shit and come out the other end.
Life will round you out if you go out and live it. And if you do the kind of research and study on your own that anybody poking around on some obscure Lemmy instance is more than capable of, you can do plenty to expand your horizons far beyond anything you’d learn in college.
I’m not against college, I think education is great, but people seem to think the only way to learn anything is to listen to lectures and take tests. Like, yeah, that’s a way to do it, but it certainly isn’t the only way to do it or even the best way to do it.
What it is, almost certainly, is the most expensive way to do it.
So like, to me, when you imply that people who didn’t spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to have someone else read to them can’t be every bit as educated as those who did, it’s a little classist and a little insulting.
It’s so blatant how gen ed classes are used to get every last cent out of students. Like, I understand the reasoning that some students lack general skills they’ll need for their jobs (e.g. engineering students having terrible English skills, which will be needed for presentations/reports), but that’s not an excuse to require every student to take those classes no matter what. If they really only cared that students were proficient in those subjects, there would be the option to test out, but that’s never a possibility. Most big universities near me also refuse to give credit for AP/IB classes, and don’t even allow credits to transfer from other colleges for everything but the most base-level courses.
I can think of about one class per semester (so almost a quarter of my classes) that was pure filler, where I only showed up for tests/presentations, and that I could have tested out of with maybe a week of effort, but that wasn’t allowed. In one case, I managed to skip the first semester of a subject and take the second course because they forgot to list the first one as a prerequisite. The scheduling counselor found out after I had already passed the more advanced course and was pissed. They made me take a replacement course even though I was 30 credits over the graduation requirement and had clearly already filled the knowledge requirement for that subject. You get one guess as to why that was 🤔
Engineering school for me was mostly about learning how to learn, getting some baseline knowledge to know what questions to ask or where to start looking for answers, and broadening my horizons. Those have a ton of value for me.
Having gone through heavily interdisciplinary education, with focus on hard sciences, I absolutely agree. My educational experience in sound production, scientific instrumentation, and cultural studies have really improved my ability to think of things abstractly, effectively communicate, and come up with novel solutions to technical problems.
Yeah. That’s really an ongoing issue that I’ve seen too. “Why do I have to take English Comp and some other art crap, when I’m studying CS?” Is something that I have heard a lot. And the reason is that context matters and humans are not rational actors so, it’s important to learn about other ideas in order to both be able to effectively apply hard sciences in a world that doesn’t always match up to what’s on paper, understand why ethical standards exist, and know about the things that we humans do without clear material reason.
I blame the neoliberal idea that everything must relate to profit and anything that isn’t directly related to profit is luxury as a cause of this problem. Hard sciences are about understanding the world around and, to some degree inside, us. Arts and humanities are about what gives us joy, purpose, and interesting ways to make the world a weirder place.
I’ll be honest, I understand the college student’s point of view because for the most part, the teachers in the geneds did not give two fucks about what they were teaching, and I had already learned enough that wasn’t directly relevant to my interests when it was free. Like, seriously, I put up with over a decade of this palpable disinterest in K-12, now I’m paying for the privilege of taking more of it from adjuncts, because the college says I need to buy $20K worth of credits before I can talk to someone who’s actually motivated?
Chicken, meet egg.
I identify with your sentiment so much. Forced to spend the first quarter of my life absorbing questionable curriculum that ultimately didn’t prepare me for adulthood, then agree to unforgivable debt, for what?
The current status of college in America is a scam. It’s designed to uplift the upper class and ruin lives of the lower classes to discourage future generations from trying.
It’s gatekeeping.
A very good point. The obscene cost and lack of that money going to hiring motivated faculty is more than a but of a buzzkill for humanities. And the use of adjuncts to replace faculty is nothing but exploitation of both the adjunct and the students.
True, but there’s a certain set of STEM students who resent that their BS degrees are not simply technical certifications. The idea of college is supposed to be that you come out a well rounded person who had exposure to a lot of fields of human endeavor at a sophisticated level compared to high school.
Now, can we argue that not everyone qualified to pursue a technical subject needs a well-rounded education? Sure, but I don’t want to work with or for those people. Even for someone who rolled their eyes through English Comp 101, you can expect that they’ve been taught how to write a damn paragraph and how to engage with a narrative beyond the surface level.
This is such a weird idea to me. For my money, the people I’ve met who have a more well rounded understanding of the world aren’t the people who’ve attended expensive colleges and been tucked away in the lap of privilege their entire lives, it’s the people who’ve been through some shit and come out the other end.
Life will round you out if you go out and live it. And if you do the kind of research and study on your own that anybody poking around on some obscure Lemmy instance is more than capable of, you can do plenty to expand your horizons far beyond anything you’d learn in college.
I’m not against college, I think education is great, but people seem to think the only way to learn anything is to listen to lectures and take tests. Like, yeah, that’s a way to do it, but it certainly isn’t the only way to do it or even the best way to do it.
What it is, almost certainly, is the most expensive way to do it.
So like, to me, when you imply that people who didn’t spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to have someone else read to them can’t be every bit as educated as those who did, it’s a little classist and a little insulting.
I think should be normal to expect that basic level of all-around competence from high school graduates.
Obviously high school systems have their own significant failures, though.
It’s so blatant how gen ed classes are used to get every last cent out of students. Like, I understand the reasoning that some students lack general skills they’ll need for their jobs (e.g. engineering students having terrible English skills, which will be needed for presentations/reports), but that’s not an excuse to require every student to take those classes no matter what. If they really only cared that students were proficient in those subjects, there would be the option to test out, but that’s never a possibility. Most big universities near me also refuse to give credit for AP/IB classes, and don’t even allow credits to transfer from other colleges for everything but the most base-level courses.
I can think of about one class per semester (so almost a quarter of my classes) that was pure filler, where I only showed up for tests/presentations, and that I could have tested out of with maybe a week of effort, but that wasn’t allowed. In one case, I managed to skip the first semester of a subject and take the second course because they forgot to list the first one as a prerequisite. The scheduling counselor found out after I had already passed the more advanced course and was pissed. They made me take a replacement course even though I was 30 credits over the graduation requirement and had clearly already filled the knowledge requirement for that subject. You get one guess as to why that was 🤔
Engineering school for me was mostly about learning how to learn, getting some baseline knowledge to know what questions to ask or where to start looking for answers, and broadening my horizons. Those have a ton of value for me.
Having gone through heavily interdisciplinary education, with focus on hard sciences, I absolutely agree. My educational experience in sound production, scientific instrumentation, and cultural studies have really improved my ability to think of things abstractly, effectively communicate, and come up with novel solutions to technical problems.