College sure isn't what I remember

[Rucker61]

For some reason this seems appropriate:

How'd you get that photo to post?

[Jeffrey Lebowski]

The peer review process (and East Anglia scandal) is precisely why I'm not sold on climate change.
If you've ever published, you know this is seriously political, and my field is extremely non-controversial, non-political. In one case, I even got to suggest my peers, all of whom knew me or knew of me, and therefore knew I was of no threat or competition for grant funding. Your mentors are always toughest on you, but I was shocked at some of the comments, and in some cases by how far they missed the point. It was really eye opening.

It was here where I finally truly gained an appreciation for what "publication bias" is. If something doesn't fit the narrative, it gets buried. So, when you do a meta-analysis, for example, you are at the mercy of published data, not necessarily all data or all known data. So, little surprise that climate data (or whatever the political flavor du jour is) shows what a narrative wants it to show. But that doesn't make it true.


This is also why some of my lesser-educated (but very "science enthusiastic") acquaintances make me roll my eyes at best or drive me nuts at worst when they start quoting "science." Even worse is when they say the science is "settled." No self-respecting scientist would ever say something like this.

[Danimal]

To say that all college kids have it easy now is far from the truth. Source: I am still a college student going to CU for my masters while working full time with a family. There are a lot of feel good useless degrees, to which most of the criticism of this thread apply. They are just money makers for the school and crank out a bunch of fast food workers. But that is neither here nor there, those students made a dumb ass choice and will pay their $100k+ student loans as a server at a steak house. But many other fields are exploding, especially engineering. Think of the tech advancements of the last 10 years, now roll it all into the curriculum that already existed for the last 60 years. You still have to learn basic circuits to get how an iPhone works, but now you have a million other massively complex ideas to master before you can even begin to design one. This is the same for just about every field because the advancement has been so rapid that schools are struggling to keep up. They are fighting for money from big corporations that fund research, and they are barely cranking out enough students to meet the demand internally. A company will fund research for a specific purpose, the school gets a cut, and the faculty that wins the funding gets a bonus for heading up the research. The company and the school both own whatever the research comes up with, which can be a massive amount of money for successful products.

Billions upon billions are being dumped into constructing state of the art lab spaces to attract researchers that bring big money. Federal and local funding has been cut to most state schools since the financial crisis, and it still has not recovered. To fund this in the near term, tuition has risen 9%+ per year, and make a bunch of additional requirements for students to take that both cost money, and boost GPA's, keeping students in school. This also has the effect of killing the small schools that cannot spend the money to compete, which increases enrollment as students leave the small schools, and the cycle continues. The "easy stuff" that you see are just money makers that are being piled on top of an already demanding schedule.

In the long term, big schools will kill the small community and trade schools. To get a job in most high paying fields will require a degree from a big school. Students will need the high paying jobs to pay off the massive debt. And one day, a Democrat will pile the debt onto the tax payer, so the students will still have to pay their debt plus that of others. But you don't have to write a check every month for taxes, so that's better, right?

[hollohas]

In the long term, big schools will kill the small community and trade schools.

Metro State is proving this wrong. It started tiny and limited. And now they are building a legit aerospace program.

[MarkCO]

This is also why some of my lesser-educated (but very "science enthusiastic") acquaintances make me roll my eyes at best or drive me nuts at worst when they start quoting "science." Even worse is when they say the science is "settled." No self-respecting scientist would ever say something like this.

Agreed.

Science, for the most part, are tools that man devised in an attempt to understand ourselves and the world around us. When I can use a math proof to prove you can not stop at a stop sign, then there is obviously a flaw in that "proof". Engineering is based on approximations to get close to the understanding we have of the 7 fundamental laws (3 in Physics and 4 in Thermodynamics) using math (which I have already asserted is flawed). At some point it all becomes circular. I agree, there is no such thing as "settled science"...until we pass to the other side and then some might find nothing, others that they were right and others that they were wrong...but no one on this side will ever really know. Enjoy your nightcap.

I do agree that there is a lot of fluff in many college curriculums, but I would argue that the general knowledge is higher, the ability to apply knowledge lower with millennials than say graduates from 20 years ago. Also that the whole system is rigged to exploit and extract $ when in most cases it is not justified. I paid for all of my education at School of Mines and University of Colorado...but when I see todays rates, not sure I would be able to in today's system.

[Rucker61]

Colleges are a for profit institution that mandate the student be indoctrinated "learn" about 95% frivolous information for every 5% relevant to their career, including by requiring a great multitude of useless and unrelated "required" courses, and institutionalizing a bunch of frivolous electives. E.g. "Star wars, the force and you", all at a cost of thousands per student per semester. The college system is entirely focused around one thing, and it isn't education. It's money, money, money, money, money, money, and money, under the guise of education. Certain people in the system are paid tremendously, or is it outrageously well. It wouldn't be necessary for tuition to have disproportionately climbed...

Many people are unable to graduate college not because of any difficulty, but rather because of the simplicity and the moronic requirements that are unrelated to their lifegoals. If I was hiring someone, I wouldn't give two shits if they completed all their general education credits. I'd MUCH prefer that they actually spend their whole 2 or 4 years, you know, becoming educated in ways that benefit the workforce. This is why for instance graduating attorneys actually have very little legal experience with a juris doctorate and simply subsidize the rest of their education on the backs of innocent clients - who suffer their mistakes absent any recourse. Shouldn't it be far more important for doctors to spend their time beneficially studying medicine, lawyers beneficially studying law, and nobody forced to choose between useless toilet flushing of cash such as "tattoos, body piercing and adornment", "kanye vs everybody", "the american vacation", etc. http://dailycaller.com/2015/08/21/th...rses-for-2015/

Sadly, the ones that control those institutions have considerable motivation to force people (or especially parents) to pay for more, and more, and more useless bullshit. If someone has an engineering degree, I want to know they are a good engineer. I'd pull my hair out if I knew they spent 1/3 of their time at college studying things like weed cultivation and kanye west. PS: Our gov't recently made it illegal to verify that someone went to college or ever graduated. So whats the point in getting a damn degree anymore?

This, coming from a guy who graduated from Harvard, with a degree in smart-assery. Prove me wrong, I dare you.

My undergrad is in math, with a minor in history. Combining that with a full time job and ROTC requirements there wasn't a whole lotta time for frivolous classes. The only one I remember was Music Appreciation, and that's because we needed one fine arts class to graduate.

[hollohas]

Only thing I feel real bad is the tuition.

Not me. The only reason it costs so much is because the money comes easily in the form of loans that have zero collateral. Loans are easy to get because we've been telling everyone for decades that college is a MUST for everyone and that's BS.

Many people are unable to graduate college not because of any difficulty, but rather because of the simplicity and the moronic requirements that are unrelated to their lifegoals. If I was hiring someone, I wouldn't give two shits if they completed all their general education credits. I'd MUCH prefer that they actually spend their whole 2 or 4 years, you know, becoming educated in ways that benefit the workforce....

Sadly, the ones that control those institutions have considerable motivation to force people (or especially parents) to pay for more, and more, and more useless bullshit. If someone has an engineering degree, I want to know they are a good engineer. I'd pull my hair out if I knew they spent 1/3 of their time at college studying things like weed cultivation and kanye west. PS: Our gov't recently made it illegal to verify that someone went to college or ever graduated. So whats the point in getting a damn degree anymore?

^This is exactly my situation. I tried to reduce the amount of BS classes as much as possible by majoring in engineering. I took only enough of them to get my advisor off my back until I passed all of my engineering courses. Once I had all my engineering courses done, I had a career job offer and I was out of there. I never finished the last 3 liberal arts "electives" I was required to take in order to get a degree. And I don't regret that one bit. I saw college as job training and nothing more. Once I had my training completed, I didn't see any point in spending any more money just to get a piece of paper to hang on my wall.


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