Samadhi23
(?)Community Member
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- Posted: Fri, 08 Feb 2013 21:01:06 +0000
frozen_water
Do you really need college?
Do you need college to be successful?
If you do need college to be successful, is it because of what college offers you, or is it because employers have set arbitrary requirements for degrees?
What do you gain from college?
Is attending college a "fad"?
1 and 2. No
3. Bingo - it is entirely because of arbitrary requirements set up by businesses. I've seen multiple times even a blanket "college degree required" with absolutely no concerns about subject matter studied. It is a step in bureaucracy, nothing more.
4. I gained a lot of social experiences that would not have happened otherwise. Other than that, nothing.
5. I don't think its a fad nearly as much as a marketing ploy. Colleges are businesses so they portray themselves as necessary as a way of making money.
frozen_water
So degrees are valuable to the extent they help one get a job? College was initially education for education's sake. Is that no longer of value?
In 5 years in engineering school I learned almost nothing and still have not gotten any job with that background that I couldn't have gotten with a bachelor's in art. The amount of material I have learned through independent study far surpasses anything I learned in school. Graduate school is a bit better in this regard, but at the undergraduate level its closer to the equivalent of what a HS diploma was considered 50 years ago - a nice piece of paper to help find a job but in no way representative of an actual education.