The Higher Education Thread: Justify Poor Life Choices

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Pops

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College became a Ponzi scheme when students loans got backed by the gov't. It became every college's vested interest to admit you and get you the funds to pay for it. Then they threw the not dischargeable in BK into the mix. Trapping every stupid kid who fell for the con job.

Just like Barney Frank's Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's gov't backed push for a house for everyone. Burying stupid homebuyers who bought into the con.

Both policies end up in a bail out by the US taxpayer.

Stupid people are breeding.
 
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Swagdaddy

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Probably gonna transfer to a University as well next year, community college is like 7th grade level

Even the local Dual-Enrollment high school kids in some of my classes giggle at how lazy and transparent the content is.
 
Croetec

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Have to agree with getting older making college a lot easier as I wish I had the motivation I do now when I was in my early 20's. Currently 33 and up here at Michigan Tech as a Sophmore in the Biomedical Engineering program working on getting into the accelerated Master's program. I honestly feel college is pushed to hard in high school to 18 year olds who really have no clue about the real world and working for a living, even having graduated Culinary School in Phoenix and being a Chef for the last 10 years left me making a lot of serious changes in life when I hit 30 realizing I was no better off then when I started. This was after fucking around at two colleges when I was 18 not giving a shit because I had no idea why I was there and what I wanted to do, which to me is the biggest thing about growing up just working day to day, you figure out what you really want.

I just hold the regret of not having this perspective earlier in life instead of having to obviously take on some debt with a pretty massive career change when I should be in the middle of saving for retirement/furthering career. It is hilarious though being in my Differential Equations class and having people asking me if I'm part of some TA program because of the light grey in my hair. My neighbor up here also wondered what graduate program I was in the middle of, apparently 30 year olds don't do changes like this often.
 
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Palum

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Pops said:
College became a Ponzi scheme when students loans got backed by the gov't. It became every college's vested interest to admit you and get you the funds to pay for it. Then they threw the not dischargeable in BK into the mix. Trapping every stupid kid who fell for the con job.

Just like Barney Frank's Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's gov't backed push for a house for everyone. Burying stupid homebuyers who bought into the con.

Both policies end up in a bail out by the US taxpayer.

Stupid people are breeding.
Click to expand...

Guaranteed student loans have been around since 1965. The issue has been a habitual increase in GSL/Stafford caps, a reduction in the social acceptance for blue-collar work and the shift to college being high school take 2 coupled with the disappearing American industrial base. The serious ramp up occurred in the later 80s and it has only increased absurdly past the point of ROI since then.

cp-2015-t02a.png
 
TrollfaceDeux

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Croetec said:
Have to agree with getting older making college a lot easier as I wish I had the motivation I do now when I was in my early 20's. Currently 33 and up here at Michigan Tech as a Sophmore in the Biomedical Engineering program working on getting into the accelerated Master's program. I honestly feel college is pushed to hard in high school to 18 year olds who really have no clue about the real world and working for a living, even having graduated Culinary School in Phoenix and being a Chef for the last 10 years left me making a lot of serious changes in life when I hit 30 realizing I was no better off then when I started.
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Hospitality/Restaurant industry chews up and spits you out like a scum. I mean it. I thought about culinary as well but after a year of working with a guy who has been at this job for 7 years and barely making more than me, it was incredibly ridiculous....Best wage here for Chef is in-tune of $15-18 dollars an hour and I bet the waitress makes way more than everyone in the kitchen...
It is incredibly hard to reward someone in culinary career and you best be working at fancy restaurants like Four Seasons or manage one. Otherwise, minimum wage plus some "rewards."

Scholarships and other merit based programs are something Mid 20 and Up are missing. Who am I kidding though. We fucked that up when we decided to "detour" from our path but imagine how fucked we would be at the end of it when we realize there is nothing positive about our choices.
 
Swagdaddy

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Croetec said:
Have to agree with getting older making college a lot easier as I wish I had the motivation I do now when I was in my early 20's. Currently 33 and up here at Michigan Tech as a Sophmore in the Biomedical Engineering program working on getting into the accelerated Master's program. I honestly feel college is pushed to hard in high school to 18 year olds who really have no clue about the real world and working for a living, even having graduated Culinary School in Phoenix and being a Chef for the last 10 years left me making a lot of serious changes in life when I hit 30 realizing I was no better off then when I started. This was after fucking around at two colleges when I was 18 not giving a shit because I had no idea why I was there and what I wanted to do, which to me is the biggest thing about growing up just working day to day, you figure out what you really want.

I just hold the regret of not having this perspective earlier in life instead of having to obviously take on some debt with a pretty massive career change when I should be in the middle of saving for retirement/furthering career. It is hilarious though being in my Differential Equations class and having people asking me if I'm part of some TA program because of the light grey in my hair. My neighbor up here also wondered what graduate program I was in the middle of, apparently 30 year olds don't do changes like this often.
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Assuming you find work in a soft skill career field you could easily work until 60+

You're not that far behind in the context of your entire life
 
Croetec

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Culinary I legitimately enjoy and was naturally good at which led to my decision of moving into engineering since there is a lot of crossover in terms of work ethic and skills needed to be effective, i.e. working on a team, communicating effectively with deadlines, learning to work with people you will not always agree with, and most importantly making something from scratch or improving upon a design while understanding budget restraints and effectively marketing it to sell aesthetically. But yeah the wage cap is definitely there and unless you plan to own your own place expect to pick up a substance abuse problem, worked with several guys in their 50's who were chefs for 30+ years and all were alcoholics. I did meet some fantastic people in the business though that are life long friends now and I did see some life story success cooking for Leslie Mann, Mario Batali and The Edge from U2.
 
Mist

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Croetec said:
Culinary I legitimately enjoy and was naturally good at which led to my decision of moving into engineering since there is a lot of crossover in terms of work ethic and skills needed to be effective, i.e. working on a team, communicating effectively with deadlines, learning to work with people you will not always agree with, and most importantly making something from scratch or improving upon a design while understanding budget restraints and effectively marketing it to sell aesthetically. But yeah the wage cap is definitely there and unless you plan to own your own place expect to pick up a substance abuse problem, worked with several guys in their 50's who were chefs for 30+ years and all were alcoholics. I did meet some fantastic people in the business though that are life long friends now and I did see some life story success cooking for Leslie Mann, Mario Batali and The Edge from U2.
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90% of the people I've met in telecoms are alcoholics or drug addicts, I doubt it's got much to do with your profession.
 
PaulZussman

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Chris

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I did Programming (3 years) then later I did Teaching Training (1 year).

Programming I didn't specialise in the right area for where jobs are in the UK and I was pretty depressed at the time, so initially I didn't use it. I'm now using it to help make teaching resources though.

My wife did Psychology (3 years), it's been totally useless for her. She did a medical related degree later on (3 years) and that directly led to a job doing what she learned at college the second time.

So STEM/Medical good, humanities bad.

I know a few other people who did hunanities and none use it, one is successful because it was History at Cambridge and he did a conversion course to Law and is now a Lawyer.
 
BrutulTM

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I really think teaching humanities to 18 year olds is a waste of time. 18 year old kids are just not sophisticated enough to really "get" things like philosophy, literature, art, religion, psychology or even history really, and while it's valuable information for life, it doesn't teach you to do anything that you can get paid for. We should teach them something useful that they can make a living at and then set up the humanities classes to be taken by older folks who actually have some life experience and want to learn and not just get a degree. I'm 43 and learning some of this stuff for the first time via YouTube and podcasts and I really enjoy it, but it would have been wasted on me at 18. Also, there would be a lot less indoctrination by radicals if it wasn't being taught to dumb teenagers who don't know any better.
 
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Campbell1oo4

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BrutulTM said:
I really think teaching humanities to 18 year olds is a waste of time. 18 year old kids are just not sophisticated enough to really "get" things like philosophy, literature, art, religion, psychology or even history really, and while it's valuable information for life, it doesn't teach you to do anything that you can get paid for. We should teach them something useful that they can make a living at and then set up the humanities classes to be taken by older folks who actually have some life experience and want to learn and not just get a degree. I'm 43 and learning some of this stuff for the first time via YouTube and podcasts and I really enjoy it, but it would have been wasted on me at 18. Also, there would be a lot less indoctrination by radicals if it wasn't being taught to dumb teenagers who don't know any better.
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When I was in highschool I wanted to join the army. That didn't happen. I got pressured into going to college and was told it would be a better path. So I went to college and didn't know what I wanted, but I had always enjoyed history class. So I studied history (and minored in German).

Holy shit what a mistake.

I don't think I learned anything in college that I couldn't have learned working a job, and I often say that I've learned more in the last 5 years (since graduating) than I did in the 16 years I spent in the education pipeline. I read a lot of books about history. I learned how to write more refined history papers. And I learned how to socialize with many different types of people. When I got out of college I had a really... really... really... hard time finding a job. The lie I had been sold, that all I had to do was go to college and I would get a good job, was just that. A lie. The only jobs I got offered were in sales or security or working in a warehouse. I didn't have to go to college to do that. Story has a happy ending. I got a job teaching English in Europe. I travel a lot in my free time. And a big reason why I got this job is because I have a college degree. But now I'm looking at moving back to the homeland, and I am at a loss of what to do.

Moral of the story? If any of you got kids about to go to college, don't let them unless they want to study the sciences (or go into teaching). Don't let them do what I did and just go with the flow.
 
Sadre Spinegnawer

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BrutulTM said:
I really think teaching humanities to 18 year olds is a waste of time.
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I strenuously object!

Remember when Captain Kirk would yell at Scotty, more power, more power? That's what I need you to do, you're Scotty, and I need more power. Can you do that for me? Can you promise, I need you to promise?


There, that's Durkheim's concept of an "organic" society: everybody has a role to play in the total organism. But the organism needs to work, it needs motive force, in other words. That is where the concept of a promise come in, as a cornerstone of a theory of a Kantian ethics, or to put it in other words, how the organism holds together not by coercion, but by something as simple as a promise.

Discuss.

Pay me.
 
Sadre Spinegnawer

Sadre Spinegnawer

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BrutulTM said:
Also, there would be a lot less indoctrination by adult morons with doctorates if it wasn't being taught to dumb teenagers who don't know any better.
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fify. And plz, I'm a radical. The people you are talking about are half-witted sea urchins. As to indoctrination, if you know what you are being indoctrinated in, that isn't much of an indoctrination, is it? That's right. They're idiots. And idiot-catchers. College does not exist to educate the intelligent; it exists to mindfuck and otherwise distract the dull witted.
 
Sadre Spinegnawer

Sadre Spinegnawer

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BrutulTM said:
I really think teaching humanities to 18 year olds is a waste of time. 18 year old kids are just not sophisticated enough to really "get" things like philosophy, literature, art, religion, psychology or even history really, and while it's valuable information for life, it doesn't teach you to do anything that you can get paid for. We should teach them something useful that they can make a living at and then set up the humanities classes to be taken by older folks who actually have some life experience and want to learn and not just get a degree. I'm 43 and learning some of this stuff for the first time via YouTube and podcasts and I really enjoy it, but it would have been wasted on me at 18. Also, there would be a lot less indoctrination by radicals if it wasn't being taught to dumb teenagers who don't know any better.
Click to expand...

I realized I wasn't being honest, and needed to fix it.

I have had countless conversations with educators who know that the system does not work well. [edit: they agree with basically everything you say here, and it is just very difficult pill to swallow because surely some "humanities" -- some of that rock and roll, some of that growl, some of that poetry that rings in any good humanities department, from history to art to theater to English to philosophy to religious studies -- is needed as they face their 20's? -- end edit] Oh sure, give me really brainy 20 year olds, who learned ancient Greek and calculus before 5th grade, and so forth, and we can read anything and have a great time, and their term papers will all get published, because that would work.

But here is the problem. We adapted the classic European model of "the university" but over there, only the brightest went to such schools, and their prior educations are immaculate and dense. In contrast, in the US we wanted to democratize Higher Ed. Let's get more people to do this.

We adopted a framework for delivering knowledge that was developed for the finest and best groomed brains, and have tried to make it work for people who can't even write at a high school level. They have 500 word vocabularies at best. And I think they are getting duller.

A society that forgets its past accomplishments, works, ideas, and that does not try to keep those same spirits moving, is remarkably close to a good description of dementia, even if when it comes to preparing food or wiping their ass and disposing of the waste, they have engineered the fuck out of those processes.

So, that means we have to solve this problem. Because we are fucking up how we "transmit knowledge" which is what this entire deal is all about. And I am basically 51% happy US higher ed may be about to go through revolutionary changes.

It is a medieval institution after all
 
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Sadre Spinegnawer

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ZyyzYzzy said:
Strong first post and thread bump
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It's just flat out brilliant, I agree. I think one of it's best attributes is it's fresh. Oh sure, people say that phrase all the time, but what they mean is, this person yesterday, or that person over there, etc. They actually mean "I hate that stupid CVS cashier whose arm looks like two country hams and can't lift the bags to hand them to me."

But no one ever just solely speaks of the category, "stupid people." The CVS cashier is a member of the set, but does not exhaust it, either numerically or conceptually. "Stupid people" is a galaxy; that cashier is simply one planet in that galaxy.

I'm open to hating stupid people, don't get me wrong. I'm just saying, this is new territory. Could be big. A totally new outlook on the world.
 
BrutulTM

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Sadre Spinegnawer said:
I realized I wasn't being honest, and needed to fix it.

I have had countless conversations with educators who know that the system does not work well. [edit: they agree with basically everything you say here, and it is just very difficult pill to swallow because surely some "humanities" -- some of that rock and roll, some of that growl, some of that poetry that rings in any good humanities department, from history to art to theater to English to philosophy to religious studies -- is needed as they face their 20's? -- end edit] Oh sure, give me really brainy 20 year olds, who learned ancient Greek and calculus before 5th grade, and so forth, and we can read anything and have a great time, and their term papers will all get published, because that would work.

But here is the problem. We adapted the classic European model of "the university" but over there, only the brightest went to such schools, and their prior educations are immaculate and dense. In contrast, in the US we wanted to democratize Higher Ed. Let's get more people to do this.

We adopted a framework for delivering knowledge that was developed for the finest and best groomed brains, and have tried to make it work for people who can't even write at a high school level. They have 500 word vocabularies at best. And I think they are getting duller.

A society that forgets its past accomplishments, works, ideas, and that does not try to keep those same spirits moving, is remarkably close to a good description of dementia, even if when it comes to preparing food or wiping their ass and disposing of the waste, they have engineered the fuck out of those processes.

So, that means we have to solve this problem. Because we are fucking up how we "transmit knowledge" which is what this entire deal is all about. And I am basically 51% happy US higher ed may be about to go through revolutionary changes.

It is a medieval institution after all
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I don't doubt that there are kids that can benefit from it, and I am 100% on board that it's important that people don't lose touch with that stuff. I just think the idea of a 24 year old that's "educated" in philosophy is kind of a joke.

I actually loved the half-assed literature and psychology classes they forced us to take in engineering school and even one called "social issues in technology" which delved a tiny bit into ethics, but most of my classmates hated them. They chose whatever was considered to be the easiest class (usually film) and did the absolute minimum required to get a decent grade in it.

I might be wrong that people would be more open to it if there was a setup to teach it to people in their 40s on the weekends or something. I would be interested in something like that but one of my best buddies from college who is not a moron told me last fall that he doesn't like movies with "a lot of talking in them". Maybe I'm wrong too that kids can't absorb that stuff but I don't think I could have at that age. I needed some like experience to actually learn to think about things instead of just believing what the professor says. I am certainly not elite intellectually but I don't think I'm an idiot either.

I do think that YouTube and podcasts are a fantastic way to democratize that kind of information while also not wasting time trying to pound it into people who aren't interested in it and put them thousands of dollars in debt for the privilege of ignoring society's great truths. I wish there was a good way to evaluate them though. I listened to a philosophy podcast once for several months before concluding that the host was an idiot who didn't know anything about philosophy. Probably just someone that took a couple of classes in college and didn't even know that she was basically Peggy Hill teaching Spanish.
 
Sadre Spinegnawer

Sadre Spinegnawer

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BrutulTM said:
I listened to a philosophy podcast once for several months before concluding that the host was an idiot who didn't know anything about philosophy.
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It only took several months? That's pretty good actually. I have seen people take years to realize they have been following a dead end. Fortunately in this area of human intellectual curiosity, "efficiency" is not necessarily a ruling value. Look at it like a giant park with stands of trees, clearings, meadows, ponds, etc. You go to the park, you end up spending most of the day wandering around in this one particular stand of trees. So what? It's still a day at the park. I'm dead serious. It took me years to come to peace with the fact my brain can only work with so much at a time, and only at my speeds. That is if I wanted to do things well, but I realized, so what? Who said I have to visit the whole park? This is a perk of the humanities: any size slice of the pie is delicious. One of the top humanities brains in the US last century specialized in William Blake. You just have to be good at whatever it is you do in the humanities. And there is no rush. It's supposed to be a way of life, after all.

BrutulTM said:
I might be wrong that people would be more open to it if there was a setup to teach it to people in their 40s on the weekends or something. I would be interested in something like that
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You are not wrong at all. At all. In fact, I have a hard time thinking of anyone I know who, if given the choice of teaching (a humanity) to a class of 20 year olds or a class of 40 year olds, would not immediately opt for the latter. That's because you're right, by and large. I love teaching intro classes to freshmen and sophomores, but anything beyond that is a waste of my time (because I have to try to find something "advanced" that won't destroy these kids, and that fucks the whole deal up) and a waste of theirs (Why exactly at this busy point in their lives would they have use of advanced work in very "useless" fields?) But we have no system in which what we are talking about can happen. That is why I have decided, I hope the industry as we know it collapses in this pandemic/financial Chernobyl happening.

I really do believe we have to be very careful to not "lose" our intellectual traditions. On the sciences front, for example, as many young people as possible should always be taught a) the history of science and b) math to at least pre-calc. That will also be useful for their productive work in life. We need to up our literacy in the sciences, from geography to physics.

Aristotle said, and he really did, that "philosophy requires leisure." He did not mean "free time." He meant, the kind of space that experience clears out for you in your head, where you can entertain that kind of stuff at ease.

But we need a system to do this. An industry. If the old college system collapses, and the humanities find themselves kicked to the curb, they should invent a whole new institution, that allows adults to escape to their own campuses and really have some fun in the park. Fingers crossed. This pandemic is the perfect opportunity to re-do these crepuscular relics that simply no longer work well.
 
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