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Is school REALLY that important or useful? (pg. 12)
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| Lilith |
| quote: | Originally posted by Joss Weatherby
I am not deying that going to school is a good thing. Like you (?) said how can it be bad? Its just I'd rather be working, making money right off the bat than going to school and paying tens of thousands of dollars to learn something I already know just to have a piece of paper that says I know it. |
You've still got to train and learn formally before people will have any confidence in taking you on, otherwise they'll take the very simple option of 'that guy has a qualification' so at least they know what they're in for.
What you fail to understand in your one menial job of working in a software company where you even failed the simple, basic premise of shut up or ship out. Any arsehole can say they have ability, maybe they can, maybe they can't, but your resume simply says in its history- you don't have ability.
So you better start somewhere because you're essentially unqualified and don't have a reference worth a damn.
| quote: | | There are many self-taught scientists, musicians, artists, mathematicians, etc who've taught themselves and made an impact to their disciplines. |
For every one that does, there are probably dozens that fall by the wayside. |
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| Theresa |
| quote: | Originally posted by Watts
Personally, college was a waste of my time. I graduated with a B.S. in computer science and have been trying to get jobs in this field since June 2009 (I developed a database and a front-end for a local company, but that ended when the franchise was sold). Companies either weren't hiring or did not want me after the interview process. These days, you can learn all this crap yourself, join some open source project, try to get an internship, and probably have enough credentials for an alright entry level job (add an extra year or two for not having a degree, though).
Unless you are going for an M.S in Software Security or Information Systems, don't even bother with the undergrad degree. You already have legit work experience. An undergrad degree will probably tack on another thousand to your yearly salary (I don't know what you get paid; I just made this number up).
I didn't enjoy college at all. I worked three jobs each semester and spent most of my free time programming projects. It was a miserable experience, and I was dumb enough to think I was entitled to a career when I finished it.
Best of luck. |
To be fair, you ONLY got a Bs. That was probably what got you the interviews to begin with... the people with the Masters or higher were likely to get the jobs. Not to mention, the field you're going into is one that suffers severely in an economic down turn.
It seems like people seem to forget some of the most important things about the reality of our futures...
1. There is A LOT more competition out there. Populations getting higher, more educated people = more competition for jobs. Jobs that used to be available to highschool students are now being closed off to only University students. Expectations are getting a lot higher.
2. We are no longer in an age where you can just 'work your way up' in MOST companies. People who are CEO's that don't have education today, will be a thing of the past. This will be unheard of in a couple of decades.
3. Education will not hurt. Being educated will not get you turned away. Not being educated probably will.
| quote: | Originally posted by Joss Weatherby
Yes it can't be bad (usually) but its more of a question of its worth. If you had the natural abilities and got in 7-8 years of experience instead of a degree you'd have 7-8 years of experience instead of debt and no experience, but a piece of paper.
Who is a prospective employer going to hire? Someone with 7-8 years of experience or someone with a degree and no experience in real work? HR might look at the person with the degree but any sane manager or developer looking at the hires would say the person with experience.
This is of course assuming we are talking about computer fields. |
OR... are they going to select the person with the degree AND the experience? You are only doing yourself a disservice by not going to school.
Nou... you say you have all this experience, all these 'credentials' blah blah blah - then why are you still living in your family's basement? Because it isn't enough? You obviously had a moment where you realized this, but now you are also realizing that you will actually have to TRY and work to get a degree and you're trying to justify backing out of it.
| quote: | Originally posted by Joss Weatherby
Its more of a "why do i need to sit in a classroom to learn this?" sort of thing. We have so much information at our fingertips now that you can learn about almost anything you are interested in and have deeper depth of knowledge than even experts on the subject had 100 years ago.
Its not like going to college means you are exposed to brand new never thought of ideas, you still choose your focus and in that way are limiting what you learn. If you are already limiting your focus there then why do you need to go to a class to learn it. People that are motivated enough can learn most anything on their own if they have basic skills. |
| quote: | Originally posted by -FSP-
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Like PKC said already... there are VERY FEW people who are motivated enough to actually teach themselves things at home and I HIGHLY doubt you are an exception to this rule. You have less resources available to you, you don't know when you're wrong or when the information you're getting is wrong AND you don't know what you don't know. You can't research something if you don't even know it exists. Learning different things, even if it isn't specific to your field can really give you different perspectives. It gives you breadth to your intelligence and this is always a good thing.
| quote: | Originally posted by tachobg
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+239487234
| quote: | Originally posted by Joss Weatherby
I did my 4 years, its not my fault the system only counts homework towards your grade. If papers and tests were what counted and not stupid pointless busy work then Ida past with flying colors.
High School in the US is a joke, its so easy the smart kids fail because they dont give a and they get lumped into the people that are too stupid to even pass a test. Only the people that do the pointless busy work pass.
Home time is my time, school time is school time. Make the day longer if you cant figure out how to teach everything during class. |
This is ridiculous. You were just a lazy ass and it WAS your own fault. The 'busy work' is to reinforce what you have learned and to commit it to long term memory. You're going to have to re-evaluate your "home time is home time" theory if you want to be successful in life. Reality is, work follows you. If you can't get beyond this, then you wont do well in University and you might as well save your money. You will have homework, and if you don't hand it in... too bad, you fail and you lose the investment.
Sounds like you need to clue in to reality. You can't live in your family's basement for the rest of your life, and it seems like what you're doing right now isn't working. |
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| -FSP- |
Ok, you guys convinced me that school isn't all that useless today. So I will say that me trying to say that formal education today is useless is wrong.
I will bet that in the very near future, we will see more PDFs of textbooks on random torrent sites, maybe even textbooks that are CC registered, perhaps much of academia will share their papers online for all to see for free (legal or otherwise), and poor information will immediately be gone. Perhaps wikiversity type things are going to be of very good quality but I bet this will be much, much, later than sooner.
You can even sort of learn at stanford or mit for free right now. They do give out video lessons of their lectures, and some even have notes homework and tests. You can go on youtube and hear lectures from academics.
I will say that today you can be very knowledgeable in any given subject through the resources we have today, but that knowledge will be very superficial.
What are your guys' thoughts on formal education's future?
I do feel that once I get my BA, I'm going to wonder if all that work was just for the paper, the networking, etc, late in my lifetime. |
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| Jake Benson |
Here in LA, school has nothing to do with getting a job, just who you know. So I wasted my time in college getting a 3.86 when I should have been partying with friends.
this life. |
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| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by -FSP-
I am pretty sure I can talk about say string theory in a physics forum. If I wanted to talk about brains, I can go to philpapers.org , view papers that are going to be published or are already published, ask the writer to emphasize points of the paper I didn't know and I can even start a thread about something about cognitive science over there at 4 a.m. or at any other type of forum. I would've said that school is really useful years ago, but technology has made things even easier |
How would you know which loud mouth on a forum is correct and who isn't? You'd have to have some way of distinguishing people who have a right to help others out and probably some way of testing their knowledge in a way that can validated by other people who've been tested and succeeded, and to do that you'd have to set up some sort of canon of information that can be referenced and cited to help people learn and to prove their point...
Oh wait. |
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| zoogla |
| quote: | Originally posted by Jake Benson
Here in LA, school has nothing to do with getting a job, just whose you suck. |
fixed for your relevance (and reality I suppose) |
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| leph555 |
| quote: | Originally posted by fayraree
fixed for your relevance (and reality I suppose) |
Thats for San Francisco |
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| Halcyon+On+On |
| You buncha Ugandans. |
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| Danny Ocean |
| quote: | Originally posted by -FSP-
Ok, you guys convinced me that school isn't all that useless today. So I will say that me trying to say that formal education today is useless is wrong.
I will bet that in the very near future, we will see more PDFs of textbooks on random torrent sites, maybe even textbooks that are CC registered, perhaps much of academia will share their papers online for all to see for free (legal or otherwise), and poor information will immediately be gone. Perhaps wikiversity type things are going to be of very good quality but I bet this will be much, much, later than sooner.
You can even sort of learn at stanford or mit for free right now. They do give out video lessons of their lectures, and some even have notes homework and tests. You can go on youtube and hear lectures from academics.
I will say that today you can be very knowledgeable in any given subject through the resources we have today, but that knowledge will be very superficial.
What are your guys' thoughts on formal education's future?
I do feel that once I get my BA, I'm going to wonder if all that work was just for the paper, the networking, etc, late in my lifetime. |
Winston? |
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| Silky Johnson |
| No no, winston is now a jew named noah. |
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| Halcyon+On+On |
| He's more of a NuJu. |
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| Silky Johnson |
| Sounds like some bad juju to me. |
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