What's one thing your learned at college/university that blew your mind?
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Higher education is a waste of money for the vast majority of degrees, even STEM ones.
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For real? A lot of high school subjects were pre requisites for enrolling in my degree here and it'd be quite tough to get through the degree without the foundation laid in those subjects. At the very least they'd have to extend the university course by probably a year or so.
Probably varies largely on where you're talking about, and even then, which university program you're looking at enrolling in. If you go and look at universities in the UK, for example, a BA studying a foreign language generally seems to assume that this is a language you've already been studying for several years in secondary education. You're meant to be entering the program with roughly a B1 level in the language, and allegedly develop up to C1 over the course of 3 years of study. Meanwhile, in the US, you can rock up to a university and be a Japanese language major with nothing more than "Well, he says he likes anime and his grades are okay." and the degree program will start you off in a 100-level class that expects negligible prior knowledge, if any.
Then again, having attempted university in the US, and now doing it at a UK school, university education is pretty drastically different. The US schools take 4 years to grant the same degree, and you spend almost the whole of the first year and a good chunk of the second just doing general education requirements that are, at best, only tangentially relevant to your chosen field of study. If I were doing my current degree program for a BA in French and Spanish as a first time student in the US, unless I did a bunch of AP courses or took night classes at a community college on the side, I'd need to do a general English composition class, a few math classes, probably get to pick between a biology or chemistry course, something to do with world cultures or music and the arts, and a handful of other electives I'm forgetting about. For that degree in the UK, from start to finish over the course of 3 years, I exactly 2 modules that aren't either French or Spanish, with one being the "Hey, we need to make sure you can actually write in English competently, too" module, and the other being a free choice of an introductory language module for something else.
I'd also assume the US' lack of a national curriculum also plays into how things work out with universities here, as well. Since things can be so variable at a regional and local level, not only in terms of the established curriculum, but what courses your particular secondary school has the funding to offer, universities can't really assume much of incoming students' education. You can have a kid from one state whose school was a Spanish language immersion school offering bilingual education from day 1 of Kindergarten, and later offering French, German, Japanese and Arabic as a third language for the final 4 years of compulsory education sat side-by-side with another from a different part of the country who only had the chance to take 2 years of Spanish classes. Even for subjects with a better baseline, someone whose studies covered all the available math classes up to geometry and algebra is going to have a totally different starting point from another whose school partnered with a local college to offer college level courses in calculus and statistics in high school.
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What does that mean?
You know how you get COVID from being in the same room as someone who sneezes on you or something? It's that.
Non locality is when you get COVID from someone the next state over.
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I learned women actually don't have the same access to higher education as men.
You're right - women have significantly better access to higher education than men, and have demonstrably better education outcomes as a result.
For example, women are significantly more likely to receive scholarships and grants than men in undergrad.
Partially as a result of this lack of access, men have dropped to almost 40% of undergrad students, while women make up nearly 60%. Women also receive more doctorates than men, and almost twice as many Master's degrees as men.
I'm not trying to minimize the bigotry that you observed (or faced), but it's objectively false to claim that women have worse access to higher education than men.
OP didn't indicate their gender.
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OP didn't indicate their gender.
Thanks, good point. I've edited my comment.
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she was an older teacher, so makes sense it was the ideal she grew up with
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That although there are many wonderful professors, the average professor does not know their ass from a hole in the ground.
But almost all professors know an incredible amount about some ass and/or some hole, just not the specific ass and hole that it would be practical to know about.
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High School is just busy work to keep you off the streets until you're ready for a job or college.
Honestly a lot of work is just busy work to keep people off the streets.
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How low the expectations are for a putatively “adult” level of education
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That I spent years developing proficiency in my language and expanding my vocabulary to get accepted, only to be told to write simplified English in journalism school. Then they doubled down in my business classes to write for a 6th grade education and those who don't speak natively.
Ya I was surprised that that became the style they liked in my university history classes. None of that rhetoric bullshit.
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You can tell from my transcript the exact week Elder Scrolls Oblivion came out.
For me it was might and magic III, yes I'm very old...
My roommate, RA for the dorm, and I played for 3 months straight on my computer. It was never turned off 24/7 ....
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Even if you are sailing directly downwind, it works. That was actually the professor's demonstration. He said that at the time it was accepted as a physical phenomenon, there were many physicists who said it wasn't possible, but it was being actively used by some engineers to make jets go in reverse.
Cool stuff!
(I am not in aerospace or sailing, so I was guesstimating)
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Higher education is a waste of money for the vast majority of degrees, even STEM ones.
Let me guess, you went to uni in the U.S.A.?
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Just how greedy some professors can be.
Like the one that had a publishing deal with Pearson. He wrote his own textbook, charged $700 for it, then made you remove parts from the book so it made used copies of the book worthless.
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Just how greedy some professors can be.
Like the one that had a publishing deal with Pearson. He wrote his own textbook, charged $700 for it, then made you remove parts from the book so it made used copies of the book worthless.
That sounds like something news worthy with name and everything
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Granted, linux is probably much more user friendly now. Although I still see mysterious errors on boot and cannot boot into newer kernel versions. How peculiar.
I've used a Linux desktop for 25 years now
Yeah, it's gotten a bit easier, just like Windows and Mac.
Not that much has changed, and frankly, most of basic Linux really isn't that hard, it's just getting people off the shitty windows concepts that is the hard part.
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Classmates of mine who moved to Linux in college, 20 years ago, all graduated at least a semester later than I did. To be fair, I got my pirated copy of everything from them.
What is this even trying to say?
When we had to team up for lab assignments I was working with a like-minded guy and we did everything Linux when the assignment didn't specifically specify that we had to use windows. The teacher was constantly updating the wording of his assignments and asked us to put a little bit of windows in there. We were way ahead of the rest of class and had plenty of time left to switch the windows parts in and out like nothing. That was 12 years ago.
If it was possible on Linux we used Linux, if not then we used windows. We used a very pragmatic approach, but favored Linux where possible.
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There is no god. No amount of looking for it would be enough. I was already doubtful beforehand. Having grown up conservatively, I kind of already knew it was all fake, but the deprogramming took a while.
I wasn't doubtful, unfortunately. I went in a true-believer, expecting to get a Religious-Studies degree. But I left early as an Atheist. I'm glad that I did, but fundamentally shifting my life like that really messed me up. Deprogramming myself was the hardest, but best decision that I ever made.
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Where can I learn more about this? Recommend any books or any techniques? I'd love to learn more about power structures, and people in power.
In workplaces, I've seen people put themselves into positions of power, get roles their not qualified for, and influence managers to dislike people. Office politics.
There are a lot of historical books on various topics; i feel like a good spot is to pick an era and dive in.
Also, everything is politics, especially office work. Part of the purpose of college wasn't just to get people to gain knowledge, but to work up Bloom's Taxonomy by applying knowledge learned and analyzing it. Reading books might get you knowledge and maybe comprehension, but the value is in those higher levels.
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I've always said in 99% sure there is no God. Or if there is he doesn't care about us.
However I'm 100% sure that every religion is full of shit and made up.
I call myself agnostic atheist but it's really gnostic when it's anything theistic humanity has come up with thus far. I say this so when I'm talking to a Christian I can make it clear I have no doubts at all when it comes to anything Abrahamic being obviously bullshit.
Deist idk. The universe is pretty fucking weird.
