Who here did NOT go to college?

Back then you could actually get a job in "computing" without going to college.

Sometimes I wish I had, but I was too 'young' really.

Saying that, I still have something of a hatred for students - an irrational jealous streak a mile wide that makes me fume. Living in Oxford, this is something of a problem. However, the more i talk to students, the more I realise that I pwn them all, so it's all good. My one remaining chip, clinging resolutly onto my shoulder, is finally slipping away. Around 2010 I'll be fine.

I think it's because of jealousy - as I say, it is with me. Because I'm aware of it I don't let it affect me, but I think that's what it is in 90% of cases.

going and leaving is >>> going and failing and failing and failing and failing and failing and failing and failing and going back again, and not facing the fact that you're 150K+ in debt

Once again, my post has little point other than to bring to everyones attention how stupid I am.

Whoop de doo. College.

Not to mention that there's a certain stigma attached to not going that could hurt you later.
Indeed, that's just loathsome... I'll actively frown upon anyone who does this to me in the future, not out of condescension but in reaction against their disdain.

also, do you hate fun?

xpost

I thought that was funny because at my school we've got two courses about consumerism, one in sociology and one in religion. Not that that's shaking up the social order or anything, but it's not classics.

(xpost - Maria makes the point more clearly, by example, that it might help him to know what he's talking about before he makes a decision based on his own knowledge)

jaymc, in that segment I was referring more to primary education; I should have specified. gabbneb, that basis would be insight, and whether or not it is keen or misguided would be up to one's personal interpretation. You can dismiss it and you really wouldn't be wrong.

I went to a small liberal arts college, and I feel like I learned so much, both inside and outside of the classroom, just about life and ideas and people -- stuff that was rarely just a means to end, and that I wouldn't give up for anything now. College can be a hothouse for this kind of fantastically intense learning and growing, both intellectually and socially.

Of course, there is always the question of $$$.

xpost - Ian sounds like he's 'interested in learning' to me, too - but not necessarily the kind of learning facilitated by a classroom. (there's also the insinuation there that he needs to look at college again because he's 'interested in learning,' and wouldn't be learning unless he goes to college)

Very true, but it's not that I'm convinced learning wouldn't occur in a college. Instead, I'm fearful that being swamped by the five-pronged attack of studies, debt, the influence collegiate culture, student poverty, and the possibility of such a busy future will make me bloody off myself.

Most colleges these days you can study whatever you want to study within reason. I think mostly it's about the value you place on learning. And sure, you could get most of the reading in a library, but the intellectual interaction isn't so easily duplicated. Like most things you get out of it what you put into it. Definitely not for everyone, though. The other thing is, you can always go later in life.

How would I not be learning when it's possible to find so much to absorb as, well, seemingly everything becomes increasingly available? (That's not rhetorical, I'm honestly curious.)

I live in a massive university town and its influence here is practically inescapable, but that's not my only reference point at all, not in the slightest sense.

yes, you get out of college what you put into it. but it's a rare person who can learn as much on their own as they could with the right instructors and colleagues. i think ian's problem is that he just hasn't found the latter yet.

(xpost - so you live in a university town. perhaps you are ascribing the character and culture of that university to universities in general? this is very probably a mistake, especially as, if i recall correctly, you live in a state that does not have any great universities.)

what does a high school textbook have to do with college? you by and large don't read textbooks in college humanities/social sciences. and there are many who would say that you are more likely to wax poetic about Sandinistas in college than about Shakespeare.

Yeah, I'd like to know if this is true, Ian. One of the exciting things about going to college for me, though, was precisely that opportunity to interact on a more intellectual level than in high school.

When I apply for jobs nobody even looks or mentions where I went to school and what I studied.

But I know if it wasn't there, on muh rez, they wouldn't hire me.

I loved college so much. My best and favorite classes were ones that had nothing to do with my major. I feel like I learned a lot and don't regret taking them.

Just like week had a phone interview for an educational consulting job and one of the reasons they called me was because of my interdisclipinary honors major nearly ten years ago in college. It impressed them.

I mean I feel like the overall we have a culture that screams 'college = good! more college = more good!'

i've had a couple awful profs but i've yet to have one who was awful because they didn't care abt teaching, mostly they were bad because they were old & incoherent or young & naive and assigned unrealistic amounts of work. but they're all still noticeably trying & caring. i've heard some terrible stories but attribute a lot of complaining to ppl expecting too much of the prof when ime u learn most from peers & in independently mulling over stuff. most times i was going to ask a prof to clear something up a classmate did first, or 15 mins poring over notes/textbook

but I met someone today who just finished a very costly history masters degree at Columbia and is about to teach English abroad. there are certainly bad decisions out there to be made. xp

= why there is more student loan debt than credit card debt in america

The notion of a teaching-oriented Ph.D. is weird; the doctoral degree, especially in its modern (i.e. 19th century German) incarnation, has been a research-oriented degree, and it's hard to see what you'd spend your time writing a dissertation on if you were teaching-oriented. I know there are education degrees but I'm pretty skeptical of those too: they learn to be good bureaucrats but the art of teaching remains that, an art.

I'd rather see the incentive structure blossom into different tracks. We tell this story that it's the researchers that bring in the big bucks, because they can get grants & because they bring prestige through the work which appeals to rich donors. But tuition/fees are also big bucks, and that's brought in by those who do the teaching. Those funds could be indexed to people who do a good job teaching...though again, the problem is measuring good teaching.

Euler- I guess you could call the degree something else, but I don't see why higher ed teaching should be limited to people capable/willing to spend years doing research. in some fields there might be financial logic to it, but in others - such as the humanities - I think it results in superfluous research and a poor use of resources.

Here's a try: why would anyone want to teach college, if not for the prospects of doing research, given how shitty the pay is? I mean: these are people who have the brains & work ethic to do most anything; why do it for average or just a bit above average wages?

aren't there plenty of tenured faculty at liberal arts colleges who live a nice life and don't spend much time or energy on research?

I mean I feel like the overall we have a culture that screams 'college = good! more college = more good!'

haha well thats probably because for a long time college did offer a good return on investment. the value of a BA is declining (i think) but its still there. & tbh job prospects are still p good for students that study engineering or the hard sciences.

Here's a try: why would anyone want to teach college, if not for the prospects of doing research, given how shitty the pay is?

srsly. haha my bf dropped out sophmore year & makes 4x what i make. also tbqh its sorta questionable how many students are that invested in learning so

Euler, do you have ANY IDEA how hard it is for most people with advanced degrees in the humanities to get teaching jobs? or earn a fucking living? i get turned down for HIGH SCHOOL teaching jobs, and my credentials, GPAs, and published work is pretty much aces.

*are pretty much aces. ooof.

so I guess the answer is 'tenure', Euler. we talked about this on the grad school thread and gf is about to start (she went w/ the 'top' one in the end btw) and I don't know if she would in a world where tenure didn't exist. job security and nice hours have a lot of appeal, maybe more than ever today.

iatee, there are older tenured faculty who meet that description, but they aren't being replaced with such people: at top liberal arts colleges you'll have to publish quite a bit to get tenure, and even at mediocre liberal arts colleges they're looking for researchers. I guess once you get tenure you might be able to stop doing research but lots of places have post-tenure review now; I dunno if that's the case so much at private schools, though.

xp Lamp: yeah, teaching, I've heard, isn't exactly a bed of roses: students complain about lousy profs but it's not like classrooms are full of lively, interested students, as this thread attests.

xp table: I know! Depending on what you mean by the humanities, though---English, for instance---you're already committed to a degree that doesn't line-up super well with ~career opportunities~. It's better in philo but that's b/c philo's like math, at least analytic philo, & so those grads can go off & do consulting e.g. for big bucks.

euler— yeah, re: the whole English degree not lining up with career opportunities. but i think that in the end, it should! so many people have no idea how to write a goddamn sentence and many will probably make more money in a year than i'll probably make in the next ten.

i have wondered at times if some degree havers black ball not-havers purely for the temerity of having got along without one.

short answer: yes

Thread is making this dropout feel unemployable. But then I do quite a bit anyway.

I felt pretty awesome when I worked my way up to my current job with several years of experience, and am feeling not so awesome now we've recruited two new people to the same post, both straight out of university. (Not very well-regarded universities either, but I know I'm a total snob for thinking that.)

Especially since I feel like all my mistakes get scrutinised endlessly, but these guys both said in the interview they knew things they turned out not to know, like, at all and everyone else just seems to find it cute when they don't know stuff.

Still, in the UK university just got 9x more expensive than it was in my day, and I've still paid off only a small percentage of my debts from a decade ago, so it's not really worth the gamble of going back and hoping I don't just go nuts again.

def. agree that taking (at least) a year off after high school -- i.e. living by myself, having some sort of job -- would have been a great idea, but i don't think i could have been convinced of it at the time.

it's kind of weird that you need "a degree" when obviously the quality of the education that produced the degree varies so wildly. there are good colleges and less-good colleges. there are motivated poor kids at crappy schools and half-assed rich kids at top-level schools. having a degree in general doesn't give a whole lot of information.

that said, it would make me vaguely wonder if someone had *tried* to get one and failed. because it's just not very hard to get one (apart from financial problems) imo. and apart from daredevil savants who work outside of the standard system -- of which there are certainly more than a few -- it does seem an inability to manage the requirements of college would not bode well for managing those of modern cubicle life etc.

i went to a "good" expensive school. i don't exactly regret it -- it was a great experience, although i of course should have taken better advantage of the opportunities -- but i'm sure it wasn't that much $ better than much cheaper schools. and it certainly hasn't boosted my future income, though that's no doubt more my fault than its.

I went but never finished due to getting married and having 2 kids over a very protracted junior+senior+co-op student timeframe. So 1980s superwoman engineering school+work+family mode collapsed into basic working mom around 1983/4. I have regretted not finishing occasionally - generally when I've been desperate to leave a job I felt trapped in and couldn't get even a call back on applications - but I also don't think my lack of degree has hindered me much. I know of one specific company that refused to hire me as an employee due to not being a degreed electrical engineer, but they had no problem paying my rates as a consultant when they needed help w/ something I'm an expert in. Granted, tech stuff is not a fair comparison to an English BA, and I was lucky to find a niche (at the time) area (industrial control communication protocols) I really enjoyed and excelled at, and was in a (lowly phone tech support) position to just start doing it, to the relief of others in the company that didn't want to deal with it.

I do wonder about that alternate universe where I did finish school, what would I be doing, etc. But not very often.

also the 'summer camp' angle was awesome. i grew up in a small town -- everyone in my high school had known each other since kindergarten or fourth grade -- and the lack of preconceptions my colleagues had about me was grebt

should have gotten laid more than i did, but o well

I'm kind of the opposite of this thread...I've never been out of education in some form since I was four: school -> undergrad -> postgrad -> postdoc. I'm quite happy with how things have turned out, and I've had the opportunity to move around and live in different places, but I'm certain I would have had a more varied experience and maybe picked up some important life skills along the way. Though I guess everyone ends up carrying not-quite-regrets and counterfactual questions, whatever choices they make.

my college experience is pretty weird. dropped out of an english major after 3 years, went to work and had successful careers in both sales and technology. got diagnosed with ADD in my early 30s, went back and got a biz degree after getting on meds.

my original transcript was a crazyquilt of A's, F's, and withdrawals, but I graduated first in my class second time around, which I attribute to a mix of maturity + the meds.

things worked out ok, but I do wish I had been on meds the first time around and finished my degree. not graduating was a sorespot for me for years.

That said at the time I pretty psyched for it but more so for the young adult summer camp aspects rather than the intellectual ones.

― \(^o\) (/o^)/ (ENBB), Friday, April 22, 2011 8:44 AM (4 hours ago)

id be amazing if it was standard for kids to travel for a year before college, the summer camp/maturing possibilities are like 1mx better than lol college, and depending where you went itd be a lot cheaper than going nuts in the freshman dorm - its imo somewhat a shame that most students arent really psychologically in the position to fully take advantage of what is a mind blowingly vast and profound historically unprecedented educational worldscape

and just my two cents ive done p well livelihood wise w/o an education - some of that is just luck and privilege no doubt, and some is being flexible and having willingness to educate myself and gravitate toward things i can do w/o a degree - but who knows where id be if i did go to school - its def something that shaped my experience - but it was also kind of choiceless cause i just did not have the discipline or desire to do the actual work of college at age 18 or 22 or w/e - now i have no doubt i could smash that shit nbd, but still i have no urge - maybe if i fell in love w/some field that required a degree - seems unlikely

yeah i was thinking abt this today & its an obvious irony that the higher you move up the economic ladder the less necessary it becomes to actually go to college - like i have a couple of high school friends who make really good money in real estate who never went to college but were able to buy their first rental property w/ family money

it occurs to me that if you ran a company in an industry that generally requires a degree for employment but doesnt really in truth need one to do the work that you could gain a competitive recruitment advantage by waiving that prerequisite

just to be clear as far as the privilege i was discussing, it wasnt like i got any money from my family starting out, theyre not rich, but i did have the luxury of knowing that if i ever was totally broke i could move back home or get a small loan or w/e, and then theres the other aspect where i wasnt expected to help support any of my family which people who come from more humble background often are - also i had a lot of connections just cause of the sort of scene i grew up in

i wish i was more mature & had a better work ethic to better take advantage of the mindblowingly vast & historically unprecedented educational worldscape but, like, i never had a work ethic or ever did homework all my life up until now, mb a real job would be a better way to learn the habit, but in some ways feel the relentless heavy intellectually exhausting workload u get in college is the best way because it's rewarding in a way i can't imagine most jobs are & i know some p lazy adults. like i feel p horrible abt myself whenever i hand in something half assed or do poorly on a test for being underprepared & each time the beatdown is a hard lesson

i might be more mature than the worst of ppl tho, idk like some ppl in my classes shop online and skype with their girlfriends during lectures

oh yeah ice crm i didnt mean to imply that just more that college is sort of abt 'access' - to networks, to skills, to resources - & that the better off your family is the easier is to aquire those things w/o going to college. & yeah even if your not from a 'rich' family i think just having the time/space to 'figure things out' is p valuable

yeah totally having time to be a lazy irresponsible fuck up working a shitty job is a p amazing opportunity, so long as you move on from there lol

yeah totally having time to be a lazy irresponsible fuck up working a shitty job is a p amazing opportunity, so long as you move on from there lol

― ice cr?m, Saturday, April 23, 2011 2:51 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest

i'm doing this right now even tho i graduated from college -- it is v helpful

its def interesting to look at the cultural privilege that an education can confer like even between diff tiers of colleges - a top liberal arts institution may provide you w/an equal or better by the books education than an ivy, but at the ivy youre going to rub elbows w/the masters of the universe, and even if none of those connections pays off in a literal sense you still got to vibe to how the upper crust just is - which is natural to them but can provide invaluable insight for ambitious people of more ordinary means

the only time i found school rewarding was was the semester where i had to save my ass from getting kicked out of school & in the summer when i'd take one or two classes at a time & could concentrate pretty heavily on those -- i convinced myself at various points that i would've been okay if i had to drop out, idk how true that is & mainly my motivation for not letting that happen was societal expectations & not wanting my mother to commit suicide

i do feel generally speaking that ppl i know that put more effort into school & doing well in school are doing 'better' than me atm -- but that prob says more about me than it does about college

"this board is now just a bunch of rich college kids"

yeah people who put more effort into things tend to 'do better', but hey not everyone can do better, that wouldnt make any sense xp

xxxxp You know, Tabes, you don't have to put both or either degrees on your resume and/or applications.

Man, we're all so lucky I'm not a mod. I would have changed this thread's title to "Who hear did NOT go to college?" ages ago.

whatever you say college boy.

i wouldnt mind teaching college and not doing any research!

research is hard

Here's a try: why would anyone want to teach college, if not for the prospects of doing research, given how shitty the pay is? I

Because, despite a strict curriculum, I still enjoy a certain amount of freedom? Also, I like teaching: the performative aspects, and also the thrill of watching a nineteen-year-old whose interest in writing waxed and waned but now, after taking the class, wants to take it seriously.

I only finished my masters degree last year: I put off writing a thesis for a humiliatingly long period. It got so that my employment prospects, especially in this economy, were beginning to disappear. I still have no interest in pursuing doctoral work, much less "tenure," but I see myself as an adjunct for the foreseeable future.

anyway i assumed this thread was being bumped for notorious butthead peter thiels new "project" to... i dont know. be loud?

Thiel’s solution to opening the minds of those who can’t easily go to Harvard? Poke a small but solid hole in this Ivy League bubble by convincing some of the most talented kids to stop out of school and try another path. The idea of the successful drop out has been well documented in technology entrepreneurship circles. But Thiel and Founders Fund managing partner Luke Nosek wanted to fund something less one-off, so they came up with the idea of the “20 Under 20″ program last September, announcing it just days later at San Francisco Disrupt. The idea was simple: Pick the best twenty kids he could find under 20 years of age and pay them $100,000 over two years to leave school and start a company instead.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/10/peter-thiel-were-in-a-bubble-and-its-not-the-internet-its-higher-education/

thiel thinks there is a higher ed "bubble" which is sort of hilarious nonsense. he also seems to think that convincing harvard students to drop out and a) take a big check and b) be mentored by rich successful people will somehow "prove" that college degrees are worthless. shakinghead.gif

My wife was an assistant professor at Ole Miss, tenure-track, but it was clear she wasn't going to get it because she hated research and loved teaching. After the last year before her tenure review, she said "it's been real, thanks," resigned and we went off to California where she taught at a junior college. She was a really good teacher, and her students loved her because she was the one who had the most enthusiasm for being in the room where they had to be.

A good way of putting it.

i dropped out of college to work in record sales and it's been real yo, but it would be nice to make some big moneys someday.

thiel thinks there is a higher ed "bubble" which is sort of hilarious nonsense. he also seems to think that convincing harvard students to drop out and a) take a big check and b) be mentored by rich successful people will somehow "prove" that college degrees are worthless. shakinghead.gif

the for-profit/online side is more of a clear cut bubble. for-profit degrees don't add a ton of value to the world and really only exist due to student loans / gov't money - university of phoenix had almost half a million student' last year and got $1 billion in pell grant money. gov't is finally paying a little bit of attention to this subject and squeezing some air out of it, but I think bubble is the right word.

bubble might be the wrong word for the non-profit side, also thiel's obv a dick, but I do think that the way we fund our non-profit higher-ed system is growing amazingly unsustainable. a college degree is a pretty complicated investment and it's really 'worth' a different amount to different people, but it's not worth...infinity...so the rise in tuition has to level off somewhere. but that's still not happening! not even in a gigantic recession.

but the student loan side of the bubble can't really 'pop' until people can default on their loans, so instead we'll just have a weird system of indentured servitude because for some reason we think it's fine to let 18 year olds take out 200k in loans for an art history degree from NYU but not for a house.

half a million students*

er until people can *discharge their loans, they pretty clearly can default on them

"i dropped out of college to work in record sales and it's been real yo, but it would be nice to make some big moneys someday."

brooklyn needs weed, dude. just sayin'...

http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/10/peter-thiel-were-in-a-bubble-and-its-not-the-internet-its-higher-education/

thiel thinks there is a higher ed "bubble" which is sort of hilarious nonsense. he also seems to think that convincing harvard students to drop out and a) take a big check and b) be mentored by rich successful people will somehow "prove" that college degrees are worthless. shakinghead.gif

― ban drake (the rapper) (max), Saturday, April 23, 2011 9:07 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

o jeez thiel is such a prick he also wants to build artificial pacific islands on which to found a tax free randian paradise, may he drown in his own hubris