Higher Education: is it relevant?
Do we need higher education today? Is it so important for our generation, as it was important for our parents? Nowadays more and more specialists in different fields, entrepreneurs and businessmen achieve success without it.
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We have adopted the "truth" that the end of the prestigious College is a secured future. But today a student gets graduate with debt from $20.000 to $60.000 of loan for education and the high expectations of his future career. Former students shackled by credit, they don't risk and don't invest effort in an adventurous startups or private activities, prefer to work in management of companies on initial positions, to pay off debts gradually. Or they even remain without work in the oversaturated labour market and do not know what to do with their science degree.
For the 2012-2013 academic year, about 60% of graduates of government universities have an average debt for its education loan on average of $ 27,300 each.
Only 30% of people with higher education find jobs in their own or related fields.
In 2014, 50% of recent College graduates employed in jobs not requiring higher education. For example: 100.000 of cleaners and 317.000 waiters have College diplomas.
In fact, a diploma of College is just an additional plus in your favor at the interview, but it is not a guarantee of employment on good terms. It only opens up more choice of places to work, but approximately with the same conditions.
Is it worth spending 4-6 years in training and incur debts, if consider how quickly technologies are changing our world? By the time of graduation, in the field you have chosen, can occur automation of many processes and greatly reduce the demand for specialists of your profile. Today, the academic knowledge that you get in College are lagging behind the required practical knowledge that need in reality.
If you already know your goal in life, then don't waste time on education, because the ability to translate ideas into practice is valued far more than any diploma.
read about successful entrepreneurs who dropped out College
But if you didn't find yourself, the first 2-3 years in College will not be superfluous. Age from 20-30 years old is the most active stage in formation of personality. Boyish goes, it's the final stage of the formation of character and principles, it's time of full social adaptation. The type of mind originated in the school (humanitarian or technical) is developing. So, it's not superfluous to spend the first few years of this period, among your peers, in the same time having a decent and hard goal (getting a diploma).
College will definitely teach you the basic rules and laws of society and adult life, but so to speak in the demo version. If we reject academic knowledge, in fact you learn to interact, cooperate, negotiate with as equals (other students) and higher (teachers). You learn self-discipline. Also get a small, but basic skills that are needed in any field – public speaking, presentation of your work, promoting yourself. Working to deadline, compromise and quick fix of your mistakes. Also in College’s years formed one of the strong ties for life.
During my studies, I changed many jobs, I can't remember almost anyone with whom i worked, but with my classmates we have been friends for 10 years. The trials, difficulties and victories unite people.
The more trials will fall to your lot while studying, the better for you. Honors in studies rarely demonstrate the ingenuity and skill needed to solve problems in a short time and under great pressure. They work great for plans and templates, but can't to improvise in difficult situations, and the honors go to boring office work in the end more often, than people with an average score of grades.
Only In the process of obtaining higher education perhaps to get a fundamental mastery of the basic Sciences, the formation methods of scientific thinking and research of the surrounding reality. You will be able to systematize the knowledge. Unlike school, you can choose what skills are useful and which are not. There is no need as in the middle and senior school cram all that system offers to you, you make the choice.
The most important thing that gives College in the first 2-3 years, you will learn to learn properly!
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At the end of the first two years you are already more mature person, who will be able to determine his future career more rationally. You're ready to learn independently and effectively, the Internet today provides access to volumes of knowledge, which does not have any College. You will be able to assess the labor market and prospects in different directions. If after the first years you know that you want to continue studying according to the initially chosen profession, well, you are very lucky, keep on do it.
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A personal experience (i described it in my intro earlier):
I have the diploma of Aeronautical Engineering, I spent 6 years to get it. I was on a budget learning, but provided housing and food by myself (was working the entire period of study in free time). In the end the diploma cost me about 60.000$. After College I went to work in the specialty in state research and production space center Khrunichev, I was adopted to the Department for development of new booster rockets. In practice, I used about 10% of the specialized knowledge that I gained in College. I can honestly say that for one year of work at the space center I learned more than for 6 years before.
Due to poor conditions I had to change the field of activity, I chose digital technologies, and had learned everything from the beginning independently. It took me approximately 2.5 years to become IT engineer in the one of the biggest internet-provider company in a country. I am self taught, but I could not to reach this result, without passing through the higher education.
I think a society does well with an equal emphasis on training tradepeople in blue collar work. That's one thing I appreciate about Australia's educational system. It's socially acceptable for a kid to leave high school at 16 to learn a trade. In the USA, this person would be considered a low life uneducated bum. The US university system will experience major changes in the coming years when the student loan bubble bursts.
I read that in Australia the most balanced and effective education system.
I suffered through this allegedly effective education system. It might be effective for joe average but it stunts the growth of the exceptional. I actually had a teacher one time refuse to let us do a particular topic that I was absolutely bursting with enthusiasm, yet this c*nt was more than happy to burn me for not turning in my assignments. I told this asshole, I WANT TO WRITE THIS. crickets chirping He literally said, 'No, because you want to do it'. I was gobsmacked.
It was the book Nineteen Eighty Four, by the way. I had already read it and I was bursting with things to say about it, that I actually wanted to write, and I would have gone home that afternoon if he'd not refused to let us do it, and written a perfect A+ assignment and submitted it the next day.
So this is your wonderous australian education system. People succeed in australia in academic fields mainly because of rich parents, not because of talent.
I want to believe that it was an isolated incident and you were just unlucky that you ran into this asshole :)
I seriously doubt it. I have heard other people talk about their experiences in the system and the term 'tall poppy syndrome' is absolutely applicable to the australian education system. You can only succeed if you are talented in australia if someone will capitalise you.
Being so abrasive and anti-authoritarian, I was cut down repeatedly, brutally, cruelly, and even, I think it started to make me feel like my blessing was a curse.
This is also why I was so excited when I came to Bulgaria. There isn't a wealth of capitalists here, but a lot of anti-authoritarians. So I am with my own kind here. Nobody gets in your way in this country, unless you try to grab their high position. I really have to say it, it's the most capitalist country I have ever seen. Everyone is running a hustle here. It can be hard to find friends, but if you are working a niche, nobody gets in your way, at all.
If it's not STEAM (science, technology, engineering, Agronomic or Mechanical) then it's a hobby.
Well that depends on what your definition of science is. Would legal studies be considered a science?
I don't think so.
Akin to voodoo perhaps...and advertising.
That's where I'd have to disagree with you. Legal studies, and understanding natural law theory, is extremely important in the field of arbitration. Arbitration is absolutely a necessity to life, as we're all individuals trying to utilizes the same scarce resources for different ends.
Advertising, likewise, is a cornerstone to the modern provision of goods and services. I don't think either of these things are hobbies, and I'd gladly argue that both of these warrant dedicated research and study.
Oddly enough, People have disagreed with me before. It's not an altogether unfamiliar sensation.
Maybe you can help me understand why fields of study other than the STEAM fields you mentioned don't warrant further study. I'm with you that institutions for higher education, especially here in the US, are a wash that provide very little of value outside those fields, but I'm asking purely from a principle standpoint.
that is a very cool acronym...
What a great question!
Personally, I feel that it depends on the person. There are a lot of people who have "the right ingredients" to be successful on their own. There are also a lot of people that just won't get much out of school for various reasons.
I do think that school has a lot to offer many people though. For a lot of people, it is a good step towards being a fully functional adult. While there are some people that are 'ready for the real world' right out of high school, a lot of people are not. I think that college gives people a good environment to mature in, and helps people figure out what to do with their life.
Managing debt is an important factor though. I do not think that going to a $30k / year school is good for someone who is planning to pay for it with student loans. It is important to look at the finances for whatever you are planning to major in, and figure out how much it will cost + how much more you can reasonably expect to make by getting a degree.
There is no guarantee that you will make more by getting a degree (which does need to be factored in), but in a lot of cases a reasonable sized loan can be paid back in 3-5 years after school, and once it is paid off, the person gets to keep the higher earnings (which are also not guaranteed) for the rest of their life.
Great replay, I completely agree.
It is important to keep sending people to the university so that basic knowledge is properly thought and people can be trained for more technical jobs (technical in the wide sense of the word). Even if they will learn much more in one year of their technical job than in five years of university courses (as you did), it is important to start with the basics before moving into more modern and complex stuff.
But not everybody can do it and should do it. My opinion is that one should not consider this as the only option for a decent life and emphasize university as the ony way to get educated, as it is currently the case in Europe.
You are right. And as i said i think that i could not become a specialist in new sphere without base from college, so quickly, I would have spent much more time maybe.
So, I basically get one important point from your discussion of the subject: networking is the only real reason to go to college. The rest is superfluous. This is one of the things that is so amazing about Steemit, a communication network system that promotes quality ideas generation and sharing. It more or less makes higher education redundant in as much as you can learn everything you need for most enterprises by self-study from free information resources now anyway.
In some point yes. But the main idea that we must develop skills of learning, and College helps to do it in some sense.
Learning just means paying attention and having the desire to retain it by immediate, and progressively diminishing application of knowledge. If you have ever heard of a french teacher of languages by the name of Pimsleur, you may have heard of his technique for rapidly acquiring long term memory. I have an instinct for it, every new thing that interests me gets applied, reiterated, evolved and cross-linked so it stays. I don't know if my memory is particularly exceptional, but for me it is just natural. The only issue I have is finding more concrete and usually expensive ways to apply new knowledge, so a lot of it just rattles around my head, keeping me awake at night and making me write compulsively :)
I think learning is also understanding and systematization of knowledge, that you get. Not enough just remember something. especially In tech science
Perhaps my memory capacity is way above normal then. I am one of those people who suddenly decides to dig into something, and then I push until I get brain-fry. Then after that subsides, I move around a lot. I am not a specialist. I have naturally specialised in areas that uprank this generalist ability, such as network technology and computers, where the capacity to network large complex disparate fields together is an advantage. I don't really have a method other than 'follow my bliss'.
But for people who have less exceptional learning ability, this systemisation is very important. In the end though, success is 9 parts talent and 1 part of effort. My efforts are very diverse, and I am sure that eventually it will qualify me for roles that nobody would have guessed existed. Having a broad, high level understanding that applies directly and can be used in various unexpected situations, makes you a leader. Not the political type, the visionary type.
Someone taking on huge amounts of debt is a major problem when it comes to school.