quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: For me, interaction, performance study, guidance from proffs and peers and hands on learning are what my education have given me. I know that I have achieved things I could not have done through the mail or online. The most memorable and to me the most important moments of my education have been in a classroom, at a cafe, in a performance hall, but never at my desk at home, or even in the university library.
Exactly! But how do you explain that to someone who wants to know why your institution can't get them a degree in the same short time period the non-traditional one claims?
That is ALWAYS a challenge when dealing with the students who want the degree beacuse they think it will get them a good paying job. My challenge is to convince some of these kids that the Gen-Ed courses are not something to "get over with." You should come to college (particularly a liberal arts college) for the education and to enrich your life. This generation of students (I call them the entitlement generation) do not always get it. It can be a tough sell.
I could only speak to people about education based on my own experiences. I suppose one may be able to learn something on one's own; in fact I am certain that is true, however a good college/univ environment focuses your efforts, immerses you in an environment of learning and gives you an education to go with that degree.
I would say: THAT is what the degree means, it represents the EDUCATION you were supposed to have gotten. I have known many people, especially fellow English majors, and less often fellow Music Majors, who have seen college as a utility: a training camp for a career in teaching or something. I have never like these people, they have generally impressed me as rather stupid and boring types, not the kind of person I would learn something from anyway, so why bother with them? Only they are getting the same degree as me, and what it represents is supposed to be the same thing. I know for a fact, not intended as a boast, that I was more prepared, more intelligent, and more able as a freshman, than some of these people whom I met in their last days before graduation at the university. Says nothing about me, these people were not educated to a standard I held, and still hold for myself.
Today, as a rising senior, I am usually (especially in English classes) seen as that "grad student to be" type who is obviously interested in being in school, and not looking to escape. I had a beer with my literary crit prof recently (that's the kind of student I am- call me a suck-up ) and he complained to me about the UC trying to turn his classes, especially his creative writing classes, into workshops for career training. Short stories are changed to business letters, persuasive arguments become corporate memos, and so on. He sees it as a major travesty, and well he should since his job is to be a creative writing teacher, not a career counselor.
Music classes are harder for me. Though I have spent MUCH more time in the music building than any other, I am not the best of the musicians, and I am not the most skillful or florid or advanced of the composers. I do excel at music history/musicology -my concentration- but it is a specialty not always looked on with the greatest admiration. Music majors have to be musicians, and we history specialties are the poorest of the lot; though many of us are not bad by most standards, we generally pale in comparison to comp and performance majors. We are literary types, who are forced to be musicians. (Actually some of us are idiots who are forced to do SOMETHING... guess which one I am! )
Interestingly, my music major is very much focused on the things one would associate with "career training;" so much so that you'd think I'd be bothered by it the way I am in English. But I'm not at all. Part of it is that the major is SO focused on practical skills, that everyone learns them quite efficiently, and everyone is attracted to and relieved by non-practical classroom experiences. Classes that don't teach an operation are so refreshing and rewarding partly because of all the training we get in the two years of core classes in lower division. We have the skills and are ready to apply them intellectually, without a focus on learning how to DO something. We learn how to think, that is our skill as musicians.
That, come to think of it, has been what I have taken away most from music: thinking and focusing my efforts on certain things, following a tast to the end, or seeking a conclusion to an open question in composition or performance. My English major has complemented this with my knowledge of literature, writing, criticism, etc.
People often, far too often, ask me, "So, what are you going to do with that?" when I say I am a music/English major. I despise the question, and usually respond with a hazy description of my future as a traveling music critic or maybe a folksey third-grade teacher in Spain or something. I don't know what to say. I am a student; I am not a _______ in training, or a future ___________. I wouldn't want to be.
Interestingly enough, most of the friends I made in freshman year that I still talk to have gotten to be this way as well. Many entered with a standard freshman line: "In and out in 4." There is even a program at my university that you can apply to, which is supposed to help you achieve that goal by giving you choice registration times and additional career counseling. These friends don't say that anymore; mainly because those who did are gone, unmotivated as students, they got jobs in the last few years and left college "temorarily" to work. Others simply dropped the mantra and got into being students and learning. Few if any kept up the original plan, either because it was a strategy for coping with their unease about their educational fitness, or because they realized that it was a limiting and pointless excercise.
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In my area -- CS -- a college degree means that you can program, and other people can look at your program and have a chance at understanding it.
I don't know what it means in other areas.
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quote:I would say: THAT is what the degree means, it represents the EDUCATION you were supposed to have gotten.
Well put!
quote:People often, far too often, ask me, "So, what are you going to do with that?" when I say I am a music/English major. I despise the question, and usually respond with a hazy description of my future as a traveling music critic or maybe a folksey third-grade teacher in Spain or something. I don't know what to say. I am a student; I am not a _______ in training, or a future ___________.
But I strongly disagree with this attitude. While I am in favor of learning for the sake of knowledge, I do think that after 4 (or 3, or 5) years, you should ALSO be prepared to Get a Real Job. I do agree that should not be one's only focus in college; but it should (IMO) be a focus.
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I hope my little brother Gets A Real Job Soon. He's got an undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering and a graduate degree in Materials Engineering from UCSB which is currently ranked at or near the top of those fields.
He graduated this spring and doesn't have a job yet. Now part of it is definitely a personal problem on his part in that he'd rather lifeguard than beat the pavement. But he could have had a job lined up while still in grad school and he just didn't care. My parents are getting a bit frustrated with him.
I on the other hand did some graduate work in Mechanical engineering but never finished the degree. I have an undergraduate degree in Chemical engineering from the U. of Oklahoma, a somewhat less prestigious school than UCSB in the field. I can emphatically say that I worked 3-4 times as hard to earn my degree as he ever worked on his undergrad degree, I know my equivalent named classes were much, much more demanding than his.
Part of me goes "it isn't fair!" On the other hand I also have oodles more practical knowledge on the subject than he does. In engineering, there is sometimes a backlash against the "most prestigious" academic institutions in the field, like MIT or CalTech, because the joke is, you give them a wrench or screwdriver and they don't know what to do with it.
Other schools like the CalPolys have a reputation in engineering that they can fix anything but don't ask them to do a calculation to save their lives.
My dad (also an engineer) used to make fun of the "namby-pamby academic" engineers because he came from Purdue, but has become more lenient on the subject because his sone has become one of them.
My point is even across similar fields the experiences you get at institutions of solid reputation in courses that should theoretically be equivalent, are vastly different. If I had it to do over again, I don't know what academic experience I'd choose. The U of Oklahoma nearly killed me physically from the stress. I wouldn't have had that at UCSB for sure considering how my brother skated through both of his degrees. On the other hand, the "real world" has been much easier for me than school was. I think my bro is going to be in for a shock the other direction.
quote:It's like you're a smarter and more articulate version of me.
!
I think that's the first time anyone's called me articulate, hehheh. Thank you .
But, blacwolve, it works the other way, too, you know. I often find myself thinking/posting "what blacwolve said" if you've posted first. I should say the same of you!
quote:I am a student; I am not a _______ in training, or a future ___________. I wouldn't want to be.
I agree with what Orinoco said (culminating in this statement), although I don't have such a poor experience with other students. Most people I know studying English and History seem to want to learn first, then become something. Perhaps that's who I talk to.
quote:"In and out in 4."
I have always said this, but mostly not because I want to stop learning and become a business executive and make loads of dosh, but because I want to keep moving up. I don't want to in the same level of school for years and years.
However, I've never been interested in Grad school. I'm intellectual, but not in an academic way- at the moment at least. The problem lies in the tension between me wanting to move on and me having no idea where to move to.
I'm not really focused enough to go to grad school. What would I study? I'll have a Masters in Everything, thank you. What- you want me to pick a subject?
Although, I have to say I have a sneaky and totally selfishly aesthetic desire to be able to call myself 'Doctor'. Again, though- of what?
I don't really fit the system too well.
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I'm a law student, so it means, "You jumped through the proper hoop before going to law school." And big name undergrad institutions help.
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See, I don't really know what I want to do. I have vague notions, but I have about a THOUSAND vague notions. So...grad school! But I'm fortunate..my dad wants me to get a master's in everything, and my mom thinks it would be really cool if I had a phd...so they don't mind if I don't get a Real Job for a few more years.
posted
For me, I'm sorry to say, the degree mostly represents that piece of paper I need to get the job I want. I mean, if I weren't going to go back to work, I probably wouldn't be finishing my degree at all.
At the same time I do love being in college so much that I hope I'm getting more out of it than just the piece of paper. In fact, I KNOW I am. So you can do both - go to get the piece of paper, and value the journey along the way as well.
As for traditional vs. online - I've been taking mostly online the last two years. First because my twins were still at home and I needed to be here with them and secondly so that I could still be in school without my chemo schedule interfering. I have found the online courses to be no less work than a traditional and probably in fact, much harder. They take a lot more discipline, particularly the English courses. You don't see a professor every other day to hanrague you about your reading, and there's no class discussion to help guide you. It's all self-discipline and rigorously attending to the reading on your own. In the class I just finished, I made an A, but it was the only A given for the course and I had to work my tail off to get it.
The best class I had so far was one of those hybrids that rivka talked about. It was a speech class, and we covered material at home, but had to participate in class discussions on line and had to give all our speeches in person, naturally. Wonderful class - enough flexibility that working people and stay at home parents could easily manage it (there were multiple time slots available to give your speeches, one during the day, one in the evening, and one on Saturday) but plenty of live interaction with both your instructor and your fellow students.
Another phenomenon I've noticed with online classes is a lot of high school students in them, students who have applied for permission for dual enrollment and are taking their first year of college along with their last year of high school. What does everyone think about that? I know that my oldest daughter wants to do that, mainly because as a gifted student, she doesn't see enough challenge in school right now and really thinks college is wonderful (no doubt because I'm currently in school, but I can remember feeling the same way at her age.) Should we encourage our best and brightest students to rush through the first year or so of college by either CLEPing it away or taking the first year online while they're still in high school?
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quote:In my area -- CS -- a college degree means that you can program, and other people can look at your program and have a chance at understanding it.
Not exactly.
There are two types of programmers:
1) Those that are "free thinkers", and are familiar with everything about the environment, the language, the tools, etc... These are the guys you tell simply "build me a house" and it will get done in time, irrespective of how.
Their code might be convoluted, brilliant in a cryptic sort of way. Other "free thinkers" understand it, the underlying algorhythms and concepts, and are amazed by it. Whoever's not a "free thinker" wonders if it's written in Greek.
2) Those that have themselves been programmed by a school curriculum. They know only the methods they've been taught. They know every single function and all syntax as a dictionary would, but need to be told in vivid detail how to get there. If you want to have these guys build you a house, you need to give them a mountain of floorplans and two other houses they could dismantle to see how it's done.
The code these people write is immaculate. Every indentation, every comma and semicolon, case sensitivity, variable names and prefixes, etc... everything is flawless. And it will, most probably work for the purpose it's intended. But it's not flexible, and one single monkey wrench that wasn't described beforehand could bring it all crashing down.
-=O=-
I've know several in both categories. I don't know anyone in category #1 that has a CS degree, yet *everyone* in #2 does.
What made me stop my pursuit for a degree? Two things:
1) Money.
2) I walked in to a class on Database Theory and Design because it was a required course for the degree. On the first day, I realized I already knew everything that was being taught. What was the point of the class then? So I can get a job like the one I already had?
And...
quote:I think it shows you can stick with something for 4 years. Oh, and that perhaps you learned how to learn.
The same thing could be said about marriage. Although, I must admit, college is way cheaper...
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I think my phd is getting the paper, while my undergrad was about an education. While I took the courses I was required to for grad school, I also was able (and required) to take courses that did not relate to my degree. I actually value the courses outside my field more than the ones within my field.
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quote:But I strongly disagree with this attitude. While I am in favor of learning for the sake of knowledge, I do think that after 4 (or 3, or 5) years, you should ALSO be prepared to Get a Real Job. I do agree that should not be one's only focus in college; but it should (IMO) be a focus.
That is why my almost-step-sister (gee, I wish my dad would get married so I could stop having to type that) got her degree in Fine Arts, emphasis in ceramics, which is what she wanted-- and then started working toward a teaching certificate. Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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In response to Nighthawk about programmers.
I worked in industry for several years, and now I am getting my Ph.D. in computer science. I am often in trouble wth my advisor for being a little too "code-monkey" and not enough "theory."
Computer science education gives you a toolbox. Working in industry writing code all day long gives you a different toolbox. Without exception, the most effective programmers I have met are those with both.
Of course, all of the following are gross generalizations with a huge number of exceptions.
People in your group #1 often are creative thinkers. They can hack together anything. Which is awesome until you actually need to make a change or debug it. The lack of structure makes it really hard to figure out what is going on sometimes. In addition, they often lack knowledge of theory, which leads them to reinvent the wheel often, almost always writing code that is less efficient. In addition, they often have huge holes in their education because it has been specialized to whatever field they are working in There are cases when I have seen a lack of understanding of what is happening under the hood. Lastly, they often know one set of tools really well.
People in your Group #2 often lack real world skills. Outside of grad school, a really huge project in a computer science class might take 100 hours to complete. Which is about 2.5 weeks of work in the real world. So often they are not able to handle big projects, especially those in industry where the technical requirements have to balanced with business requirements. A lot of formal computer science education is spent on theory. The thing about theory is that you are going to use a small percentage of it in your real life. But when you do, it can be extremely helpful.
Sometimes formal methods are great. And sometimes you need to get the job done. Any education that is designed to prepare your for a job really should have a serious internship accompanying it. Formal education is for theory and a broad overview. Actual work experience is needed to round it out. A class like databases should be taught by someone with real experience in databases.
Just to give an example, this summer I am working with gene ontologies, trying to write programs to find clusters of genes with the same function in a given sample. Basically a tree of the possible functions of genes, where the root is the most general and the leaves are the most specific. I'm really glad that I have my real-world skills in Perl, MySQL, Apache, etc. I did't learn any of that in university. But I am also really grateful for my advanced algorithms class that taught me all kinds of ways to process trees efficiently. That's the kind of thing that you only learn in the classroom.
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quote:That's the kind of thing that you only learn in the classroom.
Well, to be honest, I learned that well before classes tried. My first arguably formal computer course, AP Computers in my senior year, I effectively taught because the teacher was on maternity leave and the substitute was inept. I already knew Pascal (this was 1988-1989) before the class had even started.
I guess it depends on mindset. I knew I was going to be a programmer since the fifth grade; I didn't just show up to the university and decide then. With the interest that I myself had, I built up the toolset you describe on my own because I simply didn't feel like waiting; I was to excited about it. But when I was forced to take classes I already knew I saw that the teaching was very deficient.
Also, as a programmer you figure this out: at least when I went, "Theory of Algorithms" and "Data Structures" were NOT required courses for a computer science degree at the University of Miami. Ada was, as was VAX Assembly Language, but not algorithms. The year I wanted to take it it was cancelled because only three people signed up for it. Not counting the cost savings, it's the primary reason I left UofM to go to Florida International University.
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Well, of course, if you have bad teachers/bad curricula, you aren't going to learn anything. In any subject. I think that is a given.
I learned to program as a small child (they reinforced the floor when they brought my first computer in). But still, there were definitely things that I learned in my theory classes that I have never been exposed to in practice.
I am sure there are some people who can read a book on theory and just absorb it. In the same way that there are people who can teach themselves calculus from a book. But I think they are much more the exception than the rule. And run they run into problems, there are not as many resources to consult.
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Well put, Chanie. I have a MS in CS, and I'd love to go for the doctorate one day - just for kicks. Posts: 1069 | Registered: Feb 2005
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Another phenomenon I've noticed with online classes is a lot of high school students in them, students who have applied for permission for dual enrollment and are taking their first year of college along with their last year of high school. What does everyone think about that? I know that my oldest daughter wants to do that, mainly because as a gifted student, she doesn't see enough challenge in school right now and really thinks college is wonderful (no doubt because I'm currently in school, but I can remember feeling the same way at her age.) Should we encourage our best and brightest students to rush through the first year or so of college by either CLEPing it away or taking the first year online while they're still in high school?
There's another possibility, you can take college courses in high school and still go on to take 4 years of college. As someone who loves learning, there are so many courses I want to take and am never going to have the time to because I have to fulfill the requirements for my major and school. I'm on a four year scholarship, so I have to graduate in four years. Which puts some serious time constraints on me. I have three classes free to take electives left in my career as an undergrad and I want to take all of the history courses, several art and design courses, several sociology courses I want to take an Agriculture course, a biology course, a food science course, introductory Chemistry, some religious studies courses and so many more. And I won't have time to. Granted, I would never have had time to take all of them, but if I'd tested out of more courses in high school, or taken them online, I would have had time to take a lot more.
My boyfriend entered Purdue at Junior standing with something like 32 credit hours. He's still taking 4 years, but those extra credits mean that he can get his undergrad in Mechanical Engineering while still taking enough Electrical Engineering courses that he can get into a grad program in EE.
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I don't know how it is these days, but in my time I couldn't CLEP out of the courses I wanted to. OK, so I didn't have to take BASIC or "Introduction to Computers" in college (if I had, I would have killed someone). But I was required to take a Pascal course when I already knew the language. Same goes for several others.
Can you CLEP out of courses beyond the first year core requirements? I would have CLEPped out almost my entire compu-sci curriculum if I could.
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quote:Originally posted by Nighthawk: Can you CLEP out of courses beyond the first year core requirements? I would have CLEPped out almost my entire compu-sci curriculum if I could.
This varies greatly from college to college. Some specifically do not allow you to CLEP out of certain core requirements. Many have a maximum number of CLEPs you can get credit for.
And then there are the ones that encourage you to take as many CLEPs as possible.
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Getting rid of the first year core requirements can make a HUGE difference.
I entered Purdue with 12 credits, only six of which were actually required and that made a really big difference.
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Hmm, looking at the list, I'm tempted to CLEP my way to some random additional credits . . .
Nighthawk: I'm somewhat dismayed at your college's curriculum as described, but at my university (where I am not enrolled in the CS department ), the easiest way to get around requirements is just to become friends with various professors; they then use their magic course registration magic to get you into their classes and out of requirements because they like you and think you can contribute, and then you get department admins to sign off on the various higher level courses as fulfilling the lower level requirements, which you use to make the university give you your degree.
I'm in Informatics, myself (explore to your hearts content at http://informatics.indiana.edu , as I'm sure there'll be several questions, starting with "What is Informatics?"). I'm doing it somewhat differently from the intended approach, but I'm aided by the school being small and thus only having one advisor and one recorder, both of whom are also happy to wave their hands and make requirements go away where appropriate.
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I don't really see any reason not to start a little early. Heck, good time to get those basic courses out of the way so that you can get on to the classes that really matter. CLEP out? Not so much agree on that, but it shouldn't be banned completely.
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fugu13: While I was attending Florida International University I was writing software for the university. I wrote a disk-based application for admission to FIU for the Admissions Department (which failed miserably... thank you, Internet!).
The only way that helped me is that I didn't have to pay parking tickets (which, at the time, probably would have cost me more than tuition). Otherwise, it had no effect on my curriculum.
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I'm getting my degree in History because I freakin love learning about history! And not just learning about history, but being taught about. The different spins different teachers give the same history is really interesting to me. When I graduate, I haven't the slightest idea what I will do. I might go to grad school, but then I might join the Air Force. Or go to law school. Or try to find a job right away, which would likely not have anything to do with history. Thinking about it, a college degree means virtually nothing to me. I'm going to college because I love to learn, not to get the degree. My Assosciate of Arts degree on the other hand (gen ed), I went at with a mentality of "I'm only taking these stupid classes and getting this stupid degree so I can get to the good stuff".
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Your administration was clearly not pliable enough . However, the key isn't to write software for people (it is fun, I do it for my university), its to convince profs who teach high level courses in the areas required courses are in that you're able to take their course.
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I can't figure it out. I wouldn't trade my college years for anything, but the degree hasn't really...I don't know. Nathan makes more than I do and I've got the degree. I wonder if I'm looking in the wrong places for jobs. I'm not sure.
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Upon further reflection, I think that computer science is an interesting field, as a result of it being relatively young. This results in more diversity among the "core curriculum," senior faculty that migrated from other departments (usually math), and a rapidly changing field where a professor's knowledge becomes obsolete about the day she joins the faculty. This is probably at least part of the reason why people's experiences with the quality of a computer science education vary so widely.
In computer science (and I think this is true of many other disciplines as well), preparing someone for a job is at least different from preparing them for grad school. At an institution in which a large portion of the students go to grad school, should that be more of a responsibility than teaching the specific skills necessary in the workplace?
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I didn't bother taking any AP tests my senior year though I was enrolled in my classes. I made this decision immediately upon hearing that my college of choice had its own "core" and nothing could be tested out of. But perhaps that was because we did not have any "English 101" classes but instead took "Texts and Traditions 1" and so on for three years. They stressed the importance of a class cohesion from attending lecture and seminar together four days a week every semester. They also didn't trust that the schools had properly prepared students for college-level courses.
Which makes sense because I've heard the horror stories from professors who end up with freshman in their upper-level math courses with disasterous results.
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quote:I wouldn't trade my college years for anything, but the degree hasn't really...I don't know.
"I don't know" meaning "Lead to a hefty paycheck." But mac, you traded wisdom with monks, that kind of education is priceless and also not redeemable for any sort of material comfort.
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quote:People often, far too often, ask me, "So, what are you going to do with that?" when I say I am a music/English major. I despise the question, and usually respond with a hazy description of my future as a traveling music critic or maybe a folksey third-grade teacher in Spain or something. I don't know what to say. I am a student; I am not a _______ in training, or a future ___________.
But I strongly disagree with this attitude. While I am in favor of learning for the sake of knowledge, I do think that after 4 (or 3, or 5) years, you should ALSO be prepared to Get a Real Job. I do agree that should not be one's only focus in college; but it should (IMO) be a focus.
Thanks for the kudos Rivka-
I suppose part of it is a little personal for me. Yes I have goals of a vague sort; there is for example a much higher likelyhood of me being an English teacher than a bussiness exec, a much higher chance of me being a composer or a writer than a carpenter. These education experiences focus me on the things I do like to learn about, but I think that any career I choose is going to be, at least for me, mostly about learning. I would like to be a period instrumenatalist for Shakespeare plays, for instance, and equally well I would enjoy directing plays or even writing about them, being a critique or a copywriter, or even a journalist of a sort. Anything I do I want to be about taking in the world and putting out what I think only I can give: my interpretation of a peice of music, like my reading of a short story or my setting of a poem to music, the output is supposed to be focused by the intellect, but it relies on what I can learn for myself and share with others.
My education has been about that. Multiple choice quizzes, though easy, have not been my favorites. Synthesis over mimisis: I need to be learning AND creating. As Emerson said: "A good reader must be a creative writer," and "genius is the greatest victim of genius," you have to be always synthesizing and personalizing the world, growing in order to fill the space you have in it, and still be worthy to call yourself human.
There is my focus, it just isn't on that timeless question and answer oral exam your relatives give you on Thanksgiving and Christmas: "Plastics my song, plastics!" I know, somehow, that I couldn't be happy if I KNEW, and PLANNED that my life would put me in a certain house on a certain street in a certain town doing a certain kind of work, forever. I don't know if career life is ever like that, but I get the feeling some people make it that way for themselves. That isn't me. I don't know what me is, but it isn't that.
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You know, I was reading this thread and I was rather surprised by the attitudes of some of the posters here, who basically seem to think that if somebody is going to college in order to et a higher paying job when they graduate, they are somehow less worthy than someone who is going "just for the education." Quite frankly, that attitude seems to ignore the realities of life for a lot of people.
The fact is, getting an education is hugely expensive, not just because of the cost of tuition and such, but also because of the opportunity cost of giving up what you would otherwise be doing if you weren't going to school. And it's all well and good to say that the value of an education is priceless, but for many people it's just not an option unless they are going to get a significant financial return on their investment.
I also disagree that the purpose of college is "To prepare you for a lifetime of meeting the responsibilities of living in a liberal democracy." That implies that those who haven't gone to college are second-tier citizens compared to those who have. I agree that there are many useful things you learn in a typical university to help you be a better citizen, but there are also many things to be learned by living on your own outside a university.
Basically, people have different reasons why they value a degree, and I don't think that it "should" mean only one thing to everybody. If you're going to school just for the joy of learning, more power to you, but don't look down on the person who sees his education as an investment to earn more money later on in life.
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quote:Originally posted by Kamisaki: You know, I was reading this thread and I was rather surprised by the attitudes of some of the posters here, who basically seem to think that if somebody is going to college in order to et a higher paying job when they graduate, they are somehow less worthy than someone who is going "just for the education." Quite frankly, that attitude seems to ignore the realities of life for a lot of people.
Basically, people have different reasons why they value a degree, and I don't think that it "should" mean only one thing to everybody. If you're going to school just for the joy of learning, more power to you, but don't look down on the person who sees his education as an investment to earn more money later on in life.
If you get a degree to get a better job, in what way does that degree qualify you for anything? It represents the education, it is not the education itself. The degree is based on the acknowledgement that you have become more educated, learned something, and are thus recognized as knowledgeable in a field. This makes you hireable, not the fact that you HAVE the degree.
I think people in this thread are very reasonably giving voice to the concern that online and by-mail education may teach you less, or degrade the inherent value in education, while causing people to overvalue the degree you recieve. If anyone can get a degree in two years by mail, and it really means the same thing that my 4 year in person degree means, then what is the VALUE in that 4 years? This is a legitimate question to ask, and you seem to think we shouldn't be discussing it. I'm afraid "different people have different reasons," is not grounds to dismiss a complex issue like this. Yes, patently, everyone does things for unique reasons, but this forum speaks to the universal: what can we agree on? What can't we agree on? If we all had to spend the whole time worrying about our various motivations, then what discussion could take place?
edit: I hasten to add, that we need to question motivations in order to find their value. To simply say: we have different motivations, is to beg the question- whom has better motivations? I think a discussion can take place in which we question the value of an education based on the desire to be more hireable or make more money; that is a question we can and should adress, and not shy away from for fear of offense. You are also free to question the value of an education based on nothing but learning, and thus we all have our little say.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Kamisaki: You know, I was reading this thread and I was rather surprised by the attitudes of some of the posters here, who basically seem to think that if somebody is going to college in order to get a higher paying job when they graduate, they are somehow less worthy than someone who is going "just for the education."
With possibly one exception, I didn't see that attitude at all. Personally, I think anyone going for either one of those two things exclusively is missing out. IMO, college should be an opportunity for both education and a chance at better jobs. (And better doesn't just mean higher-paying. It may also mean more enjoyable, or more suited to their interests or abilities.)
Of course, it's not a 50:50 proposition for most people, and the relative importance is likely to be different for each person. What dismays me is when people are so focused on one of the two, to the exclusion of the other.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: If you get a degree to get a better job, in what way does that degree qualify you for anything? It represents the education, it is not the education itself. The degree is based on the acknowledgement that you have become more educated, learned something, and are thus recognized as knowledgeable in a field. This makes you hireable, not the fact that you HAVE the degree.
Hmmm, I guess I was unclear. I was using the terms 'degree' and 'education' interchangeably. I was responding to the question 'What's the value of an education?' but I suppose that was a parallel discussion to what you are talking about. I don't think I was the only one on the thread to be using it that way, though.
quote:I think people in this thread are very reasonably giving voice to the concern that online and by-mail education may teach you less, or degrade the inherent value in education, while causing people to overvalue the degree you recieve. If anyone can get a degree in two years by mail, and it really means the same thing that my 4 year in person degree means, then what is the VALUE in that 4 years? This is a legitimate question to ask, and you seem to think we shouldn't be discussing it.
I'm not dismissing it, in fact I wasn't even talking about those who are discussing the online/in-person class issue. I was responding specifically to a small number of posters who seemed to display the attitude that I described above. To be more specific, it's quotes like these that I was responding to:
"You should come to college (particularly a liberal arts college) for the education and to enrich your life. This generation of students (I call them the entitlement generation) do not always get it."
and
"I have known many people, especially fellow English majors, and less often fellow Music Majors, who have seen college as a utility: a training camp for a career in teaching or something. I have never like these people, they have generally impressed me as rather stupid and boring types, not the kind of person I would learn something from anyway, so why bother with them?"
You can discuss online/offline all you want and I probably won't have anything to add to that particular discussion; it was the whole "education should be pure and untainted by thoughts of money" vibe that I was questioning.
quote:I'm afraid "different people have different reasons," is not grounds to dismiss a complex issue like this. Yes, patently, everyone does things for unique reasons, but this forum speaks to the universal: what can we agree on? What can't we agree on? If we all had to spend the whole time worrying about our various motivations, then what discussion could take place?
edit: I hasten to add, that we need to question motivations in order to find their value. To simply say: we have different motivations, is to beg the question- whom has better motivations? I think a discussion can take place in which we question the value of an education based on the desire to be more hireable or make more money; that is a question we can and should adress, and not shy away from for fear of offense. You are also free to question the value of an education based on nothing but learning, and thus we all have our little say.
I'm not trying to stifle discussion; I am discussing the issue. I gave some reasons in my above post why I believe learning for learning's sake is not inherently better than other types, and you're free to give counter arguments.
Edit to respond to rivka: Rereading this thread, it really was only those two quotes that I listed that I took exception to, so you're right that the attitude is not prevalent in this thread. I guess they just struck me the wrong way, but I apologize if I came off as accusing a lot of people here. That wasn't my intention.
And, I agree with you about both aspects being important. I do think different circumstances call for different reactions to the question. Someone fresh out of high school should be commended for trying to learn as much as they can about all that they can; someone who has a family to support should be given some slack if they take only the courses necessary to graduate and get the job that will feed their family. Which, of course, is pretty much what you said.
quote:Originally posted by Kamisaki: I guess they just struck me the wrong way, but I apologize if I came off as accusing a lot of people here. That wasn't my intention.
It wasn't so much that I saw it as an accusation as that I wondered if we were reading the same thread. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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"I have known many people, especially fellow English majors, and less often fellow Music Majors, who have seen college as a utility: a training camp for a career in teaching or something. I have never like these people, they have generally impressed me as rather stupid and boring types, not the kind of person I would learn something from anyway, so why bother with them?"
You can discuss online/offline all you want and I probably won't have anything to add to that particular discussion; it was the whole "education should be pure and untainted by thoughts of money" vibe that I was questioning.
I'll note that I make a distinction between
1. Entering a university with an object in mind: getting a better job than you could have otherwise
and
2. as I said treating college like a training camp for a career.
Notice that the first doesn't preclude learning or say anything about how one treats the university, fellow students or the classes. It doesn't exclude learning for learning's sake, on the PATH TO the career. It may be an object, but there is room in between for what I would call the right motivations.
The second one, and the one that really bothers me, is the student who is treating the university, and thus the classes and the fellow students, in entirely the wrong way. This is the student for whom the proffessor I mentioned was asked to change a creative writing class effectively into a business letter writing class. These students treat the UC and other universities like Devry or Heald college, I have seen this happen. Students commute from long distance to sit in classes two days a week, they don't contribute to discussion, or read the assignments. They complain bitterly about office hours and study groups, and their projects at the end of the quarter are embarassing (this is in music classes mostly). I have known musicians even, to balk at spending time rehearsing with a group outside of class, because they refused to move to the area of the school, get to know anyone, or find work closer to campus. These are expected, basic things that one must do as a university student, and it cuts no ice with some people.
That is the kind of student I hate, because it brings down the level and tone of the whole class.
An anecdote: this past 2 years we had a student very much like the one I describe in my music series, so we were in 4 classes together: Musicianship, theory comp, music history and keyboarding. We were in the last lower div theory class at the UC, after 2 solid years of composition, history, musicanship, performance study, etc, she asks the professor this question in a theory lecture on Mahler:
"I mean, why are we listening to Mahler? Like, what do people like about Mahler, whats the big deal with him? Personally I just go to the symphony to hear the soloist play well, I never really listen to the whole orchestra ... so what makes Mahler so great, and what do we get out of listening to him?"
MY rendition doesn't do it justice, it was petulant and bored sounding, and delivered as much as an accusation than a question. Very strange. Questions from other class members were more along the lines of "How can we recognize the differences between the way Mahler moves into the development in his early symphonies compared with, say, Brahms? Or, "to whom to did Mahler credit the convention of the 5 movement symphonic stucture he used?" The question: "Whats the big deal about Mahler," in that circumstance, was laughable. (she is, btw a virtuoso violinist)
Later the proffessor (also conductor of one of my ensembles) would say that if you have to ask a question like THAT after 2 years as a music major, you don't listen to enough music. She was being charitable. Its the equivelant of spending two years studying drama and asking "whats the big deal about Shakespeare?"
Now, granted this is partly an isolated case involving a bewilderingly clueless music student who spent two years as a major without learning the answer to THAT question, but its something of a common experience for me. I just meet people in my classes who don't seem to be absorbing anything. I see them periodically in an English section, and peer review their work and wonder how they can be English majors, how they thought they were going to get through it! For some of these people the attitude is: Get in, get out, drive by education.
As I said above, the uncommited student, the one who wants to be given skills in outline form to practice during two hour lectures brings down the tone and pace of the class. A stupid question (I believe in stupid questions, but they are difficult to concieve of for most people), can sidetrack a discussion if the prof has to do a double take at the student and go: "seriously, you really expect me to give you an answer?" The same student is the one who spends half of the first class meeting probing the expectations of the prof as to grading, absences, and class participation, asking questions that anyone could safely assume would be answered in due time. "If you were to accidentally put a question from the first half of the quarter on a non-cumulative test from the second half, then how would you count the answers to that?" I'm not kidding when I say I have heard that question more than once in an introductory meeting. I heard it this afternoon.
These are things I have come to associate with "that type" of student, the same one who is using the university in a manner not intended by the manufacturer, and which is not covered by warranty, with the "in and out in 4" type. It is sometimes apt as a comparison, and sometimes not, for various reasons.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
Haha. No, it only bothers me when the complainer doesn't deserve to be complaining. I do my share of griping when it deserved, but then I also suck it up and do the work.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Boon
unregistered
posted
quote:Originally posted by Belle: Another phenomenon I've noticed with online classes is a lot of high school students in them, students who have applied for permission for dual enrollment and are taking their first year of college along with their last year of high school. What does everyone think about that? I know that my oldest daughter wants to do that, mainly because as a gifted student, she doesn't see enough challenge in school right now and really thinks college is wonderful (no doubt because I'm currently in school, but I can remember feeling the same way at her age.) Should we encourage our best and brightest students to rush through the first year or so of college by either CLEPing it away or taking the first year online while they're still in high school?
I did that, took one college class each semester instead of three dumb high school classes I didn't need.
It was great! It wasn't a whole first year; it only totaled 6 credit hours, so not even a real whole college semester. (I wasn't all that ambitious, just bored.) It got me out of HOURS of boring crap at high school, like an extra study hall, art class, or whatever that I didn't need and had no interest in...so instead of 15 hours "wasted" every week, I went to 3 hours of college, got out early and went to the lake to do all my homework.
And now I'm rambling and probably not making much sense, since I've been up all night reading (again!).
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posted
The importance of college varies a LOT by career course of study.
For instance, I don't see anything at all wrong with an English major taking all their classes online, as they can still do the interaction, writing, etc. all there pretty much as in a classroom.
And for me, as a Information Systems major, the degree was more of a piece of paper to say I completed the course of study and was worth paying.
But for my daughter, who will be MANY years in college becoming a veterinarian -- I don't see how anyone can pursue that degree without being on-campus immersed in a veterinary program. You have to learn labs, work on real animals, be exposed to those situations, etc. It is NOT a degree that could be done online or off-campus.
quote:Haha. No, it only bothers me when the complainer doesn't deserve to be complaining. I do my share of griping when it deserved, but then I also suck it up and do the work.
Agreed. I was a mechanical engineer in college, and there were few things more annoying than English majors whining about having to write one 18 page paper when I had just gotten out of a 20 hour stretch in the machine shop.
Posts: 170 | Registered: Mar 2001
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"I have known many people, especially fellow English majors, and less often fellow Music Majors, who have seen college as a utility: a training camp for a career in teaching or something. I have never like these people, they have generally impressed me as rather stupid and boring types, not the kind of person I would learn something from anyway, so why bother with them?"
You can discuss online/offline all you want and I probably won't have anything to add to that particular discussion; it was the whole "education should be pure and untainted by thoughts of money" vibe that I was questioning.
I'll note that I make a distinction between
1. Entering a university with an object in mind: getting a better job than you could have otherwise
and
2. as I said treating college like a training camp for a career.
Notice that the first doesn't preclude learning or say anything about how one treats the university, fellow students or the classes. It doesn't exclude learning for learning's sake, on the PATH TO the career. It may be an object, but there is room in between for what I would call the right motivations.
The second one, and the one that really bothers me, is the student who is treating the university, and thus the classes and the fellow students, in entirely the wrong way. This is the student for whom the proffessor I mentioned was asked to change a creative writing class effectively into a business letter writing class. These students treat the UC and other universities like Devry or Heald college, I have seen this happen. Students commute from long distance to sit in classes two days a week, they don't contribute to discussion, or read the assignments. They complain bitterly about office hours and study groups, and their projects at the end of the quarter are embarassing (this is in music classes mostly). I have known musicians even, to balk at spending time rehearsing with a group outside of class, because they refused to move to the area of the school, get to know anyone, or find work closer to campus. These are expected, basic things that one must do as a university student, and it cuts no ice with some people.
That is the kind of student I hate, because it brings down the level and tone of the whole class.
An anecdote: this past 2 years we had a student very much like the one I describe in my music series, so we were in 4 classes together: Musicianship, theory comp, music history and keyboarding. We were in the last lower div theory class at the UC, after 2 solid years of composition, history, musicanship, performance study, etc, she asks the professor this question in a theory lecture on Mahler:
"I mean, why are we listening to Mahler? Like, what do people like about Mahler, whats the big deal with him? Personally I just go to the symphony to hear the soloist play well, I never really listen to the whole orchestra ... so what makes Mahler so great, and what do we get out of listening to him?"
MY rendition doesn't do it justice, it was petulant and bored sounding, and delivered as much as an accusation than a question. Very strange. Questions from other class members were more along the lines of "How can we recognize the differences between the way Mahler moves into the development in his early symphonies compared with, say, Brahms? Or, "to whom to did Mahler credit the convention of the 5 movement symphonic stucture he used?" The question: "Whats the big deal about Mahler," in that circumstance, was laughable. (she is, btw a virtuoso violinist)
Later the proffessor (also conductor of one of my ensembles) would say that if you have to ask a question like THAT after 2 years as a music major, you don't listen to enough music. She was being charitable. Its the equivelant of spending two years studying drama and asking "whats the big deal about Shakespeare?"
Now, granted this is partly an isolated case involving a bewilderingly clueless music student who spent two years as a major without learning the answer to THAT question, but its something of a common experience for me. I just meet people in my classes who don't seem to be absorbing anything. I see them periodically in an English section, and peer review their work and wonder how they can be English majors, how they thought they were going to get through it! For some of these people the attitude is: Get in, get out, drive by education.
As I said above, the uncommited student, the one who wants to be given skills in outline form to practice during two hour lectures brings down the tone and pace of the class. A stupid question (I believe in stupid questions, but they are difficult to concieve of for most people), can sidetrack a discussion if the prof has to do a double take at the student and go: "seriously, you really expect me to give you an answer?" The same student is the one who spends half of the first class meeting probing the expectations of the prof as to grading, absences, and class participation, asking questions that anyone could safely assume would be answered in due time. "If you were to accidentally put a question from the first half of the quarter on a non-cumulative test from the second half, then how would you count the answers to that?" I'm not kidding when I say I have heard that question more than once in an introductory meeting. I heard it this afternoon.
These are things I have come to associate with "that type" of student, the same one who is using the university in a manner not intended by the manufacturer, and which is not covered by warranty, with the "in and out in 4" type. It is sometimes apt as a comparison, and sometimes not, for various reasons.
When the job market stops treating a college degree (note: degree, not education) like a requirement, you'll probably see a noticable change in the student demographic. As it is, there are so many jobs that unnecessarily expect/demand a degree that the diploma-mill view of higher education makes too much sense to ignore.
Posts: 246 | Registered: Jul 2006
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posted
18 pages? Psh. My freshman year, I had this class in which the final paper had to be 104 pages. He said he did this to teach us not to be afraid of long papers. Pretty much we could put whatever we wanted in it (mine ended up with drawings from a friend's Deviantart, even), so long as we had 104 pages.
It actually came in handy, when I had a class with my psycho advisor who thought that a business plan wasn't a real business plan unless it was 80 pages long or something, with 30 pages of budget analysis. Of course, we had to deliver it walking barefoot ten miles in a blizzard during the blazing heat of the summer, during a hurricane. Uphill both ways.
quote:Agreed. I was a mechanical engineer in college, and there were few things more annoying than English majors whining about having to write one 18 page paper when I had just gotten out of a 20 hour stretch in the machine shop.
An 18 page paper would take me far more than 20 hours, and I'm generally considered a fast writer. When you counted the travel time to the library and the time spent there in research, I spent more than 20 hours on a six page paper just this semester.
There are few things more annoying to me than people who think just because a different major doesn't have the same requirements as theirs, the person in the major obviously doesn't work as hard.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
I always cringe at TV ads that advertise you can get a Veterinary degree studying from home. Bet the cat's going to be hiding in the attic in no time.
I feel computer science requires a lot of hands on as well, but when I went the only hands on you got was using the university's VAX, which is hardly a real world scenario. They went through the curriculum as if PCs didn't exist, relegating knowledge of them to more vocationally oriented courses (like how to use Microsoft Office). A fellow student was troubled in that he was learning all this stuff in computer science, but couldn't put it to practical use at home other than when he dialed in to the VAX.
The fact that the computer science was not only teaching methods and theory poorly, but they were doing it in such a way that had little real world application was troubling. As stated, I worked for IBM, and had access to everything from desktop PCs to mainframes that required their own building. Yeah, I might know the VAX inside and out by the time I'm done, but what's the practical use in that? One time I had to work on an SA/36 and I didn't know what I was doing.
Posts: 3486 | Registered: Sep 2002
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quote:Agreed. I was a mechanical engineer in college, and there were few things more annoying than English majors whining about having to write one 18 page paper when I had just gotten out of a 20 hour stretch in the machine shop.
An 18 page paper would take me far more than 20 hours, and I'm generally considered a fast writer. When you counted the travel time to the library and the time spent there in research, I spent more than 20 hours on a six page paper just this semester.
There are few things more annoying to me than people who think just because a different major doesn't have the same requirements as theirs, the person in the major obviously doesn't work as hard.
I think mechanical engineers are just naturally inclined to believe that the bicycle, flamethrower, or space shuttle they are building is more important than everything else on the earth.
But yes, that attitude annoys me as well. Especially because I have a business degree, which apparently means that I am a lazy, money-grubbing moron who just chose the major I thought would make me the most money with the least amount of work.
posted
I'm worried when I hear about on line humanities classes. Edit: My ideal humanities course would be a small conversation.
Generally, judging the quality of a discipline by hardest or most time-intensive, makes about as much sense as judging that the best parent is the one who disciplines his/her kids the strictest.
In short, it doesn't matter how many hours a given paper or project or lab took, what matters is the importance of what you learned by doing it.
quote:Originally posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong: I'm worried when I hear about on line humanities classes. Maybe humanities course would be a small conversation.
Generally, judging the quality of a discipline by hardest or most time-intensive, makes about as much sense as judging that the best parent is the one who disciplines his/her kids the strictest.
In short, it doesn't matter how many hours a given paper or projuect or lab took, what matters is the importance of what you learned by doing it.
I *vastly* prefer the online humanities courses I've taken.
Forums & chat rooms are much, much more conducive to constructive discussion than any classroom environment I've experienced.
Posts: 246 | Registered: Jul 2006
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quote:Haha. No, it only bothers me when the complainer doesn't deserve to be complaining. I do my share of griping when it deserved, but then I also suck it up and do the work.
Agreed. I was a mechanical engineer in college, and there were few things more annoying than English majors whining about having to write one 18 page paper when I had just gotten out of a 20 hour stretch in the machine shop.
As a liberal arts major, I find engineering majors complaining about having to write one six page paper just as frustrating. Posts: 4655 | Registered: Jan 2002
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) and he complained to me about the UC trying to turn his classes, especially his creative writing classes, into workshops for career training. Short stories are changed to business letters, persuasive arguments become corporate memos, and so on. He sees it as a major travesty, and well he should since his job is to be a creative writing teacher, not a career counselor.![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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I do agree that should not be one's only focus in college; but it should (IMO) be a focus.
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